Massimo Introvigne

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Massimo Introvigne (b. June 14, 1955 in Rome) is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of tens of books and articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion [1]. He is also a consultant on intellectual property rights.

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[edit] Life

Massimo Introvigne has a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome, a Vatican-accredited institution, and a laurea degree (roughly equivalent to a Master's degree) in Law from the University of Turin, Italy.

Introvigne is specialized on intellectual property, and is a consultant for the Jacobacci & Associati law firm in Turin, Italy. He is married and has four children.

Introvigne started collecting books on minority religions and esoteric-gnostic schools in the 1970s. His collection now includes more than 50,000 volumes – see online catalogue [2] – that are made available to the public via the CESNUR library. He founded CESNUR in 1988.

He is a member of the Catholic movement Alleanza Cattolica[1] and one of the founding members of the Italian think tank Nova Res Publica[2] initiated in 1999 by Silvio Berlusconi, to which Forza Italia it is closely connected.[3] Introvigne is also a member of the National Council of the Italian Christian Democrat party UDC.

[edit] Work

Introvigne is the author of more than 40 books including Le Nuove Religioni ("The New Religions". 1989), and I Mormoni ("The Mormons", 1991), and editor of nine books in the field of sociology of religion. In 2001, he was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy), one of the most reviewed Italian books in this field. A second edition, Le Religioni in Italia, was published in 2006.

He has also written hundreds of articles, most of which on newspapers and on minor religious periodicals. A dozen of them were published in scientific journals in various countries, as can be seen in his bibliography. After 9/11 an important part of his work has been devoted to the study of Islamic fundamentalism and to the application to this field of the methodology developed by scholars of new religious movements. Introvigne has also written books and articles in several languages criticizing The Da Vinci Code and the documentary on pedophile priests Sex Crimes and the Vatican.

In 2006, Introvigne published a book which he called very different from his previous production, Il dramma dell'Europa senza Cristo (The Drama of a Europe without Christ), where he proposed a militant criticism of secular humanism, based on the teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The book was sympathetically reviewed (although with some criticism on specific issues) by the Vatican-connected Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica: [4].

The collection of books on religion of CESNUR "is regarded as the largest collection in Europe and the second in the world in its field", according to its own website.[5]

He is also the main editor of the website www.cesnur.org. He has participated in several activities of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and the International Federation of Catholic Universities. He is also a member of the "Sociology of Religion" group of the Italian Association of Sociology.[6]

He is also director of CESPOC, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture [3], an institution which hosts his large collections of dime novels and comics, and collects his articles on these subjects. Introvigne's CESPOC collection hosts inter alia the largest collection in Europe of dime novels and other materials featuring the literary character Nick Carter. In 2006, Introvigne published a bibliography of Nick Carter's Italian translations in the specialized magazine Dime Novel Round-Up (vol. 75, no. 1, February 2006, pp. 12-15). The collection has also important holdings and earlier editions of Fantômas, Zorro, Dracula, and other characters which defined the popular culture of the 20th century.[6]

[edit] Views of his work

Gandow, Kent, as well as Benjamin Zablocki see Introvigne's framing of scholars and academics (those who agree with CESNUR) vs. anti-cult movement (those who do not agree with CESNUR regardless of their academic qualifications) as biased, not to mention the term anti-cult terrorism he coined.[7]

One of the main points which are questioned regarding Introvigne's work is his attitude regarding brainwashing and the CESNUR information he presents on that subject. Gandow refers to the "APA-Lie" as a scientific scandal.[8] Introvigne's reply[9] was regarded as useful even by critics (see e.g. the review by Jean-Bruno Renard in "Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions", 52ème année, avril-juin 2007, no. 138, p. 97-99, of the book on the controversy Introvigne co-authored in French with Dick Anthony), since he went to great lengths to obtain, post on the Internet and later publish crucial and previously unavailable documents of the original U.S. controversy.[10]

His Encyclopedia of Religion in Italy was one of the most reviewed books in Italy in the year of its publication and those reviews were positive for the most part. Many of the reviews came from the most important newspapers of the country.[11]

[edit] Vampirism hobby

In 1997, J. Gordon Melton and Introvigne organized an event at the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles where 1,500 attendees came dressed as vampires for: "creative writing contest, Gothic rock music and theatrical performances"[12] Melton came dressed as Dracula[13].

Melton is the American President of the The Transylvanian Society of Dracula, and Introvigne is the Italian director of the society, which includes the leading academic scholars in the field of the literary and historical study of the vampire myth[12][14]. An informative page in Italian about the society is hosted at Introvigne's CESNUR institute for the study of new religious movements, of which Melton is actively involved[15].

Melton and Introvigne also participated in the Transylvanian Society's conference "Buffy, the vampire slayer", in Nashville, TN in 2004. Introvigne was titled as: "president" of the Transylvanian Society in Italy, and Dr. Melton was titled as the "Count Dracula Ambassador to the U.S."[16].

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

  • The Unification Church (Studies in Contemporary Religions, 2), Signature Books (September 1, 2000) ISBN 1-56085-145-7
  • Osho Rajneesh: Studies in Contemporary Religion (Studies in Contemporary Religions, 4), Signature Books (August 1, 2002), ISBN 1-56085-156-2 (by Judith M. Fox, with Massimo Introvigne as the Series Editor)
  • Les Mormons, Brepols (December 30, 1996), ISBN 2-503-50063-3
  • I nuovi movimenti religiosi: Sètte cristiane e nuovi culti, Editrice Elle Di Ci (1990), ISBN 88-01-14260-9
  • Il ritorno dello gnosticismo (Nuove spiritualità) , SugarCo (1993), ISBN 88-7198-216-9
  • I nuovi culti: Dagli Hare Krishna alla Scientologia (Uomini e religioni), Mondadori; 1. ed. Oscar Uomini e religioni edition (1990), ISBN 88-04-34057-6
  • Il satanismo (Collana religioni e movimenti), Elle Di Ci (1997), ISBN 88-01-00799-X

[edit] Other

  • New Age is Mistaken Answer to Search For Meaning, Interview with Introvigne, Turin, Italy, 19 March 2003 (Zenit News Agency). Available online
  • "The Secular Anti-Cult and the Religious Counter-Cult Movement: Strange Bedfellows or Future Enemies?" in New Religions and the New Europe, Robert Towler, ed. (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1995), pp. 32-54.
  • "Christian New Religious Movements: A Roman Catholic Perspective" and "New Religious Movements and the Law: A Comparison between Two Different Legal Systems - The United States and Italy," in New Religions and New Religiosity, Eileen Barker and Margit Warburg, eds., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1998), pp. 243-261 and 276-290.
  • "Children of the Underground Temple: Growing Up in Damanhur," in Children in New Religions, Susan J. Palmer and Charlotte E. Hardman, eds., (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), pp. 138-149.
  • "After the New Age: Is There a Next Age?" in New Age Religion and Globalization, Mikael Rothstein, ed., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2001), pp. 58-69.
  • "Lectorium Rosicrucianum: A Dutch Movement Becomes International," in New Religions in a Postmodern World, Mikael Rothstein and Reender Kranenborg, eds., (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2003), pp. 11-22.
  • "Occult Masters and the Temple of Doom: The Fiery End of the Solar Temple," (co-authored with Jean-Francois Mayer) in Cults, Religion and Violence, David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 170-188.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Alleanza Cattolica - Catholic Alliance - a deepening. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  2. ^ NovaResPublica.org. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  3. ^ Forza Italia Sito Nazionale - Mappa. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  4. ^ G. Esposito, in La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 156, n. 3763, 7 April 2007, pp. 96-97
  5. ^ About CESNUR - Cosa � il CESNUR (Italian). Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  6. ^ a b Italian Association of Sociology. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  7. ^ Massimo Introvigne: "So Many Evil Things": Anti-Cult Terrorism via the Internet (presented at the Association for the Sociology of Religion annual conf.), August 5, 1999
  8. ^ Thomas Gandow: Die APA-Lüge - ein Wissenschaftsskandal (german), Berliner Dialog 1-98, 1998, p.27
  9. ^ Massimo Introvigne: “Liar, Liar”: Brainwashing, CESNUR and APA, 1998
  10. ^ CESNUR - APA Documents on Brainwashing. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  11. ^ Enciclopedia delle Religioni in Italia. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.
  12. ^ a b "Coffin Break To Vampires Everywhere, Fangs For The Memories", The Los Angeles Daily News - July 23, 1997. Carol Bidwell.
  13. ^ J. Gordon Melton dressed as Dracula, 1997, "Dracula 97 Photo Album", Melinda Hayes page.
  14. ^ The Board of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, American Chapter.
  15. ^ The Transylvanian Society of Dracula, CESNUR
  16. ^ Buffy, the vampire slayer, (May 28-30, Nashville, TN)., CESNUR website.
    Dr. Massimo Introvigne, president of the TSD chapter in Italy, Count Dracula Ambassador to Italy - Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Count Dracula Ambassador to the U.S.

[edit] External links

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