Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 1988 Page 74
mental faculties in favor of the external definitions placed by the leadership. Whatever
information members may have heard must be validated by the leadership, and cannot be
validated by the members' own faculties. Coupled with this renunciation appears to be a
backwash of strong anxieties and frustrations, as members realize that they simply cannot, and
should not, trust themselves. All this pent-up emotion is therefore successfully vented in the
direction of the target Members have renounced, now they must denounce. Denunciation focuses
the anxieties and ambivalence that ordinarily would fall back on the system and gives it a
legitimate channel. The target then becomes the biblical ―sin offering,‖ where all the Hebrews laid
their hands on a bull and mystically imparted to it their own shortcomings, and then the leaders
took the bull outside the camp and slew it.
This renunciation/denunciation phase is where coercive persuasion and deviance production
merge. In denouncing the confirmed deviant, the remaining sect members are renouncing all
other options for roles and behaviors that are not sanctioned by the leadership. It appears that
the degree of renunciation is linked to the strength of the denunciation. The more insidious the
confirmed deviant is made to be, the more liberties the remaining members renounce. The more
ghastly the excommunicant's crimes, the more authority the remaining members grant to the
prevention of those crimes.
If the membership has en masse engaged in this phase, the challenge for the sect leadership is to
somehow perpetuate the norms inculcated within the excommunication, even under unsupervised
conditions.
Post-Labeling Behaviors: Shunning
This renunciation/denunciation response explains several behaviors that subsequently follow an
OASIS excommunication. Since the sect is extremely social-support oriented, deep friendships are
forged, and members share an inordinate number of experiences in many facets of life. Yet, if one
of these individuals is defined as a ―factious man,‖ the following day he wakes up to a whole new
world.
An elder‘s wife explains the sect‘s belief in shunning, forged out of the responses to the 1976
excommunicant:
[Angie – 1987] The [1976 excommunication] was the beginning. We had already
done the exercise -we had already done the drill so no one needed to tell us what
a ―shunning‖ involved. It meant that if you saw the person on the street that you
didn't speak to them, that you replied to none of their phone calls, none of their
letters -that you refused to address them as a human being at all. It meant that
they were separated from God and turned over to the devil for destruction of their
flesh. Things were said that indicated to me that it was their attitude that that
person would eventually be taken by the Lord [killed] if they did not repent and
that Gods care would be withdrawn from them and that they were just thrown to
the devil. Christians could not associate with them because of the leavening
influence they could have on their minds because of the possibility of deception.
Thus, if a target is excommunicated, friends of long standing will ignore him. Present members
will turn their faces away. Members will go to great lengths to avoid contact with the labeled
deviants. They will walk on the other side of the street they will hang up the phone or not
answer the door. They will shun confirmed deviants in the extreme.
The successful venting of the pent-up anxieties, frustration, and anger that are created within
such a context is accomplished by encouraging the focusing of elaborate behaviors of shunning.
The following interviews illustrate most of the sect's shunning tactics. Shunning is presented here
from the elders' perspectives:
mental faculties in favor of the external definitions placed by the leadership. Whatever
information members may have heard must be validated by the leadership, and cannot be
validated by the members' own faculties. Coupled with this renunciation appears to be a
backwash of strong anxieties and frustrations, as members realize that they simply cannot, and
should not, trust themselves. All this pent-up emotion is therefore successfully vented in the
direction of the target Members have renounced, now they must denounce. Denunciation focuses
the anxieties and ambivalence that ordinarily would fall back on the system and gives it a
legitimate channel. The target then becomes the biblical ―sin offering,‖ where all the Hebrews laid
their hands on a bull and mystically imparted to it their own shortcomings, and then the leaders
took the bull outside the camp and slew it.
This renunciation/denunciation phase is where coercive persuasion and deviance production
merge. In denouncing the confirmed deviant, the remaining sect members are renouncing all
other options for roles and behaviors that are not sanctioned by the leadership. It appears that
the degree of renunciation is linked to the strength of the denunciation. The more insidious the
confirmed deviant is made to be, the more liberties the remaining members renounce. The more
ghastly the excommunicant's crimes, the more authority the remaining members grant to the
prevention of those crimes.
If the membership has en masse engaged in this phase, the challenge for the sect leadership is to
somehow perpetuate the norms inculcated within the excommunication, even under unsupervised
conditions.
Post-Labeling Behaviors: Shunning
This renunciation/denunciation response explains several behaviors that subsequently follow an
OASIS excommunication. Since the sect is extremely social-support oriented, deep friendships are
forged, and members share an inordinate number of experiences in many facets of life. Yet, if one
of these individuals is defined as a ―factious man,‖ the following day he wakes up to a whole new
world.
An elder‘s wife explains the sect‘s belief in shunning, forged out of the responses to the 1976
excommunicant:
[Angie – 1987] The [1976 excommunication] was the beginning. We had already
done the exercise -we had already done the drill so no one needed to tell us what
a ―shunning‖ involved. It meant that if you saw the person on the street that you
didn't speak to them, that you replied to none of their phone calls, none of their
letters -that you refused to address them as a human being at all. It meant that
they were separated from God and turned over to the devil for destruction of their
flesh. Things were said that indicated to me that it was their attitude that that
person would eventually be taken by the Lord [killed] if they did not repent and
that Gods care would be withdrawn from them and that they were just thrown to
the devil. Christians could not associate with them because of the leavening
influence they could have on their minds because of the possibility of deception.
Thus, if a target is excommunicated, friends of long standing will ignore him. Present members
will turn their faces away. Members will go to great lengths to avoid contact with the labeled
deviants. They will walk on the other side of the street they will hang up the phone or not
answer the door. They will shun confirmed deviants in the extreme.
The successful venting of the pent-up anxieties, frustration, and anger that are created within
such a context is accomplished by encouraging the focusing of elaborate behaviors of shunning.
The following interviews illustrate most of the sect's shunning tactics. Shunning is presented here
from the elders' perspectives:
