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Cult Behavior
In the midst of all the media hoopla surrounding
the suicides of 39 members of the "Heaven's Gate" cult, Bill Maher
made a very sensible comment on the night of "Good Friday," 1997. He
said, quite truthfully and bravely, that Christianity had started out
with the name cult and had kept that name until it attracted enough
followers to become respectable.
Although I wouldn't go so far as to say all religions are cults,
being a Faith Atheist and Unitarian Universalist myself, I do
believe that there are a lot more cults out there than we realize,
hiding behind a facade of respectability...or at least acceptance.
The fact that a movement has existed for a long time, even centuries,
and is believed in by even millions of followers does not make that
movement necessarily true.
At amazes me to hear Christians say that their religion must be
true, or else it wouldn't have lasted for 2,000 years. If age and
size are signs of God's stamp of exclusive truth, then these people
better get over to Hinduism right quick. That religion has been
around even longer than Judaism.
No, age and size have nothing to do with truth. Galileo was
right; Columbus was right; Darwin was right; but it took time for
their ideas to be accepted. I don't mean to slam Christianity; I'm
just saying that its truth must be judged on the merits of what it
says, not its age. After all, the early Christians couldn't use that
argument.
So what makes a cult? It's not necessarily the strangeness of the
ideas set forth; let's be honest, most religions look ludicrous to
outsiders. There has to be something more than a style of dress or a
bizarre doctrine at the heart of a cult. Let's look at some
characteristics of cults.
- Cults usually feature a strong leader who is admired with a
fervent devotion. People will follow him... and on rare occasions,
her... anywhere. I've seen that happen in Christian denominations on
more than one occasion -- when the minister would switch churches a
large section of the congregation would follow him.
- Cults try to keep their members isolated from outside influences
that might cause doubt to arise. I'm not going to say that every
church with a "family life center" is a cult, but when you combine
that with restricting social contacts to others from the same
denomination or even the same congregation, regulating hair styles
and dress codes and condemning morally neutral activities such as
dancing, listening to "secular" music or playing certain types of
games, that starts to look like mind control.
- Cults claim exclusive access to God's will. They're the only
ones who have it all down right, they're the only ones getting into
heaven. You see that in a lot of churches we don't think of as cults.
- Cults control and sometimes destroy lives by dictating the
personal lives of the members. Churches who oppose divorce often
contribute to spousal abuse and even murder by forcing couples who
don't belong together to stay together. Churches who oppose birth
control have blood on their hands from every infant that starves to
death as a result. And churches that oppose blood transfusions and
other medical treatment are mass murderers, in my opinion.
As I said, I don't believe all religion is cultish. But we need
to rethink what we call a cult. Pantheists observing the full moon
with music and dance aren't hurting anyone or anything; they're
merely worshipping as they feel led. On the other hand, I
would call the small General Baptist church I grew up in a
cult.
In that church, we saw visiting ministers whose appearances at
our church brought out fans from their home churches who couldn't
bear to listen to someone else preach for one Sunday -- they had to
be near the leader. In that church, I was told that I was being led
to the devil by role-playing games and rock 'n' roll music, and that
dancing or even swimming in the same pool with a girl was sinful. Our
church was of the opinion that the Southern Baptists were too
liberal, and only a very handful of churches had any truth in them at
all (mostly independent Baptist or Pentecostal). And the cure for
mental illness was prayer, not therapy.
Add to that the fact that I was scared to death to leave until I
was a teenager, scared to death that the world would end before I'd
had any time to accomplish anything in life, and scared to speak up,
and I'd say I was in a cult.
That's the way it is in a lot of places. And we've gotta be aware
of that. It's easy to lose your head in those places if you don't
keep conscious of the things that lurk behind the words spoken. If
you don't, there's no telling where you might wind up.
It's not accurate to label all the people who end up in cults,
but I think that I can pretty safely say that the ones who wind up
staying in these groups are the people who feel like they don't fit
in anywhere else. People who are shy or otherwise lacking
self-esteem.
People are looking at the Heaven's Gate site right now, and
doubtless some of them are in a low state, are thinking, "That sounds
pretty good." If genuinely concerned humanists of either stripe,
religious or secular, don't reach out and try to better our society,
expect to see more than 39 bodies in San Diego. The only way to
prevent another Jonestown, another Waco, another Heaven's Gate, is to
find those people who are preyed upon by cults and care for them.
They'll take whatever comfort is offered -- it can be from someone
who genuinely cares, or it can be from a demagogue.
Invite the person who's sitting alone in the cafeteria to eat
lunch with you. You might be saving a life without knowing it; at the
very least, you might end up making a friend, and we all need as many
of those as we can get.
As Robert Fulghum says in his book From Beginning to End,
many of us are called to be ministers, although few of us are called
to the pulpit. And even if you don't believe in a higher power, you
shouldn't deny your obligation to better the community around you.
That sort of self-centered apathy is part of what's gotten us
here.
The author would like to thank Kelly A. Parker,
without whom he'd probably run off with a circus, for her input on
this piece.
Jason R. Tippitt
Martin, TN, USA
Written March 30-31, 1997
Updated January 7, 1998
Visitors since
March 2002
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