Two principal factors make it possible to advance the idea of a potential expansion of the sectarian phenomenon: the sects have indeed today powerful financial means powerful, put at the service of their active proselytism; especially, they meet significant needs, although expressed in a diffuse way.
a) The response to significant needs
It would be false to present the development of the sectarian phenomenon as being reduced exclusively to handling fragile personalities by coercive groups by the application of tested psychological techniques.
Such an explanation would be singularly reducing of an extremely complex phenomenon. The Commission could note that the sectarian phenomenon was on the contrary [indissociablement?] related to the existence of a request, needs which do not find an other means of being satisfied.
A doctor heard by the Commission, not very suspect of kindness with regard to the sectarian phenomenon, thus insisted on the complexity of dialectical between supply and demand in this field: "you meet the best and the worst in the sects (...). Sometimes, by means of the sects, of some people find a sense of belonging to a warm and friendly group, others find again a direction for their lives, others still are structured. Among my patients, some entered sects. I would not want for them to come out of there for anything in the world, because the sect is used by them temporarily as a tutor. Of course, that does not legitimize the whole of the phenomenon, but that is to say that there are very positive aspects. If that is not understood, the success of the sects will not be better understood. Our contemporaries are not imbeciles. If they are drawn by hundreds of thousands to these movements, it is because they have reasons and especially that they find answers there (...)"
The emergence of new spiritual needs results from the conjunction of a certain number of known factors, which will be recalled here only for memory.
It is certain that the dispute of the productivism, the collapse of the political ideologies, the questionings of science, the materialism, the continuous decline of the "traditional" religions strongly called into question the model on which the Western societies had developed since the 19th century.
This shock of the traditional beliefs and the great principles of social organization caused a number of disappointments, frustrations, attempts at redefinition. The uncertainty of the future consequently contributed to the multiplication of the groups proposing a total explanation of the Man, new religiosities.
This return of the religious or, more precisely, of the spiritual, paradoxically did not profit with the traditional Churches - and more particularly in France with the Catholic Church, always confronted with a continuous fall of the religious practice and vocations.
It was obviously not the role of the Commission to stick to a thorough study of this phenomenon. No one however, even within the Catholic Church, seeks to deny the shift between waitings of faithful or old faithful and the speech held by the Church sometimes, even if this one tries to release its responsibility by showing the contemporary mentality, which aims to "immediate satisfaction and material comfort, sets up 'absolute freedom' libertŽ in absolu', without reference to the Truth and different values than those 'of the individual, medium and group.' The new forms of religiosity, the development of the sects reveal the gaps of 'practical atheism' which develops everywhere in Europe." (conclusions of the East-West Synod, 1991)
From the whole of these evolutions there has resulted a certain spiritual spontaneousness: the belief is lived today in a relatively libertarian way, in any case out of the traditional institutions.
It is on this compost favorable to the blossoming of new religious movements that the economic crisis and the upheaval of the family structures intervened.
The Vivien Report already noted "aspirations to more family happiness or to more emotional abundance and completeness than preexistent at the entry into a sect and that in spite of the appearance of harmonious family relations." The entry into a sect often represents a sedentary response to the expression of emotional or user-friendly needs which are not satisfied within the family or work framework.
Lastly, the individualism of the years 1980 caused a current preaching of personal transformation, the improvement of the capacities of each one. It is rare that this topic is not exploited by sectarian associations. One of the persons heard thus told the Commission, "it is true that if one mobilizes oneself, one increases one's capacities. The light functional disorders - small evils of belly, of head or rheumatisms - disappear for little that one has a strong motivation. The sects thus obtain results. It is true that one increases his capacities, it is true that if one mobilizes oneself around anything, even the worship of beet, one can become better, more extremely, more effective and more dynamic (...). We all are tempted to develop our potential. Who among us would not be? (...). the people are drawn to the sects because they do not find any more in the world that we built the reference marks to them, the means of mobilization, he credibility of the apparatuses. Of course, we are heavily responsible. One does not catch flies with vinegar. People need ideals. One enters a sect above all by ideal. One should not be mistaken. The sects handle a set language which one does not dare even any more to practise elsewhere!."
One will deliver finally the testimony of a former follower of a sect, particularly revealing of the reasons which can push individuals to be approved by such structures: "First of all, I believe that there is this evil of the century, this evil of living which is increasingly present. The family unit is often burst, the father in particular is often missing or, on the contrary, too present, by his violence for example. Through a sect, one seeks a family, a father on loan, an authority, a model which was missing to us. Day at the following day, one finds oneself with two hundreds, three hundred friends, who will receive you, who will accomodate you. You are covered. You will be heard. You feel in confidence.
The people who enter the sects are often idealists, people whoseek perfection, not always, but partly.
Personally, the family bursting, the idealistic desire pushed me.
The guru said to us: "The world goes bad." It is enough to watch television for an hour of information to be convinced some. There are wars, diseases, problems everywhere. The world goes bad. What can one do on a purely individual basis to test which it is better? This is what the guru proposed to us.
Did we want to improve the situation of the ground, planet, others? 'Start with yourself, start with you to transform and you will transform the world.' I believed in it. I changed to transform the world."
It is thus conceived that the vision of the world proposed by the sects allures a growing number of individuals in all the layers of the French population.
The assumption of a preexistent given profile at the entry into a sect and thus predisposing there, today is largely beaten in breach. Many studies showed that the psychological profile of the followers of the new religious groups is in a normal zone, even if the existence of a depressive episode seems a factor favorable to attraction to a sectarian group. As raised it the Vivien report, "even if one cannot conclude on the existence or not from a sectarian profile of customers, it seems that acute difficulties or sufferings, however, constitute a favorable compost."
It should in addition be announced that the topic of the individual improvement attracted towards the sects customers which were until recently inaccessible for them: that of the students (seeking to increase their performances for the success with an examination...), intellectual elites, and in particular scientists.
Many interlocutors of the Commission tried to explain this phenomenon by the difficulty for certain scientists of supporting the idea of doubt, and, consequently, by their attraction to movements proposing total explanations. In addition, the intellectuals for the majority are convinced of their capacity to resist the suggestive techniques of the sects: "Who more than an intellectual is certain not to be manipulated? The man in the street will be wary, but the intellectual will say: "I am not manipulable." The vulnerability of the elites precisely lies in their certainty that they will not be easy to manipulate."
It results from the preceding developments that it is particularly difficult - not to say impossible - to define a profile of the followers of the sects which is different from that of the general population.
Some tendencies can nevertheless be released:
- the followers come mainly from the middle class and easy of the society, much more rarely of the modest classes, which is partly explained by the wish of the sects to meet a "solvent" public;
- if the age of the followers is extremely variable, two groups seem to dominate: that of the young adults (25 - 35 years), in the Oriental, gnostic, or New Age sects, that of the people of 50 - 60 years in the groups of prayer or cure;
- adhesion with the sect often represents a response to social conflicts or family with which the future follower is confronted.
In the same spirit, it should be noted that the Church of Scientology specified to the Commission that "its followers belong to all the social categories. They are mainly socially integrated and mature people since their average age is 35 years."
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