Cults, revisited

Great Debates
1

This question asked in this thread in General Questions could not be answered, as none of the participants could agree on the definition of a cult, or indeed whether they exist or not. So I thought we’d move the party over here. Here is a very interesting previous debate on the topic.

Some people seem to run around tagging every religion they disagree with (or misunderstand) as a cult. Others say that the line between a cult and a sect/religion is so thin, if not non-existant, that there is no sense in defining a cult- any organized religion or belief in a higher power fits the criteria.

I believe that “cults” distinct from religions/sects certainly exist, and it is important to define and identify these organizations and their techniques because they can be terribly harmful to people in very concrete ways. Where the majority of organized religions can bring positive benefits to their follower’s individual lives by providing a supportive social structure and/or a framework in which they can express their faith, cults can only support the ones in power.

I also feel that we are all a bit blinded by religion when discussing cults. There exists psychological, political, and economical cults that have no spiritual beliefs or overtones at all. Perhaps using a term such as “cultic organization” instead of the word “cult”, which functions as both a value judgement and a valid religious definition (cult of the cave bear and all that), would help keep that in mind.

2

I don’t know if I read you right but it seems that what you use to define a cult from a religeon is if it is good for the user or has positive aims or not. Am I right? If not, could you be specific?

And if I do read you correctly then who is to decide what is good for the user or not? When dealing with anything that has to do with an afterlife or the equally ephemeral “inner peace” that most “insert favored term here” profess who are you/I/anyone to judge? Maybe the Heaven’s Gate folks did indeed wind up on a UFO in the tail of HaiBop, is that any less or more realistic than a more popular belief that a diety impregnated a virgin, who remained a virgin and who consequently gave birth to the incarnation of the diety who impregnated her? Or an orphan waving across and dividing some 50,000,000 tons of water? Or Saturn eating all of his children except for his youngest who escapes because his mother feeds daddy a rock wrapped in a blanket? All of the belief systems mentioned above, including the Heaven’s Gate folks, were defended by the members who claimed they gained something from following them.

So is it just majority or popular opinion that reigns in the definition? Why is Wotan any less credible than Jehova/Shiva/Bog? If I ever get an answer that does not have the smell of “well thats what I believe and what my parent’s believe and taught me so it’s the correct answer” then I’ll pay some heed. Otherwise we are talking about tradition, an especially forgetful tradition at that.

3

Oh and as to positive aims of any sect: bah! The thuggies were following the doctrine as they interpreted it. Why does a reliegon have to be nice to be valid? That’s some new-age apologist crapola ranker than a loaded diaper on a crowded city bus in July.

I’d have a lot more respect for various religeons if they came out and said, well our interpretation is that you ARE going to hell and your mere presence on Earth is an affront to our religeon so the Crusades/Jihad/Pogrom was justified. In this respect I have a bit more respect for the Islamic militants who do it for their faith (not the politicos who are in it for power). At least they aren’t turning tail to the demon of popular opinion in public and then calling everyon “heathens” in private. Same goes for all those American TV priests who continue to stick to their public bigotry. Good for them, at least they (well some of them) have a seemingly genuine faith in their convictions. I wouldn’t piss on most of them if they were on fire, but I respect the real nasty ones for the same reasons I dislike them.

4

That would be me, but I’m willing to let someone try to convince me otherwise. Actually, I’m a fan of saying almost any organization or society contains some of the stereotypical aspects of “the cult” that makes me question whether we can really make any headway whatsover in trying to establish what exactly this term is supposed to imply. The definition sugaree gave in GQ was woefully inadequate as it could be applied fairly well to most religions given proper prompting by someone who had either a chip on their shoulder or was playing devil’s advocate.

The following is a list of what I see as being the most convincing criticisms of cults (and parenthetically why I disagree with them as providing adequate distinctions between cult and non-cult):

  1. The leader has too much power (There’s always someone complaining that a leader has too much power. Of course, if the cult has a rotating leadership they are termed communistic and subservesive :stuck_out_tongue: )

  2. They practice groupthink and mind-control (whatever that is… would a person say Alcoholics Annonymous a cult? They certainly try to control their minds and some of their mantras are downright 1984ish).

  3. There are secrets that are not revealed right away. (If you laid out on the table the entirety of most religious doctrines before a prospective convert, they’d more than likely run away screaming. If your trying to get someone to join you, you don’t tell them everything at first whether you are a cult or hawking encyclopedias)

  4. It is encouraged for the practice/community/belief to become the focus of the participant’s life (now what religion or Big Business doesn’t ask for the same of those who are members?)

I’m willing to hear more suggestions for criteria, but frankly, the four above are the BEST distinctions between cult and non-cult that I’ve heard, and they aren’t convincing me in the least.

By the by, one little request. For the discussion, please keep in mind that http://bernie.cncfamily.com/mc_mcbw.htm]brainwashing and mind control are NOT the same thing.

5

Those criticisms are actually part of the list of criteria that many people generally use to operationally define what a “cult” is. The major ones include:

Veneration of cult leader/dogma
belief in the inerrancy of the leader/dogma with regards to facts and morality
belief in omniscience or precisence of the leader/dogma
the use of persuasive techniques to recuit and keep members
secret agendas of the group revealed slowly and not told to potential new recuits
special new meanings given for words (such as “love”)
deceit as to potential flaws in the leader/organization
financial/sexual exploitation or coercion
psychological or physical battering by members for deviation

Obviously, some religions have these characteristics at some points. But that’s not enough: to be meaningfully classified as a cult, an organization has to have most or all of these characteristics.

It’s also generally agreed that size or public acceptability shouldn’t have anything to do with being a cult or not.

6

I recall reading about some cults in High Weirdness By Mail.
Is the Children of God still around. I doubt anyone would deny they were a cult.
Also the Manson family certainly was.

7

Apos, please, source? You say the list you refer to is “the list of criteria that many people generally use to operationally define what a “cult” is.” Which “people” in particular? I have seen a myriad of criteria and similar lists put out by anti-cult organizations that all seem to speak to the same generalized agenda. These lists purposefully avoid getting into specifics so as to allow the authors the freedom of labelling groups they don’t like “cults” as they see fit. For many, if it’s a new religion, it is automatically slapped with the label of “cult” because the definitions are broad enough to apply to almost any group of people with enough twisting and turning of beliefs, practices, histories, and current events. Any organization you care to name runs the risk of having most if not all of the criteria applied to it. And while those opposed to the organization claim the abuses are institutionalized, those within the organization would offer strong reasons why such is not the case. Who is right?

I’m not going to go into specific details what I believe, for example, the Cult Awareness Network’s(CAN) hidden agenda was or the strange and sordid tale of why it went under. As far as I’m concerned, CAN and other anti-cult alarmists used lists like yours in ignorant ways. For example, an anti-cult individual or group might cite specific cases of abuse as rationale for saying the group they are condemning is using “psychological and physical battering by members for deviation”, even when these cases were isolated incidents and sound disciplinary action was documented as being taken by the group against the perpetrator. I have heard of more than a few cases where the perpetrators of cultic crimes were expelled for that very behavior while the anti-cultists continued to use the examples without mentioning the crucial other half of the story in order to accuse the organization of fostering the environment. The anti-cult groups are notorious for completely ignoring counterevidence in order to bolster their claims. It doesn’t matter to the anti-cultists; their agenda is to get rid of these “cults” by any means necessary, and they will use whatever propaganda they can to do it. Why? I suppose it’s because generally they fear competition. It was amazing how many members of CAN were proselytizing Christians.

There is an absolutely crucial point that must be made that you seemed to miss: namely, that there has to be some degree or scaling measurement for the criteria. Does a single incident or accusation of each point-by-point item constitute a cult? What is the threshhold? Who do you believe when you are gathering your evidence to support your claim that a particular group is a cult? Certainly gathering together people who were kicked out or who had left a group and allowing them to bitch and moan about why said group was so horrendous is not getting an objective look at the “cult” in question. Things can be blown out of proportion until the group you want labeled as a cult becomes a cult. I could demonstrate the making of cults out of mainstream religions using your criteria, but I think you can do that on your own or read the relevant exchange I had in GQ.

Frankly, I am unimpressed by your list as a definitive set of criteria. Unless you can explain how the degree to which each of these criteria are met, how each can be objectively discerned, and how it can be dispassionately determined whether “abuses” and the like occur, I will continue to maintain my skepticism about this whole endeavor of labelling groups, “cults”.

8

vanilla, Children of God (now known as The Family) are indeed still around. They are an organization that has gone through so many different incarnations, I would say it’s very different organization than when they were being condemned in the anti-cult fervor of the 60s and 70s. Sure they had the whole “hooker for Christ” thing, and their veneration of Dan Berg was pretty bizarre to the outsider, but the guy’s dead now and they haven’t disbanded. Most of the rationale behind condemning the group was because there were a lot of upset parents and ex-members who made their living bashing the group and fighting it tooth and nail. They wanted to see the thing disbanded, they wanted to kill Daniel Berg: they had a vendetta. The media picked up on this reactionary group and gleefully painted the evils of the Children of God… so much so the group changed its name in order to get past this awful PR they had been strapped with. They still struggle today with harassment.

The Family has actually done some good charity work in some places. Its members are generally happy and psychologically stable. They are taken care of, and while they are supposed to give up their ties to the world, they are basically harmless. While they are not mainstream and they do require a great deal of commitment from their members, it’s extremely problematic for me to label them a cult.

By the by, for a fairly decent and honest look at any given religious group, I suggest using the website, http://www.religioustolerance.org/

They generally aren’t as obnoxiously inflammatory as other websites out there.

9

If I was forced to give an example of two cults I would have to name the Manson Family and Jim Jones.

You have to realize, though, that these two men were psychologically sick. They had gone over the deep end and took their groups with them. These groups don’t spring out of a vacuum. The dirty little secret is that many splinter groups that now enjoy the “cult” label started as bible studies, prayer groups, or independent churches affiliated with a mainstream denomination. Looking into the histories of “cults” often means we end up looking into a mirror that probes a particular corner of the spirtual and religious landscape of humanity we don’t necessarily want to have associated with ourselves.

10

JS: Didn’t CAN get bought out by the Scientology corporation? I thought I say a Dateline or similar program special about it.

11

To a large extent, I share JS Princeton’s view that “cult” is a fairly nebulous term, and may not be much use.

At the same time, sticking just with religious denominations for a moment, it is useful to recognise that there is a spectrum of denominations ranging from groups like (say) the Unitarian Universalists who make little demand of their members in terms of what they are required to believe or who they are required to obey, and who actively engage with society at large, to groups like (say) Jim Jones’s outfit, who demand unquestioning belief even in doctrines which are not stated and obedience even as far as suicide, and who seek to enforce this through separation from the rest of society

In an open society we mistrust characeristics such as secrecy, blind obdience and enforced isolation. The fact that we may have difficulty in finding a clear dividing line between groups which have these characteristics and those which don’t doesn’t mean that these characteristics are unimportant, or that we should treat all groups as though they possessed them in the same degree, or that there is no useful distinction to be observed in this regard between (in this example) the Unitarian Universalists and Jim Jones.

But it does mean that arguing whether this group or that group is a “cult” is a fruitless exercise. A more useful exercise might be to discuss whether a particular group practices an unhealthy degree of secrecy, or demands an unhealthy degree of obedience or isolation. In other words, focus on cultic characteristics rather than on the label “cult”.

12

Indeed, Zen101, one of the delicious ironies of the death of CAN was that is was successfully sued into bankruptcy by the Scientologists and then gobbled up by them. The sad thing is, CAN was a fairly good clearinghouse of new religious movements, so long as the discerning reader of their publications dismissed their actual critiques of the groups, one could discover some interesting religions that otherwise were difficult to find. If someone asks nicely, I may be persuaded to go into my diatribe about how horrendous CAN was in publishing lies and practicing some of the self-same abuses it decried in cults it watched.

UDS, I see the Jim Jones/Unitarian distinction a bit different than you. I could care less whether there are secrets and whether a group chooses to separate itself from society. What is more discerning is first looking at the psychological stability of the leader of a particular group and then seeing if said leader is a token, a pawn, or actually megalomaniacal and in strict control of the group. Those criteria are what, to me, determine the “unhealthiness” of a particular group.

Now that I’ve just offered my criteria, a caveat. If you use distortion techniques, you can make the most ineffectual and benign leader into a dictatorial monster. One must carefully examine ALL sides of the issue. It is also important to listen carefully to the way the members of the group talk about the subject and not simply dismiss them as being under mind-control. Frankly, I think it may be beyond the ability of those of us in our society to do as we are skewed toward believing that independence is of utmost importance and that any kind of sumbission is perpetuating tyranny. This is a cultural bias and not something that can be used to evaluate groups that are strictly counter-cultural.

13

Hi JS Princeton

What you say underlines my point about the importance of discussing the specific characteristics of a group, rather than labelling it a cult or not. I am associating the term “cult” with the characteristics of secrecy and isolation, you with insanity and control. Both of our uses are (a) defensible and (b) probably useful, but they are quite different.

I also agree with your point about our own cultural bias towards personal independence and our resulting attitudes towards control and submission. The point is equally valid with reference to the characteristics of secrecy and isolation which I mentioned.

On the other hand, we have no basis for criticising any religious group (or any other kind of social organisation) unless we have some values which we regard as important and worth defending. If anti-semitism is not wrong, we cannot criticise the Nazi party. If self-destruction is not wrong, we cannot criticise the Solar Temple.

14

—These lists purposefully avoid getting into specifics so as to allow the authors the freedom of labelling groups they don’t like “cults” as they see fit.—

Ah, a mind reader eh? No, the criteria do not avoid getting into specifics, and they are not designed to label disliked groups as “cults.” They are derived from characterizing organizations that almost everyone agrees are cults (Jim Jones) in the hopes of AVOIDING exactly what you fear (the over labeling of everything one doesn’t like as a “cult”)

The key to the definition of cult is NOT that they are religious, NOT that they are new, and NOT that they have uncommon beliefs.
The ENTIRE point of the definition is the sort of self-sealing tactics they have in place to insulate their beliefs and activities and leaders from all criticism, and to bring the will of the cult to dominate every aspect of the person’s life.

— Unless you can explain how the degree to which each of these criteria are met—

It’s a judgement call, but thats no different than most definitions. The degree of evidence is going to be as high as a skeptic puts it, but even someone eager to label something a cult should place the degree of each requirement quite high.

As for a cite, check out “Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?” in which Chaz Bufe has an excellent discussion of the academic discussion over these criteria (and, coicidentally decides unequivocally that AA is NOT a cult, contrary to your assertions that labeling target groups is the reason of even discussing “cults”)

15

I still maintain, Apos, that the criteria you listed are too broad. They seem to me to be almost stifling any sort of unorthodox or slightly different belief system. Veneration, belief in irrational ideas, use of persuasion, special new meanings of words, etc. are pretty much concepts that appeal to the post-modern Westernized rationalist and show a distinct bias against people who may not fit the profile of a rugged-individualist intellectual. Just because these folks seem naive and have willingly subjected themselves to living what we see to be lie doesn’t mean they are in a cult. There has to be criteria for abuse that are better than these, otherwise it is all to easy to find evidence to support the labelling of this particular group you don’t like. The actual intent of the criteria isn’t really the issue, the issue is how people will use this criteria to preach that the church down the street is a cult.

However, I also think you may be giving Chaz Bufe a bit too much credit for offering an “academic discussion”. I have read Bufe’s stuff and frankly found the discussion lacking in dispassionate integrity. He makes no excuses for the fact that his subjective bias is ultimately influencing him in writing the book, though he makes an admirable attempt to try to split himself from it, it seems to me that he ultimately fails. Sadly, Bufe often reminded me of a typical anti-cultist. Namely, it seemed he had something of a hidden agenda: to support his goals for a specific kind of reformation of society. I am not going to make a value judgement as to whether his goals are admirable or not, but they definitely color his explorations of “cult” phenomena.

Actually, I’m surprised you say that Bufe came to the unequivocal conclusion “that AA is NOT a cult”. I seem to remember came ultimately to decide that is was, but that it wasn’t as extreme as some of the more widely-accepted cults. Didn’t he come to the conclusion that AA was basically a dying fad that would be consigned to the trashbin of history? A cult isn’t as threatening when it looks like its dying, so people tend to be a bit easier on it.

I do remember his discussion of the cults that supposedly “everybody” recognizes as being thoroughly unthoughtful and biased against them and it seems to me he basically divined from the a priori examples of cults (moonies, scientologists, etc.) his criteria for cult evaluation. That’s a backwards way of doing it, in my opinion.

I don’t have the book handy, but from my recollections of it, I do think that the guy had a mild case of anti-cult agenda. While trying to maintain some scholarly integrity, it seems he was subtly attempting to drive a stake into the heart of the AA organization that he has, not coincidentally, left. To his credit, Bufe does evaluate the positive claims of AA members as being valid, and for that reason alone he has a leg-up on other anti-cult folks.

16

JSPrinceton, you mean David Berg.

I was working in a research institute in the early '90s once when a dude came in and started telling us about his group, which it eventually turned out was the “Children of God.” He was offering all kinds of evasions for the hard questions that came up about it.

What embarrassed him into silence was when a gentleman from Libya that I worked with spoke up. ‘Ali said: “Your David Berg praised Colonel Qaddafi as a great leader. For someone like me who suffered under his dictatorship, that is really offensive.” The CoG fellow had no answer for that.

17

Thanks Jomo for the correct Christian name of the Berg leader. I’m curious, why did Berg praise Qaddafi? I don’t recall ever reading that particular criticism of the man (plenty of others, though).

18

I agree, if defining a cult is to be anywhere objective and scientific then we should be able to do it in the same way we fill in blanks in mathematics equations or on the periodic table. If we were to be truly objective about it we should be able to define a cult without ever having had one exist to point to as an example.

This is not to say that any example not using an existing cult as a reference point is automatically an objective or correct example, but that in any example of the framework of what a cult is if an existing ethos is named as an example ie; “You know, like The Moonies do.” is automatically suspect as being subjective from the person making the statement.