Cesnur

Aims

According to their website, CESNUR is devoted to promoting scholarly research in the field of new religious consciousness, and is dedicated to exposing the problems associated with some movements, while defending the principles of religious liberty.

While established by a group of scholars who were mostly

• Homepage of CESNUR

External links

References

[6] Introvigne responded by claiming that the anti-cult movement have accused CESNUR of being a front for "Freemasonry, a "Methodist cult", the Roman Catholic Church and a number of Catholic organizations, including

In an official OSCE report, Dick Marty, Swiss senator and member of the OECD Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, answered criticism by Introvigne, who was himself an official Rapporteur at the OCSE conference held in Vienna on March 22, 1999: "The CESNUR report misrepresents the contents of the "Regards sur" newsletter: taking everything into account, there is insufficient credible evidence for the allegations to be made out. As to the CESNUR document and in the absence of corroborative material, the Rapporteur views its credibility in the light of his conclusions on the partial and misleading report of the Beijing Conference."^[5]

Scholars and anti-cultists Stephen A. Kent and Raffaella Di Marzio consider CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing controversy one-sided, polemical and sometimes without scholarly value.^[2][3] Di Marzio is listed among the contributors of the CESNUR online encyclopedia "Religions in Italy".^[4]

CESNUR has been criticized by the cults.

Criticism and response

• Eileen Barker, professor in sociology at the London School of Economics
• David Bromley, professor of Sociology & Anthropology, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Douglas Cowan, Renison College, University of Waterloo
• Jeffrey K. Hadden, University of Virginia
• Irving Hexham, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary
• Free university in Amsterdam
• J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion (ISAR)
• Anson Shupe, Professor of Sociology of the School of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University

CESNUR-affiliated scholars include:

CESNUR sponsor yearly conferences in the field of new religions. Conferences have been held inter alia at the London School of Economics (1993 and 2001), the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil (1994), the Sapienza University of Rome (1995), the Université de Montréal (1996), the Free university of Amsterdam (1997), the Industrial Union in Turin (1998), the Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania (1999), the University of Latvia in Riga (2000), the University of Utah and Brigham Young University (2002), and the University of Vilnius (2003).

CESNUR is critical of concepts like mind control, thought reform and brainwashing, asserting that they lack scientific and scholarly support and are mainly based on anecdotal evidence. They do not believe that all religious movements are benign but oppose special laws against religious movements.