Cult

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Cult

The meanings of the term "cult" in American society underwent a radical transformation during the latter half of the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, cult was generally used to denote a system of religious beliefs and ritual that sometimes included the system's body of adherents. With the growth in religious experimentation that accompanied the counterculture of the 1960s, cult came to be used in a much more pejorative sense. Due in large degree to the efforts of the anticult movement, cult has popularly come to mean a kind of deviant or spurious religious organization characterized by a naive and exploited body of members, unsavory charismatic leaders, and practices of "brainwashing," or systematic psychological indoctrination. This negative characterization of unconventional religions has been used to justify the forcible abduction of members by deprogrammers, who have been employed by worried parents to rescue family members from these religious communities. The 1978 mass suicides and murders at Jonestown, Guyana, greatly accelerated the demonization of unconventional religions in the American news media and led to the current state of affairs in which the term "cult" is popularly used to smear any religion with whose doctrines or practices a person does not personally agree.

Throughout the past thirty years, academic researchers of new religions have developed a large body of empirical data and interpretive insights that have helped to balance the one-sided characterizations of "cults" disseminated by the anti-cult movement and the mass media. Many researchers have challenged the very use of the term "cult" because of its overwhelmingly negative connotations. In its place, terms such as "new religions," "emergent religions," "alternative religions," and "new religious movements" have been substituted in scholarly writing and, increasingly, in media coverage.

Researchers such as Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge have attempted to salvage the term "cult" by using it to distinguish certain religious organizations from others. "Denominations," in their typology, are established Christian churches in America that have their roots in one of the historic European confessions. They tend to be inclusive in their membership, to have professionally trained leaders, and to be positively aligned with the dominant social structure. Examples include Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics.

"Sect movements" are voluntary organizations that begin as offshoots from a denomination. Typically, a small group of members become convinced that their denomination has veered away from its original doctrines and become hopelessly compromised by worldly values. These members break away (and sometimes are expelled) and set about to re-create their former church in its original purity. Sect movements tend to be homogeneous and exclusive in their membership, to espouse strict codes of ethics, to have an egalitarian organizational structure, and to hire leaders distinguished more by personal charisma than by education and training. Examples include Carl McIntire's Bible Presbyterian Church, a sectarian offshoot of the Presbyterian Church, USA; and the Branch Davidians, a sectarian offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists.

A "cult movement," according to Stark and Bain-bridge, is a religious community that begins independently of any established denomination or sect movement. In other words, it is an original creation—usually by a charismatic leader and his or her early followers—that has no ties to established churches. This does not mean that cult movements do not adopt beliefs and practices from existing traditions, only that they do so in a piecemeal fashion so that the end result does not resemble any established sect or denomination. Both cult movements and sect movements are usually small and have a tightly knit membership. They also exist in some degree of tension with the surrounding culture, since they often consider conventional society to be corrupt.

Stark and Bainbridge also distinguish among "audience cults," "client cults," and "cult movements." Audience cults are loosely organized groups whose primary mode of expression includes lectures, conferences, and meetings through which a variety of esoteric and unconventional teachings are communicated. This form of cultic activity tends to be ephemeral, and its attendees generally remain mere consumers of the audience cults' books, pamphlets, and products. Prominent examples of audience cults include much of what passes for "New Age" religion and various UFO-related groups.

"Client cults" have a higher degree of organization than audience cults, and the relationship between members and leaders resembles the relationship between therapists and clients. Some client cults attract a large number of adherents, but these adherents remain individual consumers of a technique or practice and rarely are organized into a social movement. Indeed, adherents of client cults regularly maintain active commitments to other religious organizations. Prominent examples of client cults are est (Erhard Seminars Training) and its offshoots Lifespring and Actualizations.

"Cult movements," in this limited sense, are comprehensive organizations that try to satisfy all the religious needs of members. Typically, they demand a high level of commitment and personal sacrifice and see themselves as instrumental in bringing about needed changes in society. The longer a member remains in this form of cultic organization, the more difficult it becomes to leave its ranks. Cult movements usually place a high priority on missionary outreach and on the recruitment of new members. Aggressive recruitment practices have been a major focus of societal unease with these movements. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Family, and the Church Universal and Triumphant are prominent examples of cult movements.

Researchers have observed that both sect and cult movements tend to change over time, most often in the direction of increasing accommodation to the norms and values of the larger culture. As one example of such change, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly referred to as Mormons), a cult movement founded in the 1830s, dropped its practice of polygamy and its proscription of black men in its priesthood in response to societal pressures. The Holy Order of MANS, an independent New Age community founded in 1968, slowly accommodated itself to mainstream Christian norms and joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1988.

As recent history has proved, some cult movements can become dangerous both to their own members and to society at large. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese movement, released poisonous Sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing and injuring more than one thousand people. Heaven's Gate, a UFO religion founded during the 1970s, committed mass suicide in 1997 to rendezvous with a spacecraft said to be trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. For people who find themselves involved in such groups, anti-cult organizations such as the American Family Foundation recommend extensive psychotherapy to facilitate disengagement and subsequent reentry into society. The goals of this therapy are: (1) to help ex-members recognize and come to terms with the abuse and manipulation they may have experienced in a cult movement; (2) to help ex-members manage the psychological disorientation and crises of self-esteem that often occur once they have left their former community; and (3) to facilitate the ex-member's reconnection to family, old friends, and personal goals. Some exmembers find a new sense of purpose in their lives by speaking out publicly about their "cult" experience and by warning society of the dangers of unconventional religions.

During the past thirty years, anti-cultists and academic researchers have often found themselves at odds over the putative dangers posed by cult movements to American society. As a result of the anti-cult movement's skillful use of the news media, a great deal of misinformation has been fed to the general public. The common misconceptions concerning cult movements include:

Cult movements have many members and are growing rapidly. In fact, the proportion of the general population who belong to cults at any one time is fairly small. The best evidence available—based on meticulous counting—indicates that there are about 200 viable cult movements at the present time, and their aggregate membership is 150,000 to 200,000 members. Most cults have 200 to 2,000 members, peak in membership within their first 10 to 20 years of existence, and then rapidly decline. The exceptions often go on to become established denominations, such as the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists.
Cult movements are led by abusive, greedy criminals who exploit their followers for their own personal gain. Certainly, there have been instances in which a group's leader became progressively more abusive and self-serving, but this is not the norm. Most movement leaders sincerely believe in their religious vision, are lawabiding, and are committed to serving humanity along with their followers. No institution in modern life is free of persons with criminal inclinations, but this does not mean that the institution itself is a criminal operation.
The only reliable account of what a cult movement is like comes from ex-members. Although former members can often provide useful insights about the inner workings of a group, their accounts cannot be taken at face value. Often, people in the midst of leaving a relationship of any kind tend to display a selective memory about their past partners and are inclined to amplify negative aspects of a person or group. Moreover, there have been instances in which therapists and anti-cult counselors coached former members to accept a prefabricated "script" concerning their involvement.
Brainwashing has been proved to exist in cult movements. On the contrary, the vast majority of scholars have concluded, from their research in the field, that nothing that resembles the "brainwashing" techniques employed by North Koreans against American POWs exists in cult movements. Rather, they have discovered that people who join cults do so of their own free choice as part of a search for a meaningful way of life. Researchers have also found that most members leave when they want to, in spite of group pressures to have them remain.

Cult movements have long been part of American religious culture. Their growth during the late twentieth century, however, may be one indicator of an increasingly pluralistic religious environment and the continuing breakdown of the Protestant hegemony that began during the early twentieth century.

Bibliography

Beckford, James. Cult Controversies: The Societal Responseto the New Religious Movements. 1985.

Bromley, David G., and Jeffrey K. Hadden, eds. Religion and the Social Order. Vol. 3, The Handbook onCults and Sects in America, Parts A and B. 1993.

Dawson, Lorne. Comprehending Cults: The Sociology ofNew Religious Movements. 1998.

Jacobs, Janet Liebman. Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions. 1989.

Langone, Michael D., ed. Recovery from Cults: Help forVictims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse. 1993.

Lucas, Phillip Charles. The Odyssey of a New Religion:The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy. 1995.

Stark, Rodney, and William Sims Bainbridge. The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation. 1985.

Phillip Charles Lucas

Contemporary American Religion