[MUSIC PLAYING] DAN MCKANAN: On behalf
of Harvard's program for the evolution
of spirituality, I am delighted to welcome you
to today's virtual colloquium on affirming personal agency in
discussions on abuse of power in emerging and alternative
spiritual spaces. My name is Dan McKanan,
and I'm pleased to join you from Somerville on the unseeded
lands of the Massachusetts people and the watershed
of the Charles River. I have the pleasure of
serving as the Founding Director of Harvard's
program for the evolution of spirituality. I'll say a little
bit about the program in this particular
series on abuse of power before I introduce
today's speakers. The program for the
evolution of spirituality is a recent addition to
programming at Harvard Divinity School. We aim to support
the scholarly study of emerging spiritual movements,
marginalized spiritualities, and the innovative edges
of established traditions. We try to build a scholarly
community that fully includes practitioners of alternative
spiritualities and critics of those spiritualities,
including people who have been harmed,
as well as those who take a more neutral
scholarly approach. To serve these multiple
constituencies, we sponsor multiple
strands of programming, including an
inaugural conference on ecological spiritualities
that will take place on April, 27 through 30, 2022. Today's session is part
of a monthly series of events digging deeply
into power dynamics in spiritual communities. We hope these conversations
will highlight diverse individual experiences
and diverse approaches to abuses of power
in a manner that's both challenging and respectful. And we are thrilled today
to feature two speakers who thought with special care
about how therapists, scholars, and other professionals
can affirm the integrity and agency of both
present and former members of alternative spiritual groups. And with that, I'm delighted
to welcome our two speakers. Erin Prophet, who
holds both a master's of public health and a PhD is
visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion
at the University of Florida. She studies religion,
spirituality, and medicine. Her publications include the
forthcoming Cults and New Religious Movements from
Cambridge University Press. And prophets daughter, My Life
With Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside Church Universal
and Triumphant published by Lyons
Press in 2009. Jessica Pratezina has a master's
degree in child and youth care and is currently a PhD student
at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Jessica's research
centers on growing up in alternative religious
movements on women's narratives of religious transition, and the
development of wise therapeutic and social work practice
with people involved in these religious groups. So to begin our conversation,
I'd like to invite each of you to share a little bit
more of your own story. How did you come to be
interested in the study of alternative spiritualities
and in therapeutic support for people making transitions
out of spiritual organizations? Erin, could you begin? ERIN PROPHET: Sure. First of all, I want to
thank you Dan and Natalia for inviting me to
be on this panel. I'm excited about the
prospects for your new program for the evolution
of spirituality. So I came of age, I was a
teenager in the immediate post Jonestown moment when many
people in this country were anxious about
the presence of groups that were called cults or
new religious movements. And so that formed the
backdrop of my adolescence. And naturally people
were concerned. 900 people had killed
themselves in a murder suicide. So I was at the time
growing up in a group that wasn't a religious
movement and that soon ended up on a list of so-called cults
by this growing movement called the anti-cult movement. That was composed of
concerned parents, of some Christian groups, as
well as some psychiatrists who were trying to figure out
how to address concerns. So I just want to share with you
an anecdote from my upbringing because my mother used
to lecture quite a bit and so I accompanied her. We were at the University of
Pennsylvania campus and myself and some other
members of the group just went out to try to get
people to come to her lecture, and we were standing
on the street corner, we were singing Hindu chants
and clapping our hands and of course, a young
man came up to us and stood in front of us and
said, "Oh, my God, a cult." And I couldn't
necessarily blame him because we were all
wearing purple pantsuits and we were all had prayer
beads around our necks. But to me, it highlighted
this shift, and this was 1980. So this shift just
started happened in '78. The shift in awareness
and definitely a shift towards greater
hostility and suspicion of groups that previously might
have been seen as harmless. So I had what I consider to
be a pretty good upbringing. I had a good education, I had
a lot of people cared about me, I had great food,
traveled a lot, and I went to a church school. So when I was in
the church school, I experienced also another
event that was shaped me, which was that one
of my classmates was kidnapped by her
non-custodial parent. Her father had hired people
to kidnap and deprogram her. This deprogramming
was unsuccessful. She returned back to our
group and she graduated in our high school
class, and both she and I went on to
leave the group. She sooner rather than later, I
ended up working through my 20s to my late 20s and I was
profoundly struck though by this practice
of deprogramming and some of the narratives
that were being promoted which seemed decentralizing
and stigmatizing towards new religious movements. And so I chose to become
a religion scholar because I thought there
has to be a better way. I think it's
important to promote transparency and accountability
within new religious movements. Many of them actually
have people in them that are trying to do that. I think it's important to
ensure that people are not harmed by their religion, but
also that they're not harmed because of their religion. And I know that even though
deprogramming is no longer practiced by anti-cult movement,
there are certain narratives that I believe are faulty that
get promoted in nations outside of the United States, that
actually support deprogramming and coercive actions
by governments towards new religious movements. And so as a scholar,
I like to try to think that we can
find ways to promote better harmony on all sides. So that's my journey why I
decide get a PhD in religion. DAN MCKANAN: Thank
you so much, Erin. Jessica. JESSICA PRATEZINA: Hi, thank
you so much for the welcome and the kind introduction. I came to be a scholar who
studied child and youth care, and who bridged
together child and youth care and religious studies,
because I also grew up in a group that is
commonly called a cult or what I like to call an
alternative religious movement. It was a group that I left
when I was in my early 20s. It was also in
decline at the time. It doesn't really exist anymore. And I found myself seeking
therapy at certain points during my 20s and really
disappointed with what was on offer for me. I felt like the approach
that therapists were taking were very pathologizing
fundamentally, deficit-based. And really erased my voice
and my sense of agency, and told me how I should tell my
story according to what I felt was a scripted cult narrative. So I came to study
child youth care and bridge this with
religious studies because I thought that there
were certainly better, more affirming ways, more
strength-based ways of helping people who were either raised
in alternative religions or who had been
involved at some point. DAN MCKANAN: Thank
you both so much. So both of you have talked about
the importance of acknowledging personal agency when
working with people who have experienced harm
and spiritual organizations. And I wonder if you could
say a little bit more about why this is so important. And Erin, you can
go first again. ERIN PROPHET: All right. So the reason that I think
it's so important to talk about personal agency is that
I think as Jessica mentioned, it can take away a
person's sense of self to tell them that they were
somehow manipulated, abused, that they grew up in a structure
out of which they could not help themselves. And the only way for them
to be helped out of that was through some outside
agency, and that was not really my experience. So I absolutely
affirm people who choose to refer
to their past life in a religious
group as a cult. I understand that it
can feel empowering to say I was in a cult, I was
lied to, I was manipulated, I was abused, and
of course, we've seen some of the documentaries
that have come out. People do experience harm. But I think it is
also a category error to just assume and to pose
the question that everyone in these groups is
being harmed somehow, and that the default good
thing is for them all to leave. I don't think that's true. And we know that whether it's
the Shakers and the Mormons, there are all kinds of
groups in American history who've been perceived as
being extreme, or harmful, or dangerous, that have ended
up changing and normalizing in some ways, or in the case
of the Shakers, dying out. So I think it's important
to not assume harm, but also to assume
that people may have been doing good
things for themselves by being in the group. It may have served a purpose. They may have a community
or social structure. They may have family that
are still in the group that they want to interact
with and relate to. So a lot of the narrative
and the discourse I feel, and of
course, it doesn't help that you get
a lot of clicks or you get a lot of
views when you talk about this horrible
cult. And we're attracted by some of
the sensational stories, especially if it
involves sexual abuse. And I think that, obviously,
we need to be aware and to provide
avenues for people to seek help and redress. But I think that, unfortunately,
the narrative that has really stuck in the press involves a
misuse of Robert J. Lifton's work with Americans who are
imprisoned by the Chinese during World War II. And he wrote his famous
book, Thought reform and the Psychology of Totalism. So he identified
eight characteristics that supposedly, in his view,
would create thought reform. And many people hear about
those characteristics and think, oh, well, my group
had that or my group wasn't totally honest about x. So therefore I must have
been under thought reform. And the thought
reform narrative has been turned into what I would
call brainwashing without bars narrative, because the
Americans who were imprisoned by the Chinese, most
of them didn't stick to renounce their criticisms
of the United States that they had made. Most of them reverted to their
pre-imprisonment narratives after they got out. So the brainwashing
without bars narrative, and it often comes in the
disguise of other terms like coercive persuasion,
coercive control, thought reform, mind control. So you have these
self-appointed cottage industry of cult experts who
tries to, in my view, misapply Lifton and
other experts who who've worked with people who
have been in prison that tries to say that people who are
living in their own homes have jobs of their own,
have children in school, that these people are also under
some kind of system of control. And so I think that those
systems, all slice off the agency. And for me, I would have felt
that if I had said, oh, I left the group I was
in when I was 27, I went through sort
of a spiritual crisis. I would have felt that if I
had totally denied or negated my upbringing, that I would
have lost a part of myself. And that included practices
around food, and diet, and alternative medicine. It included a
community, it included all kinds of
experiences and friends, people who cared about me. And so I think that for people
to be suddenly yanked out of a system, that seems
to be working for them and to be told that
they have that they don't know their own mind, and
you're really short circuiting the normal process
of development and you're also
interfering, in my view, with what could be a
more productive family relationships. Often people join new
religious movements as a way of launching into
a new phase of maturity and adulthood, getting
away from their families. And it's natural
that parents are going to be nervous and
upset if their child suddenly decides to abandon a career
or something like that. We also have to realize that
these groups are not islands. They're not these little beads. People participate in religious
movements at different levels. Some of them are very close
to the center and the leaders. Some of them are just accepting
literature or attending events and conferences. So there needs to be an
appreciation of that diversity, and the fact that
people did choose to attend or to go to these
events that the group holds. And that they also may
have hybrid identities just like Catholics or members
of mainstream organizations. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you so much. Jessica. JESSICA PRATEZINA:
I loved listening to what Erin had to say. I relate to it quite
a bit because I also grew up in this alternative
religious group. A different one
from Erin though. I remember recently I
was talking to a reporter just at a party,
coincidentally, and he was asking me all these
questions about the group that I grew up in. And I guess I wasn't giving
the right kinds of answers. And he said this is not a
story that I was expecting. And I said, "Well, what
do you want me to say?" And he said, something
that can go on television. And I realized that sometimes
what people want to hear is a story that fits a
particular kind of a narrative, the narrative, and I
wasn't positioning myself as a victim or a survivor. I was telling a
different kind of story. A kind of a boring story really. I think that I don't
have a story that could go in a memoir. That's why I write
academic books. But it's not that interesting. But within my story,
I position myself as someone who has agency. I want to be careful to say that
I'm someone who really feels like I experienced harm because
of the group that I grew up in. I did not have a good time. I would not recommend it. My Yelp review
would be quite poor. And that's why it's all
the more important for me to hold on to my sense
of agency through that. And to my sense of dignity,
and to resist a narrative that comes from someone
else that says, I know how your story goes,
I know how you can tell it, I know how you can tell it. So I wanted to have control
over my own narrative, and what my experience
had meant to me. And fundamentally, in
a therapeutic context, there is no resistance to abuse
unless there is also agency, and that's why I needed to
hold onto my agency as well. And also gives me the power
to look at my experience and say, I'm OK with
this piece and I'm letting go of that piece. And this was abusive
and this is something that I want to hold on to. So for me, that's what agency
comes down to and especially in a therapeutic context. Why it's so important that
we are affirming agency of the people who
experienced abuse maybe in a spiritual context,
but in other contexts too. DAN MCKANAN: Thank
you so much, Jessica. And I'd like to pick up on
what you were just saying about the therapeutic context. In the program for the
evolution of spirituality, we're very curious about
therapeutic responses to harm and spiritual
organizations. So I wonder if you
could each reflect on what specific therapeutic
practices and approaches are most helpful to people
who have experienced harm or people making a
religious transition, and what concretely
can therapists do to ensure that
they don't undermine the personal agency of the
individuals they're supporting. Jessica. JESSICA PRATEZINA:
I think playing off what I've just said, is not
assuming that someone else's story. That foundational to
my therapeutic practice is a sense of radical
curiosity and not assuming that because someone
has come from a specific group, that therefore their
experience looks like this. I was once talking to a man who
was raised in the same group as me and he is
now an out gay man, and this was many years ago. And I made the
assumption that he must have had a terrible time
growing up in our group which was quite homophobic at times. And he said, I didn't actually. He said, I loved it. And I missed it. And that was my fault, that
was showing a problem that I was having because
I was assuming I knew where his pain was and
I was resisting being curious about his experience. This is a kind of
therapeutic practice that we assume is foundational
to all good coping skills. But for some reason,
they seem to go out the window when we're talking
to people who have come from weird religious groups. In particular, when I'm
asked what resources would you recommend for
someone who's exiting a group or who feels like they've
been abused by a group, and I want to be very
clear that harm happens in alternative religious
groups just like it happens in all kinds of religious groups
or organizations or movements, I don't recommend
specific people who call themselves
exit counselors, or cult specialists, or anything. But there are ways that you
can look for a therapist who might be particularly suited
to helping you with the things that you're feeling
you're struggling with. The little research that we
have especially about people who grew up in
alternative religions shows that they have a
combination of ordinary needs and sometimes unusual needs. So the ordinary needs might
be, if you've left a group and it's meant that
you've lost your family and your social
supports, you might need help applying for
college, or finding a job, or going through the typical
adolescent life transitions support. It's almost a
immigrant experience. You've been socialized into an
alternative religious culture and now you're coming into
more of the mainstream. So you might need some
support around that. Narrative therapist. Narrative therapy,
in particular, I think can be very useful. Again, bringing back
to agency and control over telling your own story. Response-based practice,
and I would particularly cite the work of Dr. Alan Wade,
Linda Coates, Cathy Richardson, again, where we center the
dignity and the response of people who are in
oppressive situations or who are victims of violation. So in general, those
would be the things. You don't have to
find someone who calls himself a cult expert. You are the expert on your life. You are the expert on the
group that you have come from. And at the end of
the day, you're the one who's going to
get to tell your story. And the most important
thing is a therapist who you can work relationally
with and curiously with to do that in a way
that is best for you. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you so much. Very eloquent. Erin. ERIN PROPHET: All right, sure. Well, I thought that
was fantastic, Jessica. And I will say that I've
been fortunate enough to have a number of very
effective therapists none of whom were called experts. I actually began my
therapeutic journey while I was in the group
that I was raised in. And the psychoanalyst
that I worked with was very respectful
of my choices and wanted really the
best outcome for me, and didn't place any
judgment on whether I would stay in or out of the group. So that was quite helpful. I think it's important
for therapists to not to assume that
the person you're talking to conforms to a stereotype. Just as if you're counseling
a Catholic individual, you wouldn't assume
that they did or did not use birth control. I have met people, for
example, Christian Science, the stereotype is they
don't see doctors. But it's really their
choice, and I've definitely met Christian scientists
who would go to doctors for some things and not others. Even Scientologists,
people say, oh, they don't believe in mental health care. Well, that's actually
not true either. Some of them will accept certain
kinds of mental health care. So I think that's
really important to treat them as individuals. And in addition, there are some
very helpful materials out, the World Religions and
Spirituality Project. If you're counseling
someone who's from a group you've
never heard of, World Religions and
Spirituality Project is a collaborative resource
that is peer reviewed and is going to take you away
from this sensationalized coverage. Also in form in the UK,
maintains a wonderful database of information about
all kinds of groups. And so I would just
encourage therapists to really look at the
nuance and understand people may be going through an
existential crisis, especially if the sacred has been used
as part of their abuse. They may also be grieving
the loss of community, like Jessica's friend. They may feel stigmatized and
shunned by the larger world just because they grew up
in this group, just guilt by association. And they may be experiencing
anger, powerlessness, emotional trauma, depression,
loss of self-worth, that could go along with any
kind of major life transition. As we know today, this
latest Gallup poll suggests that more
than 50% of Americans are now not attending a church. Deconversion is a massive
phenomenon in our society and people often
feel quite alienated and need to be shown
the way to construct their own new
narrative, whether it's spiritual or not spiritual. And I think it's wonderful
when therapists can meet people where they are. I teach a class called
spirituality and health care at the University of Florida. And usually, we get about
half pre-health students, pre-med students,
and the other half are just looking to try
to find their own way. And we explore a wide
variety of viewpoints. And some students really
gravitate towards one and others towards another. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you so much. So my last question
for each of you. Each of you has spent
a lot of time thinking about the distinctive
experiences of people who've grown up in alternative
spiritual movements, which can be quite different from the
experiences of people who come to those movements as adults. When people choose
to leave movements that have shaped their
entire upbringing, what sorts of therapeutic
or other support do they most need? JESSICA PRATEZINA:
So coming back to where I started, where
I said I felt like that's the care that I was
receiving, which I want to say the
therapists I've seen have all been wonderful and
very qualified and very kind. But sometimes I think a little
uninformed and maybe misguided. But I describe it as
ultimately pathologizing and deficit-based, coming
from a perspective that, simply because of
where I came from, I was in need of
rescuing or curing. So that undergirds the
therapeutic approaches that we see that are the
most prevalent right now. In response to that,
I've been thinking what I wish someone might
have told me many years ago. What would be another
way to respond to someone like
me who was coming into any kind of a
helping situation? And what I wish
someone had said was, if you're struggling with
doubt and you feel confused, and you've come out of some
kind of religious group and you don't know
where you've landed and you don't know what's
going to happen next, congratulations. You're in a good place. If you feel like you
don't know what's going to happen to you next
and all possibilities are open to you, which by the way,
can be a terrifying feeling, you're on the right path. It's when we think we
know all the answers and we're absolutely certain
that we're right when someone comes to you with
a checklist that says here is the checklist
of what your experience was, here's what you're going
to go through next. That's when you have to worry. But there is nothing inherently
wrong with struggling. It's very rare in life I
think to meet someone who's had the opportunity to question
fundamentally everything that they believe. Just for yourself, if you think
about when was the last time that you really deeply changed
your mind about a deeply held belief? I think you'll find that most
people don't go through that, and people who were
raised in and then left alternative religions have that
right up close and personal to their experience. And I think that can come
with a whole host of strength to look at the world and
to say why is it this way? And maybe it could be different. And I think that
often goes for people who are seekers who end up
joining alternative religions. They're looking at
the world and they're saying, why is it this way
and couldn't it be different? Sometimes that's going
to get you into trouble. And sometimes it's
going to take you to really exciting and
interesting places. So if that's where you
find yourself today, in that place of
struggle and questioning, I hope that you would hold
on to that place for maybe a little bit longer. And above all, don't
let someone else come in and tell you how your
story needs to go. You get to pick. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you. Erin. ERIN PROPHET: The kinds
of therapeutic support. First, I'll say just
from my own experience, I find-- and we often see this. People will go from one
belief or practice to another. So I ended up finding quite a
bit of enjoyment and support through, for example, yoga
practice of yoga, meditation, being part of that culture
which hadn't necessarily been a high degree of emphasis
when I was growing up. I also would just like to say
that, I think one thing that I think might make
a difference, it might give people more
resources is if we actually had a national
curriculum in the K through 12 area,
which is recommended by the American Academy
of Religion of taking a historical and critical
approach to religion, as well as a
comparative approach. And I think, unfortunately,
a lot of students, especially if they grow up in
a small and isolated movement, they don't understand the
range of viewpoints out there, and that's another thing I try
to bring out in my teaching. And I think that it
should be required even in religious schools. I imagine there'd be a
huge amount of pushback against that. But I think that
would be helpful. So I support some kind of
change in our curriculum, even if someone's
being home schooled. There are a lot of
resources out there for people who are feeling a
sense of spiritual struggle or harm. As a public health
professional, I know that religion is a
social determinant of health. And if a person is making a
transition from one belief system to another or
if they're questioning, we know that religion can
be a positive influence on people's health. It can also be involved in what
we call spiritual struggle. So there are already
quite a few resources out there to deal with
people, for example, who are in a spiritual struggle. And the American
Counseling Association endorses various guidelines and
the Association for Spiritual and Ethical and Religious
Values in Counseling also has guidelines
for therapists. And I think that
it would be great if we didn't have this
carve out for cults and if people who are in new
religious movement or have left could be seen and
their needs could be met at the place
where they are, depending on what
their experience was. So I would think that
therapists should know how to contact
experts if they need to find out more about a group. According to the guidelines
that were adopted in 2009, they also need to use religious
and spiritual concepts that coincide with the
client's spiritual or religious perspectives
and are acceptable. They need to understand
someone may be in-- many people who
leave Scientology have a problem with the
institution, but they still actually believe
in the principles that they've learned,
and they continue wanting to practice it outside. And so they also
need to understand just the wide possibilities
for psychosocial needs of the individuals. And in therapy, it can
also be helpful to set goals that are consistent
with the client's spiritual and religious perspectives. And again, as
Jessica was saying, not to assume that they know
exactly what the best thing is. So it's definitely, especially
in our secular world, it's temptation
to say, oh, well, you are stupid because
you believe that stuff. You're stupid or
to take a position that the normative
value in society is an anti-religious posture. And I don't think that's always
going to be helpful for people. And I know that many
therapists already know how to work
within a variety of religious
perspectives and I think that allowing the
fringe minority cult members to also have
their own perspectives is going to be helpful. DAN MCKANAN: Thank
you both so much. As we transition to our
time of question and answer, I really want to thank you both
for the clarity and challenge of what you've had to share. One of the things I really
heard strongly from both of you is an emphasis, not just
on agency but really on power, that people who've
made courageous changes in their religious identities
have wisdom from which others of us can learn. And to really start with
an openness to that wisdom, it feels like a really
helpful reframing of so many of the
conversations that we have. Thank you everyone who's been
posting questions in the Q&A. Please continue to do. So we'll do our
best to answer them. And I'm going to start with
a question that really gets at the heart of a
lot of what we want to do in the program for the
evolution of spirituality, which is to create
resources for practitioners of alternative spiritualities to
continue growing and developing in conversation with one
another and with scholars. So this question comes from
Krista Husky who writes, for organizations looking
to improve their members' sense of personal agency or new
organizations forming that want to honor personal
agency, what steps do you recommend to create
a mindful and respectful environment? So what advice would you give
to the spiritual organizations themselves? ERIN PROPHET: Well, I'll
just briefly answer that. If Jessica wants to add
anything, that would be great. I've actually participated
in a come to Jesus moment in my own movement,
as what can we do to prevent abuses of power? What can we do to prevent
problems in the structure? I think some movements
are more open than others to transforming and
promoting accountability. I read this story about what
happened at the Kripalu Retreat Center in Massachusetts. They actually tried-- how can
we restructure and reframe, and especially when
it comes to groups that are built around
Eastern traditions, that are transplanted
into Western society where we have very different
views about the role of women, about
authority, about. I think that's part of the
opposition many people have. The cults is that is seen
as a system in which we're taking these oriental
systems of control and we're putting
them on people. People are accepting these
structures around their lives. So I think there's actually
been really excellent work done in some groups on,
for example, reframing ideas around homosexuality,
reframing ideas that come to us from
traditional faiths. And so I think
it's possible that these new religious movements
can be part of the solution, as well as being seen
as part of the problem. I think the real
problem occurs, you have people who get entrenched
in their power structures within a group and
don't want to let go. And then the only option
really is to leave. But I do think it's
worth trying to reform. And I'm excited about
everything we're hearing today about what's
been going on, for example, in North American Buddhist
groups or yoga groups. JESSICA PRATEZINA: I think
Erin has said it beautifully. I would add that
as an individual also, you can have
boundaries and you can decide that you're not
going to be the one spearheading that reform. So you can choose to back out
and not be a part of a group anymore as well. So don't feel too
heavy a responsibility to reform your group. DAN MCKANAN: Well,
next I'm going to read a couple of
comments that really came in through the Q&A and see
if you have anything you'd like to add
to these comments. So the first comes
from a participant who chose to be anonymous
who writes appreciatively. This reframing of
the nuance is present in alternative spiritualities
feels very free. It makes me realize
how in my early life I felt like I couldn't share
certain spiritually impactful experiences because I
wasn't sure whether they were cult experiences. Being concerned
what others would think of me if I had
participated in a cult, meant I kept all of the
experience to myself. If I had realized it's not
always all or nothing, if I could have thought
as Jessica stated, this element was harmful in
this I want to hold on to, that would have changed
a decades long sense of isolation. And then Punito [INAUDIBLE]
writes, I'm not a therapist, but I work with many
young adults and students. I get at least two
students a year who are going through a process
of converting to a religion or leaving a group. By listening to their
stories, I actually find little difference between
converting to or leaving a cult, versus converting to or
leaving an organized religion. So I wonder if either of you
have any thoughts on those two comments. JESSICA PRATEZINA: One
of the areas of my work has been around a group that I
call alternative religion kids, and it's a play on the
idea of third culture kids. So whereas in
third culture kids, you are born or
accompany your parents into a different country,
a different society. For alternative religion
kids, you are born or you accompany your parents
into an alternative religious society. So your socialization was
into a different society. And so you can come
to life looking like you have different
values and you have different perspectives. And then if you join what I
would call mainstream culture because I'm not
sure what else makes it sound like this monolithic
thing, you bring with you-- the stories that
I hear from people are very much like an
immigrant experience. And I don't think anyone
likes the feeling that they're being told that where
you've come from is all bad, and aren't you
lucky that you're here now? And aren't you lucky
that you're free? And I look around and
say, this is free? You all look like you're
having that much fun to me, but what do I know? I just came from a cult. It's very affirming
to me to hear that this kind of perspective
that accepts variety and this perspective that
centers agency and dignity can mean something
to other people, because like I think the
first responders said, there's this
experience of isolation when you're an
alternative religion kid. That's something that's really
shared among people, no matter what group they've come from. And knowing that there are
other people who are like you and that fundamentally there's
nothing weird or stranger, so different that a
therapist can't even begin to speak to you unless
they've had special training. It's not like that. There are other people like you. And we're called
alternative religion kids, and you can find
us and we can talk. And among us,
variety is the norm. And one of the thing
that's nice about that is that usually means
that there's probably a place for you at the table. ERIN PROPHET: I think that
was beautiful Jessica. And I would just like to add
that I am looking forward to working with you to
develop therapeutic resources for people who have come
out of or people who are in alternative religions
and trying to come to terms with various aspects of them. Unfortunately, there
is not a lot out there. I will say that the
International Cultic Studies Association has
changed its perspective and now isn't so much
necessarily focused on cult trauma as
relationship trauma, and institution trauma,
workplace trauma. So they do offer some resources. But I still have some
problems with some of their fundamental
assumptions. So I know that there
are good people who are trying to help people from
a lot of different angles. I think it's
important for people to just be aware of the range of
approaches that are out there. DAN MCKANAN: Next, I'm going
to combine two questions that deal with families. So Sue Butler
writes, some families are organized in
cultish structures. How do you see these families
in relation to cults? And then Stuart
Wright writes, I once compared leaving new or
nontraditional religious movements to marital
separation and divorce. Being a member of a high
commitment group, especially for women might be
analogous to marriage. Does this resonate
with either of you? ERIN PROPHET: Do you want
to go first, Jessica? JESSICA PRATEZINA:
Well, you go ahead. ERIN PROPHET: OK. All right. Well, as far as the notion
of a family being like a cult in some way or a
lot people have, or like a marriage
as Stuart mentioned, there are certainly
parallels that can be drawn. And I think even people
in cultic studies would acknowledge that
there is a spectrum and a range of control that
groups exercise over people. And obviously, if
you're in a family, your parents have quite a
bit of control over you. There are some
checks and balances because the state has an
interest in your well-being. If you're living with a
group of people communally, there's a lot more
control over your life versus if you have your
own financial resources and you're outside. So I think it's
important for people when they're getting involved
with the group to really be careful about how much
commitment they make right off the bat. Because as Stewart said, it's
the brilliant comparison. It can be almost like falling
in love with a teacher and there's this moment. There's this period where
it's all about the romance and then reality will set
in, and the person's flaws start to come to light. And so if someone
has done something like give all their money to the
group, which I don't recommend, people often do
that because they want to show their commitment. And so that was
one of the reforms that we instituted or tried
to institute in our church, was not to ask people for
more than they can afford to give, especially not to let
them give all of their money so that they wouldn't
have any options then. So I definitely
think that there can be some principles around that. But I also support people who
want to join and experiment with monastic communities
and people who say, I've got this inheritance. There's nothing I'd
rather do than to share it with my brothers and
sisters in this movement. And so I don't
know if that helps, but those are my
initial thoughts. JESSICA PRATEZINA:
It makes me think the question is almost like
what makes for a healthy family or what makes for a
good relationship? But I'm not sure I have a
snappy answer to that one. But it does make
me think that one of the most difficult things
many of us experience in life is accepting that you
can't go on someone else's journey for them. When you love someone
very much, of course, you want to spare
them suffering. And when you see them going
down any kind of a path where you believe you
can look down the path and say this is going to happen,
and that's going to happen, and it's going to happen,
it's very painful. And I know as someone with a
social work helping background and as just a person
who's been married a long time or a person who
has a big family, that trying to rescue someone from that
path often doesn't work. What you can do is
you can be with them and you can make
sure that they know that you're not going anywhere. And if they want to
come off the path, that you'll be there with them. And I think that
goes for people who are in any kind
of a relationship or any kind of an organization
that you're having concerns about. But fundamentally, you can't
learn their lesson for them and you can't go on
their journey for them. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you. I have a related question
from John Grobb who writes, please comment
on the dynamic which emerges through
the abuse of power when it is delivered
in the guise of love. It's there psychological,
social, spiritual, institutional consequences? Can power ever be an authentic
vehicle for transcendent love? ERIN PROPHET: Do you want
to take that one Jessica or? JESSICA PRATEZINA: I
think ultimately what I would have to say
is I don't know. I'd have to think about it. Really, I'd have to think
about what do we mean by power and what do we mean
by love, and also I'd want to take whatever
theoretical situation we're talking about and put it
into a concrete one that has also other social and
relational context within it. We're not just individuals. It's not just me and someone
else in this love relationship or this power relationship. We have to think
intersectionally about people's experiences. ERIN PROPHET: And
I would just add that I think both within Western
and Eastern spirituality, there are traditions
that equate giving up one's power to a spiritual
advisor or teacher with spiritual progress. And I think many of the
organizations in our country are trying to reformat
some of those. How can we have
some accountability, but still allow people to
have this love feast that often occurs when people
are transforming themselves spiritually? And I think that,
again, transparency and accountability, I think
that there should be principles that groups and leaders
can espouse and promote that are designed as
checks and balances on some of the worst types
of abuses that can happen. And I certainly would
welcome thoughts from attendees and other
therapists and experts out there about what kinds of
resources can be available, even guidelines
for groups that are trying to reformat themselves. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you. We have time for I
think one more question and I'm going to combine
two of the questions that have been posted. So someone who chose
to remain anonymous asks if there's
any place to report questionable or abusive
alternative spiritual organizations that have not
yet been publicly identified. And then Denise
Susak asks, what can be done in seminaries
and graduate schools to identify persons who
are not psychologically safe to be spiritual leaders. Also, how can
spiritual leaders be prepared to support
very vulnerable people such as people
with disabilities, including mental
health challenges? So both of these
questions are oriented to what steps can be taken
proactively to prevent harm from happening in the future by
people who may be at one step removed from the places
where harm might occur. JESSICA PRATEZINA: Well, the
first thing I want to say is I think there's like
eight questions in there. And I can't answer
all eight of them. But I do want to say if you
think that someone is being harmed, if you suspect
a child is being abused, please call whatever
the equivalent of child protective services is in your
area, and to call the police. That's what we do with abuse,
and harm, and violence, whether it's happening in
a spiritualist organization or whether it's
happening to a neighbor. So you have that you can do. So that would be one
thing that I would say. I'm not sure if I can remember
all 97 of the other questions. How can we prepare
seminarians and leaders to be more aware of
the power dynamics that they have working
with them and their people? DAN MCKANAN: I think
maybe Denise's question about seminary's may have
both a component of how do we block the path of
emerging spiritual leaders who have enormous
potential to abuse power and how can we help emerging
spiritual leaders who might be on the fence
tilt into places where they can be more helpful
to the others they lead. JESSICA PRATEZINA: I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't have all the answers. That might be something
that is suited to Erin. ERIN PROPHET: Well,
I will just add that I think it's often
difficult to tell what a person is going to do,
especially when they're early in their career. And we see this with
political leaders. A political leader
will rise up out of a resistance or guerrilla
movement and take over, and all of a sudden, they
become the next bloody dictator. So I think that
things change when people have a lot of charisma
and they have a lot of people around them who are supporting
practices that are not well understood or that
are new, and that's the problem with new
religious movements in general, is that
they are dynamic. They change, and they change
in response to outside events. So I think that trying to
completely delegitimize a group because you don't like
what their leader says often results in the group becoming
more secretive, more reclusive, moving away from scrutiny,
whereas engaging with the group and engaging with
people who are in it, can often lead to more
openness and perspective. But it's almost like
this idea of preemption. We would really, really like it
if we could preempt precrime. If we could figure this
all out in advance, I just think and I'm committed
to promoting just more openness and tolerance across
the board, and I think that ultimately
that's going to lead to better outcomes
for the people in the groups and the people
outside of the groups. DAN MCKANAN: Thank you, Erin. And I think the suggestion
to really promote connection rather than
stigma and isolation really fits with
what we're trying to do with the program for
the evolution of spirituality, to create spaces where pastoral
leaders and alternative spiritualities can build
collegial relationships with other pastoral leaders. And I really hope
that those kinds of collegial relationships
will guide all of us to being our best selves. It is 1 o'clock. So please join me in thanking
these two wonderful panelists for sharing the depth
of your scholarship and your experience
and your commitment to the well-being of all people. Thank you. JESSICA PRATEZINA: Thank you. ERIN PROPHET: Thank
you for having us. It's terrific. We appreciate it. DAN MCKANAN: And thank you
to everyone in our audience for joining us today. We plan to continue having
gatherings like this about once a month into the future. We're always organizing them. So just stay tuned to the
website for more information. If you've not already signed
up for our newsletter, we encourage you to do so. And we especially
include encourage you to join us in April of 2022
for our inaugural conference on ecological
spiritualities, which will occur both in-person
in Cambridge and online for those who are
not able to travel. Thanks so much for
your attention, and we wish you the best. And have a wonderful
rest of today. Take care. [MUSIC PLAYING]
