Massimo Introvigne

New religious movements

In 1988, Introvigne co-founded the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), a nonprofit organization based in Turin that studies new religious movements and opposes the anti-cult movement. Introvigne is the group director of CESNUR. Beginning in 2018, Introvigne was editor-in-chief of the daily magazine on religious issues and human rights in China and elsewhere, Bitter Winter, which is published by CESNUR.

Swedish academic Per Faxneld, writing for Reading Religion, described Introvigne as "one of the major names in the study of new religions." His 2016 book Satanism: A Social History received praise from several scholars as one of the best books on modern Satanism. Faxneld and Johan Nilson, in their 2023 survey of Satanism published by Oxford University Press, identified it as one of the "best and most comprehensive broad histories of Satanism", and characterized Introvigne as one of the "founding fathers" of Satanist studies.

Sociologist Roberto Cipriani has called Introvigne "one of the Italian sociologists of religion most well-known abroad, and among the world's leading scholars of new religious movements". In George D. Chryssides's Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, Introvigne is noted to be "regarded as a cult apologist" by members of the anticult movement. In 2001, sociologist Stephen A. Kent described Introvigne as a "persistent critic of any national attempts to identify or curtail so-called 'cults'", arguing that "he advocates doctrinaire positions that favour groups like Scientology" and that "on [CESNUR's] web page Introvigne intermingles ideological positions within solid research and information". In the mid-1990s, Introvigne testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon. After Introvigne was critical of the publication of the 1995 report on cults by the French government, investigative journalist Serge Faubert described Introvigne as a "cult apologist", saying he was tied to the Alleanza Cattolica and Silvio Berlusconi's then ruling party. Introvigne responded that his scholarly and political activities were not connected.

Introvigne has written on the concept of brainwashing, which he does not believe is real and has described it as a myth. In a 1997 interview with the Journal de Genève et Gazette de Lausanne, he said that some groups do practice "dishonest and deceptive techniques or to denigrating propaganda regarding other religious experiences", and that some groups should be monitored but that this must not risk religious freedom. CESNUR published the Encyclopedia of Religion in Italy in 2001, of which Introvigne was the main author. Introvigne is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of CESNUR. It has been described by religious scholar Donald Westbrook as having "contributed heavily to the study of new religions and Scientology," and critical Scientology scholar Stephen A. Kent has also contributed to the journal, while journalist and Scientology-critic Tony Ortega penned a series of 2018/19 articles criticizing The Journal of CESNUR as an unreliable "apologist journal".

Personal life

Introvigne is a Roman Catholic. Introvigne is also director of CESPOC, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He was the Italian director of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, which included the leading academic scholars in the field of the literary and historical study of vampire myth. 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 a "creative writing contest, Gothic rock music and theatrical performances".

Introvigne has been married twice and has four children.