Chris Shelton on Social Science
…”They quote new religious movement academics as though they have any idea what they’re talking about. I did a whole series here on this channel of what I call the deconstructing Scientology series and that was a chapter by chapter breakdown of an academic work on the Church of Scientology and its beliefs in practices that was not put out by the Church of Scientology.’
“It was it was an academic work. It was a compendium of papers that had been written by academics from all over the world basically in support of the Church of Scientology. There were a couple articles or essays or papers that were in the book that were somewhat, you know, acknowledge some of the controversy or acknowledged some of the problems with the belief system but not one of the articles or essays took up any of the physical abuses or torture or you know wrongful imprisonment or psychological abuse. I mean all of that was just whitewashed and sort of ignored.’
“And basically the work might as well have been produced by Scientology because most of the academics in an extreme display of laziness simply took Scientology’s promotional materials and use that as though it was the you know God’s given truth and wrote academic papers academic grade papers touting Scientology’s beliefs and tenets and as a good thing.’
“And so I call these guys an are a more new religious movement academics because that’s they refer to the Church of Scientology as a new religious movement. And that and other destructive cults are given a whole lot of air cover by these academics speaking from their ivory towers from their university positions.‘
“They don’t know really much of anything about Scientology. They don’t go do any Scientology. One one of these academics actually tried to go get an auditing session and this I talked about that but other than that these people really have no idea what they’re talking about.
“And they simply forward the church’s propaganda so to quote such academics is the height of intellectual dishonesty and yes pretty much all I will say about that although you can refer to my entire series I did hours of videos breaking down their arguments and showing why it is that each and every one of these academics was paid off, I don’t know was somehow cajoled coerced, whatever, or they simply are delusional in the first place.‘
“And so they you know sort of put these papers together about all this and I broke all that down and I’ll put a I’ll
put a link to the playlist of all of those videos in the show notes here for this episode.”
Chris Shelton read one book published by the Oxford University Press in 2009, contributed to by 8 social scientists, who wrote papers on the beliefs and practices of the Church of Scientology. And these are the sweeping generalizations that Chris Shelton makes about everyone who engages in the social scientific study of religion.
Chris Shelton never went to college, has never taken a course in sociology, anthropology or any other course in social science.
He has simply adopted the belief system of the AntiCult Movement, and this is what informs his rant about all of the social scientific study of religion here.
As with most of the hysterical screechers in the AntiCult Movement, no governmental agency, or any other law enforcement or policy maker will take any of this seriously. And that’s a good thing.
Chris’ generalizations, his lack of citing any one specific claim, his sweeping conspiracy theories of all those who engage in the social scientific study of religion as having “been paid off” or “coerced by Scientology” or “delusional” is just…not serious.
But this is the level of thought that is acceptable by those who believe in the AntiCult Movement’s ideology about minority religions.
This is not critical thinking – it’s the sociological equivalent of an AntiVaxer rant.
Any Ex must rise above this type of hyperbolic raving from people like Chris Shelton and Tony Ortega and freaking Leah Remini, for God’s sake, to get the ideational framework necessary to understand their own minority religious involvement.
It’s what social science is for.
Do it.
Chris Shelton’s perspective on the issue being discussed is very much validated by “How the Problem of Melfeasance Gets Overlooked in the Studies of New Religions: An Examination of the AWARE Study of the Church Universal and Triumphant”, a paper by Robert W. Balch and Stephan Langdon that was published in the book Wolves within the Fold. The paper deals with a study of an NRM called “Church Universal and Triumphant” that was conducted by a group of researches led by Jamer R. Lewis[1]. Balch and Langdon were themselves members of said research group and found plenty of flaws in the methods of their colleagues, such as:
*Favoritism toward CUT with Lewis making an a priori assumption that CUT cannot be guilty of the various melfeasance allegations made against them.
*Laziness.
*Failure by some of the researches to familiarize themselves with the beliefs of CUT prior to the study.
*Barely any attempt was made by the various researchers to examine allegations of melfeasance against CUT.
*Failure to take into account the possibility that during ethnographic research the group being examined may actively work to hide its unsavory ascpets from the shcolars who are acting as participant observers. The authors of the paper go on to tell of how earlier in his career Balch had to learn about this issue the hard way.[2]
*Failure to interview ex-members of CUT due on the presumption that ex-members of NRMs are unreliable. Balch and Langdon argue that ex-members may not be as untrustworthy as other sociologists of NRMs tend to percieve them. For example, when Balch interviewed former members of Heaven’s Gate he found that their accounts did not significantly differ from what he had observed during his own ethnographic research into that group.
*A tendency by members of the research team to uncritically accept claims made by members of CUT as true.
Balch and Langdon believe that the aforementioned study is not unique in its problems; they say that the same flaws can be found in much of the research conducted by sociologists of NRMs. I suspect that you’re going to dismiss Balch and Langdon as sympathizers of the ACM or something like that. Such a position is hard to take seriously once it’s taken into account that Balch is cited fairly fequently by Douglas E. Cowan and David G. Bromley (who is definitiely not an ally of the ACM) in the 2015 edition of their book Cults and New Religions: A Brief History; based on my count, works in which Balch is either a co-author or the sole author are cited by Cowan and Bromley 32 times in the chapter of the book dealing with Heaven’s Gate.
To sum it up, Shelton may not be as “hysterical” as you make him up to be.
[1]James R. Lewis is also the editor and author of one of the chapters in the 2009 book Scientology, the same book mentioned by Chris Shelton in the video you quote from in your post.
[2]As described in the paper, earlier in his career Balch conducted participant observer research in a communal NRM called Love Familiy. After finishing his research, Balch believed for a time that Love Family was one of the few modern communes not infected with problems of drugs and corruption. Only several months later news came out that showed Balch was wrong. His later research would reveal that the commune’s leader nearly brought his group into bankruptcy by using its money to support his cocaine habbit and what Balch calls a “self-indulgent lifestyle”.
You are making the same grade school mistake that Chris did: James R Lewis is not the whole of the social scientific study of religion.
And David Bromley had a chapter in the one book that Chris read.
See? You are mistaking one piece for many pieces.
Don’t do that.
Outside of the Scieno bubble, dead agenting is known as “poisoning the well”: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
The level of argumentation here is grade school level.
I hope that it does not work on Exes, but I know that it does. Because it worked on me for years.
Chris’ comments are eerily reminiscent of Scientology’s own approach to addressing opposing viewpoints. Simply state the source has no merit, then pepper it with unsubstantiated classic “dead agent” slights designed to discredit the source of the material. Sounds like Chris has not fully recovered from his Scientology experience. Either that, or he DID learn something from Scientology; unfortunately it was the wrong lesson.
It’s just not good critical thinking.