Rochford's Summary

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Fourth in a Series (this is an excerpt):

 

PRABHUPADA CENTENNIAL SURVEY: FINAL REPORT

 

Rochford's Summary

 

The following represents a summary of the major findings presented in this report.

 

There is a striking lack of trust between ISKCON members and the movement's leadership, as well as between devotees themselves. Survey respondents across regions expressed the view that there is a lack of honest and open communication between devotees; that impersonalism has been allowed to dominate devotee relations in place of friendship, respect, and caring. The findings presented also demonstrate that a lack of authority (and a related lack of trust) attributed to the gurus and/or the GBC institution has had major consequences for devotees' commitments to ISKCON (full-time, congregational, and former ISKCON members alike).

 

Many devotee respondents expressed the view that ISKCON suffers from poor management and that leaders are not always responsive to those they serve. There is reason to suspect that this only breeds mistrust and a sense that local as well as regional leaders are out of touch with the needs and lives of the average member.

 

A set of concerns expressed by devotees worldwide falls under the general heading of social development. As the data demonstrate conclusively, the nuclear family has effectively displaced communalism as the movement's foundational structure of social organization in most parts of the world. Even in the newly formed ISKCON communities in Eastern Europe and the CIS, a sizable percentage of householders are living and working outside the movement's communities. By favoring a renunciate-sectarian model organizationally in the face of an expanding grhastha ashram, ISKCON has generally failed to integrate families and family life into its communities. Until recent discussions of "social development," ISKCON has done little toward building an internal domestic culture capable of supporting householders and their children. Two elements of social development were given special attention by survey respondents:

 

(a) The lack of employment opportunities within ISKCON. As the findings demonstrate, a large portion of ISKCON's worldwide membership is working in conventional jobs. As sankirtan has become (and becomes) less of a source of revenue for ISKCON's communities, devotees have been forced to seek employment in the outside labor market. This has primarily affected householders. The result is that devotees working in non-devotee work environments are less involved in and committed to their religious beliefs and practices, and to ISKCON as a religious organization. Of telling significance is that 80% of the respondents working outside of ISKCON say they would work within the movement, if employment was available allowing them to support themselves and/or their families.

 

The survey findings give further support to ongoing discussions concerning the urgency of developing varnashram within ISKCON. Although varnashram appears to mean different things to different devotees it nonetheless remains clear that there is a pervasive belief that something must be done to ensure that ISKCON members have the opportunity to work together, rather than in non-devotee jobs.10

 

(b) Inadequate educational alternatives within ISKCON. Findings from the survey suggest that children, like their parents, are spending a good portion of their daily lives associating with non-devotees while attending schools outside of ISKCON's communities. As the evidence presented suggests, parents report that their children often grow up having few commitments to ISKCON and, more often than not, remain more or less uninvolved in the practice of sadhana-bhakti. While such a finding is hardly unusual, as many young people become estranged from their religious faith in adolescence, it still raises questions about ISKCON's future given the paucity of new adult recruits to the movement in at least some parts of the world. Yet in the case of young devotee children who attend public/state-supported schools there is another force at work which differs from the average non-devotee young person who withdraws from his or her faith during adolescence. As I have shown elsewhere (Rochford forthcoming b), attending public/state-supported schools for devotee youths tends to erode their collective identity as ISKCON members; although many hold to their identity as devotees of Krishna. In seeking social acceptance from their new non-devotee peers, devotee young people have essentially felt the need to subvert their ISKCON identity to avoid the stigma attached to being a Hare Krishna.

 

Without adequate schools to train ISKCON's children spiritually and academically one can only expect that more and more parents will choose to educate their children outside the movement. While most survey respondents suggest a preference for ashram-based gurukulas one wonders if such a view continues to hold given recent revelations about child abuse within the ashrams during the 1970s and 1980s. It may be that the ashram-based schools are seen as a viable alternative because some parents express general dissatisfaction with the spiritual and academic training provided by their local ISKCON community day-school. Also, of course, Prabhupada established these schools with the best interests of the children in mind.

 

o Both women and men recognize that (mis)treatment of women within the movement over the years has negatively affected women's sense of self-esteem and limited their ability to make spiritual progress. Most also agreed that the climate toward women within ISKCON has improved in recent years. Men and women supported the idea that women's roles should be expanded within ISKCON and that women, being the spiritual equals of men, should have the same opportunities for devotional service where performance, not gender, is the determining criteria. As was true during the early days of the movement (see Jyotirmayi Devi Dasi 1997) respondents tended to agree (with some gender variations) that men and women should worship on different sides of the temple, chant japa collectively in the temple (slightly less than a majority of men support), that women should be able to lead public kirtans in the temple, give classes, and serve as Temple Presidents when qualified. Fewer men and women supported the idea of women serving as gurus.

 

o Of critical importance to the stability of ISKCON has been the erosion of traditional religious authority in the face of scandal and controversy involving ISKCON's gurus and sannyasis (see Rochford 1985,1998b; Goswami, Tamal Krishna 1997). These very scandals have served to promote ritvik ideas, both within ISKCON's communities and among dissidents outside the movement's ranks. But even among devotees who reject the ritvik philosophy there still has been an effort to further elevate Prabhupada as the primary source of religious authority within ISKCON. In sum, the authority of the present gurus has been openly questioned and Srila Prabhupada has become the source of legitimate religious authority within ISKCON and the broader movement.

 

Because of continuing scandal involving gurus, survey respondents expressed a desire to place strong bureaucratic controls on qualifications for becoming an ISKCON guru, and on the behavior and lifestyle of the gurus. Many respondents offered the view that the reform movement of the mid-1980s did not go far enough in placing adequate controls on the independent authority and power of ISKCON's gurus.

 

o Related to the demise of religious authority has been the apparent decline of GBC authority among some portions of ISKCON's membership. Many congregational members for example expressed the belief that they have been left with little input in how ISKCON is governed. As a result many felt that the GBC had little real relevance to their lives as devotees. This is perhaps most pronounced in the area of the GBC's failure to address the needs of householders and their children. A sizable percentage of ISKCON's congregational members believed that a representational form of government would help broaden the variety of viewpoints found on the GBC. Full-time members, congregational members and former ISKCON devotees alike expressed the view that the GBC had not gone far enough in its efforts to control the gurus and the guru institution.

 

As the regression analyses demonstrate, member commitment to ISKCON is most influenced by views about the GBC and ISKCON's gurus (among a number of other variables, see Tables 12-14). For full-time members the authority placed in the GBC had a strong influence on ISKCON commitment. Those full-time respondents who viewed the GBC favorably (having a high level of authority) were also most likely to be highly committed to ISKCON.

 

Conversely, those who saw the GBC as having little authority were more likely to have less commitment to ISKCON. Interestingly, guru authority was not a significant predictor of ISKCON commitment for initiated full-time ISKCON members. For congregational members the authority of the GBC had a significant influence on commitment to ISKCON; yet the strongest influence for initiated congregational members was the authority of the gurus. The pattern among former ISKCON members parallels the findings for full-time members. The authority of the GBC had by far the greatest influence on ISKCON commitment with the authority of the gurus having no significant effect.