Ronald Enroth - Writings

Writings

Enroth has written, co-written and edited a number of books and essays where he presents an evangelical interpretation of the sociology of cults and new religious movements. He has also written and edited works specifically concerned with the evangelization of adherents of cults.

He was an early chronicler of the countercultural movement within evangelicalism that was known in the 1970s as the Jesus People movement or the Jesus revolution movement. His co-written book The Jesus People covered para-church organizations that held to Christian orthodox doctrines, and also examined controversial groups whose orthodoxy was open to dispute among evangelicals (such as the Children of God.)

Another early work of his examined the emergence, sociology and theology of gay churches within Protestantism.

In the late 1970s he wrote Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults, where he explored the dynamics of conversion and member participation through some case studies of various controversial minority religious groups such as: Hare Krishna (ISKCON), Children of God, Alamo Christian Foundation, the Love Family, the Unification Church, the Way International, and the Divine Light Mission. Enroth argued there were characteristics to cult commitment that were aberrant, such as the separation of youth from their families, intensive and manipulative activities of instruction and recruitment, and tests of loyalty to the group. He argued that the sociological and psychological processes of recruitment and indoctrination involved some form of brainwashing or mind control. The final part of his study explored the spiritual problems he discerned with cults from the standpoint of evangelical Christianity.

Although Enroth argued in support of the brainwashing theory of cult conversions, he was nonetheless very critical of the tactics of secular anti-cult individuals who engaged in deprogramming. In the early 1980s Enroth criticized the views of the deprogrammer Ted Patrick. In an interview with Neil Duddy, Enroth rejected deprogramming as a remedy for dealing with cults. J. Gordon Melton also reported Enroth’s views about opposing deprogramming in Christianity Today magazine.

During the mid-1980s Enroth had a formal and frank exchange of views with J. Gordon Melton on a range of questions and methodological approaches to studying cults. This dialogue first appeared in an abridged version in Christianity Today in March 1984, and was then expanded into a book Why Cults Succeed Where The Church Fails. One of the important outcomes of this dialogue was an agreement between Enroth and Melton that a technically precise demarcation was needed to differentiate the Christian countercult movement from the secular anti-cult movement.

Enroth complained that Melton, together with co-author Robert Moore, had lumped Christians in with secularists in their 1982 book The Cult Experience. Enroth also accused David Bromley, Anson Shupe, and Lowell Streiker, of committing the same error in their writings. Enroth stated: "I recognize the distinction Gordon was mentioning between the Christian and the secular anticult movement, but he doesn’t, unfortunately, make the distinction in his published writing. We’re all painted with the same brush." (p. 30). Melton, who acknowledged the distinct differences between the two movements, promised to rectify this point in his writings. In the 1986 edition of his Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America Melton introduced religious studies scholars to the neologism Christian countercult as a means of demarcating it from the secular anti-cult movement.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s Enroth turned his attention on to the subject of marginal or fringe churches. In his studies Enroth has pinpointed church groups that operate outside mainstream denominations that promote a legalist understanding of the gospel, and operate with manipulative processes of membership. He discusses these problems in Churches That Abuse and Recovering from Churches That Abuse.