Cult: A Definition Part I

 A cult is a group requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant outside the norms of society, which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader who tightly controls its members. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, also used for new religious movements and other social groups which are defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or their common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.

An older sense of the word, which is not pejorative, involves a set of religious devotional practices that is conventional within its culture, is related to a particular figure, and is frequently associated with a particular place. References to the imperial cult of ancient Rome, for example, use the word in this sense. A derived sense of "excessive devotion" arose in the 19th century.

Beginning in the 1930s, cults became an object of sociological study within the context of the study of religious behavior. Since the 1940s, the Christian countercult movement has opposed some sects and new religious movements, labeling them "cults" because of their unorthodox beliefs. Since the 1970s, the secular anti-cult movement has opposed certain groups and, as a reaction to acts of violence, frequently charged those cults with practicing brainwashing. There are thousands of cults around the world. Groups labelled "cults" range in size from local groups with a few members to international organizations with millions.

Sociological classifications

Sociological classifications of religious movements may identify a cult as a social group with socially deviant or novel beliefs and practices, although this is often unclear. Other researchers present a less-organized picture of cults, saying that they arise spontaneously around novel beliefs and practices. Cults, especially nonreligious ones, have also been called high-control groups, and compared to miniature totalitarian political systems.

Definition and usage

In the English-speaking world, the term cult often carries derogatory connotations. In this sense, it has been considered a subjective term used as an ad hominem attack against groups with differing doctrines or practices. As such, religion scholar Megan Goodwin has defined the term cult, when it is used by the layperson, as often being shorthand for a "religion I don't like". In the 1970s, with the rise of secular anti-cult movements, scholars (though not the general public) began to abandon the use of the term cult. According to The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, "by the end of the decade, the term 'new religions' would virtually replace the term 'cult' to describe all of those leftover groups that did not fit easily under the label of church or sect."

Sociologist Amy Ryan (2000) argues for the need to differentiate those groups that may be dangerous from groups that are more benign. Ryan notes the sharp differences between definitions offered by cult opponents, who tend to focus on negative characteristics, and those offered by sociologists, who aim to create definitions that are value-free. The movements themselves may have different definitions of religion as well.

George Chryssides also cites a need to develop better definitions to allow for common ground in the debate. Casino (1999) presents the issue as crucial to international human rights laws. Limiting the definition of religion may interfere with freedom of religion, while too broad a definition may give some dangerous or abusive groups "a limitless excuse for avoiding all unwanted legal obligations."

New religious movements

A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious community or spiritual group of modern origins since the mid-19th century, which has a peripheral place within its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. In 1999, Eileen Barker estimated that NRMs, of which some but not all have been labelled as cults, number in the tens of thousands worldwide; and that the great majority of which have only a few members, some have thousands and only very few have more than a million.

In 2007, religious scholar Elijah Siegler commented that, although no NRM had become the dominant faith in any country, many of the concepts which they had first introduced, often referred to as "New Age" ideas, have become part of worldwide mainstream culture.

High-control groups may encourage their believers to disengage from so-called 'world affairs', shun or limit interaction with nonbelievers, and maintain a distinct identity separate from mainstream culture, reinforcing group cohesion and control. The emphasis on isolation and exclusivity can likewise contribute to the group's sense of identity and reinforce adherence to its beliefs and practices.

Scholarly studies

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

Sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) is an important theorist in the academic study of cults, which often draws on his theorizations of charismatic authority, and of the distinction between churches and sects. Weber theorizes that charismatic leadership often follows the routinization of charisma. These ideas have been used to theorize the dynamics of groups that have been labelled cults, including the People's Temple, and the Rajneesh movement.

The concept of a cult as a sociological classification was introduced in 1932 by American sociologist Howard P. Becker as an expansion of German theologian Ernst Troeltsch's own church–sect typology. Troeltsch's aim was to distinguish between three main types of religious behaviour: churchly, sectarian, and mystical. Becker further bisected Troeltsch's first two categories: church was split into ecclesia and denomination; and sect into sect and cult. Like Troeltsch's "mystical religion", Becker's cult refers to small religious groups that lack in organization and emphasize the private nature of personal beliefs. Later sociological formulations built on such characteristics, placing an additional emphasis on cults as deviant religious groups, "deriving their inspiration from outside of the predominant religious culture."  This is often thought to lead to a high degree of tension between the group and the more mainstream culture surrounding it, a characteristic shared with religious sects. According to this sociological terminology, sects are products of religious schism and therefore maintain continuity with traditional beliefs and practices, whereas cults arise spontaneously around novel beliefs and practices.

In the early 1960s, sociologist John Lofland, living with South Korean missionary Young Oon Kim and some of the first American Unification Church members in California, studied their activities in trying to promote their beliefs and win new members. Lofland noted that most of their efforts were ineffective and that most of the people who joined did so because of personal relationships with other members, often family relationships. Lofland published his findings in 1964 as a doctoral thesis entitled "The World Savers: A Field Study of Cult Processes", and in 1966 in book form by Prentice-Hall as Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization and Maintenance of Faith. It is considered to be one of the most important and widely cited studies of the process of religious conversion.

Sociologist Roy Wallis (1945–1990) argued that a cult is characterized by "epistemological individualism," meaning that "the cult has no clear locus of final authority beyond the individual member." Cults, according to Wallis, are generally described as "oriented towards the problems of individuals, loosely structured, tolerant [and] non-exclusive," making "few demands on members," without possessing a "clear distinction between members and non-members," having "a rapid turnover of membership" and as being transient collectives with vague boundaries and fluctuating belief systems. Wallis asserts that cults emerge from the "cultic milieu".

J. Gordon Melton stated that, in 1970, "one could count the number of active researchers on new religions on one's hands." However, James R. Lewis writes that the "meteoric growth" in this field of study can be attributed to the cult controversy of the early 1970s. Because of "a wave of nontraditional religiosity" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, academics perceived new religious movements as different phenomena from previous religious innovations.

In 1978, Bruce Campbell noted that cults are associated with beliefs in a divine element in the individual; it is soul, self, or true self. Cults are inherently ephemeral and loosely organized. There is a major theme in many of the recent works that show the relationship between cults and mysticism. Campbell, describing cults as non-traditional religious groups based on belief in a divine element in the individual, brings two major types of such to attention – mystical and instrumental – dividing cults into either occult or metaphysical assembly. There is also a third type, the service-oriented, as Campbell states that "the kinds of stable forms which evolve in the development of religious organization will bear a significant relationship to the content of the religious experience of the founder or founders."

Dick Anthony, a forensic psychologist known for his criticism of brainwashing theory of conversion, has defended some so-called cults, and in 1988 argued that involvement in such movements may often have beneficial, rather than harmful effects, saying that "[t]here's a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions. For the most part, the effects seem to be positive in any way that's measurable."

 

In their 1996 book Theory of Religion, American sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge propose that the formation of cults can be explained through the rational choice theory. In The Future of Religion they comment that, "in the beginning, all religions are obscure, tiny, deviant cult movements." According to Marc Galanter, Professor of Psychiatry at NYU, typical reasons why people join cults include a search for community and a spiritual quest. Stark and Bainbridge, in discussing the process by which individuals join new religious groups, have even questioned the utility of the concept of conversion, suggesting that affiliation is a more useful concept.

Destructive cults

Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple

Destructive cult generally refers to groups whose members have, through deliberate action, physically injured or killed other members of their own group or other people. The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance specifically limits the use of the term to religious groups that "have caused or are liable to cause loss of life among their membership or the general public." Psychologist Michael Langone, executive director of the anti-cult group International Cultic Studies Association, defines a destructive cult as "a highly manipulative group which exploits and sometimes physically and/or psychologically damages members and recruits."

John Gordon Clark argued that totalitarian systems of governance and an emphasis on money making are characteristics of a destructive cult. In Cults and the Family, the authors cite Shapiro, who defines a destructive cultism as a sociopathic syndrome, whose distinctive qualities include: "behavioral and personality changes, loss of personal identity, cessation of scholastic activities, estrangement from family, disinterest in society and pronounced mental control and enslavement by cult leaders."

In the opinion of sociology professor Benjamin Zablocki of Rutgers University, destructive cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members, stating that such is in part due to members' adulation of charismatic leaders contributing to the leaders becoming corrupted by power. According to Barrett, the most common accusation made against destructive cults is sexual abuse. According to Kranenborg, some groups are risky when they advise their members not to use regular medical care. This may extend to physical and psychological harm.

Writing about Bruderhof communities in the book Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field, Julius H. Rubin said that American religious innovation created an unending diversity of sects. These "new religious movements…gathered new converts and issued challenges to the wider society. Not infrequently, public controversy, contested narratives and litigation result." In his work Cults in Context author Lorne L. Dawson writes that although the Unification Church "has not been shown to be violent or volatile," it has been described as a destructive cult by "anticult crusaders." In 2002, the German government was held by the Federal Constitutional Court to have defamed the Osho movement by referring to it, among other things, as a "destructive cult" with no factual basis.

Some researchers have criticized the term destructive cult, writing that it is used to describe groups which are not necessarily harmful in nature to themselves or others. In his book Understanding New Religious Movements, John A. Saliba writes that the term is overgeneralized. Saliba sees the Peoples Temple as the "paradigm of a destructive cult", where those that use the term are implying that other groups will also commit mass suicide.

Doomsday cults

Doomsday cult is an expression which is used to describe groups that believe in Apocalypticism and Millenarianism, and it can also be used to refer both to groups that predict disaster, and groups that attempt to bring it about. In the 1950s, American social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues observed members of a small UFO religion called the Seekers for several months, and recorded their conversations both prior to and after a failed prophecy from their charismatic leader. Their work was later published in the book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.

In the late 1980s, doomsday cults were a major topic of news reports, with some reporters and commentators considering them a serious threat to society. A 1997 psychological study by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter found that people turned to a cataclysmic world view after they had repeatedly failed to find meaning in mainstream movements. People also strive to find meaning in global events such as the turn of the millennium when many predicted it prophetically marked the end of an age and thus the end of the world. An ancient Mayan calendar ended at the 2012 years, sparking the 2012 phenomenon as many anticipated catastrophic disasters would rock the Earth.

Aum Shinrikyo

In 1995, members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo murdered a number of people during a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. Aum Shinrikyo has been involved in several violent incidents. In 1990, members of Aum Shinrikyo murdered the family of a lawyer who was involved in a legal action against them. There were several other murders besides that brought the death toll associated with this group's acts to 27. Some were surprised by the group's ability to recruit educated young people. Scholars have attempted to explain the cause of this as feelings of social alienation that make young Japanese vulnerable to mind control techniques.

Political cults

A political cult is a cult with a primary interest in political action and ideology. Groups that some have described as "political cults", mostly advocating far-left or far-right agendas, have received some attention from journalists and scholars. In their 2000 book On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth discuss about a dozen organizations in the United States and Great Britain that they characterize as cults. In a separate article, Tourish says that in his usage:

The word cult is not a term of abuse, as this paper tries to explain. It is nothing more than a shorthand expression for a particular set of practices that have been observed in a variety of dysfunctional organizations.

 

In 1990, Lucy Patrick commented:

Although we live in a democracy, cult behavior manifests itself in our unwillingness to question the judgment of our leaders, our tendency to devalue outsiders and to avoid dissent. We can overcome cult behavior, he says, by recognizing that we have dependency needs that are inappropriate for mature people, by increasing anti-authoritarian education, and by encouraging personal autonomy and the free exchange of ideas.

Ayn Rand Institute

Followers of Ayn Rand have been characterized as a cult by economist Murray Rothbard, and later by Michael Shermer. The core group around Rand was called the "Collective", which is now defunct; the chief group which is disseminating Rand's ideas today is the Ayn Rand Institute. Although the Collective advocated an individualist philosophy, Rothbard claimed that it was organized in the manner of a "Leninist" organization.

LaRouche movement

The LaRouche movement is a political and cultural network promoting the late Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included many organizations and companies around the world, which campaign, gather information and publish books and periodicals. It has been called "cult-like" by The New York Times.

The movement originated within the radical leftist student politics of the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of candidates ran in state Democratic primaries in the United States on the 'LaRouche platform', while Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly campaigned for presidential nomination; however, the LaRouche movement is often considered far-right. During its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, the LaRouche movement developed a private intelligence agency and contacts with foreign governments.

New Acropolis

An Argentine esoteric group founded in 1957 by Jorge Angel Livraga, a former theosophist, the New Acropolis Cultural Association has been described by scholars as an ultra-conservative, neo-fascist, and white supremacist paramilitary group. The group itself denies such descriptions.

Unification Church

Founded by North Korea-born Sun Myung Moon, the Unification Church (also known as the Unification movement) holds a strong anti-Communist position. In the 1940s, Moon cooperated with members of the Communist Party of Korea in the Korean independence movement against Imperial Japan. However, after the Korean War (1950–1953), he became an outspoken anti-communist. Moon viewed the Cold War between democracy and communism as the final conflict between God and Satan, with divided Korea as its primary front line.

Soon after its founding the Unification Church began supporting anti-communist organizations, including the World League for Freedom and Democracy founded in 1966 in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan), by Chiang Kai-shek, and the Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation, an international public diplomacy organization which also sponsored Radio Free Asia.

In 1974, the Unification Church supported Republican President Richard Nixon and rallied in his favor after the Watergate scandal, with Nixon thanking the church personally for it. In 1975 Moon spoke at a government sponsored rally against potential North Korean military aggression on Yeouido Island in Seoul to an audience of around 1 million. The Unification movement was criticized by both the mainstream media and the alternative press for its anti-communist activism, which many said could lead to World War Three and a nuclear holocaust.

In 1977, the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, of the United States House of Representatives, found that the South Korean intelligence agency, the KCIA, had used the movement to gain political influence with the United States and that some members had worked as volunteers in Congressional offices. Together they founded the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization which acted as a public diplomacy campaign for the Republic of Korea. The committee also investigated possible KCIA influence on the Unification Church's campaign in support of Nixon.

In 1980, members founded CAUSA International, an anti-communist educational organization based in New York City. In the 1980s, it was active in 21 countries. In the United States, it sponsored educational conferences for evangelical and fundamentalist Christian leaders as well as seminars and conferences for Senate staffers, Hispanic Americans and conservative activists. In 1986, CAUSA International sponsored the documentary film Nicaragua Was Our Home, about the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua and their persecution at the hands of the Nicaraguan government. It was filmed and produced by Unification Church member Lee Shapiro, who later died while filming with anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet–Afghan War.

In 1983, some American Unification Church members joined a public protest against the Soviet Union over its shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight 007. In 1984, the Unification Church founded the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a Washington D.C. think tank that underwrites conservative-oriented research and seminars at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and other institutions. In the same year, member Dan Fefferman founded the International Coalition for Religious Freedom in Virginia, which is active in protesting what it considers to be threats to religious freedom by governmental agencies. In August 1985 the Professors World Peace Academy, an organization founded by Moon, sponsored a conference in Geneva to debate the theme "The situation in the world after the fall of the communist empire."

In April 1990, Moon visited the Soviet Union and met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon expressed support for the political and economic transformations underway in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Unification Church movement was expanding into formerly communist nations.

In 1994, The New York Times recognized the Unification Church movement's political influence, saying it was "a theocratic powerhouse that is pouring foreign fortunes into conservative causes in the United States." In 1998, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram criticized Moon's "ultra-right leanings" and suggested a personal relationship with conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Unification Church owns several news outlets including The Washington Times, Insight on the News, United Press International, and the News World Communications network. During the presidency of George W. Bush, Dong Moon Joo, a Unification Church member and then president of The Washington Times, undertook unofficial diplomatic missions to North Korea in an effort to improve its relationship with the United States. Joo was born in North Korea and is a citizen of the United States.