Cult

Black Hebrew Israelites, who refuse to believe that Jesus was Jewish, protested in San Diego, California against the long-standing depiction of Jesus as a "White man" rather than a Black man.

A propaganda poster made by the Black Hebrew Israelites implying that Black and Native Americans are the "real" descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The Black Hebrew Israelites allege that the said peoples have been "wrongfully" classified by White imperialists into different ethnic groups across the Western hemisphere.

A cult is a group of people who have a religion or a set of beliefs. In modern times the term "cult" usually does not mean a mainstream religion, but a group set up "in opposition to a centre of established authority". New Age religions were often called cults because they were thought to be deviant social movements.

The word cult originally meant a system of ritual practices. It was first used in the early 17th century to mean homage paid to a divinity. It came from the ancient Latin word cultus, meaning "worship".

A cult is often a small, newly started religious movement. Cults have beliefs or practices that are unusual or viewed as odd by many people. More than that, cults have often been led by people who are not elected, and control the group according to their own wishes. Some cult leaders have been dangerous criminals (like Charles Manson and Jim Jones). Killings and mass suicides have occurred in some cults (like the Order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate). Armed guards carrying submachine guns enforced mass "suicides" among Jones's Peoples Temple and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.

It can be difficult to say whether a religious group is a cult. A group that is considered a cult today may be accepted as a religion in the future. Likewise, a religion that is accepted today may later become a cult.

Mind control

Cults use some form of persuasion or mind control to recruit and keep members. After studying cult members, a psychiatrist named Dr. John G. Clark testified that cults use "coercive persuasion and thought reform techniques ... on naïve, uninformed [people] with disastrous health consequences." Their goal is to prevent the faithful from thinking critically and making choices in their own best interests.

Many cults use the following methods:

1. They put a person in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
2. They repeatedly tell the person their problems have one simple explanation;
3. A charismatic leader or group gives the person what seems to be unconditional love, acceptance, and attention
4. The person gets a new identity based on the group;
5. The person is subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.

Some disagree that using these methods makes a group a cult. The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion stated in 1990 that there was not enough research for a consensus. They said "the techniques involved in the process of physical coercion" were not necessarily the same as the techniques of "nonphysical coercion and control".

Management style of cults

Cults have often been criticized for having a dictatorial and exploitative managerial style. In his testimony, Dr. Clark said:

The beliefs of all these cults are absolutist and non-tolerant of other systems of beliefs. Their systems of governance are totalitarian. A requirement of membership is to obey absolutely without questioning. Their interest in the individual’s development within the cult towards some kind of satisfactory individual adult personality is by their doctrines, very low or nonexistent. It is clear that almost all of them emphasize money making in one form or another, although a few seem to be very much involved in demeaning or self denigrating activities and rituals. Most of them that I have studied possess a good deal of property and money which is under the discretionary control of the individual leaders.

Use of violence

Some cults have collected weapons and committed acts of violence.

The Branch Davidians, under the direction of David Koresh, used violence against federal agencies, with tragic results for both sides. The later FBI report revealed the extent of their arms stockpile.

The People's Temple included guards armed with submachine guns. These guards killed a visiting United States Congressman, Leo Ryan, and stood around as over 900 believers committed suicide.

Members of the Manson Family were convicted of several murders.

Cult Media

• 

  Howard P. Becker's church–sect typology, based on Ernst Troeltsch's original theory and providing the basis for the modern concepts of cults, sects, and new religious movements

• 

  Max Weber (1864–1920), an important theorist in the study of cults

• 

  An anti-Aum Shinrikyo protest in Japan, 2009

• 

  Falun Gong books being symbolically destroyed by the Chinese government

Related pages

• Sect
• Religion

Further reading

• Jenkins, Philip 2000. Mystics and messiahs: cults and new religions in American history. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512744-7
• Snow, Robert L. 2003. Deadly cults: the crimes of true believers. Praeger/Greenwood. ISBN 0-275-98052-9
• Tobias, Madeleine Landau; Lalich, Janja and Langone, Michael 1994. Captive hearts, captive minds: freedom and recovery from cults and abusive relationships. ISBN 0-89793-145-9
• Wohlforth, Tim & Dennis Tourish 2000. On the edge: political cults left and right. Sharpe. ISBN 0-7656-0639-9
• Barrett D.V. 2001. The new believers: a survey of sects, cults and alternative religions. London: Cassell.
• Zellner W.W. & Petrowsky Marc 1998. Sects, Cults, and Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis
• Dawson, L. Lorne 2006. Comprehending cults: the sociology of new religious movements