Apostasy

Apostasy is the formal renunciation of one's religion. One who commits apostasy is called an apostate. Many religious faiths consider apostasy to be a serious sin. In some religious faiths an apostate can be excommunicated. In some Middle Eastern countries, apostasy is punishable by death. Apostates are often shunned by the members of their former religious group.

When used by sociologists apostasy refers to the renunciation and/or criticism of, or opposition to one's former religion. Few former believers would call themselves "apostates" because this phrase is generally used in a perjorative sense. Sociologists also make a distinction between apostasy and "defection" or "leave-taking," neither of which involves public opposition to one's former religion.

The difference between apostasy and heresy is that the latter refers to the corruption of specific religious doctrines but is not a complete abandonment of one's religious faith. Some atheists and agnostics use the term "deconversion" instead of "apostasy" to describe the loss of faith in a religion.

Asostasy, as an act of religious conscience, has acquired a protected legal status in international law by the United Nations, which affirms the right to change one's religion or belief under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Apostasy is also used to refer to the renunciation of belief in a cause other than a particular religous faith, particularly in the area of politics.

Apostasy in the major religion Religions

Judaism

In the Hebrew Bible apostasy is equated with rebellion against God, His Law, and the loss of faith of the Israelites. The penalty for apostasy in Deuteronomy 13:1-10 is death

The Lord, your God, shall you follow, and him shall you fear; his commandment shall you observe, and his voice shall you heed, serving him and holding fast to him alone. But that prophet or that dreamer [he lead you to the worship of other god] shall be put to death, because... he has preached apostasy from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and ransomed you from that place of slavery. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods... do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him... You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.

However, there are few instances when this harsh attitude seems to have been enforced. Indeed, the constant reminders of the prophets and biblical writers warning against idolatry throughout the history of Israel and Judah demonstrate that Deuteronomy's standard rarely if ever became the enforce "law of the land" in today's sense. Modern scholars beieve that Deuteronomy itself was not written until the seventh century B.C.E., and even then was ignored with impunity by many of the citizen of Judah, where it was promulgated.

Several Old Testament show defections from the Jewish faith: e.g., Isaiah 1:2-4 or Jeremiah 2:19, as do the writings of the prophet Ezekiel (e.g., Ezekiel 16 or 18). Israelite kings were often judged guilty of apostasy. Examples include Ahab (I Kings 16:30-33), Ahaziah (I Kings 22:51-53), Jehoram (2 Chronicles 21:6,10), Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:1-4), and Amon (2 Chronicles 33:21-23). However, a question exists as to whether some of these incidents involve a type of ex post facto law, in which the Deuteronomic standard was imposed on them after the fact. In other words, several of these kings continued to honor the Israelite God Yahweh even while they tolerated the worship of other gods as well. This attitude was deemed apostasy by the writer of Deuteronomy, whom modern scholars tend to believe wrote after the fact.

There are several example, however, where strict punishment was indeed metted out to those who caused the Israelites to violate their faith as ordained in the Bible. When the Hebrews were about to enter Canaan, many Israelite men were reportedly led to worship Baal Peor by Midianite women. One of these men was slain together with his Midian wife by the priest Eleazer. The Midianite crime was considered so serious that Moses then launched a war of extermination against them.

Perhaps the most remembered story of Israelite apostasy is that brought on by Jezebel, (Kings I and II), the wife of King Ahab, who ruled the Kingdom of Israel, and was responsible for widespread apostasy, in the form of Baal worship. Jezebel was not an Israelite, but was originally a princess of coastal Phoenician city of Tyre, in modern day Lebanon. When Jezebel married Ahab (ruled c. 874–c. 853), she persuaded him to introduce Ba'al worship. The prophets Elijah and Eilisha in particular condemned this Ba‘al worship as a sign of being unfaithful to Yahweh. If Yahweh alone is Yahweh, (Deut.6:4), then the people could not worship both Yahweh and Ba‘al.

Elijah had 450 prophets of Baal slain after they had lost a contest with him on Mount Carmel. Elijah's successor, Elisha had a military commander named Jehu anointed as king of Israel. Jehu killed King Jehoram and then went to Jezebel's palace and ordered her slain as well.

However, by the time of the prophet Jeremiah, the worship of Canaanite gods continued unabated, as he complained:

Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger (Jeremiah 7:17-18)

At the beginning of the Common Era, Judaism face a new threat of apostasy from the new religion of Christianity. At first, believers in Jesus were treated as a group within Judaism (see Acts 21), but was later considered heretical, and finally—as Christians began proclaiming the end of the Abrahamic covenant, the divinity of Christ, the docrtine of the Trinity—those Jews who converted to belief in Jesus were treated as apsotates. The situation was compounded by Christians themselves treating Jews with contempt. In the Christian Roman Empire, Constantine I forbade Christians to fellowship with Jews, preachers such as Saint John Chysostom preached firey sermons against Judaism, and Christian mobs sometimes destroyed Jewish synagogue at the urging of local bishops.

During the Spanish inquisition, apostasy took on a new meaning. Forcing Jews to renounce their religion under threat of expulsion or even death complicated the issue of what qualified as "apostasy" in Judaism. Many rabbis generally considered the behavior of a Jew, rather than his professed public belief, to be the determining factor. Thus, large numbers of Jews became Marranos, publicly acting as Christian, but privately acting as Jews as best they could. On the other hand some well-known Jews converted to Christianity with enthusiasm and even engaged in public debates encouraging their fellow Jews to apostasize.

A partiularly well known case of apostasy was that of the Shabbetai Sevi in 1566. Shabbatai was a famous mystic and kabbalist, who was accepted by a large proporation of Jews as the Messiah until he apostasized to Islam.

It should also be noted that from the time of early Talmudic sages in the second century CE, the rabbis took the attitude than Jews could hold to a variety of theological attitudes and still be considered a Jew. In modern times, this attitude was exemplified by Abraham Isaac Kook (1864-1935), the first Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in the British Mandate for Palestine, who held that even Jewish atheists were not apostate. Kook held that, in practice, atheists were actually helping true religion to burn away false images of God, thus in the end serving the purpose of true monotheism.

In Christianity

Apostasy only became an issue in Christianity when the Christian church separated itself from Jewish and Gnostic forms of Christianity. In the early centuries apostasy was a problem that was solved when orthodox Christianity separated itself from heretical and schismatic movements. But with the conversion of Constantine apostasy became a civil offense punishable by law. For more than a thousand years there was the mutual cooperation between Church and State. The State used the power of the sword to protect the Church against apostasy and the Church used the power of the scripture to protect the State against insurrection. Apostates were deprived of their civil as well as their religious rights. Torture was freely employed to extract confessions and to encourage recantations. Apostates and schismatics were excommunicated from the Church and persecuted by the State.

Apostasy on a grand scale took place many times. The “Great Schism” between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism in the 8th century was the first great division within Christendom, resulting in mutual excommunication. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century further divided Christian against Christian. Each sectarian group claimed to have recovered the authentic faith and practice of the New Testament Church, thereby relegating rival versions of Christianity to the status of apostasy.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) believe that a great apostasy took place with the death of the early apostles. and continued into the early nineteenth century. Mormons believe that the "priesthood" (the authority to act in God's name) was lost, and that the church as it existed in the days of Christ needed to be restored to its original condition. They believe the "restoration" was performed by Joseph Smith.

Regarding apostasy on an individual level, some denominations quote Jude and Titus 3:10 saying that an apostate or heretic needs to be "rejected after the first and second admonition." Hebrews 6:4-6 notes the impossibility of those who have fallen away "to be brought back to repentance."

The Roman Catholic Church holds that in certain circumstances apostasy can cause one to be excommunicated.

In Islam

Islam imposes harsh penalties for apostasy. The Quran has many passages that are critical of apostasy, but is silent on the proper punishment. The Hadith, on the other hand, the words of Muhammad, the death penalty is very explicit.

Today apostasy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the Comoros and, most likely, Iraq.[11][12] Similarly, blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. In Qatar apostasy is a capital offense, but no executions have been reported for it.[13]

A few examples of passages in the Qur'an on apostasy:

Qur'an, [Qur'an 2.256] Let there be no compulsion in the religion: Clearly the Right Path (i.e. Islam) is distinct from the crooked path.

Qur'an, [Qur'an 3:090] But those who reject faith after they accepted it, and then go on adding to their defiance of faith, never will their repentance be accepted; for they are those who have (of set purpose) gone astray.

Qur'an, [Qur'an 4;137] Those who believe, then reject faith, then believe (again) and (again) reject faith, and go on increasing in unbelief,- Allah will not forgive them nor guide them on the way.

The Hadith, the body of quotes attributed to Muhammad, mandate the death penalty for apostasy:

Sahih Bukhari 9:84:57 Kill whoever changes his religion.

Sahih Bukhari 9:83:17 The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.

Some scholars have tried to donwplay these statements in the Hadith. For instance, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, a Pakistani Islamic scholar, writes that these statements were valid only for the particular time period in which they were written and are no longer valid.[15]. Hasan al-Turabi argues that the passages in the Hadith that calls for death should be taken to apply only to political betrayal of the Muslim community, rather than to apostasy in general.[10] These scholars argue for the freedom to convert to and from Islam without a legal penalty, and consider the Hadith quotes as insufficient confirmation of the extremely harsh punishment. They regard apostasy as a serious crime, but undeserving of the death penalty. These scholars point out that it is important to understand that the Hadith must be put in its proper historical context. It was written at a time when the nascient Muslim community in Medina was fighting for its very life, and there were many tactics by which the enemies of Islam used to entice rebellion and discord within the community.[14] Any defection would have had serious consequences for the Muslims, so the passages in the Hadith may have been more about treason rather than religious apostasy.

But the majority of scholars believe that if a Muslim consciously and without coercion declares his rejection of Islam, and does not change his mind, then the penalty for male apostates is death and for women it is life imprisonment.

In New Religious Movements

Many apostates of new religious movements may make a number of allegations against their former group and its leaders. This list includes one or more of the following: unkept promises, sexual abuse by the leader, false, irrational and contradictory teachings, deception, financial exploitation, demonizing of the outside world, abuse of power and hypocrisy of the leadership, unnecessary secrecy, teaching platitudes, discouragement of critical thinking, brainwashing, mind control, exclusivism, pedophilia, and a leadership that does not admit any mistakes.

The roles these people play in the opposition to new religious movements are controversial subjects among scholars of religion, sociologists and psychologists. One noted study, by Bromley and Shupe, proposes that these stories are likely to paint a caricature of the group, shaped by the apostate's current role rather than his experience in the group, and question's their motives and rationale. Lewis Carter and David G. Bromley claim in some studies that the onus of pathology experienced by former members of new religions movements should be shifted from these groups to the coercive activities of the anti-cult movement.

There have been several studies on New Religious movements by various academics. See below.

Other uses of the term

In popular usage, religious terminology like "apostasy" is often appropriated for use within other public spheres characterized by strongly-held beliefs, like politics. Such usage typically carries a much less negative connotation than the religious usage does, and sometimes people will even describe themselves as apostates. Authors Kevin Phillips (political commentator)|Kevin Phillips (a former United States Republican Party|Republican strategist turned harsh critic of the George W. Bush|Bush administration) and Christopher Hitchens (a former left-wing commentator turned enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War) are examples of people who are often described as political apostates.

Sociological definitions

The American sociologist Lewis A. Coser (following the German philosopher and sociologist Max Scheler) holds an apostate to be not just a person who experienced a dramatic change in conviction but “a man who, even in his new state of belief, is spiritually living not primarily in the content of that faith, in the pursuit of goals appropriate to it, but only in the struggle against the old faith and for the sake of its negation."

The American sociologist David G. Bromley defined the apostate role as follows and distinguished it from the defection|defector and whistleblower roles.

• Apostate role: defined as one that occurs in a highly polarized situation in which an organization member undertakes a total change of loyalties by allying with one or more elements of an oppositional coalition without the consent or control of the organization. The narrative is one which documents the quintessentially evil essence of the apostate's former organization chronicled through the apostate's personal experience of capture and ultimate escape/rescue.
• Defector role: an organizational participant negotiates exit primarily with organizational authorities, who grant permission for role relinquishment, control the exit process, and facilitate role transmission. The jointly constructed narrative assigns primary moral responsibility for role performance problems to the departing member and interprets organizational permission as commitment to extraordinary moral standards and preservation of public trust.
• Whistleblower role: defined here as one in which an organization member forms an alliance with an external regulatory unit through offering personal testimony concerning specific, contested organizational practices that is then used to sanction the organization. The narrative constructed jointly by the whistleblower and regulatory agency is one which depicts the whistleblower as motivated by personal conscience and the organization by defense of public interest.

Stuart A. Wright, an American sociologist and author, asserts that apostasy is a unique phenomenon and a distinct type of religious defection, in which the apostate is a defector "who is aligned with an oppositional coalition in an effort to broaden the dispute, and embraces public claimsmaking activities to attack his or her former group."

In international law

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, considers the recanting of a person's religion a human right legally protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: "The Committee observes that the freedom to 'have or to adopt' a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views [...] Article 18.2 bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to their religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Babinski, Edward (editor), Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists. Prometheus Books, 2003. ISBN: 1591022177
• Bromley, David, The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements Westport, CT, Praeger Publishers, 1998. ISBN 0275955087
• Elwell, Walter A. (Ed.) Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume 1 A-I, Baker Book House, 1988, pages 130-131, "Apostasy." ISBN 0801034477
• Lavallée, G. 1994 L'alliance de la brebis. Rescapée de la secte de Moïse, Montréal: Club Québec Loisirs (ex-Roch Theriault)
  • Lucas, Phillip, NRMs in the 21st Century: legal, political, and social challenges in global perspective, 2004, ISBN 0-415-96577-2
• Wilson, S.G., Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2004. ISBN: 0800636759
• Wright, Stuart. Post-Involvement Attitudes of Voluntary Defectors from Controversial New Religious Movements. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 23 (1984): pp. 172-82

External Links

• Dunlop, Mark, The culture of Cults, 2001 [1]
• [Massimo Introvigne|Introvigne, Massimo Defectors, Ordinary Leavetakers and Apostates: A Quantitative Study of Former Members of New Acropolis in France - paper delivered at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 23, 1997 [2]
• The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906). The Kopelman Foundation. [3]
• Lucas, Phillip Charles, The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy Indiana University press;
• Lucas, Phillip Charles, Shifting Millennial Visions in New Religious Movements: The case of the Holy Order of MANS in The year 2000: Essays on the End edited by Charles B. Strozier, New York University Press 1997;
• Lucas, Phillip Charles, The Eleventh Commandment Fellowship: A New Religious Movement Confronts the Ecological Crisis, Journal of Contemporary Religion 10:3, 1995:229-41;
• Lucas, Phillip Charles, Social factors in the Failure of New Religious Movements: A Case Study Using Stark's Success Model SYZYGY: Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture 1:1, Winter 1992:39-53
• Apostates of Islam, why Islam should be avoided [4]
• http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/deuteronomy/deuteronomy13.htm
• Pignotti, Monica, My nine lives in Scientology, 1989, [5]
• Wakefield, Margery, Testimony, 1996 [6]
• Lawrence Woodcraft, Astra Woodcraft, Zoe Woodcraft, The Woodcraft Family, Video Interviews [7]
• Islam and Apostasy Islam's affirmation of the Freedom of Faith and Freedom of Changing one's Faith
• The punishment of Apostasy in Islam
• Apostasy, Freedom and Da’wah: Full Disclosure in a Business-like Manner by Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq
• World's #1 Muslim Debator advocates Capital Punishment for Apostates - Watch brief video
• Another known Muslim Scholar advocates Capital Punishment for Apostates - Watch brief video
• A video on "Apostasy & Holy Quran
• Back To Islam - Stories of ex-apostates of Islam
• Fatwa, Islam & freedom
• APOSTASY (IRTIDÃD) IN ISLAM: The act in which a Muslim abandons Islam
• Apostasy in Islam
• Apostasy From Islam
• ex-christian.net
• exchristian.org
• christianism.com
• Catholic Encyclopedia see Apostasy a Fide
• A list of apparent contradictions to be found if reading the 'Bible' as a literal and clear statement of fact
• Witnessing to Those Who Have Fallen From Faith J.P. Holding
• Information on a proposed procedure and the consequences of formally renouncing the Faith of the Catholic Church
• The CESNUR case website of Miguel Martinez, a critical former member of New Acropolis, who criticizes Massimo Introvigne's study of ex-members of New Acropolis and the assertions made by Bryan R. Wilson about apostates
• The Great Apostasy at the end of the age — Helpful quotes from article include: "He will establish his 666 economic system based on some sort of blood covenant marking of citizens. This will be the ultimate apostasy."
• More Apostasy from Islam
• Kaufmann, Inside Scientology/Dianetics: How I Joined Dianetics/Scientology and Became Superhuman, 1995 [8]
• Malinoski, Peter, Thoughts on Conducting Research with Former Cult Members , Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2001 [9]
• Palmer, Susan J. Apostates and their Role in the Construction of Grievance Claims against the Northeast Kingdom/Messianic Communities [10]

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