What is your experience with cults?
Before a conversation can even begin on this topic, there is the question of what "cult" means.
The most common use of the word is a label for any new and different religion that is considered sinister. For example, when Christianity first began, it would have been a cult by this definition.
Another definition is simply that cult and religion are interchangable. I don't find that particularly useful.
Yet another use of the word is "Anything claiming to be my religion but that I disagree with." I similarly find this to be unhelpful, since it is too subjective.
Finally, there is the idea that a cult is a religion that is dangerous, a religion that will thrash your heart and mind, can clean out your bank account, and even demand your life from you. This is when we start thinking about the People's Temple in Jonestown, the Branch Davidians in Waco, or the Heaven's Gate suicides. Now THIS understanding I DO find helpful. These are groups where the members feel trapped, dependent, and unable to leave, even when aware of harm. Experts have identified certain traits that these sort of harmful groups seem to share:
- A charismatic leader who has absolute authority
- No one is allowed to question, and those who do are shamed and even kicked out. Doubts are considered sins.
- Fear tactics such as hell and shunning are used to keep people in line.
- Control is exerted over even the smallest aspects of a person's life.
- Members are cut off from family, friends, and all others not connected to the group. This isolation can be geographical by the group locating somewhere remote, or simply by rules forbidding communication.
- An emphasis on us-them. "Us" is good, "them" is bad and dangerous.
- Demands of total commitment
- Exploitation of those who are vulnerable due to emotional distress, loss, and personal problems.
- Restricted access to materials that question the group's beliefs.
- Indoctrination through repetition
- Deceptive recruitment, i.e. by not revealing the groups real beliefs and motives until one is deeply involved.
- Emotional harm from the pressure to conform, as well as forbidding any psychological help.
- Although not universal, the exploitation and abuse often seems to include physical and sexual abuse, combined with a culture that protects the leader rather than the victim.
Now that you understand my own working definition of a cult (which I usually call a toxic faith rather than cult in order to avoid confusion) here is my one and only true encounter with a cult.
In my life, I've always been very curious about all religions. I've visited all sorts of places, from Buddhist temples to Native American sweat lodges.
One day I was driving down the boulevard and noticed a sign on a beautiful building that said, "St. X American Orthodox Church." I had never heard of "American Orthodox" so I was very curious, and one Sunday I decided on a whim to pay a visit.
My first clue that something was rotten in Denmark was that all the men in the church were wearing Jewish kippot and tallitot, which I'm pretty sure no Eastern Orthodox church would ever do.
What I eventually found out was that this Christian congregation had originally been Pentecostal, but at the direction of their pastor had converted en masse to Russian Orthodoxy. But they maintained some of the Pentecostal beliefs, such as that a person can "prophecy." Because of this, the Russian Orthodox church had kicked them out.
Their pastor, now a priest, was a prophet in their eyes. His prophecies had been gathered and published in a book that they considered divinely inspired and on par with the Bible. This man allowed no one in the church to question him. When I tried to simply inquire what he taught (not to argue with him, but to simply find out where he was coming from) I got dagger eyes from him. Everyone in the congregation was afraid to go against him.
The whole experience gave me the total creeps, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I suppose I'm just lucky to have a good "cult radar."
I've read books about them, talked with members and former members of cults, and once became acquainted with someone who had for a year or so worked as a cult deprogrammer. My impression is that cults are pretty similar in being nice at first to take you in, and then they get increasingly demanding and vicious once you've committed. The deprogrammer told me that most of his work was taken care of by giving a cult member time to sleep, eat healthy food, and think, and usually they'd come to a moment when they suddenly snapped out of commitment.
Psychologists disagree whether "brainwashing" is even a real thing. The fact that people can make very bad choices doesn't necessarily mean that some organization is exuding mental control over them.
The "deprogrammer" you spoke to doesn't appear to be too extreme. I agree that often times just removing someone from a toxic environment, giving them adequate sleep and food, and allowing them to talk to others outside the group, especially family, can be all it takes for them to leave the group.
But there are plenty of instances where that is not the case, where the person remains adamant in their loyalty to the cult. And that is when some of the ugly deprogramming stories happen, where people are held against their will and submitted to mind control techniques even worse than the groups they leave. Apparently, these experiences leave them every bit as scarred as their toxic experiences in the group.
I don't really have an answer. I believe that people have dignity and the right to make mistakes, even mistakes which harm themselves. But how far do you go with that before inaction becomes a sin of omission?
The Catholic Church, the Latter Day Saints, and the Anglican Communion all own extensive property, but none of these would be cults using the definition that I gave (referring to harmful, toxic faiths).
