Interview with Susan Palmer on the Theme of "Cults"

Susan Palmer is a Canadian sociologist of religion who teaches in Montreal and does fieldwork among new religious movements. Backed by a three-year grant from Canada’s federal research council, she began travelling to France in 2001 to study the public management of religious minorities there, and she visited some twenty of the groups named on the French parliamentary report’s list of 172 “cults”. Her books include a study of the Raëlian movement and The New Heretics of France, which grew out of the fieldwork she describes here. In this interview she recounts what she found: media-driven stigma, custody battles, an academic taboo around studying the listed groups, and the first application of the About-Picard law.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 3 July 2009. The video carries a French voice-over dub of Susan Palmer’s remarks; that French audio was machine-transcribed and cleaned before translation, and the English below renders the French dub literally — including several garbled names and phrases, which have been left as heard rather than corrected.)

[Palmer]: You asked me how I began to study new religious movements in France. I applied for a grant from the Canadian federal government. It is called the Council of Social Sciences and Research of Humanity. I received a three-year grant to study the public management of religious minorities in France. I began coming here in 2001.

I had heard about the Gaillard report. I thought that my first step would be to contact the groups on the list and to visit them, to see whether the Gaillard report, whether the list of 172 cults, had influenced their movements. But I only managed to visit about 20 of them — 14 in detail.

I was fascinated and surprised by the negative impact of the media and of public opinion on the members of the movement. Some members lost their jobs, or were denounced, or were denounced from employment. I met many people who had problems in the course of divorce, because the judge would give the children to a partner who was not in a cult. Some were denounced from visits with their children.

I had the impression that these government bureaucrats were paid to fight against cults, but they did not hesitate to read nothing. They did not visit the groups themselves. At the time, it was Mills, Alain Vivien. I studied their literature and the books written by members of the anti-cult movement, psychologists like Dr. Abgral and Michel Monroy. I was really surprised by the little information they had, and how they forgot to do even the most basic research.

I think that in North America, the study of inconvenient religions is considered a valid subject. There are many students and professors who teach or take courses on new religions. One thing I find strange in France is that there are so few academic studies on these groups. I think it comes from the fact that they are considered criminal groups, like the mafia. You cannot send your students to study the Mandarin, because it is as if you had to join the biker gang and your life is in danger. And also, just being associated with these groups is a kind of social stigma.

For example, I found the fact that I interviewed Raëlians. When I was interviewed by the media, after my book on the Raëlians came out, people told me that I had visited the Raëlians and that I had spoken with them. They told me that I was a very unrespectable woman, that I was a delicate character.

In 2006, when I came back, I stayed for a month in France. And that is when I met Arnaud Moussi, in 2006. I heard about it when I read a news report — news reports concerning this little group that was planning a mass suicide, where some people had killed themselves, and that it was the leader’s fault, and that he was going to prison. And I was really intrigued, because I said to myself that I was going to visit this group. There was something going on here that did not make sense. I called Arnaud Moussi and I spoke to him and to his brother Olivier. They told me to come out and talk to us. He had a prophetic vision, and they had the idea of living in a commune and of changing partners, and all the kinds of things that one finds in communes. But the facts I heard concerning the suicide seemed really pointless to blame the leaders, or to consider that it was the result of mental manipulation. I mean, in any religion you will find strange suicide, and you do not arrest the pope if a Catholic commits suicide.

It was the first application of the Abu Picard law, and in the legal process, they simply did not look at the facts and the real story of the team. It seems to me that Arnaud Moussi was drawn as an example, and the team was considered a clone of the Solar Temple. They had all the stereotypes about secular cults in the current. It was a very interesting case where the media colluded with the media and had a test case.

The Gaillard report named the cults, had a list of cults, and the cult itself was the problem — the group, the organizations, that type of inalienable organizations. And then, in the resistance movement that comes out of Cap, people decided to call the groups independent citizens and to affiliate their affiliations with the groups. So the idea is that we have religious freedom here: why should I be discriminated against because of my choice of philosophy, and so on. And then Mivalud responds by speaking of dérive sectaire as cult. So it became vaguer: cults, inevitably, result in criminal actions and antisocial behaviours. So it was very, very vague, but they did not have to name the groups. The assumption was that if the cults were not unrolled, we would have more crimes in our society, so we should create a law that targets the type of crimes that come out of cults.

I spoke to Nathalie Luca. In fact, I published part of our interview in an article that came out in Nova Religio, an American journal. And what she said is that she volunteered her experience at Mivalud, and she found that, when Langlais was replaced by Roulet, they were not open to hearing her opinion; they only wanted it because it looked good. And she felt that it was really important for sociologists to have input into public policy, and that is why she renounced: because she would not have had any impact on the meetings.

I gave a lecture at the EHESS in Paris, and to certain students. They were very intelligent, and some were doing interesting research on Muslim communities or on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But I asked whether they would be able to do research on groups like Mandarome, Scientology, and they said: no, we would never do that. We talked about objectivity, and about how far one would participate in the groups one was studying. So I made a little diagram and I said: here is a Muslim mosque — would you go and stay there overnight? Would you have dinner with the imam and his family? And they all said: yes, no problem. But would you dine overnight at Mandarome? Would you have dinner with Aurelien? Not at all. So there is a very strong taboo in academia, and they are against studying these groups subjectively. It would probably be bad for their careers if they did that.

As regards the treatment of new religious movements, it is that the public seems to be more vulnerable in accepting what is written in the media. I think that in North America, we have a more critical attitude, because in university and in school, in their courses, they will read Noam Chomsky. They will be aware of the media’s agenda, and of the way the media are shaped and diverted. The media have to sell papers and have to be sensational. I think that North Americans are less capable of accepting media stories as truth.

And in the school where I teach in Montreal, the students of humanity — whether it is history, or philosophy, or any subject in humanity — will have a critical attitude to the media. They will be interested in Chomsky. There is a certain awareness that the government must have, and that it must have input into public policy.

I was arguing with a very intelligent man about the sexes, and he said: “I do not want to hear it,” as if it were painful for him to change his thoughts about the sexes. It is quite unique to find a country…

I actually found that among the groups, there was a lot — they were not very united. Many groups asked me if I was a scientist, and I had to assure them that I was not, and then they spoke to me. But I think that the fact that I was a foreigner, that I came from Canada, gave me trust, because I thought that I was not a spy for the government. They were very open and welcoming, and they seemed very happy to talk to someone who listened to them.

The Canadians I have spoken to, who have read this — the anticult war in France — find it surprising that there is a certain level of intolerance against inconvenient religions, and that the French are really very militant against religious diversity and spiritual movements.

In my book, The New Heirs of France, I chose this title because I was studying the history of France and the persecution of heirs in the past — the Cathars, the Albigenses, the Huguenots, and so on. And of course, it is very different today: they do not kill people in the dungeons and kill them at the paste, and it is not the Catholic Christian who persecutes or who fights against heresy. But I think that the new religious movements today are… they are like the new heirs, but they are heirs of laïcité. So their heresy is that they are not non-secular, and that they are too enthusiastic about religion, and that they ask people to invest in these new movements — by living communally, by paying taxes. And it is that kind of thing that is offensive to laïcité, to this mentality.