Groups Debate Impact of ‘Moonie’ Court Ruling on Mainline Religions

The California Supreme Court ruling this week that former “Moonies” may sue the Unification Church for alleged “brainwashing” and deceptive recruiting techniques has raised major implications for mainline religious groups and divided church-state experts over the decision’s bearing on religious freedom.

A lawyer for the National Council of Churches called the 6-1 ruling “a real blow to both free exercise of religion and separation of church and state.”

But the head of the Commission on Cults and Missionaries of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles applauded the decision--believed to be the first of its kind by any state’s high court--saying that it did not involve religion at all.

‘Informed Consent’

Rather, Marsha Addis said, the ruling was about “informed consent” on the part of people who are the target of proselytization efforts and about distinguishing “between belief and conduct.”

Reversing two lower court decisions, the high court on Monday decided that Tracy Leal and David Molko, both former members of the the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s church, could bring before a jury their contention that they had been brainwashed and were unable to exercise independent judgment when they joined the church in 1979.

Leal and Molko claim that they were tricked by church recruiters who denied that they were church members and then used subtle “mind-control” techniques to obtain their conversion to Unification Church beliefs and practices.

‘Subject to Regulation’

The court majority, in an opinion by Justice Stanley Mosk, said the “challenge here . . . is not to the church’s teachings or to the vitality of a religious conversion. The challenge is to the church’s practice of misrepresenting or concealing its identity in order to bring unsuspecting outsiders into its highly structured environment. That practice is not itself belief--it is conduct subject to regulation for the protection of society.”

But many church officials tended to disagree with the ruling and said it could cause the evangelism and counseling practices of most religious groups to be legally challenged.

“The process of religious evangelism and conversion is now going to be subjected to judicial review,” said Kathleen Purcell, a lawyer for the National Council of Churches, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The three groups, plus the Southern California Ecumenical Council, had filed briefs with the court supporting the Unification Church.

‘Could Easily Degenerate’

Purcell said Monday’s ruling “opens the door to a process that unfortunately could easily degenerate into both religious prosecution and religious persecution. When you’re looking at the process of religious proselytizing and you’re trying to superimpose secular and psychological analyses, religion will very easily be labeled cults, conversion will very easily be labeled brainwashing, and evangelism will very easily be labeled fraud.”

Religious bodies seeking new members “are now on notice in California that their communication had better be pretty straightforward, clear and free of error,” said Edward Gaffney, associate professor of law at Loyola Law School, a Roman Catholic institution in Los Angeles. The Catholic Church did not file a brief in the case.

‘Greater Protection’

“If miscommunication is actionable at law, then what do we make of the slick efforts of Madison Avenue to urge us to buy products we don’t need or to sell us politicians wrapped in plastic?” Gaffney asked in an interview. “The answer seems to be that commercial and political speech enjoy greater protection than religious speech.”

Gaffney said he was “distressed” by the decision that “outreach efforts of a religious community, especially such a vulnerable one as the Unification Church, may be fairly characterized as brainwashing.”

Dean Kelley, director for religious and civil liberty for the National Council of Churches, agreed: “To insist that pariah groups must confess their outcast status at the outset, like a leper compelled to cry ‘Unclean!’ whenever another person approaches, is to condemn their outreach efforts to futility.”

No Official Position

Forest Montgomery, public affairs counsel for the National Assn. of Evangelicals, said his organization did not take an official position on the case. But he said the ruling appeared to be “so broad” that a person undergoing “an evangelical church conversion and . . . a profound change in life style” might be looked upon by disgruntled family members as having been “brainwashed.”

“One person’s brainwashing is another person’s devout or deeply felt belief. . . . What is deceptive to one person is someone else’s truth,” Montgomery said in a telephone interview. And Richard Johns, former associate general counsel for the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference, said that “in recruiting efforts and operations . . . it’s better to err on the side of the church and religious freedom than on the side of the individual even though it may mean setting yourselves up for some possible abuses.”

‘Belief and Conduct’

On the other hand, the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, which, along with the Cult Awareness Network and the American Family Foundation, filed a friend of the court brief in favor of plaintiffs Leal and Molko, said the state Supreme Court had made a prudent distinction “between belief and conduct.”

Allowing a jury to decide whether Molko and Leal were defrauded will not infringe religious practices or beliefs nor deny religious groups the right to teach about their faith. However, wrongful conduct in recruiting or retaining members should be subject to court action, the brief said.

“The Unification Church’s own terminology of ‘heavenly deception’ (in recruiting) indicates their conscious attempt to deceive potential recruits,” Addis said.

‘Constitutional Rights’

The ruling was also hailed by Cynthia Kisser, executive director of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network. “It’s an affirmation of the constitutional rights of Americans. It reaffirms the basic principle of separation of church and state,” she said. “Had the (earlier) decisions not been reversed, the church would dictate when the state could and could not intervene to protect the rights of citizens like Leal and Molko.”

In the view of Ron Loomis, national president of the cult awareness group, which has 32 chapters throughout the nation, the “case has absolutely nothing to do with religion and the rights of individuals to pursue their own individual religious interest, or the rights of religious organizations to proselytize and recruit members in a free and open manner.

“What it does,” Loomis said, “is say that no organization--not even a religion--can use fraud and deceit and coercion as a means of recruiting members.”