The Cult Experience

Great Debates
21

No doubt…details are not exactly easy to locate.

My starting point is this:

*According to SAI, the first serious attempt to break out of the fundamentalist Utah Mormon chrysalis was the Church of Christ (Patriarchal), later renamed the Evangelical Church of Christ led by a man called John W. Bryant, otherwise known by the pseudonym “Samuel” who in 1974 broke with the fundamentalist Utah Mormon “Apostolic United Brethren”, having joined the Mormon Church ten years earlier and served a mission in Japan before becoming affiliated with fundamentalists in the early 1970s. The Evangelical Church of Christ collapsed in about 1986 when Bryant abandoned his flock after major upheavals caused by public and members` reaction to his neo-Brighamite dictatorial behaviour and his bizzare and blasphemous marriage practices. Accused of being a fertility cult on account of the practice of sexual communism and homosexuality in his own secret order, called the “Church of Enoch” like Joseph Smith’s, the Church soon disintegrated through mass inner apostacy and public hostility.

A few survivors formed a new church from the remnant calling itself the Church of the New Covenant of Christ which today openly embraces and proclaims Gnosticsm, calling itself a “Gnostic Church”. John Bryant remains in hiding and indirectly runs this new Church.
*
http://www.nccg.org/occult/Occult003B-Ch1.html

22

I have a few questions.

In your experience what level of (things of a sexual nature) where children involved in this cult? I’m interested in the things they were taught as well as if they were ever encouraged to have any physical contact with anybody.

Did you witness any sex/nudity as part of church function?

(a)Did John Bryant (by this name of any other) claim to have a personal direct link to God and the flock needed to access God via him alone?(b) Did he ever claim to be “the one mighty and strong”?

Did your Mom have any other husbands? Wives?..Dad have any Husbands? AND did the church push either of them towards any same sex relationships in your opinion?

23

One problem with discussing cults (as noted by E-Sabbath) is that the word has more than one meaning (particularly in the U.S.) that overlap to a small degree and anyone entering a discussion with a notion based on only one definition is going to be out of step with anyone entering the discussion carrying a different definition.

I’ve posted these, before, but the typical definitions of cult (posted by age, not prevalence) are:

  1. as a direct cognate translation of the Latin cultus, meaning any well-organized set of religious beliefs. In this sense, the various sects and denominations of Christianity and Islam could each be called cults.

  2. any religious group with a strong connection to a living or recently-deceased leader. In this case the LDS could be called a cult up until the death of Brigham Young, at which point the direct connection to Joseph Smith was broken. (On the other hand, Christianity would be a cult of Jesus, in this sense, until the death of the first generation of Apostles. Woudn’t this definition irk some fundies?)

  3. a nominally religious-based group enforcing control over all aspects of the lives of its adherents in the manner described in the previous posts.

  4. any religious group opposed by various fundie groups.

Depending on the history of who, me?'s group, they are clearly a cult under definition #1 and, as long as they are closely tied to the personality of their founder, they are a cult under definition #2. It goes without saying that they are considered a cult under definition #4, but then, so is the Catholic Church, (and, occasionally, Judaism).

So the sticking points are the degree to which definitions #2 and #3 overlap and apply to who, me?'s group. Barring any evidence that #3 applies (and it does not seem that who, me? was in any way coerced to stay), I would say that only #2 applies.

From my perpective, the problem of a personality-driven cult is the risk that people may turn off their brains to accept everything the leader says, unquestioningly. (This is what makes it easy for some #2 definition cults to drift into #3 definition cults.) However, while that may be a danger, it is hardly a forgone conclusion and I would look on the group that who, me?'s parents joined as pretty benign. If they have some elder hoarding every female who hits puberty as “his” God-given wife, then I would see it as more malign than benign, but who, me? has not given any indication that this is the case.

Of course, following Moses and the Children of God, Jim Jones and the Jonestown horror, various stories emanating from the Moonies, David Koresh and company, and the Hale-Bopp loons, the definition that people will most frequently associate with cults will be #3 (and there are enough Fundamentalist Christians wandering about to cause definitions 3 and 4 to be conflated in many conversations).

I think that this discussion will go more smoothly if people recognize which definition they are relying upon when they post.

24

I would argue with the word religious in the second definition. The cult of personality can be expanded to far beyond simple religion to, well, the Dope, Randians, those that follow Heinlein… heck, prod an internet flame war, and at the heart, there’s a cult of personality, even if not founded on specific people. ‘Macheads’ are certainly cultlike in personality. (Though the group ‘machead’ has grown to a much small percentage of ‘mac user’ recently.) My favorite fan grouping, for example, has those who adore the first few years of Transformers, and those who adore the Beast Wars era. Giving us ‘Trukk Not Munky’ and ‘Munky Not Trukk’ discussions that can grow quite heated.

25

I guess see your point there are all kinds of cults. But aren’t we talking about a swinging sex church with a charismatic God complex leader operating far outside of the norm of it’s counterparts and the law?

I think if that’s the case the indicators should cause us to start closer to the #3 definition and look for information that moves us away rather than the other way around no? I could be paranoid but don’t’ these fringe groups normally turn out to be the kind of cult most people think of first and not the less dangerous “clubs” the other definitions lean towards?

26

Wow, Okay, first things first…

John Mace, I’m male. Make of that what you will, but I wouldn’t call it a good deal for anyone, except those at the top.

Revenant Threshold, No. Ol’ John B. has his hooks into enough people.

TomnDebb I would put this church under categories 2, 3, and 4. 2 because John had the ultimate say on anything that happened within the church, such that the whole church centered around him and his “revelations”. 3 because, living in a religious commune pretty much caused every action to be dictated according to religious considerations. And 4 because, well, the reason this church was started was because of John’s exommunication from the LDS church based on his heretical ideas.

John F The reason John B. is in hiding relates to federal charges I believe, but I don’t know if you can find more about it. BTW, your search skills seem to be very good (I have never been able to find anything about it online) and seems accurate. For example, Japan is where John met my father. Needless to say, I am very interested to learn more about the early history of the church. Share your search methods?

As for your next post (sorry, I haven’t learned how to quote yet): Part of what split the church up was the widespread sexual abuse of children among the leaders. By the time I was old enough to know anything, my parents’ faction had split off. they were pretty benign, and as far as I know, my father( the leader of this particular faction) never encouraged or taught any kind of child abuse.

did I witness nudity? Yes.

John, I think it is safe to say, did claim to have a personal relation with god, and often typed up and printed “revelations” which were circulated among church members and affiliates. As well, I believe Krakauer’s research (anecdotal though it may be) when he asserts that John claimed to be “the one mighty and strong”. He often claimed to possess the “keys to the priesthood” passed down in unbroken generations from Joseph Smith.

“Plural Marriage” was considered to be a rite of passage and a necessary thing to progress in the priesthood. I think that most men had more than one wife ( even sharing wives sometimes), and some women had more than one husband.
There is much speculation among the children of the church regarding the homosexual content of church teachings/beliefs/practices. One of my sisters claims that she witnessed my father and John engaged in sexual acts. I believe her.

kythereia No my beliefs tend to run against blindly accepting what others tell you as the truth. That is, after all, what led me to the Dope.

27

Sounds like a kibbuts!.. But wait, isn’t that secular LEFT-wing?! :eek:

28

I started in alt.religon and then alt.religon.mormon. I looked at some cult watch sites and then tried some Google searches on the raid. Surprisingly I didn’t turn up anything on the raid but that is what I thought would be the easiest to find.

It was enough to find some key questions that you answered exactly how I expected somebody who witnessed a “cult” cult (#3 definition) from the inside would have.

Interesting.

29

Thanks for this thread who, me?

I read *Under the Banner of Heaven * and enjoyed it with a sick fascination. In fact I might need to go reread it.

I also have seen a documentary about polygamy, I’m not sure what LDS offshot it was about exactly.

My questions:

Do you think that some of the members of this religous sect are truly, honestly happy, fufilled, and satisfied with the course of their lives and faith? Some of the women in the documentary talked about how happy being one of 4 wives made them, but I’d swear their eyes were hollow.

Also, can you describe a typical day for a member of this sect? Not a Sunday, I assume that day would be spent in church.

Did your sect go through “sealing”, like in the mainstream LDS church? What other things were retained from the LDS? Did you wear garments for example?

If your answers vary for men and for women can you give us both persepctives please?

Thanks.

30

I think part of the difficulty in coming up with a clear definition of a cult is that we’re dealing with a continuum rather than a simple binary opposition. There’s no bright line on one side of which reside cults and on the other religions. There’s a broad spectrum with the friendly neighborhood church on one end and the Heaven’s gate on the other. While we can easily label groups on the extremes as cults or not there’s a big fuzzy area.

It seems to me what differentiates a cult from a religion is the different degrees of commitment the two things require. A religion will typically recognize that an individual congregant has a life outside the Church, while a cult will consume the entire believers identity. A church will encourage giving on the part of its members, while a cult will require all or nearly all property to be given to the cult. Cults will have more of a secret doctrine than religions, with certain knowledge reserved for a special elect. While probably a minority of Catholics know every teaching of the Church the Church does not actively discourage members from learning about doctrine and theology, or attempt to hide it’s beliefs from the world. A cult may do this. Also Churches can be more open about people leaving. Again, this is a matter of degree, and obviously even the most mainstream church leader will be concerned about straying congegrants. But the psychological hold of a cult will be greater than that of a mainstream church.

Note I am using the word “church” broadly, to encompass synagogues, mosques, and temples as well as Christian churches.

31

Twiddle

No, I do not believe that anyone who is still a member of the church or splinter factions is truly fulfilled. I know that my father’s two wives (one left a while ago), desperately hate each other.

I cannot describe a typical day now, or before the time I was, say 6, but in my formative years, the women taught the children, the men worked at various jobs, and there were various times of prayer interspersed throughout the day.

I think the best description of the church would be as an offshoot of fundamental Mormonism than as a separate religion, so there were many holdovers from the original Mormon beliefs. Yes on sealing, and garments, and several others, such as the ritual baptism *in absentia * of the dead ancestors of members (we’ll disregard the disrespect to those who wouldn’t have wanted to be a part of the church had they been given the choice in life).

32

Larry Borgia has a good, and possibly key point. Secret knowlege, and hidden revelations, seem to be the tipping point from safe religion to dangerous cult. Vis, Scientology, which in my opinion is on the far end, and the LDS, who are on the near end of said tipping point.

33

To me, a cult is a religion that hasn’t been around long enough to be accepted in to the general society. Thats it. All religions are cultish to a certain degree, the ones we now insist on calling religions have just been around longer.

34

I agree. An anecdote, if I may.

A few months ago, during the most recent Michael Jackson trial, one of the local free rags sent a reporter down to cover the trial. Within the article was a sentence describing two Jackson supporters discussing (apparently with straight faces) whether Michael was God incarnate, or merely an angel made flesh. Started me thinking.

Say Michael Jackson was murdered (I don’t wish the man any harm, just speaking hypothetically), and in fifty years people start writing books relating how Michael healed them with the touch of his hand. Voila, a cult is born, “Michael Jacksonism”.

Wait two thousand years, and everyone in the world is either “Jacksonite” or pagan. This scenario parallels with early christianity, and I only use it when I want to rile the fundies, but still.

35

There is but One True Cult! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subgenius :smiley: