The problem in this case would be they seem to be hiring almost exclusively from a rather obscure religious group. That means they're illegally discriminating against members other religions.
Cults are not “obscure religious groups.” It varies widely by state (and in federal jurisprudence), but most states have a “free association”-style test: if members aren’t free to come and go, it’s a cult and not a religion.
Google would not be exposed to any significant liability here. Particularly not when the cult has a well-documented history of sexual abuse.
On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference
Cults are not religions. The body of decisions is remarkably explicit about this, when you consider how difficult the question “what is a religion” actually is.
Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctrines. In other words, an internal decision by Google to terminate cult members because of their history of sex abuse or self dealing is unlikely expose them to civil litigation risk.
At some point you have organizations that are doing the exact bare minimum to dodge a more unsavory classification. The Rule of Law can't legislate being a good person. It can only legislate not being a monster.
I'm not interested in legislating the exact qualities of a "good person." I'm pointing out that, from a case law perspective, Google is entirely in clear to fire these people.
The categorical question of "is X a cult" doesn't impinge on whether The Fellowship of Friends is a cult, which it is.
The case you cited says nothing of the sort. It only establishes that a religious organization can be sued for fraud if it uses coercive persuasion ("brainwashing") techniques [1].
It doesn't make a statement as to what is or isn't considered a religion.
It's worth noting that the Fellowship of Friends is recognized by both the IRS and California as a tax-exempt religious organization. And, at least from my perspective, it doesn't sound all that different from Scientology, which does enjoy First Amendment protections as a religion. [2]
Note I said what the Rule of Law can't do, not whether it succeeded in doing anything.
A Fortune 500 company I worked for had anti-discrimination training that said it was okay to discriminate against 45 year olds. And their harassment training said that it's not illegal for a bisexual manager to flirt with or grabass everyone because they're not being selective about it. I hope to god some later employees figured out how twisted both of those were and that, even if they are both true, you shouldn't call attention to it in ethics training, ffs.
There is no universal consensus on how to define the term "cult". There are multiple competing definitions.
In 1932, the sociologist Howard P. Becker introduced a fourfold classification of religious groups, into cults, sects, denominations and ecclesias (which was in turn an expansion of the theologian Ernst Troeltsch's earlier two-fold classification of religious groups as "churches" or "sects"). Cults and sects are religious groups with a high degree of tension with the surrounding society; cults have novel beliefs (in the context of that society), sects have traditional beliefs. Denominations are established religious groups with low tension with their society, but who do not dominate it. An ecclesia is a de jure or de facto state religion. By this set of definitions, cults are religions, if by "religion" one means "religious group". Many sociologists of religion continue to use Becker's definitions today; they are still part of the standard content of most university-level introductory courses on the sociology of religion – although not all sociologists endorse them, and some have put forward alternative proposals (such as Roy Wallis' proposal that the defining feature of cults is "epistemological individualism".)
In most sociological use, "cult" is a value-neutral, non-judgemental term; in colloquial English, it has become a derogatory term, implying the group is harmful or aberrant. Some psychologists have developed formal definitions of "cults" as psychologically harmful organisations – it appears those psychologists were ignorant of the prior use of the term in sociology (or, possibly, knew about it but didn't care.) Many evangelical Christians promote a theological definition of the term "cult", in which it essentially means "Christian group we judge to be heretical"–in some cases, the label "cult" is even extended to include all non-Christian religions.
You seem to be suggesting there is some legal definition of the term "cult", in the case law of some American states, including a legal distinction between "cult" and "religion". As evidence for this, you point to a newspaper article summarising the 1988 Supreme Court of California decision Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn. However, the newspaper article you cite never actually uses the word "cult" non-attributively–it is citing the use of the word by others, not using the word itself–and it is citing the use of the word by the plaintiff's expert witnesses and by activist groups, not the Court's justices as using the word.
And, if you read the actual text of the decision [0], while it cites a number of journal articles and books with the word Cult in their titles, it never actually uses that word itself. I am wondering if maybe you are projecting this binary distinction which exists in your own mind, between "cults" and "religions", on to case law in which that distinction is never actually drawn. On the contrary, Justice Stanley Mosk's decision assumes that the alleged "cult" (in this case, The Unification Church) is a religion, and the case turns on what are the legal standards for fraud and emotional distress claims against religious groups. The Court's judgement is that you can sue a religious group for fraud and emotional distress, by alleging deceptive recruiting practices, brainwashing, etc; and that such lawsuits are not barred by the First Amendment. The actual decision doesn't turn at all on any cult-vs-religion distinction, the same legal standard applies to all religious groups, whether "cults" or not. And it was not a decision on whether or not the Unification Church actually had engaged in any such activities, or whether they were a "cult"; it was simply a preliminary ruling that the case against them could proceed to trial. (Ultimately, the case never went to trial, it was settled.)
> Islam for example is a religion, that you can not leave.
I personally don't know what Islamic teaching says on the matter, but there seems to be a reasonable number of "ex-Muslim" organisations around the world, the existence of which makes an empirical case that, for practical purposes, you can indeed leave.
I've heard that the Catholic Church considers baptism into the church to be for life, and can make it quite difficult for anybody to remove themselves from official registers. I don't know if there are any equivalent registers in Islam that you'd have trouble deregistering from.
Obviously, there are plenty of people around who consider themselves ex-Muslims or ex-Catholics, regardless of any such considerations. Likewise, for so-called cults, so I'm not convinced it's really a point of difference.
The difference is that Islam proscribes death for apostates very clearly in its laws, whereas catholicism does not. You're on a list, like a birth certificate. In general, you cannot force another person to erase their memory of you, but certainly not killing you would be good.
It's rare in the US, but it does happen in other parts of the world (killed for being apostates).
Not going to comment on anything else, just pointing out the obvious difference in kind here. Death is orders of magnitude worse than having your name on a list.
(This wasn't unique to Spain, but Spain was certainly an epicenter, due to a large Jewish population forcibly converted during and after the Reconquista)
I'm not going to excuse the church, but this was actually the civil punishment. The church just declared you an apostate or not, and civil authorities would punish you (BTW, most European countries still have similar laws with just lesser punishments and no church involvement... IIRC, blasphemy is still a prosecutable crime in Germany)
What about people executed for heresy in the Papal States? There are many examples, but the most famous would be Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600.
The whole "it was the civil authorities not the Church" line doesn't really work there, since the Pope was ultimately in charge of both, even if the two were still nominally distinct.
Even in the case of the Spainish Inquisition, where the Church-va-State distinction was somewhat more real – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy. I think you will find that the answer was very much "encourage", not "discourage" or neutral. "We didn't execute anybody, we just encouraged the government to execute them" is a rather laughable defence.
> – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy
That's literally why I started off my comment with "I'm not going to excuse the church". You're absolutely right that there ought to have been a reckoning with the consequences.
As a Catholic, I regularly attend Church and we have many people (even entire families) who either join after a long period of being away or leave the faith all together. We miss them of course but no one sends them death treats.
Additionally, many people move between denominations.
Perhaps you are confusing those with real cults such as: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism ?
I can't however speak for how they operate as I haven't studied them or been involved.
The Catholic Church in a number of European countries stopped processing requests to formally deregister people, due to mass departures after the sexual abuse revelations, which may be what they're referring to.
The tests the courts use is whether you can actually physically leave control of the organization. Having your name written down or having a spiritual belief that some ritual is permanent, etc, doesn't count as not being able to leave.
Are you asking the court to make a judgement on theological matters (i.e., the state of your soul)? Surely you can see why they don't care.
Cults are often criminal. The Catholic church doesn't harrass you for money or really reach out at all if you're on its roster. All it is is a record of your having come there, which is their record to keep. This is like saying elementary schools are cuts because they keep your transcripts on file -- a completely ridiculous assertion.
>As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.
I'd say at least in those eight death penalty countries, you practically are not allowed to leave. And if the state letting you live but is taking away your children from you, you'll too think twice about leaving, too...
In some regions, while apostasy is not official punished by law, people will still punish it extra-legally e.g. by committing "honor killings".
Of course, this does not reflect all of Islam/all Muslims, and what people think about how apostates should be dealt with varies a lot regionally.
If it even is legally (under religious laws) possible to leave the religion is a contested issue between theological scholars, however the bulk of theological scholars seem to consider it an absolute crime against God, but may disagree on whether it's up to people to punish the crime, or punishment be left to God.
But even in Western countries there can be significant support within Muslim communities to harshly punish apostates.
> A similar survey of the Muslim population in the United Kingdom, in 2007, found nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-old faithful believed that Muslims who convert to another religion should be executed, while less than a fifth of those over 55 believed the same. [0]
That said, other religions, including an in particular Christianity, historically haven't been nice to apostates, either.
> As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death,[17][18][19] and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.
I was not attempting to define a cult, and the definition of a cult does not matter in this context. What matters is if they're discriminating against people who are not members.
Maybe this is a linguistic misunderstanding. Languages other than English don’t have different words for “sect” and “cult”. For example in Spanish it’s all “secta”.
They argue in the article that Google hires fairly from the pool of applicants, but that the pool of applicants often includes members of this religious sect because people employed at the company encourage their friends to apply, who are often also members of the sect.
If that is true, it isn't really Google's fault. If it's false, I doubt there will be any documentary evidence to say so - these people aren't stupid, they won't have said "make sure you only hire my religion" in an email.
While that is true, I don't think that's such as useful take.
They are mainly discriminating against people who are more qualified for the jobs; basically the entire world that isn't Oregon House.
If the Crips gang infiltrated Google and were only hiring Crips, you wouldn't say that they are unfairly discriminating against other perfectly good gangs like Bloods, as the main issue.
(I understand that the analogy is far from perfect, because gang membership isn't a constitutionally protected class, but still ...)
