Robbins - Government Regulatory Powers and Church Autonomy - Deviant Groups As Test Cases

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Government Regulatory Powers and Church Autonomy: Deviant Groups as TestCases

Thomas Robbins

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Sep., 1985), pp. 237-252.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8294%28198509%2924%3A3%3C237%3AGRPACA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

is currently published by Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/sssr.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jul 2 06:54:28 2007

Government Regulatory Powersand Church Autonomy: DeviantGroups As Test Cases

THOMAS ROBBINS*

The current proliferation of legal conflicts over "church autonomy" reflects the incompatibilityof two contemporary tendencies:

1)

the functional diversification of constitutionally protected religiousorganizations: and

2)

the expanding regulatory mandate of the state to enforce public accountabilityof organizations for harmful or fraudulent practices. This paper examines several cases involvingthe financial practices of deviant movements, including the conviction of Sun hlyung hloon for taxevasion and the intervention of the California Attorney General in the finances of the WorldwideChurch of God. These cases have elicited widespread concern among mainline church leaders, whoappear to interpret them as boundary-defining engagements whose outcomes will yield rules applicableto the legal status of churches in general. These cases illustrate the difficulties faced by churchesin attempting to legitimate diversified structures of economic rationality in terms of (individual)freedom of religious conscience.

Religiopolitical conflicts and tension between church and state presently appear to beintensifying both in the United States (Demerath

&

Williams, 1984; Kelly, 1982;

U.S.

News,

1984) and on a worldwide basis (Robertson, 1985). An expansion of Americanreligious pluralism has been identified as one factor underlying the increasing tensionbetween church and state in the United States (Demerath

&

Williams, 1984; Robbins,1984a), although other factors such as the politicization of certain American religiousgroups, the changing role of courts in American life, and the decline of the Protestantestablishment have also been viewed as salient (Demerath

&

Williams, 1984). Indeed, muchof the current conflict concerns controversial marginal religious and religiotherapeuticmovements popularly termed "cults" (Robbins, 1984a),which have been involved in somerecent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The purpose of this paper is to suggest atheory purporting to explain the increasing production of "church autonomy conflicts,"under which most controversies involving new religious movements can be subsumed,and thus contribute to an explanation of the present heightening of church-state tensionsin the United States.Proliferating conflicts over the issue of "church autonomy" (Laycock, 19811 or"religious exemptions" (Pfeffer, 1984) tend to cut across the increasingly tenuousdistinction between legitimate "churches" and stigmatized "cults." The kinds of issuesaffecting groups situated at different points on a continuum of respectability are oftenquite similar. A possible exception to this assertion may involve the allegations of "mindcontrol," which are substantially more likely to be applied to esoteric groups such as theUnification Church, Hare Krishna or Scientology than to conventional groups.

*Thomas Robbins has taught sociology at

a

number of major L'nicersities, most recently at Central MichigallUniversity, u'here he was tmisiting lecturer.

8

Journal for the Scientific Stiidy of Religion,

1985.

24

(,?I:

237-252

237

238

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGIOS

Nevertheless, there is now some tendency to level allegations of mind control and to applydrastic remedies such as "deprogramming" to evangelical Christian fellowships, someof which are on the borderline of respectability (Frame, 1983). The line separatingstigmatized "mind-controlling cults" and acceptable high commitment groups is becomingincreasingly indistinct (Robbins, 1984a: 51).The distinction is particularly tenuous whenthe focus moves from mind control to conflicts involving education, commercial pursuits,financing, public solicitation and social services, and even health and child abuse.The underlying constitutional issues involved in conflicts involving marginal groupsare of growing concern to mainline churches, which are increasingly likely to be supportivetoward embattled marginals (see below). The convergence of issues and concerns involvingmarginal and mainline groups may be a fairly new trend. Indeed, "the dominant focusof American legal history has not been on church versus state so much as sect versusstate, especially if one broadens the term

sect

to include religious groups serving thoseon the margins of society" (Demerath

&

Williams, 1984: 5). However, while the courtshave "exercised considerable influence over the forms and functions of sectarianreligiosity," mainline churches, in the past, have often been unconcerned with sectarianstruggles with the state, or have actually used the courts to constrain sectarian rivalssuch that "the courts have been aligned with the churches in their struggles against thesects" (Demerath

&

Williams, 1984: 5). Mainline churches, in the past, have felt little needto cling to formal legal and political supports for their prerogatives. Trends towardsecularization and the decline of mainline denominations have now placed the latter ina quasi-sectarian position toward an increasingly secular society (Demerath

&

Williams,1984).They fear the loss of tax exemptions and other privileges, and perceive the currentconflicts over marginal groups as boundary-defining engagements which clarifygovernmental expectations and legal rules pertaining to churches in general.Churchistate conflicts involving the defense of "church autonomy" can be seen asconflicts involving rational-legal vs, charismatic spiritual authority, as the state attemptsto advance rational criteria such as financial accountability as a standard for evaluatingand reviewing the affairs of churches. But the situation is complicated to the detrimentof the churches by the uneasy mixture of charismatic and rational-legal elements in theoperations and legitimacy claims of religious organizations. The partial secularization ofthe legitimacy claims of churches in support of autonomy creates a situation in whichthe state may itself exploit the rationales advanced in behalf of church atonomy as basesfor intervention to protect the very values which are said to legitimate the regulatoryexemptions of churches. If the beneficient(e.g., public spirited, charitable) activities ofchurches are a basis for sustaining public support for churches, then the absence of suchactivities or the presence of negative activities (e.g., of "destructive cults") may becomea basis for expanding governmental prerogatives in the area of religious organizations.If the diversified activities of churches are legitimated in terms of religious liberty andsacred individual conscience, then the state is encouraged to pose as the defender ofreligious freedom against exploitative, authoritarian sects. More importantly, the sanctityof individual conscience increasingly appears as an implausible legitimating foundationfor elaborated organizational patterns suffused with instrumental rationality, whichinterventionist critics and state officials easily perceive as detachable from private spiritualfaith. The necessity of protecting elaborate rational structures from interference, plus

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