CESNUR (English: Center for Studies on New Religions, Italian: Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni), is an organization based in Turin, Italy. It was established in 1988 by a group of religious scholars from universities in Europe and the Americas, working in the field of new religious movements. Its director is the Italian sociologist and attorney Massimo Introvigne. CESNUR defines itself as being independent of any religious group, church, denomination or association. It has evolved into a network of scholars and organizations who study the field.

Aims[link]

According to their website, CESNUR is devoted to promote scholarly research in the field of new religious consciousness, and are dedicated to exposing the problems associated with some movements, while defending the principles of religious liberty.

While established by a group of scholars who were mostly Roman Catholics, CESNUR is not affiliated with any religious group or denomination and has from the outset included scholars of various religious persuasions.^[1] The Italian authorities recognized CESNUR as a public non-profit organization in 1996 and are currently the main contributors to CESNUR projects.^[1] Other sources of income include book royalties and member contributions.^[1]

CESNUR gives a greater weight to religious freedom than anti-cult activists^[who?] and is critical about concepts like mind control, thought reform, and brainwashing asserting that they lack scientific and scholarly support and are mainly based on anecdotal evidence. They do not believe that all religious movements are benign but oppose special laws against religious movements.

CESNUR sponsor yearly conferences in the field of new religions. Conferences have been held inter alia at the London School of Economics (1993 and 2001), the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil (1994), the Sapienza University of Rome (1995), the Université de Montréal (1996), the Free university of Amsterdam (1997), the Industrial Union in Turin (1998), the Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania (1999), the University of Latvia in Riga (2000), the University of Utah and Brigham Young University (2002), and the University of Vilnius (2003).

CESNUR-affiliated scholars include:

• Eileen Barker, professor in sociology at the London School of Economics
• David Bromley, professor of Sociology & Anthropology, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Douglas Cowan, Renison College, University of Waterloo
• Jeffrey K. Hadden, University of Virginia
• Irving Hexham, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary
• Reender Kranenborg, Free university in Amsterdam
• J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion (ISAR)
• Anson Shupe, Professor of Sociology of the School of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University

Criticism and response[link]

CESNUR has been criticized by the Christian countercult movement and cult-watching organizations, and some former members of movements they consider to be cults. CESNUR rebuts these criticisms by saying that most of the information supplied by anti-cult activists is theoretical and anecdoctal, based on second-hand accounts by families of members, press-clippings, and accounts of ex-members who rationalize their past. One CESNUR-affiliated scholar responds to Hein's criticisms by stating that "Some of us – myself (Douglas Cowan), Eileen (Barker), Massimo (Introvigne), Jeff (Hadden), Irving Hexham, Anson Shupe, David Bromley, Gordon Melton – are listed on Hein's site as dedicated 'cult apologists' of varying degrees of prominence.^{[citation needed]}

Scholars Stephen A. Kent and Raffaella Di Marzio consider CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing controversy one-sided, polemical and sometimes without scholarly value.^[2][3] Di Marzio, however, later somewhat changed her views, left the Catholic counter-cult organization Gruppo di Ricerca e di Informazione sulle Sette (GRIS) and worked quite regularly with CESNUR.^{[citation needed]} She is listed among the contributors of the CESNUR online encyclopedia "Religions in Italy".^[4]

In an official OSCE report, Dick Marty, Swiss senator and member of the OECD Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, answered criticism by Introvigne, who was himself an official Rapporteur at the OCSE conference held in Vienna on March 22, 1999: "The CESNUR report misrepresents the contents of the "Regards sur" newsletter: taking everything into account, there is insufficient credible evidence for the allegations to be made out. As to the CESNUR document and in the absence of corroborative material, the Rapporteur views its credibility in the light of his conclusions on the partial and misleading report of the Beijing Conference."^[5]

Introvigne responded by claiming that the anti-cult movement have accused CESNUR of being a front for "Freemasonry, a "Methodist cult", the Roman Catholic Church and a number of Catholic organizations, including Opus Dei and Alleanza Cattolica." He noted that one of the directors, J. Gordon Melton, was an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, and that Introvigne himself was a member of Alleanza Cattolica, which he described as "a lay Catholic organization, enjoying a good relationship with a number of Italian Catholic dioceses where it is established, about which much nonsense has been written in Germany". Introvigne stated that CESNUR's only institutional funding came from the government of the Region of Piedmont, and that it did not receive funds from any religious organization or institution.^[6]

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b c} Fautré, Willy (2006), "Non-state actors and Religious Freedom in Europe", in Andreopoulos, George J.; Kabasakal Arat, Zehra F.; Juviler, Peter H., Non-state actors in the human rights universe, Kumarian Press, ISBN 978-0-415-30948-6 
2. ^ The French and German versus American debate over 'new religions', Scientology and human rights, by Stephen A. Kent, Marburg Journal of Religion, Volume 6, No. 1 (January 2001)
3. ^ "Brainwashing" in New Religious Movements, by Alberto Amitrani and Raffaella Di Marzio, from the Roman seat of G.R.I.S., April, 1998.
4. ^ Le religioni in Italia: Alcune osservazioni metodologiche
5. ^ European Federation of Research and Information Centres on Sectarism (FECRIS): request for consultative status with the Council of Europe
6. ^ CESNUR - Blacklisting or Greenlisting? A European Perspective on the New Cult Wars

External links[link]

• Homepage of CESNUR

Massimo Introvigne
Born	(1955-06-14) June 14, 1955 (age 57) Rome
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Sociologist, Author

Massimo Introvigne (b. June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist and intellectual property consultant. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of tens of books and articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion [4]. He is also a consultant on intellectual property rights[5]. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the "Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions" of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Life[link]

Born in Rome on June 14, 1955, Massimo Introvigne reported in a partially autobiographical paper presented at the 2008 yearly conference of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago^[1] how his interest in non-Christian religions dates back to his reading as a young boy of the novels of Emilio Salgari, Rudyard Kipling, and Luigi Ugolini (1891–1980, the author of the 1950 Italian novel L'isola non trovata), which included references to Hinduism, Islam and other religions not generally well-known at that time in Italy. The popular encyclopedia Le grandi religioni del mondo (The Great Religions of the World), published in 1964 by the leading publishing house Rizzoli, was – according to the same paper – also an influence on the young Introvigne, who devotedly purchased its monthly instalments at age nine. Also in the Chicago paper, Introvigne mentions the crucial importance of his Jesuit high school, the Istituto sociale in Turin, Italy, between 1970–1973. As other Italian high schools in these years, that one hosted a vigorous political debate, and Introvigne attended it in the same years of future left-wing Italian leader Piero Fassino and centrist politician Michele Vietti (whose cousin, the scholar of Islam Silvia Scaranari, he will eventually marry in 1982). At the same school he met the Catholic conservative organization Alleanza Cattolica which he joined in 1972. He went on to obtain a laurea degree (equivalent to a Master's degree) in Philosophy from the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome, a Vatican-accredited institution, and a laurea degree in Law from the University of Turin, Italy. During the Gregoriana years he also attended (as a layman, i.e. not as a seminarian studying for priesthood) the Catholic Almo Collegio Capranica, where he had as fellow students the future Archbishops Rino Fisichella, Nikola Eterovic, and many others who will later become prominent figures of the Catholic Church. His dissertation at the University of Turin was on John Rawls, and was later published in 1983 by Giuffré as I due principi di giustizia nella teoria di Rawls, the first work on Rawls in Italian.^[2] The dissertation was directed by Italian philosopher Enrico di Robilant, with whom Introvigne worked between 1979 and 1985 as an assistant lecturer.

Gradually, he shifted his main interests from philosophy to sociology, and from law to religion. In 1987 he presented a paper at the international conference of the Mormon History Association in Oxford, where he started a long-lasting co-operation with Swiss historian Jean-François Mayer and with the Utah lawyer and historian Michael W. Homer, which would eventually lead to the establishment of CESNUR in 1988. He taught short courses in the sociology of religious movements at the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum and in 2005–2006 at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, both Vatican-accredited institutions. In the second edition of his Nuovo manuale di sociologia della religione (New Manual of Sociology of Religion) Roberto Cipriani, former president of AIS (Associazione Italiana di Sociologia) and one of Italy's leading sociologists, calls Introvigne "one of the Italian sociologists of religion most well-known abroad, and among the world's leading scholars of new religious movements".^[3]

From 1980, Introvigne also developed parallel activity as an intellectual-property attorney. As of 2011^[update] he works as a partner in the Jacobacci & Partners patent- and trademark-consultancy firm in Turin, Italy, and is counsel in the law firm Jacobacci, Sterpi, Francetti, Regoli, de Haas & Associati, a firm he helped establishing in 1998. He is also one of the partners. although with no role in the management, of Terrazza Solferino, a company which bought and restored the historical terrace and Liberty apartment of the same name in Turin as a center for business and culture. He is married and has four children.

Introvigne started collecting books on minority religions and esoteric-gnostic schools in the 1970s. As of 2011^[update] his collection includes more than 50,000 volumes – see the online catalogue made available to the public via the CESNUR library.

He is vice-president of the Catholic movement Alleanza Cattolica^[4] and one of the founding members of the Italian think tank Res Publica^[5] initiated in 1999 by Silvio Berlusconi, to which The People of Freedom it is closely connected.^[6] Introvigne was also a member of the National Council of the Italian Christian Democrat party UDC – Union of the Centre, but disagreed with this party's decision not to support Silvio Berlusconi at the Italian political elections of 2008 (which Berlusconi eventually won) and left the party. At the regional elections of 2010 in his home region of Piedmont Introvigne emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of the conservative candidate, Roberto Cota (who defeated governor Mercedes Bresso) and a vitriolic critic of the support given by the UDC and other Catholics to the strongly pro-choice Bresso.^[7]

In 2010 he was appointed by the Italian Ministry for Internal Affairs as one of the 19 members of the Comitato per l'Islam Italiano, a body created by the same Ministry in order to advise the government in matters related to the Islamic minority in Italy.^[8] From January 5 to December 31, 2011 he served as "Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions"^[9] of the OSCE. In this capacity, he organized inter alia the international conference of OSCE on hate crimes against Christians held in Rome on September 12, 2011. In his speech at the Ministerial Council of OSCE in Vilnius, Lithuania, on December 6, 2011, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti,Secretary for the Holy See's Relations with States, with a reference to the mandate of Introvigne at OSCE during the year 2011, when Lithuania chaired the organization, stated that «last September’s Meeting in Rome on the theme “Preventing and responding to Hate Incidents and Crimes against Christians” was a successful and hopeful event, and revealed the possibility of constructive dialogue toward mutual understanding and respect among Christians, members of other religions, and nonbelievers. The Holy See appreciates the outstanding work that was done under the Lithuanian Chairmanship to combat intolerance against Christians»^[10].

Work[link]

Introvigne is the author of more than 60 books including Le Nuove Religioni ("The New Religions". 1989), and I Mormoni ("The Mormons", 1991), and editor of nine books in the field of sociology of religion. In 2001, he was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy), one of the most reviewed Italian books in this field. A second edition, Le Religioni in Italia, was published in 2006.

He has also written hundreds of articles, both in daily newspapers (including Silvio Berlusconi's Il Giornale of Milan) and in religious and secular periodicals. Some twenty of them were published in scientific journals in various countries, as can be seen in his bibliography. The same bibliography shows him as contributor of several collective works on the sociology of religion. After the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, an important part of his work has been devoted to the study of Islamic fundamentalism and to the application to this field of the methodology developed by scholars of new religious movements. In Italy, Introvigne is known as one of the main proponents of the sociological theory of religious economy developed by Rodney Stark and Lawrence Iannaccone. With Stark, Introvigne co-published in 2003 Dio è tornato: indagine sulla rivincita delle religioni in Occidente (God Is Back: An Enquiry on Religious Revival in the West – Casale Monferrato: Piemme), and with Iannaccone, in 2004, Il mercato dei martiri: l’industria del terrorismo suicida (A Market for Martyrs: The Industry of Suicide Terrorism – Turin: Lindau). These books were written specifically for the Italian editions, but a part of the Introvigne-Stark study appeared in April 2005 in the first issue of the online Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion[6].

Introvigne has also written books and articles in several languages criticizing The Da Vinci Code and the documentary on pedophile priests Sex Crimes and the Vatican. In 2006, Introvigne published a book which he considered very different from his previous production: Il dramma dell'Europa senza Cristo (The Drama of a Europe without Christ – Milan: Sugarco), where he proposed a militant criticism of secular humanism, based on the teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The book was sympathetically reviewed (although with some criticism on specific issues) by the Vatican-connected Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica:^[11] In 2008, Introvigne followed with a second book in the same vein, Il segreto dell'Europa (Europe's Secret – Milan: Sugarco), intended as a study guide for the groups which had been established in several Italian cities for studying The Drama.

The collection of books on religion of CESNUR "is regarded as the largest collection in Europe and the second in the world in its field", according to its own website.^[12]

He is also the main editor of the website www.cesnur.org. He has participated in several activities of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and the International Federation of Catholic Universities. He is also a member of the "Sociology of Religion" group of the Italian Association of Sociology.^[13]

He is also director of CESPOC, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture [7], an institution which hosts his large collections of dime novels and comics, and collects his articles on these subjects. Introvigne's CESPOC collection hosts inter alia the largest collection in Europe of dime novels and other materials featuring the literary character Nick Carter. In 2006, Introvigne published a bibliography of Nick Carter's Italian translations in the specialized magazine Dime Novel Round-Up (vol. 75, no. 1, February 2006, pp. 12–15). The collection has also important holdings and earlier editions of Fantômas, Zorro, Dracula, and other characters which defined the popular culture of the 20th century.^[13] In 2008, with the help of the American scholar J. Gordon Melton, Introvigne published on CESNUR's Web site a bibliography of English-language vampire comics between 1935 and 2000, which includes more than 11,000 entries and is defined as a "lifetime achievement" by the authors .^[14]

Views[link]

• He wrote, "The demise of the largest American anti-cult organization, the Cult Awareness Network, finally occurred because of its involvement in a violent and illegal activity, i.e. forcible deprogramming ..."^[15]
• He agreed with the view that "the great majority of members of the new religious movements derive positive experience from their membership". [ibid]

Views of his work[link]

Anti-cult activists and scholars sympathetic to the anti-cult movement such as Thomas Gandow, Stephen Kent, as well as Benjamin Zablocki see Introvigne's framing of scholars and academics (those who agree with CESNUR) vs. anti-cult movement (those who do not agree with CESNUR regardless of their academic qualifications) as biased, not to mention the term anti-cult terrorism he coined.^[16]

On the other hand, Introvigne says that "anti-cult terrorism" has not always been a metaphorical term, pointing out that:

"acts of terrorism in the strictest sense of the word were indeed perpetrated in France in 1996 and later. Premises of both the Unification Church and New Acropolis (a movement headquartered in Argentina) were bombed in Paris."^[15]

One of the main points which are questioned regarding Introvigne's work is his attitude regarding brainwashing and the CESNUR information he presents on that subject. Gandow refers to what he calls the "APA-Lie" (i.e. the way Introvigne presented the position of the American Psychological Association on brainwashing) as a scientific scandal.^[17] Introvigne's reply^[18] was regarded as useful even by critics (see e.g. the review by Jean-Bruno Renard in "Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions", 52ème année, avril-juin 2007, no. 138, p. 97–99, of the book on the controversy Introvigne co-authored in French with Dick Anthony), since he went to great lengths to obtain, post on the Internet and later publish crucial and previously unavailable documents of the original U.S. brainwashing controversy.^[19]

His Encyclopedia of Religion in Italy was one of the most reviewed books in Italy in the year of its publication and those reviews were positive for the most part. Many of the reviews came from the most important newspapers of the country.^[20]

Vampirism hobby[link]

Melton is the American President of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula, and Introvigne is the Italian director of the society, which includes the leading academic scholars in the field of the literary and historical study of the vampire myth.^[21][22] An informative page in Italian about the society is hosted at Introvigne's CESNUR institute for the study of new religious movements, with which Melton is actively involved.^[23]

Melton and Introvigne also participated in several international conferences on vampires, including one on "Buffy, the vampire slayer", in Nashville, Tennessee in 2004. Introvigne was titled as: "president" of the Transylvanian Society in Italy, and Dr. Melton was titled as the "Count Dracula Ambassador to the U.S.".^[24] The large bibliography on vampire comics Introvigne and Melton posted on CESNUR's Web site in 2008 is discussed above, under "Work".

In 1997, J. Gordon Melton and Introvigne organized an event at the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles where 1,500 attendees came dressed as vampires for: "creative writing contest, Gothic rock music and theatrical performances"^[21] Melton came dressed as Dracula.^[25]

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• The Unification Church (Studies in Contemporary Religions, 2), Signature Books (September 1, 2000) ISBN 1-56085-145-7
• Osho Rajneesh: Studies in Contemporary Religion (Studies in Contemporary Religions, 4), Signature Books (August 1, 2002), ISBN 1-56085-156-2 (by Judith M. Fox, with Massimo Introvigne as the Series Editor)
• Les Mormons, Brepols (December 30, 1996), ISBN 2-503-50063-3
• I nuovi movimenti religiosi: Sètte cristiane e nuovi culti, Editrice Elle Di Ci (1990), ISBN 88-01-14260-9
• Il ritorno dello gnosticismo (Nuove spiritualità) , SugarCo (1993), ISBN 88-7198-216-9
• I nuovi culti: Dagli Hare Krishna alla Scientologia (Uomini e religioni), Mondadori; 1. ed. Oscar Uomini e religioni edition (1990), ISBN 88-04-34057-6
• Il satanismo (Collana religioni e movimenti), Elle Di Ci (1997), ISBN 88-01-00799-X

Other[link]

• New Age is Mistaken Answer to Search For Meaning, Interview with Introvigne, Turin, Italy, 19 March 2003 (Zenit News Agency). Available online
• "The Secular Anti-Cult and the Religious Counter-Cult Movement: Strange Bedfellows or Future Enemies?" in New Religions and the New Europe, Robert Towler, ed. (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1995), pp. 32–54.
• "Christian New Religious Movements: A Roman Catholic Perspective" and "New Religious Movements and the Law: A Comparison between Two Different Legal Systems – The United States and Italy," in New Religions and New Religiosity, Eileen Barker and Margit Warburg, eds., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998), pp. 243–261 and 276–290.
• "Children of the Underground Temple: Growing Up in Damanhur," in Children in New Religions, Susan J. Palmer and Charlotte E. Hardman, eds., (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), pp. 138–149.
• "After the New Age: Is There a Next Age?" in New Age Religion and Globalization, Mikael Rothstein, ed., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2001), pp. 58–69.
• "Lectorium Rosicrucianum: A Dutch Movement Becomes International," in New Religions in a Postmodern World, Mikael Rothstein and Reender Kranenborg, eds., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2003), pp. 11–22.
• "Occult Masters and the Temple of Doom: The Fiery End of the Solar Temple," (co-authored with Jean-Francois Mayer) in Cults, Religion and Violence, David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 170–188.

References[link]

External links[link]

• CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions
• Massimo Introvigne's own site
• CESNUR critical page
• CESPOC, the Center for Studies on Popular Culture
• Terrazza Solferino