Yaddayadda: Thanks for the reference to the Moonies. I checked out Wikipedia (a portion of the entry is entered below for interest's sake) So the question is, how do you know if the affection is feigned or not sincere? I guess that time would show the true colours. If you believe the Bible's description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, that would be a good measuring guide. How does the WT measure up to that passage?
Love bombing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
History of term
The phrase and practice were apparently first created within the Children of God. Deborah Davis, daughter of the founder of the Children of God, [1] and Kristina Jones, daughter of an early member, [2] both use the term in memoirs of that organization's early days.
The term was later used within, and is often associated with, the Unification Church, especially the San Francisco Bay area church known as the "Oakland family." In 1999 testimony to the Maryland Cult Task Force, Ronald Loomis, Director of Education for the American Family Foundation (an Anti-Cult Movement organization), with no indication of the source of his claim (and apparently ignorant of the early use of the term within the Children of God), asserts: "The term 'love bombing' originated with the Unification Church, the Moonies. It’s their term." [3]
Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, used the term "love bomb" in a July 23, 1978 speech (translated):
Unification Church members are smiling all of the time, even at four in the morning. The man who is full of love must live that way. When you go out witnessing you can caress the wall and say that it can expect you to witness well and be smiling when you return. What face could better represent love than a smiling face? This is why we talk about love bomb; Moonies have that kind of happy problem. [4]
"Love bombing" by Unification Church members has reportedly influenced recruits to prolong a visit to Unification Church centers or camps. Church opponents criticize the practice as contrived; more severe critics condemn it as manipulation, an essential and insidious element of mind control.
[edit] Criticism of love bombing and response
Critics of cults often cite love bombing as one of the features that identifies an organization as a cult. When used by critics, the phrase is defined to mean affection that is feigned or at least not entirely sincere.
The term was popularized by the controversial psychiatrist Margaret Singer. She used the term in 1981 when testifying in a lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Mail. (The Unification Church had sued the newspaper for libel, in regard to stories the newspaper had published about David Adler's experiences with the church). [5] In her testimony Singer said that she had interviewed over five hundred members of various sects, about half of them members of the Unification Church. She said that the church's use of a showering of intense affection was more effective than the brainwashing techniques used by the North Koreans on prisoners of war. In a 1996 book entitled Cults in Our Midst, she described the technique thus:
As soon as any interest is shown by the recruits, they may be love bombed by the recruiter or other cult members. This process of feigning friendship and interest in the recruit was originally associated with one of the early youth cults, but soon it was taken up by a number of groups as part of their program for luring people in. Love bombing is a coordinated effort, usually under the direction of leadership, that involves long-term members' flooding recruits and newer members with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually nonsexual touching, and lots of attention to their every remark. Love bombing - or the offer of instant companionship - is a deceptive ploy accounting for many successful recruitment drives. [6]
This view of love bombing is strongly rejected by the groups involved, who take exception to the assertions that the interest and friendship are "feigned," that it is a "coordinated effort," that it amounts to "verbal seduction," that it "part of [a] program for luring people in," or that it is a "deceptive ploy."
Damian Anderson, member of the Unification Church and prominent promoter of it on the internet writes:
One man's love-bombing is another man's being showered with attention. Everyone likes such care and attention, so it is unfortunate that when we love as Jesus taught us to love, that we are then accused of having ulterior motives. [7]
[edit] Coherence of the concept as favored by critics
Even if the view of critics of love bombing is accepted, there is no litmus test which defines love bombing any more than there is any way of objectively determining the sincerity of any human emotion. There is no bright line separating "love bombing" from practices which, in an organization not described as a cult, might be referred to simply as "welcoming," "unconditional love," or "good public relations." Missionaries of various religions may engage in practices that some regard as love-bombing. It has been alleged that all Christian missionary groups engage in some form of Love Bombing as they seek to convert others.
