David G. Bromley

David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. He wrote extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.

Education and Career

Bromley received his B.A. in sociology (1963) from Colby College. He then obtained his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1971) from Duke University.

He began his professional teaching career at the University of Virginia where he taught from 1968-1974. He then taught at the University of Texas at Austin (1976-1980), and Hartford University (1980-1983). Since 1983 he has held his professorial post at the University of Virginia and also at Virginia Commonwealth University.

His primary area of teaching and research is sociology of religion, with a specialization in religious movements especially new religious movements. He was also director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Hartford and chairman of Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Virginia.

Bromley is the editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, published by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and editor of Religion and the Social Order, an annual serial published by the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

Controversy

During the 1970s a social conflict erupted in North America concerning fringe religions labelled as cults. The social discourses of the critics of cults centered on allegations that cults were socially devious and subversive groups. The subversion was alleged to threaten the norms of mainstream society and of social institutions such as the family. The processes by which devotees were converted and indoctrinated into cults were alleged to involve various degrees of brainwashing and mind control.

Many of those who were opposed to cults were disaffected former members, and members of distraught families and friends who had loved ones involved in a group. As networks developed among these people a social movement developed which has come to be known as the anti-cult movement. He defined the anti-cult movement in 1981 as the amalgam of groups who embrace the brainwashing theory. In the 1970s and 1980s the anti-cult movement came to prominence for their allegations and activities in resisting cults and in delegitimating these groups as inauthentic religious bodies. One of the controversial activities promulgated by some protagonists was known as deprogramming - a form of counter-brainwashing.

As a sociologist interested in topics like social deviancy and religious apostasy, Bromley became a prominent scholarly voice about the social conflict ensuing around cults. He defined in his 1998 article the apostate role as "one that occurs in a highly polarized situation in which an organization member undertakes a total change of loyalties by allying with one or more elements of an oppositional coalition without the consent or control of the organization. The narrative is one which documents the quintessentially evil essence of the apostate's former organization chronicled through the apostate's personal experience of capture and ultimate escape/rescue."

However, Bromley's role soon extended from that of an observer as he expressed his opposition to the claims of brainwashing and the practice of deprogramming. Bromley was concerned that the social conflict was resembling aspects of the witch hunts of the late middle ages, and that civil liberties guaranteeing religious freedom were at stake. He questioned the tactics of anti-cultists and their claims over brainwashing in several books such as Strange Gods, Moonies in America, and The New Vigilantes.

Bromley's high profile opposition to anti-cult activities has led to critical reactions to his own work by various anti-cult activists. He has been dubbed by them a "cult apologist."

In recent times Bromley has participated in scholarly discussions over the brainwashing controversy (see his essay contributed to the book Misunderstanding Cults).

Books

Moonies" in America: Cult, Church and Crusade. Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications, 1979. (with Anson Shupe).
The New Vigilantes: Anti-Cultists, Deprogrammers and the New Religions. Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications, 1980. (with Anson Shupe).
Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981 (with Anson Shupe)
The Anti-Cult Movement in America: A Bibliography and Historical Survey (with Anson Shupe and Donna L. Oliver). New York and London: Garland, 1984.
The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: Historical, Sociological, Psychological and Legal Perspectives. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984. (edited with James T. Richardson).
New Christian Politics. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984. 288 pp. (edited with Anson Shupe).
The Future of New Religious Movements. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987. 278 pp. (edited with Phillip Hammond).
Falling from the Faith: The Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications, 1988. (edited)
Krishna Consciousness in the West. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1988. 290pp. (edited with Larry Shinn).
The Satanism Scare. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991. (edited with James Richardson and Joel Best).
Anticult Movements in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: Garland Publishers, 1994 (edited with Anson Shupe).
The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998. (edited)
Toward Reflexive Ethnography. Volume 9: Religion and the Social Order (edited with Lewis Carter). Oxford: Elsevier, 2001.
Cults, Religion, and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. (Edited with J. Gordon Melton)

References

Bromley and Anson Shupe, Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981
, MaryMcCormick Maaga, Mary Hearing the voices of Jonestown, 1998 Syracuse University press, ISBN 0815605153
Bromley (editor) The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998.

Assessment

Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins, eds. Misunderstanding Cults (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). This includes Bromley's essay "A Tale of two Theories: Brainwashing and Conversion as Competing Political Narratives".

External link

Home Page of David Bromley at the University of Virginia ^*

American sociologists