Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 42
She declares that legislative reforms to date are inadequate, as are such measures as
harsher punishments, pedophile-free zones, and Megan‘s Law. Her position is that it will
take the elimination of SOLs for what she envisions as a coming civil-rights movement for
children—a movement that will bring long-overdue justice for survivors, and that will let the
public know who many of the predators in our midst are.
Andrea Moore-Emmett
Hare Krishna Transformed
E. Burke Rochford, Jr., New York, NY: New York University Press (The New and
Alternative Religion Series), 2007. ISBN 978-0-8147-7579-0 (paperback), $22. 288
pages.
Because I‘ve been involved in counter-cult work for nearly 30 years, one of my major
interests today is how cultic groups change and accommodate themselves to new
circumstances over time. E. Burke Rochford, Jr., details this process in the ISKON
movement in his important new book Hare Krishna Transformed.
Rochford, a professor of sociology and religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, has
studied ISKCON for 30 years. Hare Krishna Transformed is an excellent examination, via
personal interviews and research questionnaires, of how this troubled group has adapted to
changing and often dire circumstances in order to survive.
In the 1980s ISKCON could no longer able support itself through the sales of literature and
preaching that had produced its large income in the 1970s. Members, who until that time
had lived primarily together in ISKCON temples and communities, were forced to obtain
outside jobs to support themselves and the movement. They were also forced to seek
individual housing. These changes brought them into more contact with the outside
materialistic world and weakened the group‘s opposition to the alien popular culture.
At the same time, the young members began to marry, most of these marriages arranged
by the group leaders as the only acceptable outlet in the Hare Krishna movement for
handling sexual urges. The formation of families caused child-, women-, and family-related
issues to come to the fore at the same time the rank and file members were questioning the
legitimacy of the leadership.
Rochford concludes that these struggles and the resulting changes the group made have
transformed ISKCON from an isolated counter-culture organization into a mainstream
congregational one. Changes in the economic structure of the organization and the living
conditions of its members have caused ISKCON to soften its opposition to the outside-world
culture. Such changes include that Hare Krishna children now attend public schools and
ISKCON must accommodate that fact. As a result,
ISKCON could no longer assert totalistic claims over the lives and identity of
householders and their children, in large part because ISKCON‘S leaders lost
their ability to control their members through financial dependence…Freed
from ISKCON control, householders formed social enclaves between the larger
culture and their local ISKCON community, which resulted in the
disintegration of ISKCON‘S traditional communal structure. (p. 67)
Hare Krishna leaders were forced to accelerate reforms when children who had grown up in
the group disclosed the occurrence of severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse in
Hare Krishna ashram-based Gurukalas (boarding schools to which children as young as 5,
and sometimes 3 years old, were sent) these schools operated either in the United States
or in India from 1971 to the 1980s (p. 74). When the extensive child-abuse accusations
She declares that legislative reforms to date are inadequate, as are such measures as
harsher punishments, pedophile-free zones, and Megan‘s Law. Her position is that it will
take the elimination of SOLs for what she envisions as a coming civil-rights movement for
children—a movement that will bring long-overdue justice for survivors, and that will let the
public know who many of the predators in our midst are.
Andrea Moore-Emmett
Hare Krishna Transformed
E. Burke Rochford, Jr., New York, NY: New York University Press (The New and
Alternative Religion Series), 2007. ISBN 978-0-8147-7579-0 (paperback), $22. 288
pages.
Because I‘ve been involved in counter-cult work for nearly 30 years, one of my major
interests today is how cultic groups change and accommodate themselves to new
circumstances over time. E. Burke Rochford, Jr., details this process in the ISKON
movement in his important new book Hare Krishna Transformed.
Rochford, a professor of sociology and religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, has
studied ISKCON for 30 years. Hare Krishna Transformed is an excellent examination, via
personal interviews and research questionnaires, of how this troubled group has adapted to
changing and often dire circumstances in order to survive.
In the 1980s ISKCON could no longer able support itself through the sales of literature and
preaching that had produced its large income in the 1970s. Members, who until that time
had lived primarily together in ISKCON temples and communities, were forced to obtain
outside jobs to support themselves and the movement. They were also forced to seek
individual housing. These changes brought them into more contact with the outside
materialistic world and weakened the group‘s opposition to the alien popular culture.
At the same time, the young members began to marry, most of these marriages arranged
by the group leaders as the only acceptable outlet in the Hare Krishna movement for
handling sexual urges. The formation of families caused child-, women-, and family-related
issues to come to the fore at the same time the rank and file members were questioning the
legitimacy of the leadership.
Rochford concludes that these struggles and the resulting changes the group made have
transformed ISKCON from an isolated counter-culture organization into a mainstream
congregational one. Changes in the economic structure of the organization and the living
conditions of its members have caused ISKCON to soften its opposition to the outside-world
culture. Such changes include that Hare Krishna children now attend public schools and
ISKCON must accommodate that fact. As a result,
ISKCON could no longer assert totalistic claims over the lives and identity of
householders and their children, in large part because ISKCON‘S leaders lost
their ability to control their members through financial dependence…Freed
from ISKCON control, householders formed social enclaves between the larger
culture and their local ISKCON community, which resulted in the
disintegration of ISKCON‘S traditional communal structure. (p. 67)
Hare Krishna leaders were forced to accelerate reforms when children who had grown up in
the group disclosed the occurrence of severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse in
Hare Krishna ashram-based Gurukalas (boarding schools to which children as young as 5,
and sometimes 3 years old, were sent) these schools operated either in the United States
or in India from 1971 to the 1980s (p. 74). When the extensive child-abuse accusations
