The article expands a forensic expert opinion on certain aspects of religious or spiritual use of ibogaine in Slovenia, written by the author on the request of a defendant. The argument recognises ...the religious use of entheogens in the tradition of Phanke's "Good Friday" experiment and even suggests that evidently religious settings may be less important when the experience is taking place in a New Age context. Available public documents on initiations with ibogaine into the Slovenian New Age community Sacrament of Transition are considered. Relations between the Slovenian state and religious communities are also explored at a time when the recognition of genuine religiosity has been demanded as a condition for achieving the legal status of a religious community. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The article expands a forensic expert opinion on certain aspects of religious or spiritual use of ibogaine in Slovenia, written by the author on the request of a defendant. The argument recognises ...the religious use of entheogens in the tradition of Phanke's "Good Friday" experiment and even suggests that evidently religious settings may be less important when the experience is taking place in a New Age context. Available public documents on initiations with ibogaine into the Slovenian New Age community Sacrament of Transition are considered. Relations between the Slovenian state and religious communities are also explored at a time when the recognition of genuine religiosity has been demanded as a condition for achieving the legal status of a religious community. Adapted from the source document.
The article documents and summarises events marking relations between the state and religious communities in Slovenia from 2008 to 2011. In so doing, it focuses on the perspective of the state. ...Chosen indicators of the quality of these relations include separate reviews of the actual position of religious communities, the actions and procedures of state institutions and amendments to the main legislation on religion. These materials enable us to distinguish two competing positions. Starting from socially and legally defined egalitarianism in socialist Yugoslavia, the position of exclusivism advocates a differentiation between particular religious communities and between all religious communities and all other social groups and practices. Its main goal is to define differences and special features that give rise to particular privileges. The position of inclusivism, on the contrary, places religious communities in line with other social groups and practices, but so as to protect their common characteristics, which are included in the human right of freedom of religion, belief and consciousness. Although the former position should be considered as traditional in Slovenia, the latter one is still dominant because its advocates managed to rewrite the main law on religion in 2007. . Adapted from the source document.
The article analyses a special group of Slovenian religious organisations, "created religious communities" (leaning on the term "invented religions" coined by the Australian scholar of religion C. ...Cusack) - namely, very diverse (at least intended to be) religious organisations which emerged in response to a specific legal problem and/or as a protest against very specific actions of the state in the last 15 years. As unique and interesting, although quantitatively not very significant and qualitatively borderline cases, they must find their place (together with other Slovenian radical religious innovations) in the general religious picture. The latter is introduced through the contents of the Catalogue of Slovenian Religious Organisations, which derives from the first empirical sociological research of new religious and spiritual movements in Slovenia conducted by the authors since 2003, and which has today grown into a systematically arranged database of all Slovenian religious organisations.
A group of Slovene scholars with special interest in new religious movements has formed a formal religious group, The Church of Holy Simplicity (Cerkev svete preproscine), to study & explain certain ...complications in the administrative procedure of registering a religious community with the Slovene state at the beginning of 2004. Due to unusual response of the state, relatively simple & practically orientated project has grown into special case study of "Slovene religious transition" -- a 15 years long process, leading from communist supervision & control of all religions towards selective interest of the democratic state for particular churches. The Church of the Holy Simplicity thus became the first small & new Slovene religious community, which has not succeeded in registration, though The Administrative Court of justice refused all of the state's arguments against registration twice, & though the registration of every religious community was still considered as obligatory by the outdated communist law. The results of the experiment are, of course, included in a new store of knowledge, but they cannot be considered as optimistic: during the period of almost 5 years, the state of law has not enabled a disputable new religious movement to oppose effectively an arbitrary & non-professional attitude of the state. Adapted from the source document.
The article documents and summarises events marking relations between the state and religious communities in Slovenia from 2008 to 2011. In so doing, it focuses on the perspective of the state. ...Chosen indicators of the quality of these relations include separate reviews of the actual position of religious communities, the actions and procedures of state institutions and amendments to the main legislation on religion. These materials enable us to distinguish two competing positions. Starting from socially and legally defined egalitarianism in socialist Yugoslavia, the position of exclusivism advocates a differentiation between particular religious communities and between all religious communities and all other social groups and practices. Its main goal is to define differences and special features that give rise to particular privileges. The position of inclusivism, on the contrary, places religious communities in line with other social groups and practices, but so as to protect their common characteristics, which are included in the human right of freedom of religion, belief and consciousness. Although the former position should be considered as traditional in Slovenia, the latter one is still dominant because its advocates managed to rewrite the main law on religion in 2007. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Discusses an experiment centered on the registration of a religious community in the Republic of Slovenia. At issue is understanding the criteria & procedure for registering a religious community as ...a legal person in private law. Following some background information, which includes a look at pertinent legal provisions, the author's efforts to establish a religious community -- the Church of Holy Simplicity -- after the end of the "silent moratorium" on religious community registration are described. Their application was rejected, & the essence of that denial is examined in terms of whether a test of religiosity of an applicant group involves a legitimate set of criteria for registration. It is argued that the state's rejection reveals that the state exceeded its authority by virtue of its "backdoor" test of the Church of Holy Simplicity's religiosity, & as such is a violation of extant Slovene legislation. A discussion of the legal provisions in this light ensues. References. D. Edelman
The article introduces & comments on the contemporary American discussion on brainwashing in cults that resulted from recently renewed claims about the scientific status of the hypothesis made by ...sociologists Benjamin Zablocki & Stephen Kent. It is recognized that responsible & expert affirmation of brainwashing argument is still very difficult or maybe even impossible. Such argumentation in therefore considered a dead end after 30 years attempting to explain supposedly unique cultic form of social influence & control. From a broader perspective, it seems that sociology of new religious movements benefited from the whole controversy in a way of becoming better & more rigorous science. 29 References. Adapted from the source document.
The concept of new religious & spiritual movements does not evoke conflict in Slovenia. We do not have any available data on violations of basic human rights to freedom of religion. State's attitude ...to this was, at first, subsumed under wider legalistic & egalitarian efforts to manage legal status of religious communities. The vision, however, diminished as the state recruited all possible resources for transnational unifying processes. Socially articulated religious movements are thereafter associated with marginal groups. Anti-cult & counter-cult ideas are diffused & eclectic. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.
