Tag: cult experts

‘Sex rabbi’ Eliezer Berland faces extradition from the Netherlands. A religious pirate radio broadcaster has been ordered off-the-air. And: what’s up with yoga’s popularity?

Also: information about the International Cultic Studies Association’s annual conference.

Once again a Scientology front group has been discovered infiltrating schools to promote the cult’s quackery.

Plus: the Scientology business is in full damage-control mode over Alex Gibney’s documentary exposing it to daylight. Meanwhile, it is using the dirty tricks its founder proscribed for dealing with critics.

Speaking of critics: we’ve got info about an upcoming anti-Scientology conference.

Is Dr. Craig Stasio running a doomsday cult? Parents of the young people he has surrounded himself with think he has brainwashed their daughters, who refer to him as “the prophet.”

Plus: a poll shows that increasing numbers of Americans don’t consider religion all that important. Russians, on the other hands have become more religious — and religion plays an important role in the current Russia – Ukraine conflict.

Also: Christians urgently need to gain an understanding of Islam.

Private Investigator David Sullivan — who helped people get out of cults by joining those cults himself — has died at the age of 62.

His work is featured in a cover story in the November 2013 issue of Harper’s magazine.

Two former Narconon executives will expose the Scientology front group to daylight in a broadcast on NBC’s Rock Center.

Also: a panel of cult experts looks at the question, Are Cults a Hidden Epidemic?

In today’s issue of Religion News Briefs: Already jailed for violating residential zoning codes, ‘home bible study’ pastor Michael Salman now faces a series of felony charges.

Plus: the condition of cult leader Sun Myung Moon worsens.

A daughter-in-law of Samuel Mullet, the leader of a breakaway Amish group on trial on hate crimes charges, says he coerced her into sex. Meanwhile his sister says Mullet’s group is a cult.

The Israeli government has distanced itself from a new Scientology cult center in Jaffa.

Also: the authors of a new study say the common assumption that natural and supernatural explanations are incompatible is psychologically inaccurate.

Plus, the latest issue of ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association) Today has an in-depth article about the history of the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center — non-profit residential treatment facility that provides a program of counseling and instruction to victims of cultic abuse, religious abuse and/or mind control.

The upcoming trials of the last three Aum Shinrikyo cult members will inevitably revisit the atrocities committed by the cultists, whose spiritual pursuits under guru Shoko Asahara claimed 29 lives and left more than 6,500 people injured.

Cult experts hope that revisiting Aum’s mayhem will raise public awareness of the potential dangers of joining cults.

After 25 years in operation, the Cult Information Centre in England fears it may no longer be able to work effectively.

The Cult Information Centre (CIC) was granted education charity status in 1992 but has recently run into difficulties with the commission after complaints were received from the Church of Scientology that it is in breach of the rules governing status.