Location Florida, United States Executive Director Michael Langone Founded 1979 | Area served Global Founder Kay Barney President Steve Eichel | |
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Formation 1979, as American Family Foundation (AFF), renamed in 2004 Board of directors Steve Eichel, Carol Giambalvo, Michael Langone Key people Michael Langone, Carol Giambalvo Profiles | ||
The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is a non-profit anti-cult organization focusing on groups it defines as "cultic" and their processes. It publishes the International Journal of Cultic Studies and other materials.
Contents
History
ICSA was founded in 1979 in Massachusetts as the American Family Foundation (AFF) — one of several dozen disparate parents' groups founded in the late 1970s by concerned parents. For a time it was affiliated with the Citizens’ Freedom Foundation (CFF) which later became the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). It also developed links with Evangelical Christian counter-cult movements such as the Christian Research Institute
ICSA is a non-profit organisation, with a stated mission "to study psychological manipulation, especially as it manifests in cultic and related groups". Michael Langone, ICSA's Executive Director, defines a cult as "a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing, and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control designed to advance the goals of the group’s leader, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community".
Print magazines
The American Family Foundation's early print magazine, The Advisor, was replaced by the Cult Observer and the Cultic Studies Journal in 1984.
Cultic Studies Review
Publication of the Cultic Studies Journal ceased in 2001 and the AFF began publishing the Cultic Studies Review as an Internet/online journal with triennial print editions. The final AFF published edition of Cultic Studies Review was released in 2005. Subsequent editions were published by the International Cultic Studies Association until 2010.
International Journal of Cultic Studies
The first print and online editions of the International Journal of Cultic Studies (IJCS) were published online in 2010 as a self-described "refereed annual journal that publishes scholarly research on cultic phenomena across a range of disciplines and professions",
Connections with post-communist governments
Edelman & Richardson (2005) state that China has borrowed heavily from Western anti-cult movements, such as ICSA, to bolster their view of non-mainstream religious groups, and so the support campaigns of oppression against them. In a previous article Richardson & Shterin (2000) said that Western anti-cult organizations, including the CSA had been a source of anti-cult material in Russia.
Criticism
In their 2009 book, Cults and New Religions: A Brief History, sociologists Douglas Cowan and David Bromley describe the ICSA as a "secular anticult" organization. They point out that the ICSA provides no indication of how many of their characteristics are necessary for a group to be considered "cultic." The checklist creators do not adequately define how much of certain practices or behaviors would constitute "excessive," nor do they provide evidence that any of the practices listed are innately harmful. Finally, Cowan and Bromley criticize the ICSA list as being so broad that even mainstream organizations such as Evangelical Protestantism, the Roman Catholic Church, Buddhism and Hinduism fall within the criteria.