Co-authors: Tamal Krishna Goswami, University of Cambridge and
Kenneth Valpey (Krishna Kshetra Swami), University of Oxford

[Presented by Tamal Krishna Goswami in a panel of the American Academy of Religion meeting in Denver USA, 2001]

Since the demise of its charismatic founder in 1977, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has faced a growing institutional disaffection among its initiated membership. In outreach, if results are judged quantitatively, a slackening of missionary fervor has failed to attract new recruits to replenish the diminishing ranks of its full-time members. An official survey conducted in 1998 has found ISKCON’s underlying problems to be largely sociological.1 Rarely is the theology deemed suspect. It is regarded as sacrosanct, as if to tamper with it is to court disaster.