Roland J. Campiche
When addressing the topic of sects, we are faced with the problem caused by the representations that we have of what is religiously “incorrect.” These representations are fueled above all by the media, which have been paying increasing attention to religious issues, especially since the year 2000. This interest has developed in close correlation with sociocultural changes that have been affecting both the area of mass communication and religion. We need only think of the hold of emotional elements or of the transformation of the relationship with authority. Therefore we should not be surprised to observe that the “dramatization of the religious sphere by the media” is—at least partially—beyond the control of even the best-organized religious institutions, and obeys laws that regulate their own discourse.
Furthermore, the relationship that the producer of images, spoken words and texts maintains with the religious sphere cannot help having an impact on the product. In other words, the process of individualization that characterizes modernity is to be considered as a matter of priority when attempting to understand some aspects of transformation of the representations of the religious sphere, which have an effect on religious change itself.1
Four quotations will serve as my theoretical basis.
The media are not merely communication agencies of a technologically advanced kind engaged in the transmission and diffusion of information. Because of the powerful institutions which they have evolved, they have, willy nilly, created a culture of their own, with its own values and priorities, heroes and, no less equally accepted, villains. They operate impersonally in perfect congruity with the increasing depersonalization of the role-articulated social system. But they also imitate communal culture and manipulate the symbols of a more intimate and personal world.3
This media culture extends to the sphere of religion, where the media are not content with reproducing specialists’ opinions but prefer to position themselves as authoritative interpreters of the phenomenon in question.
The media obey their own laws as far as perception of reality is concerned. Only someone who knows and cracks this code is able to relativize the way in which the media present reality. This is particularly important for a topic such as drugs and politics because the vast majority of the public is familiar with these issues, mainly through the description of them given by the media. While it is true that readers purchase the newspapers that reinforce their prejudices, the choice of titles in a region and the undifferentiated opinions on editorial staffs have a doubly negative effect on objectivity and consensus.4
This observation can be transposed to the religious sphere, particularly to its poorly known “zones” of sects and “new religious movements.” The two conventional and conflicting hypotheses on the influence of the media, which are considered to be either “omnipotent” or “ordinary reflections of public opinion” can be replaced by a new hypothesis on the power of the media’s impact when the public are unfamiliar with an issue.
Sensational stories about the “new religious movements” do not require a knowledge of religion on the part of users of the mass media. The focus on the non-religious aspects of the movements means there is no need to address the problems relating to beliefs or religious experience. By drawing a parallel with stories of fraud, political exploitation, racketeering and crime, the public is offered a script to which it is accustomed. In short, the anti-sects movement provides journalists with material that does not require much adaptation for it to be easily ingested by a public that does not have much taste for religion.5
This observation, which reinforces the hypothesis set out above, is echoed by Jean Baubérot’s6 reaction to Chapter One of Quand les sectes affolent (1995) in a personal correspondence to me:
In becoming diversified, the religious sphere is experienced less and less directly and is increasingly perceived through the (distorting? magnifying?) mirror of the media. Perhaps the preliminary step before a sociological approach is to allow people to dissociate themselves from the media’s gaze. (Letter dated 20 December 1995)
The way the Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS) was treated by the media revealed the existence of what we might call the “religiously correct,” which expresses the expectation or representation that religion cannot be a source of conflict in a secular society. This representation of what is religiously correct obscures the historical relationship between religion and violence and strengthens the theory of privatization of religion. The position can be explained if one considers that the generation of baby boomers, which believes in religion without institutions,7 is currently the generation which is in control of the media.
The type of explanation put forward to explain the suicide-massacre oscillates between two levels of individual and collective argumentation. The individual explanation generally takes the route via psychology, confirming what was observed, for example, at Waco, where credence was given to the opinions advocating abnormal individual behavior and submission to a guru.8 As for the arguments at the collective level, they form part of the familiar script: money-laundering, arms smuggling, corrupt practice. It will be noted, however, that virtually all the analyzed editorials written the day after 5 October 1994 in France and French-speaking Switzerland refer to the collapse of reference points. But none of them—with one notable exception—goes as far as to say that “human beings are religious animals who need values,” thereby explaining a religious phenomenon in religious terms.
In some cases the sect was treated as a dangerous consumer product. The programe in the A bon entendeur series on French-speaking Swiss television on 25 October 1994, entitled “Sects, how to get out of them?”, is a good example. Other programmes blew out of all proportion the extraordinary features of certain religious groups, but without putting them in context or attempting to verify whether the beliefs being discredited might make sense to the persons involved (such as the programme Sans aucun doute on the French television channel TF1 on 10 January 1996).
The need to put programes together in a hurry does not explain the choice of proposed interpretations, because it can clearly be seen that when the media return to the tragic event, they do not change their register but continue to treat the subject according to the script—that is, to explain the dramatic event in non-religious terms.
Further proof of this is the media coverage that followed the second OTS suicide-massacre at Chérennes. Little change can be perceived in the way the problem was approached and the “sixty-nine dead in the name of a sect” were covered (53 in the first suicide-massacre and 16 in the second). The exceptions were rare: the commentaries on French-speaking Swiss television, for example, became more moderate, leaving room for a qualified explanation, differentiating between sects and paying attention to the circumstances that may cause them to “drift out of control.”
Can one propose an analysis and an explanation that do not form part of the script? After the dramatic events at Cheiry and Granges-sur-Salvan, my reply is in the negative. It appears impossible to change or even attenuate the representation of the sect as a group of people under the sway of a “guru,” whose actions are suspect and concealed. It is even difficult to get people to perceive the heterogeneity of the universe of religious minorities. Stigmatization of their internal diversity, which was previously effected by religious institutions, has thus been taken over by civil society. The observation has a paradoxical aspect in light of the social legitimacy conferred on religious pluralism.
Seen from this perspective, an explanation that emphasizes an analysis of religion and the religious process (seeking salvation, the quest for purity, breaking away from the world, the limits of religious recomposition) is not adopted. Yet in a secondary analysis the hypothesis claiming that the population adopts the script without any other form of examination is only partially verified. Let me give some evidence of this. An analysis of about one hundred questions asked by viewers during the French-speaking Swiss television programme Table ouverte on Sunday 14 January 1996 reveals that the prime concern of those who phoned in was to obtain information, as they insistently asked for a definition of “sect.” Questions followed about the repression/freedom alternative, characterized by the worry about control, but in a rather partial way. It should be noted that of the three questions concerned with the causes of the dramatic event, only one placed the problem in the context of society. This observation shows the difficulty of proposing an analysis of the relationship between social change and religious change, or of revealing religion as a component of social life.
Faced with the media, the sociologist can only take note of the successive collapse of all monopoly positions when it comes to interpreting the phenomenon of religion. After the theologians, it was the turn of the social scientists to gauge the limits of their possibilities or their ability to get people to understand social phenomena. It does not suffice to take a critical position amid the conflicting interpretations. One still has to propose explanations that are capable of contributing to political management of “borderline” situations, such as that illustrated by the transit of the members of the Solar Temple, or even of creating the conditions liable to prevent a fatal outcome, such as that of Waco. In doing so, we are accepting our social responsibility.
The changes undergone by this Order deserve our attention; in many respects its trajectory might help us to understand a type of religious recomposition whose logic obeys more the law of supply and demand (depending on the circumstances, preference is given to the religious message over fashion and what attracts people) than that of building a new, more or less exclusive religious tradition. In other words, the OTS would appear to constitute a religious group with a “variable gnosis.” The promise of salvation is characteristic of any religious movement; it implies a judgment about the world. It may have been stated here in apocalyptic terms, involving the construction of bunkers and the distribution of survival kits. It may have taken the New Age route, linking the announcement of disaster and the advent of a new age prepared by self-transformational work, as was well described by Françoise Champion (1995). The announcement of salvation finally took the form of transit, a notion probably borrowed from astrology, esotericism or even belief in flying saucers,9 but accompanied by elements taken from Buddhism or Hinduism, since the idea of a return to Earth (reincarnation) was also present. The fact that the OTS leaders Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret had made use of these different elements and had incorporated them into an esoteric organization of the Rosicrucian type appears to be proven by the inquiry. Nothing tells us, however, that the members followed them along this tortuous path; like the seekers described by Wade Clark Roof (1993), they were able to make OTS a stage in their spiritual quest. In this sense, sharing the same convictions would have been less important for them than the exchange and communion brought about by similar experiences. Their attitude would therefore not be very different from that identified in other religious networks today.10 These few remarks justify use of the concept of “post-New Age order,” which describes the OTS as an extreme and perhaps atypical version of contemporary religious recomposition.
Four hypotheses can be stated about the OTS’s final uncontrolled drift, in view of the fact that research aimed at understanding the “end of OTS” is far from complete. They range from the particular to the general.
The first is that of the logic of failure. It had already been proposed by Jacques Gutwirth (1979) in connection with the tragic end of Jim Jones’s Temple of the People in Guyana. The dissent within the OTS as early as 1990 and the ensuing resignations, the cashflow problems, Jouret’s trouble with the police in Quebec, Di Mambro’s illness and perhaps the impossibility of proposing a credible new gnosis are all elements that explain the collective massacres-suicides.
Then the stigmatization felt by the members, particularly following the first massacre-suicide, may have led them to become even more inward-looking, reinforcing their feeling of being special, of possessing the only true truth or of not being able to bear the ironic look of other people. Survivor Thierry Huguenin’s attitude is symptomatic in this respect.11
The third hypothesis, known as that of the “explosive cocktail”, explains the incompatibility of the different religious traditions to which the OTS leaders referred, either separately or by mixing them up. This hypothesis is controversial. Some people, like Carl Keller (with Raphaël Aubert), by relying on the texts, see the OTS as the pure heir of esoteric gnosis. To my mind, this argument does not hold water if one analyses the link between the producers of the texts, the texts produced and the effect brought about by the texts. In relation to the apocalyptic solution, the Age of Aquarius and transit do not constitute similar replies to the question of salvation (the effects are manifestly different). This third hypothesis explains why the existence of the OTS had to be terminated, as the contradictions were becoming too flagrant; it does not enable us to understand the final act itself but it has the advantage of asking the question about the limits of religious recomposition.
I am borrowing the fourth hypothesis from psychology, although I am altering its meaning. A dissociation may have existed, based on personality disorders and the existence of a mental structure in which each of the personalities present thinks and behaves autonomously and with no relation with the other(s). This hypothesis might explain the dissociation that has been made between the religious sphere and the other spheres of social life, owing to the extreme fragmentation of our societies and growing individualization. At the same time it would make it possible to explain the incredible: that is, the ability of OTS members to conceal their intentions and to live right up to the last moment “as if nothing was going to happen.” But it also dramatically provides an example of the process of decomposition of the religious sphere, “which is said to be committing suicide” through its inability to propose a social utopia or to provide a general meaning. In short, the mental dissociation is founded on the rift between religion and the social bond, as illustrated by the tragic fate of the OTS.
Thus owing to the fragility of the knowledge available to us—to which the four hypotheses set out above testify—it appears that the OTS tragedy, as covered in the media, teaches us less about the reasons that led its members to embark on the “journey to Sirius” than about contemporary representations of the religious phenomenon. The media are developing a “religiously correct” discourse, linked to the values of a democratic society, to civic-mindedness and basic morality. They are evading the fact that religious phenomena are also a force behind, and a reflection of, social violence.
With the passing if time, one could have imagined that the OTS case would be distinguished from the case of other sects. Apparently, nothing of that kind has happened. The affirmation that sect equals danger is now a stereotype. The questions asked by journalists on the tenth anniversary of the OTS’s suicide-massacre testify to this evolution. The use of the sociological concept of sect to nominate this type of religious organization is problematic and aims at a deontological discussion. So it is no surprise to discover in the evangelical movement a trend demanding that the communities of this Protestant tradition be called denominations instead of sects.
1 Cf. Roland J. Campiche, Quand les sectes affolent. Ordre du Temple Solaire, medias et fin de millénaire. Entretiens avec Cyril Dépraz (Geneva/Lausanne, 1995).
2 This text dates from after the book written following the events of Cheiry, Salvan and Morin Heights: Campiche, Quand les sectes affolent. It contains some elements of the line of argument developed below; the latter has been expanded on with the comments made by numerous colleagues further to the publication of the above-mentioned book. It also takes account of the dramatic event in the Vercors (December 1995), which served to verify the validity of the argument previously defended. A first version in French was published under the title Sectes, médias, fin des temps, by Françoise Champion and Martine Cohen (eds), in Sectes et Démocratie (Paris, 1999), pp. 290–99.
3 Bryan Wilson, “Culture and religion”, Revue suisse de sociologie, special edition, Religion et Culture, 17/3 (1991): 444.
4 Boris Boller, Der Drogendiskurs der Schweizer Presse. Zweijahresbericht 1993– 1994. Eine quantitative Inhaltsanalyse zur Drogenberichterstattung der Schweizer Presse, “Cahiers de recherches et de documentation de l’Institut universitaire de médecine sociale et préventive”, nos 111–12 (Lausanne, 1995).
5 James A. Beckford, “Cults, conflicts, and journalists”, in Robert Towler (ed.), New Religions and the New Europe (Aarhus, 1995), p. 103.
6 Jean Baubérot is Emeritus Professor of l’Ecole pratique des hautes études (EPHE) in Paris, where he was formerly director.
7 The term “spirituality” indeed denotes the personal, experience-based beliefs characteristic of this generation, which are differentiated from a religion conceived in terms of dogmas and tradition.
8 Beckford, p. 107; James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (Berkeley/London, 1995), p. 18.
9 Jean-François Mayer, Les Mythes du Temple Solaire (Geneva, 1996).
10 Liliane Voyé, “Belgique: crise de la civilisation paroissiale et recompositions du croire”, in G. Davie and D. Hervieu-Léger (eds), Identités religieuses en Europe (Paris, 1996), p. 208ff.
11 Thierry Huguenin, Le 54e (Mesnil-sur-l’Estrée, 1995).