Not This Sh*t Again! High-Tension Religions and the Rise of Coercive Control in Child Protection Law

Social scientists and scholars of high-tension religious groups (often referred to as new religious movements or emergent religious groups) have spent nearly half a century debunking the social psychological theory of “brainwashing.” But there is now a veritable brainwashing legal renaissance in child protection guidelines in Japan, several US states, and the UK through the concept of “coercive control.” In this exploratory perspective piece, we trace the ideological lineage of mid-century anti-cult rhetoric into twenty-first-century childcare and child protection frameworks. We argue that the legal doctrine and cultural logic of parens patriae, one means by which the state regulates and mandates the construction of care, is increasingly weaponized to regulate parental religious socialization under the guise of psychological safeguarding, building upon Japanese anti-cult educational guidelines and the American OneTaste trafficking legal case precedent. We hope that this brief discussion pushes back on recent international appetite for the suppression of “deviant” religious liberty within the family unit.