Who is Raphaël Liogier?

Raphaël Liogier is a political scientist and sociologist of religion. Since 2006 he has directed the Observatoire du religieux, and he is a university professor at the Institut d'études politiques in Aix-en-Provence.

What is individuo-globalism?

Individuo-globalism is a term Liogier coined, presented in his book « Souci de soi, conscience du monde », for the paradoxical mix of growing individualism and an unprecedented concern for the world as a whole. He argues this new mythic ground now nourishes the classic religions, which must absorb some of it to survive, while the new religious movements are directly connected to it.

What does Liogier say about the MIVILUDES?

Liogier says France's field ministries (the ones that actually encounter religious minorities) ran up against what he calls the defenders of a « laïcité en puissance » based at Matignon: the MIVILUDES, and the MILS before it, whose institutional role is to defend that ideology. He reports that those field ministries see dangerous religious movements, where they exist, as extremely marginal, so no massive blanket policy is warranted, and that such a policy's «ideological bulldozer» can even harm more precise targeting.

Why did Emmanuelle Mignon have to retract her remark about cults?

Liogier recalls that Emmanuelle Mignon, informed by field reality, merely permitted herself to say that cults do not in themselves constitute a social problem requiring a public policy. On his account she was pilloried for the remark, had to publicly retract it, and came almost to the brink of resignation. He adds that her awareness came from the Interior Ministry being a field ministry rather than from her closeness to Nicolas Sarkozy, and that the anti-cult consensus is not partisan. It was the same under the left as under the right.

Does Liogier deny that anyone is harmed by these movements?

No. He concedes that some people are indeed manipulated. His argument is about proportion and method: he reports that the field ministries find genuinely dangerous movements to be extremely marginal, and he contends that the thirty-second television format leaves no time to explain that the question is more complicated than the slogan.

What does Liogier propose instead?

Liogier supports the CICNS proposal to create an independent observatory of spiritual and therapeutic minorities, which he argues would allow a calmer view and help identify the real dangers. He says the current cult lists were drawn up more or less any old way, and that without the European identity crisis such bodies feed on, an observatory of this kind would obviously have existed long ago.

Raphaël Liogier on the Cult Question

In 2013 the CICNS recorded a four-part interview with Raphaël Liogier, a political scientist and sociologist of religion who has directed the Observatoire du religieux since 2006 and is a university professor at the Institut d’études politiques in Aix-en-Provence. [1] [4]

Taken together the four parts make a single argument, and it is not the one the format leads you to expect. Liogier is not defending the groups France calls cults. He is asking a prior question: why the country needs the category at all. His answer runs from the corridors of the State, through the television studio, to a thesis about what modern Europeans believe they are losing. This guide follows that argument across the four parts and points to each in turn.

The struggle is inside the State, not outside it

Liogier’s opening move is to relocate the conflict. The interesting fight, on his account, is not between the State and the movements it polices. It is within the State. France’s field ministries, the ones that actually encounter religious minorities, see that dangerous movements, where they exist, are extremely marginal. No massive blanket policy is warranted, and such a policy’s “ideological bulldozer” can even damage the more precise targeting that real cases need. [1]

Those ministries, he says, immediately ran up against what he calls the defenders of a laïcité en puissance based at Matignon: the MIVILUDES and the MILS before it, whose institutional role is to defend that ideology. He describes the resulting conflict inside the State as a staggering dialogue of the deaf, bordering on insult, between the then head of the Bureau central des cultes and parliamentarians who wanted to hear of a general and growing danger driven by a secret strategy. Didier Leschi of the Bureau central des cultes, initially rather in agreement with the anti-cult line, spoke out against the paranoia once he found its claims untrue, and ran into that same anxiety. [1]

This is where Liogier’s argument turns from institutional to diagnostic. He rejects the idea that the anti-cult climate is state propaganda: it is something deeper than propaganda, which operates only at the level of short-term tactics. [1] What lies underneath is an identity anxiety. Europeans feel they are no longer identical to what they once were, that something is being taken from them, and so they need to find someone who is taking it. That anxiety recasts the different other as aggressing deliberately, with a plan and a project, so that cults come to be seen not merely as a danger to their own members but as a danger to national identity itself. [1]

It is a mark of how far this reaches that Liogier can also say the cult lists were drawn up more or less any old way, and that without the European identity crisis such bodies feed on, an independent observatory of spiritual and therapeutic minorities (a CICNS proposal he supports, one he thinks would allow a calmer view and help identify the real dangers) would obviously have existed long ago. [1]

Asking the question puts you in the wrong camp

The second part explains why almost nobody says any of this out loud. Liogier recounts that on nearly every television programme where he discussed the cult issue, the mere fact of asking why people believe and how belief works drew the response, sometimes stated to him outright: “we can see whose side you are on.” Being assigned a side means being placed on the side of evil: a binary vision that recurs constantly. [2] Anyone taking a critical, questioning position immediately becomes suspect of wanting to favour cults. [1]

The cost is structural, not personal. For anyone with political, media or symbolic power, taking a critical position on anti-cult policy would be too great a risk to their pedestal; because the equation “cult means evil” commands near-unanimity, no politician has the courage to voice criticism. [2]

Liogier’s evidence is a case that cost someone real standing. Emmanuelle Mignon, informed by field reality, merely permitted herself to say that cults do not in themselves constitute a social problem requiring a public policy. She was pilloried for it, had to publicly retract, and came almost to the brink of resignation. [2] He is careful about what this proves: the consensus is not partisan (it was the same under the left as under the right), and Mignon’s awareness came from the Interior Ministry being a field ministry, not from her closeness to Nicolas Sarkozy. [2]

The format forbids the argument

The third part is the shortest and the most mechanical. Declaring that one fights against cults is a cost-free political resource, which makes the simplistic anti-cult stance the path of least resistance. [3] And the medium finishes what the incentive starts: the thirty-second television format leaves no time to explain that the question is more complicated than the slogan, even while conceding, as Liogier does, that some people are indeed manipulated. A speaker who attempts nuance is cut off as soon as he links two or three elements, and is left looking merely suspect without having had time to explain the substance. [3]

That is the trap the first two parts describe, closed: the position that requires explanation cannot be explained in the only format on offer, and the failure to explain it is read as evasion.

What is actually happening to belief

The fourth part steps back from France entirely and supplies the thesis the rest rests on. Liogier coined the term individuo-globalism, presented in his book « Souci de soi, conscience du monde », to name the paradoxical mix of growing individualism and an unprecedented concern for the world as a whole. [4]

He rejects as false the standard secularisation story in which more rationality, reason and laïcité mechanically equals less religion. [4] Every era, including the supposedly secularised present, needs a narrative continuity beyond the material. Even atheists tell a story about what it is to be atheist, and knowledge and the sciences, no less than belief, need their own narrative to recount their greatness and legitimacy, quite apart from their real effects. [4] For Liogier, a myth is not what is false but the way one gives meaning to what has become necessary. [4]

What has changed is the ground, not the quantity. A mythic ground weakened by advances in knowledge becomes less and less plausible and cracks; this is the difficulty facing the Catholic Church in particular, Christianity in general, and monotheism more generally still. The new individuo-global mythic ground now nourishes the classic religions, which must absorb some of it to survive, while the new religious movements are directly connected to it. [4] He hears in the social ambiance a recurring three-theme “little music”: self-knowledge, creativity, and higher well-being, from which everyone draws, whoever they are. [4] He calls the belief that everyone is energetically interlinked, so that what one does here has an effect elsewhere, the “dogma of connectivity”, and sees it underlying the language of sustainable development. [4]

This has a political edge that returns the series to where it began. Individuo-globalism calls into question the legitimacy of the nation-state and of all intermediary structures, since the singularised individual now attaches directly to the global. Most new religious movements intend to exist planetarily, in a space without limits, rather than within a reduced national or even continental frame. [4]

Set that beside part one and the shape of the whole becomes visible. If the new movements are the most legible expression of a mythic ground that dissolves the nation-state’s claim on the individual, then a State defending a laïcité en puissance is not reacting to their crimes. It is reacting to what they signify. That, rather than any particular group, is what Liogier spends four parts trying to get said, in a format that, as part three explains, is built to prevent him.

Raphaël Liogier on the French Cult Question: A Guide to the 2013 CICNS Interviews