We publish the following study by Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Oxford University, Bryan Ronald Wilson (1926-2004), on the subject of apostates and the New Religious Movements. “As instances have indicated,” Wilson writes, “he [the apostate, ed.] is likely to be suggestible and ready to enlarge or embellish his grievances to satisfy the species of journalist whose interest is more in sensational copy than in a objective statement of truth.” Those who have seen the media campaign recently conducted by the TV program Zona Bianca (White Zone) against the Christian congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses will find some truth in that assertion.
Apostates and New Religious Movements
Bryan Ronald Wilson, Ph. D.
Emeritus Fellow
University of Oxford
England
Every religion which makes claim to a definitive body of doctrine and practice which it regards as exclusively its own, is likely to be faced with the fact that from time to time some erstwhile members will relinquish their allegiance and cease to subscribe to the formalities of the faith, in at least some, perhaps all, of its teachings, practices, organization, and discipline. Apostasy has been a common phenomenon in the history of the various denominations of the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition. Each new schism from an already established organization of faith has been likely to be seen, by those from whom the schismatics have separated, as a case of apostasy. There have been dramatic instances on a large scale, as in the so-called “great schism” of the eastern (Orthodox) and western (Catholic) churches, and in the emergence of Protestantism at the Reformation.
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Source: FREEDOM PUBLISHING
