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Faith leaders and academics have warned that a Victorian inquiry into “cults” risks undermining religious freedom, blurring lines between coercion and devotion, and potentially targeting mainstream faith communities.

Freedom for Faith executive director Mike Southon has told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry investigating the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and fringe groups that while he doesn’t believe the inquiry was created to target faith communities, there exists a “palpable fear” among both mainstream and minority faith groups.  

In an interview with The Catholic Weekly, he also called out recent media coverage of the inquiry and of religion in Australia when discussing the problems surrounding the definition of a cult.   

“There was an article earlier this year which basically said that religion is coercive, that just a simple belief that I need to follow Jesus for my eternal salvation is fundamentally coercive,” he said.  

“This is the danger of defining a cult – if you say a cult needs high commitment and expects people to give money to it and expects people to change how they live, and asks them not to affiliate with certain people, well, that’s quite a lot of churches and religions, and that puts mainstream and minority faith groups at risk.”  

The Victorian government announced the inquiry in April as a response to “recent events” in the state, which had raised concerns about the methodology employed by religious and non-religious groups to recruit members.    

In a guidance note released at the announcement, the Victorian government claimed these groups “use techniques that can harm individuals emotionally, financially or even physically.”

Scope Creep

Southon provided testimony to the inquiry on 21 October, in one of a series of public hearings.   

He warned of the dangers that can emerge from providing definitions and criteria for coercive control, which could affect the lifestyles of those faithful to mainstream and minority religions.   

“There is a lot of risk, particularly in legal definitions and specific definitions, of scope creep,” he said.   

“We have seen this in other forms of legislation which have sought to protect a specific harm, but in defining that harm, they have had to draw the circle a little bit bigger, and they start capturing other forms of behaviour.”   

Southon also emphasised the need for the Victorian government to investigate already illegal behaviour occurring within both mainstream and minority fringe groups, and warned against expanding what are reasonably considered methods of coercion to behaviours which represent one’s devotion to their faith.   

“You are saying you are not going after beliefs, you are going after behaviours, but there is an undeniable blurring between belief and behaviour,” he said.   

“Coercive control has been legislated in New South Wales when it comes to domestic contexts, so it is doable.   

“[However] Defining organisational coercive control in such a way that it is not (a) targeted at religions and (b) does not capture a whole lot of other groups I fear is nigh on impossible to do.”  

Southon later told The Catholic Weekly the very action of defining a cult immediately creates conjecture, particularly in a legal context.   

“One of the greatest dangers [for this inquiry] is in attempting to create a legal definition of a cult, because in the end what you could do is legislate communities and groups based on some fairly abstract concepts,” he said.  

“There are some really abusive and dangerous pseudo-religious groups like The Family, and in the end, The Family and similar groups did break laws.  

“Rightfully, there are questions about how capable the legal system is to engage, investigate and prosecute [these groups] appropriately, but they don’t answer questions about what a cult is.”  

The inquiry also heard testimony from the Australian Christian Lobby and the President of Cult Information and Family Support Tore Klevjer, who each also presented concerns for the inquiry’s impact on religious freedom.

Dubious Definition

Some academics are also concerned that the outcome will affect religious freedom in Australia.    

Dr Bernard Doherty, Associate Professor at St Mark’s National Theological Centre and Charles Sturt University, said he was “shocked” when the news emerged that the Victorian government would be pursuing the inquiry.   

“I just thought ‘this is a flagrant attempt to bypass religious protections and legislation by calling something that’s clearly religious something else,” he told The Catholic Weekly.  

He also believes the definition the inquiry is using for a cult is one that has long been discredited in academic circles.  

“It’s a very dubious definition,” he said.     

“[The definition] emerged from a tiny minority in the study of religion, which scholars politely call “cultic studies”, and these people are less scholars of religion than critics of alternative forms of spirituality and religion.

“They tend to basically focus on the idea that a cult is any religious group we don’t like, and that’s the definition they provide. When you apply their definitions, they become so broad as to become analytically useless – the criteria they use could be applied to all manner of religious and social groups, including political parties.”  

The definition provided by the inquiry suggests a cult is a group which exhibits “great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing,” while also employing “unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion or control,” including isolation from family and friends, “powerful group pressures”, and “promotion of total dependency on the group.”  

Thus, Associate Professor Doherty believes the inquiry is headed towards “a pre-empted conclusion”.

“I don’t know any scholar who has been invited to appear, and I think it’s almost certain there will be a negative outcome,” he said.  

He also believes the ramifications on religious freedom and discrimination laws could be significant, and believes the inquiry could target religious groups who have previously professed their faith freely in Australia.   

“The reason they’re using the language of ‘cults’ is because I think they know that when you get down to how religion is defined in Australian law, they recognise that the groups they could look at are, on any reasonably legal test, religious,” he said. 

“They’re going to target small, unpopular minority faiths, which, frankly, I don’t like. I don’t believe in kicking the small guy, and I think the government is being a bit cowardly here. If they’re worried about abuse and religion, they should openly say it, and go after everyone.”  

Dr Keith Thompson, Associate Dean of Law at the University of Notre Dame Australia, agreed with Associate Professor Doherty but believes any government effort to bring in subsequent legislative amendments to religious freedom laws will stall. 

“I suspect that when they try and propose some amendments, they will have great trouble differentiating between what these people that they want to proscribe are doing and what they say the Anglican or the Catholic Church or ‘mainstream’ religion are doing,” he said.   

“If they write these things down, they will become weapons that can be used against other people who have been worshipping one way for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.”   

Dr Thompson also agreed that the definition of the term ‘cult’ provided by the inquiry is problematic.  

“Even making a distinction [between a religion and a cult] troubles me a little bit because if a religion or faith has been functioning for 30 or 50 or 100 years, and there’s been no suggestion that they did anything that was physically or economically harmful to somebody else, then I don’t see why we should try and regulate them,” he said.   

“We are a country that believes in individual freedom and liberty, and I don’t think that would be worthwhile.”   

The inquiry is set to report on 30 September 2026. 

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Republished with thanks to The Catholic Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.