Régis Dericquebourg: The Sociologist's Point of View

Régis Dericquebourg: The Sociologist’s Point of View

Régis Dericquebourg[1], do you cultivate a certain sympathy for the sects you study, without of course adhering to them?

It is quite simply the researcher’s sympathy towards “the field”. It is necessary, otherwise this profession is impossible to practise.

Are the great institutional churches not sects that have succeeded?

Yes, but while succeeding, they made compromises with the world, they softened their demands on the faithful, and their hold was thereby diminished. What characterises the sect, by contrast, is its indifference towards the State, its animosity or its hostility towards it. Certain sects refuse to vote; one renders “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” — in other words, one does not meddle in the affairs of the State. That is not the case with the churches, which are engaged in the world and some of which have made compromises with the State.

How do the principal sects evolve? Do they seek social recognition at all costs, and do they achieve their ends?

Every sect is at first radical. It tends to grow calmer as generations of faithful succeed one another, and it accommodates itself to the world in which it ends up settling. But it may also be that the sect disappears; many have known that fate. The quest for recognition is variable; certain groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses whom I have studied closely, do not concern themselves with it. Yet they are expanding, and engage in proselytism. Other groups, by contrast, seek to pass for churches, whose status they claim. For a secular State the problem is legal and political. It is the recognition of a religious pluralism that is at stake.

Minority religious groups and the State

Let us dwell on the relationship the State maintains with the various religious movements. You write somewhere that in the end there is no legal definition of the sect. There are indeed reports, but do they not remain a dead letter?

At the level of the European Parliament there exist, among others, the Cottrell report (1984-85) and the Hunt report (1991). Some wanted to place the accent on children’s rights, but that never resulted in legislation. If it did, one would also have to impose it on the Churches. The question is not simple, doubtless because our democratic States rest on notions of tolerance and religious freedom. Pluralism is at the basis of the democratic idea.

The great institutional churches: sects that have succeeded? Sects or churches therefore exist as associations, quite simply.

Yes, because there is no legal definition of the sect or of the minority religious group. We do have legal documents, such as those of Jacques Robert for example. Case law also exists, but is the jurist in a position to define what a religious minority is? In France few minority religious movements are recognised as religions, coming under the law of 1905. That can hamper some of them in their quest for recognition.

When a State calls itself secular and does not recognise the existence of a God or of any belief whatever, how could it be capable of granting a status to religious movements?

At the limit I would say that a pluralist State does not have to manage the religious, nor to say what a good or a bad religion is. It must concern itself with public order. If movements, whatever they may be, break legal rules, they must be judged. There is not even any need to put in place a specific jurisdiction; our legal arsenal is sufficient to condemn groups that commit abuses against persons or seizures of property. What would worry me more is the strong hold over persons. That said, one must nuance: in minority religious groups the “turnover”[2] is considerable.

Without wishing to labour the point, one is obliged to note that the State maintains privileged relations with institutional Churches, with the leaders of the great religions such as Islam or Judaism, or with figures given media coverage such as the Dalai Lama received by the President. There is there a de facto recognition in which minority religious movements do not share. Is that normal within a society that would wish to be fully secular?

I understand you well. Let us recall that in France we live on the ruins of the hegemony of a great church which, through the process of secularisation, gradually lost its hold. It has had to share the terrain with other churches. And it does indeed seem that the State currently recognises only those churches and religious movements that can situate themselves — indeed impose themselves — in a relation of force with political power.

On the causes of the sect phenomenon

You have a basic training in psychology. Can you say why this or that person is led to enter a sect?

A difficult question, which would moreover deserve to be refined: why this sect and not that one? There are basic sociological conditions. 1) One enters certain religious groups when one belongs to a disadvantaged social stratum. Some movements have no middle or senior managers. 2) One also enters a sect because one is engaged in a search for spirituality to which the churches cannot respond. 3) For certain emigrants, the sect works as a mechanism of integration. I saw it in the North with the Poles who entered the Jehovah’s Witnesses en masse. That can also correspond to a quest for identity, when one is caught between two cultures. 4) One must see, moreover, that the sectarian proliferation is linked to the phenomenon of the counter-culture of the years 68-70. At that time one saw an expansion of the sect phenomenon. In a society still in full economic expansion, suspicion hung over all the great values. Many people found themselves disarmed, at a loss, and they went looking for values in religious movements. 5) Certain religious groups have also played the role of catalysts; they have channelled an aggressiveness towards society. That is the case for the movements that attract people of the middle class. These have knowledge but no power, and few economic means. Minority religious groups allow them to live in a world apart, and to contest society globally. That is what is called “socio-religious protest”.

For certain emigrants, the sect works as a mechanism of integration.

From a strictly sociological point of view, do minority religious movements have their place among us?

A functionalist sociologist would tell you that they can perhaps participate in the integration of individuals into society. Other sociologists will tell you that they destabilise the family or other structures of the said society.

Nothing new under the sun

Is man for ever homo religiosus?

No society lives without religion, and when it believes it has rid itself of it, it invents “analogical religions” for itself, to use Jean Séguy’s expression — that is to say, substitutes for religion. The countries of the East are the flagrant illustration of it.

What is your view of these new religious manifestations grouped under the term “New Age”?

The phenomenon of minority religiosities is nothing new. In the Middle Ages as much as in the nineteenth century one finds a religious proliferation that our so-called “new age” era would be tempted to cultivate and renew. That said, it is certain that if the public leaves the institutional religions, that does not mean that the religious disappears, but that it passes by other paths, and notably by minority religious groups. The exit from the churches is not accompanied by a global atheism, although that “exit” is itself to be qualified. The personal religious quest depends on numerous determinations; that is doubtless why we shall never have finished studying this phenomenon, and why it is not satisfied by a simplistic analysis.

[1] A senior lecturer at the University of Lille and a psycho-sociologist, Régis Dericquebourg studies minority religious groups, and in particular those that claim to heal. His doctoral thesis was on the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

[2] “Turnover”: the rate of turnover. Followers remain in a sect on average 4 to 5 years.

http://www.paroles.ch/lire/cert/SECTES/socio.htm

Régis Dericquebourg: The Sociologist’s Point of View

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