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Apologia Report 13:41
November 20, 2008
Subject: The New Age marriage to Native American spirituality
In this issue:
BRAINWASHING - Stephen Kent explains why the concept is far from irrelevant in Western culture
ISLAM - are evangelicals missing the big picture?
NEW AGE MOVEMENT - its "appropriations of Native American religion and misappropriation of traditional shamanism"
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BRAINWASHING
"Contemporary Uses of the Brainwashing Concept: 2000 to Mid-2007" by Stephen A. Kent -- the abstract reads: "The brainwashing concept is sufficiently useful that it continues to appear in a wide variety of legal, political, and social contexts. This article identifies those contexts by summarizing its appearance in court cases, discussions about cults and former cult members, terrorists, and alleged victims of state repression between the years 2000 and mid-2007. In creating this summary, we discover that a physiologist has examined the biochemical aspects of persons going through brainwashing processes, and that (to varying degrees) some judges and others related to the judiciary have realized that people who have been through these processes have impaired judgment and often need special counseling. Most dramatically, a new brainwashing program may be operating in Communist China, a country whose political activities toward its own citizens in the late 1940s and 1950s spawned so much of the initial brainwashing research." Cultic Studies Review, 7:2 - 2008, pp99-128.
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ISLAM
"Islam According to Gallup" -- this interview by Warren Larson with senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, Dalia Mogahed, argues that "it's time to rethink what we think we know about Muslims." Larson is director of the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies at Columbia International University.
"Here, Larson interviews Mogahed about the book she coauthored with John Esposito, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think [1]. ...
[Q:] "What surprised you most in your findings?
[A:] "It was how much Americans and residents of majority-Muslim countries have in common. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that paints a picture of an inherently conflict-ridden relationship. Americans are as likely, for example, as Iranians to say religious leaders should have no part in crafting a constitution. We found that 57 percent of Americans think the Bible should have at least some role in legislation. (Nine percent think it should be the sole source.) This is similar to many majority-Muslim countries where people don't want theocracy and don't favor religious leaders being in control, but they do want legislation informed by religious values. ...
"[O]ur goal was not to quantify percentages of so-called extremists, but to understand the fringe element and how they differ from mainstream Muslims. ...
[Q:] "Don't all four schools of Sunni Islamic law suggest that a Muslim who leaves Islam and embraces Christianity, for example, should be executed?
[A:] "We have to look at modern interpretations, because Islamic law is a vibrant, ever-changing set of interpretations. ... Look, for example, at Sheikh Ali Jumu'a, grand mufti of Egypt, whose interpretation of apostasy laws is not to take drastic measures. ... One's faith today is no longer seen in the same context, because the nation-state has been completely transformed. ...
[Q:] "How do you respond to conventional wisdom that says the Qur'an espouses violence? ...
[A:] "[I]f the Qur'an espouses violence, then we should have a greater percentage of Muslims involved in violence. Violence is usually politically, not religiously, motivated. [T]errorist sympathizers or the 'cheering section' - the 7 percent who are politically radicalized - are no more religious than mainstream Muslims who abhor violence and say it is morally unjustified. Muslims are as likely as Americans to denounce attacks on civilians. Finally, people defending their position on 9/11 - the 7 percent who think it's completely justified - do so because of political and geopolitical perceptions, not theology. ...
[Q:] "How should evangelicals respond to what seems to be the spread of extremist Islam globally? ...
[A:] "Understanding the cause of the problem is important. The data clearly show it is driven not by religious extremism but by extreme political ideology. Second, as a human family, look at the extremists as an outside group, rather than as an outgrowth of religion. ... [E]vangelicals should help empower those trying to make positive change peacefully. At the end of the day, this battle is not for the soul of Islam. It's the road to reform.
"The grievances terrorists champion are strategically chosen and ones the vast majority agree with. Others try to address these same issues peacefully. To the extent these people are effective, terrorists are seen as ineffective and their methods as barbaric. Finally, evangelicals should vocally and unequivocally denounce anti-Muslim hate speech. When prominent Christian leaders make degrading statements about Islam, it feeds [Osama] bin Laden's claim of an American 'crusade' against Islam and Muslims. Hateful statements against what Muslims hold most dear are a gift to bin Laden and a slap to mainstream Muslims who fear and reject his methods and therefore should be seen as allies, not enemies, in the fight against violent extremism." Christianity Today, Nov '08, pp38-41. <www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/november/26.38.html>
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NEW AGE MOVEMENT
In his joint review of Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking, by Alice Beck Kehoe [2] and Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality, by Philip Jenkins [3], Joseph P. Szimhart says that both Kehoe and Jenkins "address popular (if surreptitious) New Age appropriations of Native American religion and misappropriation of traditional shamanism. More than twenty-five years ago when I was searching for a way out of an intellectual morass regarding religious ideas, [Mircea] Eliade was the intellectual seeker's scholar. He was the head of the Religious Studies department at the University of Chicago. When he gave academic thumbs-up to Carlos Castaneda's fantastic first novel about an apprenticeship under a Yaqui Indian [4], we felt justified in believing in Castaneda (1925Ð1998). Castaneda was one of the most successful New Age hoaxers in the twentieth century. Castaneda's books, along with Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy [5], helped to usher in a New Age industry of neoshamans such as Michael Harner and don Jose Luis Ruiz, with their lucrative transformational workshops. Eliade has had his critics (Robert Ellwood lists some of them and the criticisms in Politics of Myth [6]).
"However, Kehoe's small book drives criticism of Eliade and the neoshaman movement into a compelling if provocative conclusion: Neoshamanism is 'racism.' By this Kehoe means an intellectual or ivory-tower racism that looks down on and dismisses the achievements of a living ancient culture as if shamanism represents a lesser evolved human being who needs a more advanced culture to properly interpret it. Thus the neo-shaman is one that feels justified in appropriating techniques of shamanism and marketing them for personal benefit. Furthermore, the neo-shaman mixes or 'syncretes' occult notions from various religions and spiritual philosophies as if shamanism shares a common perennial basis with all religious ideas. ...
"Kehoe's intent is to distinguish proper anthropology from both the 'armchair' scholarship approach of Eliade and the New Age misappropriation of shamanistic technique for individual embellishment. ...
"Less strident but more thorough than Kehoe, Philip Jenkins offers a clearly written, impressively researched historical survey of the same early conflict with Native religion and controversial modern assimilations of Indian spirituality in white or non-Indian society. Beyond the history, he offers useful sociological insight and criticism. Kehoe's book covers a mere 125 pages, while Jenkins fills more than 300 with nearly 500 endnotes that contain an average of 5 to 10 references per note! Jenkins' companion book to Dream Catchers is Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, published in 2000 [7]. Indeed, he covers much of the same territory in Dream Catchers but with his eye keenly on Native American or Indian culture throughout. ...
"The work and commentaries of Frank Waters, Carl Jung, and Jack Kerouac, for example, helped Westerners to absorb Indian ideas as if they were part of a primal mystical pool shared by all ancient religions. According to Jenkins, it was Frank Waters with his immensely popular The Book of the Hopi [8] 'above all who made the Ganges flow into the Rio Grande.' Waters' syncretism included his reverence for the pseudo-Sufi teachings of the controversial Gurdjieff, which Mabel Dodge had introduced to him.
Ê "Jenkins examines pseudo-Indians such as Sun Bear and neoshamans such as Michael Harner as examples of the next wave of popularization of Indian spirituality, from 1960 to 1980. ... Jenkins notes that while New Age Whites scrambled to claim any drop of Indian blood that flowed through their ancestry and any past life as an Indian, few if any sought black blood or black African lives. Indians were somehow more 'spiritual' by nature. ...
"Jenkins addresses the current status of Native spirituality in his last two chapters. He writes that Indians have both absorbed New Age notions that define their culture and reacted against the same, referring to the New Age use of sweat lodges and peyote as 'cultural theft.' Some Indians go so far as to call it cultural genocide. In light of such reactions, Jenkins asks how, then, do we define 'authentic' religion? What standard prevents a syncretic cult in the New Age movement from claiming authenticity? 'They make certain bold assumptions about the nature of religion; about the role of authenticity and historicity, and the potential for change and development over time.' He asks whether we are arguing about olives or onions. Do we peel away the surface to find the nugget of truth, or is the truth in the peels themselves, without a solid core?
Ê "Jenkins refers to a landmark decision in the US versus Ballard case of 1944 and the statement by Supreme Court Judge Robert Jackson. Ruling on the outcome of the fraud case against the Mighty I AM, Jackson said that the 'bogus and deceptive cult' that taught 'nothing but humbug, untainted by any trace of truth' offered a 'blatant case of deception.' Jackson acknowledged the potential for harm to 'over-credulous people,' yet 'the price of freedom or of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish. ... 'By that standard,' writes Jenkins, 'the neo-Native religion of the New Age groups is as valid as any other, and deserves as much respect.' He sums up this view ... by noting that the encounter, despite the exploitation, has been overwhelmingly positive, sincere, and respectful for both Indians and Whites. The interaction has drawn Native religion into the mainstream. Jenkins concludes that 'there is no sign that this process of influence and adaptation will cease.'" Cultic Studies Review, 7:2 - 2008, pp182-184.
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed (Gallup Prs, 2008, hardcover, 230 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595620176/apologiareport>
2 - Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking, by Alice Beck Kehoe (Waveland, 2000, paperback, 125 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1577661621/apologiareport>
3 - Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality, by Philip Jenkins (Oxford Univ Prs, 2004, hardcover, 306 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195161157/apologiareport>
4 - The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, by Carlos Castaneda (Univ Calif Prs, 3rd ed, 2008, paperback, 240 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520256387/apologiareport>
---- Plus several other related books of interest ----
4a - The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda, by Amy Wallace (Frog, 2003 reprint, hardcover, 200 pages, ISBN 1-5839-4076-6)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583940766/apologiareport>
4b - A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda, by Margaret Runyan Castaneda (Millenia, 1996, paperback, 204 pages, ISBN 0-9696-9601-9)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0969696019/apologiareport>
4c - Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, by Richard DeMille (Universe.com, 2000, paperback, 208 pages, ISBN 0-5951-4508-6)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595145086/apologiareport>
4d - The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies, by Richard Demille (George Erikson, 1980, paperback, ISBN 0-9155-2024-9)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0915520249/apologiareport>
4e - Carlos Castaneda: Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties, by Jay Courtney Fikes (Millenia, 2000, paperback, ISBN 0-9696-9600-0)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0969696000/apologiareport>
For background on this book, see "Peyote's Hallucinations Spawn Real-Life Academic Feud" by Simon Romero in the New York Times, Sep 16 '03, pD2.
<www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/science/16PEYO.html>
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5 - Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, by Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask, and Wendy Doniger (Princeton Univ Prs, 2004, paperback. 648 pages) <www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691119422/apologiareport>
6 - The Politics of Myth: A Study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell, by Robert S. Ellwood (State Univ of NY Prs, 1999, paperback, 224 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/079144306X/apologiareport>
7 - Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History by Philip Jenkins (Oxford Univ Prs, 2001, paperback, 304 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195145968/apologiareport>
8 - The Book of the Hopi, by Frank Waters (Penguin, 1977, paperback, 384 pages) <www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140045279/apologiareport>
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