The highly respected apologist, author and seminary president Norm Geisler writes here about the momentous victory recently won by John Ankerberg, Harvest House Publishers and, quite simply, the entire counter-cult movement. Below is an excerpt.
The Local Church and its publishing service, Living Stream Ministries, sued John Ankerberg and Harvest House Publishers for listing them as a cult in their Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions. Strangely, some noted counter-cult ministries like Hank Hannegraaff’s CRI, a paid free-lance editor of CRI, Gretchen Passintino-Coburn, and Fuller Seminary sided with The Local Church! I wrote an Amicus brief in defense of John Ankerberg and Harvest House (which is available on www.normgeisler.com). Recently, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of our contention that it would be a violation of our First Amendment rights to forbid calling a group a cult. The Local Church has appealed the decision.
What is most interesting is that even the Local Church, in its subsequent appeal to the Court, agrees with one of the main contentions of the counter-cult movement, namely, that we do have the right to call them a cult. Their recent appeal to the Texas Supreme Court states clearly: "It is nothing more than an expression of religious opinion that the Local Church is a ‘cult’ in a theological sense. It is a type of religious opinion that is undisputedly protected by the Establishment Clause..." (p. 9, emphasis added). Of course, they go on to shift the argument to another sphere. They contend that while it is constitutional to use the term cult in a theological sense, it is wrong to call the Local Church a cult in a secular sense. They claim this kind of speech is libelous and is not protected by the First Amendment. But Ankerberg and Harvest House deny that they have libeled them in this secular sense of the term cult. And this is where the rest of the battle will be fought in the High Courts.
Nonetheless, the Local Church has made a very significant admission by an acknowledgment in which the counter-cult movement can take courage. For one of the cults most prone to lawsuits of this nature has finally removed all fear of successful lawsuits against us for pointing out the unorthodox doctrinal nature of deviant religious systems.
This is a great victory because this litigious cult has now acknowledged that we have a right to call them a cult in a theological sense. Indeed, were this not true, we would have no freedom of speech to define our own belief. As I said in my Amicus Brief, "First, it is a danger to our religious liberty for the Courts to engage in determining what is or is not orthodox theology. Second, it violates one’s freedom of speech not to allow a group to define the limits of their own orthodox beliefs by distinguishing them from beliefs and groups that do not in their opinion meet the standards for orthodoxy."
