Several months ago, I reported on BuddhaJones that SGI's official PR flak in Denver had claimed in a letter to a local newspaper that SGI *was not* excommunicated by Nichiren Shoshu. Of course, SGI *was* excommunicated. People gave me a lot of crap, saying that I was misrepresenting what was stated in the letter.

Well, oddly, I've found another instance of a "clarification" of the excommunication claim, this time in a response to the Italian Report on Cults. But I'll get to that in a minute.

First, here's the text of what I wrote back in September 2003...

SGI President Ikeda was not excommunicated. That's right. An official SGI spokesperson recently claimed that Ikeda merely "left" Nichiren Shoshu.

Funny, I thought the bitter, internecine religious war between Nichiren Shoshu and Soka Gakkai came to a head when Ikeda was forced out.

Alas, Chris Risom (not to be confused with Cris Roman) -- who holds the title "director of community affairs, SGI-USA Buddhist Association, Denver region" -- now assures the good people of Denver that the excommunication is a "discredited allegation."

Huh?

In late August, a Denver newspaper ran an article that mentioned Soka University and SGI. The article, in Westword, stated:

"But for all its emphasis on peaceful co-existence, Soka Gakkai has been extremely controversial, with a PBS documentary and scores of articles reporting on everything from leaders' disputes over prostitute bills to allegations of members destroying rival temples. Critics of the seventy-year-old lay organization of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist priesthood charge that it's a cult that focuses only on Ikeda rather than the traditional teachings of Nichiren Buddhists. Even the priests of Ikeda's own sect aren't particularly fond of the fellow, having excommunicated him in 1991." [bold added]

SGI-USA responded in a letter to the editor, published Sept. 4 dead link :

"Your characterization of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) in the August 21 Off Limits dead link was extremely one-sided and offensive to the Nichiren Buddhists living in the Denver area. You aired some very old and discredited allegations with no apparent effort to present a balanced or truthful picture.

"For the record, there are no known allegations of Soka Gakkai leaders having a dispute over prostitute bills. Second, Mr. Ikeda left Nichiren Shoshu, along with 12 million members of the Soka Gakkai International -- roughly 95 percent of the Nichiren Shoshu membership. This split was inevitable, given the outgoing and engaged style of Soka Gakkai versus the more insular and doctrinaire manner of the Nichiren Shoshu leadership. [bold added]

"It is unfortunate that your reporter did not take the time to learn more about the group he was defaming. He/she would have learned that the SGI-USA is the largest and most diverse Buddhist association in the U.S., and that we seek to help people -- through Buddhist practice -- to cultivate the virtues of responsibility, wisdom and compassion in their daily lives. Locally, the SGI-USA/Denver and its over 3,000 members have been civicly active and contributive to the Denver metro community for over 33 years.

Chris Risom, director of community affairs
SGI-USA Buddhist Association, Denver region"

There you have it, folks. For the record, Mr. Ikeda wasn't excommunicated; he left. Please disregard the hundreds of SGI-published assertions to the contrary.

Please go to "Confirming Our Path of Faith dead link ," your Temple Issue handbook published by SGI-USA. Find the speech given by President Ikeda on Feb. 5, 1999, and cross out the line: "On Nov. 28 of the following year, 1991, Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated the Soka Gakkai. What madness!"

Also, since his "leaving" was inevitable, we can stop crying foul about "Operation C" and all of the other dirty deeds that led to the ouster-that-never-happened. Please annotate your handbook accordingly.

Madness? What madness?

(If you want to know what else I think, check out my letter to Westword, just below SGI-USA's.)

OK...fast forward to today...

One of the readers of this blog referenced the Center for Studies on New Religions (at cesnur.org) in one of his comments. So I checked it out. In searching the CESNUR site, particularly an article dead link analyzing the "Italian Report on Cults," I found this bizarre claim:

"(The report incorrectly argues, p. 15, that the Italian Soka Gakkai was "apparently excommunicated by the Japanese mother organization". In fact both the Italian and the Japanese Soka Gakkai as lay organizations parted company from the monastic order they used to be affiliated with, Nichiren Shoshu)."

Wuh? By SGI's own *repeated* accounts, SGI was most emphatically excommunicated by Nichiren Shoshu, *twice.* So does this mean that info from cesnur.org is unreliable? Or is it a case of SGI PR flaks working with CESNUR and trying to rewrite history?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Lisa J.