Cult

"Cult leader" redirects here. For the band, see Cult Leader.

For the original sense of "religious practice", see Cult (religious practice). For religious groups with modern origins, see New religious movement and List of new religious movements. For other uses, see Cult (disambiguation).

In the sociological classifications of religious movements in English, a cult is a religious or social group with socially deviant or novel beliefs and practices. However, whether any particular group's beliefs and practices are sufficiently deviant or novel is often unclear, thus making a precise definition problematic. In the English speaking world, the word often carries derogatory connotations, but in other European languages, it is used as English-speakers use the word "religion", sometimes causing confusion for English-speakers reading material translated from other languages. The word "cult" has always been controversial because it is (in a pejorative sense) considered a subjective term, used as an ad hominem attack against groups with differing doctrines or practices, which lacks a clear or consistent definition.

Beginning in the 1930s, cults became the object of sociological study in the context of the study of religious behavior. Certain groups have been labelled as cults and have been opposed by the Christian countercult movement for their unorthodox beliefs. Since the 1970s, some groups have been opposed by the anti-cult movement, partly motivated in reaction to acts of violence committed by members of some groups. Some of the claims by the anti-cult movement have been disputed by other scholars and by the news media, leading to further controversy. Public and governmental reactions to the cult issue have also been a source of controversy.

Terminological history

Further information: Cult (religious practice), Sociological classifications of religious movements, Holiness movement, Faith healing, Anti-cult movement, and ritual abuse panic

Howard P. Becker's church-sect typology, based on Ernst Troeltsch original theory and upon which the modern concept of cults, sects, and new religious movements is based.

The word "cult" was originally used not to describe a group of religionists, but for the act of worship or religious ceremony. It was first used in the early 17th century, borrowed via the French culte, from Latin cultus (worship). This, in turn, was derived from the adjective cultus (inhabited, cultivated, worshiped), based on the verb colere (care, cultivate). The word "culture" is also derived from the Latin words cultura and cultus, which in general terms refers to the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a religious or social group.

While the literal sense of the word in English is still in use, a derived sense of "excessive devotion" arose in the 19th century. The terms cult and cultist came to be used in medical literature in the United States in the 1930s for what would now be termed faith healing, especially for the US Holiness movement. This experienced a surge of popularity at the time, but extended to other forms of alternative medicine as well.

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 church-sect typology. Troeltsch's aim was to distinguish between three main types of religious behavior: churchly, sectarian and mystical. Becker created four categories out of Troeltsch's first two by splitting church into "ecclesia" and "denomination", and sect into "sect" and "cult". Like Troeltsch's "mystical religion", Becker's cults were small religious groups lacking in organization and emphasizing the private nature of personal beliefs. Later sociological formulations built on these 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. In this sociological terminology, sects are products of religious schism and therefore maintain a continuity with traditional beliefs and practices, while cults arise spontaneously around novel beliefs and practices.

By the late 1930s, the Christian countercult movement began applying the term cult to what would formerly have been termed heresy. This usage became mainstream by the 1960s, via the best-selling The Kingdom of the Cults (1965). This terminological development, which had so far been characteristic of the religious sociology of the United States, entered international use with the "ritual abuse" moral panic of the 1980s, which originated in the United States. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the international spread throughout most of the Anglosphere and some parts of Europe.

Also from the 1990s, as part of the discrimination discourse at the height of the US "culture war", US neopagan religions, especially Wicca, began to protest through literature their classification as cults as discriminatory. Because of this usage of "cult" began to be discouraged in favour of the neutral new religious movement in sociological literature. Proponents of such an approach within the study of new religious movements have in turn been denounced as "procult apologists" by adherents of the Christian anti-cult movement. An anti-cult movement comparable to the one in the United States originated in Russia in the 1990s. In 2008, the Russian Interior Ministry prepared a list of "extremist groups", which included groups adhering to militant Islamism and "Pagan cults".

New religious movements

Main article: New religious movement

Most sociologists and scholars of religion also began to reject the word "cult" altogether because of its negative connotations in mass culture. Some began to advocate the use of new terms like "new religious movement", "alternative religion" or "novel religion" to describe most of the groups that had come to be referred to as "cults", yet none of these terms have had much success in popular culture or in the media. Other scholars have pushed to redeem the word "cult" as one fit for neutral academic discourse.

Using the term new religious movement instead of cult does not remove all negative perceptions. In a survey study containing 258 participants, negative perceptions of the terms "new religious movement", "cult" and "satanic cult" were found. However, these terms differed significantly (i.e., not due to chance) in how negatively the participants perceived them. "New religious movement" was found to be the most favourable term, followed by "cult" and then "Satanic cult".

Scholars usually consider the mid-1800s as the beginning of the era of new religious movements. During this time, spiritualism and esotericism were becoming popular in Europe and North America. Scholars have estimated that new religious movements, of which some but not all have been labelled as cults, number in the tens of thousands worldwide, most of which originated in Asia or Africa. The great majority 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 new religious movement had become the dominant faith in any country, many of the concepts which they had first introduced (often referred to as "New Age" ideas) had become part of worldwide mainstream culture.

Scholarly studies

Max Weber (1864–1920), one of the first scholars to study cults.

Pioneering sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) found that cults based on charismatic leadership often follow the routinization of charisma. 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". In their 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 "...in the beginning, all religions are obscure, tiny, deviant cult movements".

In the early 1960s, sociologist John Lofland lived with South Korean missionary Young Oon Kim and some of the first American Unification Church members in California, during which he 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.

Dick Anthony, a forensic psychologist noted for his writings on the brainwashing controversy, has defended some so-called cults, and in 1988 argued that involvement in such movements may often have beneficial, rather than harmful effects: "There'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."

Herbert Kelman, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus at Harvard University, outlined three stages of conversion involving individuals in coercive situations:

1. Compliance: Individuals follow orders told only because they are being publicly asked by someone in power to do so. They publicly agree, but privately disagree with the powerholder. This often results in obedience only when the individual in power is present.
2. Identification: Individuals follow orders because of their admiration of the person in power. They take on the characteristics and behaviors of the powerholder because they identify with them, and want to be like them.
3. Internalization: Individuals follow orders because they fall in line with their own belief system. They no longer just follow along with the group, but rather they adopt the group’s beliefs, opinions and values as their own.

When members first join a cult, they are required to adopt the beliefs and rituals of the group, but are only expected to comply with them and do not necessarily have to fully believe or support them. These new members are treated positively, and are invited to take part in social activities with the group and its leader to get to know them better. Compliance at this stage can be as a result of social pressure, but may also come as a result of politeness, or out of curiosity in an attempt to find out more about the group.

Once these positive experiences entice new members to stay long-term, older members begin to treat them more negatively, isolating them from the outside world and forcing them to take part in lectures and discussions focused on the key beliefs of the group. They are often sleep deprived, malnourished and over-exerted, which diminishes their sense of self and ability to make good decisions. At this point, compliance often results from members attempting to reduce these negative and sometimes threatening aspects of group membership.

Eventually, the recruits will experience identification, where they will comply with their group and its leader because they want to please them, and often because they would like to imitate them. For example, members of The People’s Temple admired Jim Jones, their leader, and wanted to reach his level of spirituality. As a result, they did whatever he told them in the hope of becoming more like him, and more well-liked by him. The level of compliance is gradually increased, until the recruits are forced to comply with extreme demands.

As a result of increased demands and conditions of their existence in the group, the members will eventually begin to adopt the beliefs and values of the group as their own, and will openly make sacrifices for the group. At this point, the recruits have reached the internalization stage, and have become devoted members of the cult. Internalization is often necessary in order to reach the extreme level of commitment and obedience needed for devotion to an extremist group such as a cult. The internalization stage goes hand in hand with consolidation, where allegiance to the group is solidified and there is total acceptance of all aspects of the group.

There is some empirical research supporting the idea that social influence, and in particular the stages of conversion, play a role in cult membership. A study was conducted in which members of a cult were asked to describe their time as cult members. All participants noted that there was extreme pressure to conform to the group, and four participants, when asked to rate how controlling their cult environment was on a scale from 0-10, gave the highest possible rating of 10. They noted conformity techniques such as adopting a “new cult self” and leaving their old self behind, a lack of contact with family and friends, and total immersion into the culture of the cult. All of these techniques relate to aspects of Kelman’s three stages of conversion, and internalization in particular.

Anti-cult movements

Christian countercult movement

Main article: Christian countercult movement

Walter Martin (1928–1989), American author and leading figure in the Christian countercult movement.

In the 1940s, the long held opposition by some established Christian denominations to non-Christian religions and/or supposedly heretical, or counterfeit, Christian sects crystallized into a more organized Christian countercult movement in the United States. For those belonging to the movement, all religious groups claiming to be Christian, but deemed outside of Christian orthodoxy, were considered cults. Christian cults are new religious movements which have a Christian background but are considered to be theologically deviant by members of other Christian churches. In his influential book The Kingdom of the Cults (first published in the United States in 1965), Christian scholar Walter Martin defines Christian cults as groups that follow the personal interpretation of an individual, rather than the understanding of the Bible accepted by mainstream Christianity. He mentions The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarian Universalism, and Unity as examples.

The Christian countercult movement asserts that Christian sects whose beliefs are partially or wholly not in accordance with the Bible are erroneous. It also states that a religious sect can be considered a cult if its beliefs involve a denial of what they view as any of the essential Christian teachings such as salvation, the Trinity, Jesus himself as a person, the ministry of Jesus, the Miracles of Jesus, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Death of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Rapture.

Countercult literature usually expresses doctrinal or theological concerns and a missionary or apologetic purpose. It presents a rebuttal by emphasizing the teachings of the Bible against the beliefs of non-fundamental Christian sects. Christian countercult activist writers also emphasize the need for Christians to evangelize to followers of cults.

Secular anti-cult movement

Main article: Anti-cult movement

In the early 1970s, a secular opposition movement to groups considered cults had taken shape. The organizations that formed the secular "anti-cult movement" (ACM) often acted on behalf of relatives of "cult" converts who did not believe their loved ones could have altered their lives so drastically by their own free will. A few psychologists and sociologists working in this field suggested that brainwashing techniques were used to maintain the loyalty of cult members, while others rejected the idea. The belief that cults brainwashed their members became a unifying theme among cult critics and in the more extreme corners of the anti-cult movement techniques like the sometimes forceful "deprogramming" of cult members became standard practice.

In the mass media, and among average citizens, "cult" gained an increasingly negative connotation, becoming associated with things like kidnapping, brainwashing, psychological abuse, sexual abuse and other criminal activity, and mass suicide. While most of these negative qualities usually have real documented precedents in the activities of a very small minority of new religious groups, mass culture often extends them to any religious group viewed as culturally deviant, however peaceful or law abiding it may be.

Secular cult opponents like those belonging to the anti-cult movement usually define a "cult" as a group that tends to manipulate, exploit, and control its members. Specific factors in cult behavior are said to include manipulative and authoritarian mind control over members, communal and totalistic organization, aggressive proselytizing, systematic programs of indoctrination, and perpetuation in middle-class communities. According to anti-cult group ICSA, methods of control employed by some cults may involve intensive ideological indoctrination, psychological intimidation, social humiliation and punishment, limitation of access to information, and outright deception. All of these methods may be applied by one member upon another, but they are often also internalized to such an extent that members do not believe that any coercion is actually taking place, as is common in many forms of social control.

The media was quick to follow suit, and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed more sophisticated models of brainwashing.

While some psychologists were receptive to these theories, sociologists were for the most part sceptical of their ability to explain conversion to NRMs. In the late 1980s, psychologists and sociologists started to abandon theories like brainwashing and mind-control. While scholars may believe that various less dramatic coercive psychological mechanisms could influence group members, they came to see conversion to new religious movements principally as an act of a rational choice.

Some scholars favour one particular view, or combined elements of each. According to Marc Galanter, Professor of Psychiatry at NYU, typical reasons why people join cults include a search for community and a spiritual quest. Sociologists 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.

Stigmatization and discrimination

Because of the increasingly pejorative use of the words "cult" and "cult leader" since the cult debate of the 1970s, some academics, in addition to groups referred to as cults, argue that these are words to be avoided.

Catherine Wessinger (Loyola University New Orleans) has stated that the word "cult" represents just as much prejudice and antagonism as racial slurs or derogatory words for women and homosexuals. She has argued that it is important for people to become aware of the bigotry conveyed by the word, drawing attention to the way it dehumanises the group's members and their children. Labeling a group as subhuman, she says, becomes a justification for violence against it.

At the same time, she adds, labeling a group a "cult" makes people feel safe, because the "violence associated with religion is split off from conventional religions, projected onto others, and imagined to involve only aberrant groups". This fails to take into account that child abuse, sexual abuse, financial extortion and warfare have also been committed by believers of mainstream religions, but the pejorative "cult" stereotype makes it easier to avoid confronting this uncomfortable fact.

In the United Kingdom, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Edinburgh City Council have ruled that the word "cult" is not "threatening, abusive or insulting" as defined by the Public Order Act, and that there is no objection to its use in public protests.

Sociologist Amy Ryan has argued for the need to differentiate those groups that may be dangerous from groups that are more benign. Ryan notes the sharp differences between definition from cult opponents, who tend to focus on negative characteristics, and those of 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. These definitions have political and ethical impact beyond just scholarly debate. In Defining Religion in American Law, Bruce J. Casino 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".

Doomsday cults

Main article: Doomsday cult

"Doomsday cult" is an expression used to describe groups who believe in Apocalypticism and Millenarianism, and can refer both to groups that prophesy catastrophe and destruction, and to those that attempt to bring it about. 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. Leon Festinger and his colleagues had 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. The group's members believed that most of the Western Hemisphere would be destroyed by a cataclysmic flood on 21 December 1955. 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.

Political cults

LaRouche Movement members in Stockholm protesting the Treaty of Lisbon.

A political cult is a cult with a primary interest in political action and ideology. Groups that some writers have termed 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 organisations.

The LaRouche Movement and Gino Parente's National Labor Federation (NATLFED) are examples of political groups that have been described as "cults", based in the United States; another is Marlene Dixon's now-defunct Democratic Workers Party (a critical history of the DWP is given in Bounded Choice by Janja A. Lalich, a sociologist and former DWP member).

The followers of Ayn Rand were characterized as a "cult" by economist Murray N. Rothbard during her lifetime, and later by Michael Shermer. The core group around Rand was called the "Collective" and is now defunct (the chief group disseminating Rand's ideas today is the Ayn Rand Institute). Although the Collective advocated an individualist philosophy, Rothbard claimed they were organized in the manner of a "Leninist" organization.

In Britain, the Workers Revolutionary Party, a Trotskyist group led by the late Gerry Healy and strongly supported by actress Vanessa Redgrave, has been described by others, who have been involved in the Trotskyist movement, as having been a cult or as displaying cult-like characteristics in the 1970s and 1980s. It is also described as such by Tourish and Wohlforth in their writings. In his review of Tourish and Wohlforth's book, Bob Pitt, a former member of the WRP concedes that it had a "cult-like character" but argues that rather than being typical of the far left, this feature actually made the WRP atypical and "led to its being treated as a pariah within the revolutionary left itself". Workers' Struggle (LO, Lutte ouvrière) in France, publicly headed by Arlette Laguiller but revealed in the 1990s to be directed by Robert Barcia, has often been criticized as a cult, for example by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his older brother Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, as well as L'Humanité and Libération.

In his book Les Sectes Politiques: 1965–1995 (translation: Political cults: 1965–1995), French writer Cyril Le Tallec considered some religious groups as cults involved in politics, including the League for Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Cultural Office of Cluny, New Acropolis, Sōka Gakkai, the Divine Light Mission, Tradition Family Property (TFP), Longo-Mai, the Supermen Club and the Association for Promotion of the Industrial Arts (Solazaref).

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."

In 2016 supporters of United States presidential candidate Donald Trump were labeled a cult by several political scholars and commentators.

Polygamist cults

In certain polygamist families, destructive behavior akin to that of a cult has been observed. They are called "polygamist cults" because their behavior becomes psychotic and non-conventional in ways that are similar to the profile of a cult. The head of the family is a male who dominates his wives, both physically and mentally. The head of the family becomes a subject of worship, and he is able to distort reality in the minds of his women. To strengthen his stronghold, he manipulates their minds to convince them that the polygamist lifestyle is the subject of envy of the rest of the population, and therefore they have to abide by a family code and stay away from the state authorities. The male head of the family forces his women to perform erratic and bizarre acts to prove allegiance or prove that they deserve to belong to the group. He usually suffers from a psychosis of superiority or grandeur, and he infects his women with a shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3). This disorder is also known as Lasègue-Falret Syndrome.

In Israel, the authorities have detected at least two such polygamist cults, which resulted in prosecutions of the heads of the families, and in case also of the women. In Goel Ratzon's prosecution, he was living with 32 wives and more than 89 children in one compound in Tel Aviv. At the time of arrest only 17 women were residing. Ratzon was interviewed on Israeli television before his arrest and said the women congregate around him because they adore his physical traits and are addicted to sex. Ratzon was sentenced to 30 years in jail for sex offences against minors under the age of 16. Goel Ratzon was acquitted of the offense of holding women in slavery for purposes of receiving labor and sex. The State argued that in polygamous cults, slavery can be extended to "mental slavery", by way of mind control. The Tel Aviv District Court found that the theory of mind control is not universally accepted.

One year after the arrest of Ratzon, the Jerusalem Police arrested Daniel Ambash, a Frenchman living with 6 wives and 17 children. All his women and children were begging for money in the streets of Jersalem. His indictment claimed that he mentally dominated his women by forcing them to participate in confession ceremonies, whereby for each indecent thought which a woman confessed about, she had to perform a humiliating punishment, such as rubbing excrement on her face, licking diarrhea off an anus, perform fellatio on animals, or masturbate in front of the children. Ambash was sentenced to 26 years in prison for rapes of four women, rape of one child under the age of 16, and ordering the punishment of two children by commanding members of the family to rape them with a broomstick. He was also convicted of enslavement of the women for purposes of sexual gratification, and living off the money they collected from beggary. His case was heard in closed doors, and the judgment published as "anonymous". In the press he was referred to as head of the "Jerusalem sadistic Cult". When his children were placed in welfare institutions, it was argued that the women who remained loyal to him suffer from a joint psychosiis of Folie à deux.

Destructive cults

The Thuggee were a criminal cult active in India for at least 500 years before being suppressed by the British in the 1830s.

"Destructive cult" has generally referred 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 limit use of the term to specifically refer 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". The anti-cult movement's use of the word “destructive” in describing a cult group refers mainly to the detrimental effects of membership in the group, which can include physical, sexual, financial, social, emotional, mental and/or spiritual harm. There are varying degrees of unethical or harmful practices from one group to another, and the harm done is not equally severe in all cases. Members can develop PTSD as a result of membership; the type of trauma resulting from cult membership falls under the category of "captivity," along the same lines as prisoners of war and victims of domestic abuse.

John Gordon Clark cited totalitarian systems of governance and an emphasis on money making as 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 Benjamin Zablocki, a Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, destructive cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members. He states that this 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.

There are specific characteristics which the anti-cult movement pinpoints that, when combined, cause them to label a cult as "destructive." These include

• a pyramid-structured system of leadership
• a charismatic leader who is the final authority and rule maker, is above scrutiny and criticism, and shows symptoms of Narcissistic personality disorder
• unethical methods of control over members, as defined by Steven Hassan's BITE model of control (behavior, information, thought and emotion)
• members displaying extreme personality changes (In Psychological Types, Carl Jung wrote, "As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of external influences, the individual becomes neurotic later...A reversal of type often proves exceedingly harmful to the physiological well-being of the organism, often provoking an acute state of exhaustion.")
• members’ lives being centered around the group, taking priority over family, personal well-being and other life pursuits
• aggressive, deceptive and unethical recruiting and fundraising practices

Criticism of the term

Some researchers have criticized the usage of 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 new religious movements will have similar outcomes.

Writing in the book Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field, contributor Julius H. Rubin complains that the term has been used to discredit certain groups in the court of public opinion. 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 Germany's Federal Constitutional Court to have defamed the Osho movement by referring to it, among other things, as a "destructive cult" with no factual basis.

Terrorist cults

Poster by Shining Path

In the book Jihad and Sacred Vengeance: Psychological Undercurrents of History, psychiatrist Peter A. Olsson compares Osama bin Laden to certain cult leaders including Jim Jones, David Koresh, Shoko Asahara, Marshall Applewhite, Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro, and says that each of these individuals fit at least eight of the nine criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. In the book Seeking the Compassionate Life: The Moral Crisis for Psychotherapy and Society authors Goldberg and Crespo also refer to Osama bin Laden as a "destructive cult leader".

At a 2002 meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA), anti-cultist Steven Hassan said that Al Qaida fulfills the characteristics of a destructive cult. He added: "We need to apply what we know about destructive mind-control cults, and this should be a priority with the war on terrorism. We need to understand the psychological aspects of how people are recruited and indoctrinated so we can slow down recruitment. We need to help counsel former cult members and possibly use some of them in the war against terrorism."

In an article on Al-Qaida published in The Times, journalist Mary Ann Sieghart wrote that al-Qaida resembles a "classic cult", commenting: "Al-Qaida fits all the official definitions of a cult. It indoctrinates its members; it forms a closed, totalitarian society; it has a self-appointed, messianic and charismatic leader; and it believes that the ends justify the means."

The Shining Path guerrilla movement active in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s has been described variously as a "cult" and an intense "cult of personality". The Tamil Tigers have also been qualified as such by French magazine L'Express' The People's Mujahedin of Iran, a leftist guerrilla movement based in Iraq, has been controversially described as a political cult and as a movement that is abusive towards its own members.

Former Mujaheddin member and now author and academic Dr. Masoud Banisadr stated in a May 2005 speech in Spain :

If you ask me: are all cults a terrorist organisation? My answer is no, as there are many peaceful cults at present around the world and in the history of mankind. But if you ask me are all terrorist organisations some sort of cult, my answer is yes. Even if they start as [an] ordinary modern political party or organisation, to prepare and force their members to act without asking any moral questions and act selflessly for the cause of the group and ignore all the ethical, cultural, moral or religious codes of the society and humanity, those organisations have to change into a cult. Therefore to understand an extremist or a terrorist organisation one has to learn about a Cult.

Racist cults

Sociologist and historian Orlando Patterson has described the Klu Klux Klan, which arose in the American South after the Civil War as an heretical Christian cult, and their persecution of African Americans and others as a form of human sacrifice. Secret Aryan cults in Germany and Austria in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries had a strong influence on the rise of Nazism. Modern Skinhead groups in the United States tend to use the same recruitment techniques as destructive cults.

Political and legal issues

In the 1970s, the scientific status of the "brainwashing theory" became a central topic in U.S. court cases where the theory was used to try to justify the use of the forceful deprogramming of cult members. Meanwhile, sociologists critical of these theories assisted advocates of religious freedom in defending the legitimacy of new religious movements in court. While the official response to new religious groups has been mixed across the globe, some governments aligned more with the critics of these groups to the extent of distinguishing between "legitimate" religion and "dangerous", "unwanted" cults in public policy.

France and Belgium have taken policy positions which accept "brainwashing" theories uncritically, while other European nations, like Sweden and Italy, are cautious about brainwashing and have adopted more neutral responses to new religions. Scholars have suggested that outrage following the mass murder/suicides perpetuated by the Solar Temple as well as the more latent xenophobic and anti-American attitudes have contributed significantly to the extremity of European anti-cult positions.

For centuries, governments in China have categories certain religions as xiejiao (邪教) The term is sometimes translated as "evil cult", but a more literal translation is "heterodox teaching". The classification of a religion as xiejiao did not necessarily mean that a religion’s teachings were believed to be false or inauthentic, but rather, the label was applied to religious groups that were not authorized by the state, or that were seen as challenging the legitimacy of the state. In modern China, the term xiejiao continues to be used to denote teachings that the government disapproves of, and these groups face suppression and punishment by authorities. Fourteen different groups in China have been listed by the ministry of public security as xiejiao. In addition, in 1999, Chinese authorities denounced the Falun Gong spiritual practice as a heretical teaching, and began a campaign to eliminate it. According to Amnesty International, the persecution of Falun Gong includes a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education, as well as a variety of extralegal coercive measures, such as arbitrary arrests, forced labour, and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death. The Chinese government has sought to legitimize its treatment of Falun Gong by adopting the language of the Western anti-cult movement, but Western scholars familiar with the group say that Falun Gong does not meet the definition of a cult.

Sociologists critical to this negative politicized use of the word "cult" argue that it may adversely impact the religious freedoms of group members. In the 1980s clergymen and officials of the French government expressed concern that some orders and other groups within the Roman Catholic Church would be adversely affected by anti-cult laws then being considered.

The application of the labels "cult" or "sect" to religious movements in government documents signifies the popular and negative use of the term "cult" in English and a functionally similar use of words translated as "sect" in several European languages. While these documents utilize similar terminology they do not necessarily include the same groups nor is their assessment of these groups based on agreed criteria. Other governments and world bodies also report on new religious movements but do not use these terms to describe the groups.

At the height of the counter-cult movement and ritual abuse scare of the 1990s, some governments published lists of cults. Since the 2000s, some governments have again distanced themselves from such classifications of religious movements.

In the United States religious activities of cults are protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits governmental establishment of religion and protects freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. However, no religious or cult members are granted any special immunity from criminal charges.

See also

• Anti-cult movement
• Cult following
• Cult of personality
• Cults and new religious movements in literature and popular culture
• List of new religious movements
• New religious movement
• Sect
• Sociological classifications of religious movements

References

• Cowan, Douglas E. (2003). Bearing False Witness? An Introduction to the Christian Countercult. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-275-97459-6. 
• Lewis, James R. (2004). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0-19-514986-6. 
• Richardson, James T. (1993). "Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative". Review of Religious Research 34 (4): 348–356. doi:10.2307/3511972. JSTOR 3511972. 
• Richardson, James T.; Introvigne, Massimo (2001). "'Brainwashing' Theories in European Parliamentary and Administrative Reports on 'Cults' and 'Sects'". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (2): 143–168. doi:10.1111/0021-8294.00046. 
• Stark, Rodney; Bainbridge, William Sims (1987). The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05731-9. 

Bibliography

Books

• Barker, E. (1989) New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction, London, HMSO
• Bromley, David et al.: Cults, Religion, and Violence, 2002, ISBN 0-521-66898-0
• Enroth, Ronald. (1992) Churches that Abuse, Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-53290-6 Full text online
• Esquerre, Arnaud: La manipulation mentale. Sociologie des sectes en France, Fayard, Paris, 2009.
• House, Wayne: Charts of Cults, Sects, and Religious Movements, 2000, ISBN 0-310-38551-2
• Kramer, Joel and Alstad, Diane: The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, 1993.
• Lalich, Janja: Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, 2004, ISBN 0-520-24018-9
• Landau Tobias, Madeleine et al. : Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, 1994, ISBN 0-89793-144-0
• Lewis, James R. The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements Oxford University Press, 2004
• Lewis, James R. Odd Gods: New Religions and the Cult Controversy, Prometheus Books, 2001
• Martin, Walter et al.: The Kingdom of the Cults, 2003, ISBN 0-7642-2821-8
• Melton, Gordon: Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America, 1992 ISBN 0-8153-1140-0
• Oakes, Len: Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities, 1997, ISBN 0-8156-0398-3
• Singer, Margaret Thaler: Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, 1992, ISBN 0-7879-6741-6
• Tourish, Dennis: 'On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, 2000, ISBN 0-7656-0639-9
• Zablocki, Benjamin et al.: Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field, 2001, ISBN 0-8020-8188-6

Articles

• Langone, Michael: Cults: Questions and Answers [9]
• Lifton, Robert Jay: Cult Formation, The Harvard Mental Health Letter, February 1991 [10]
• Robbins, T. and D. Anthony, 1982. "Deprogramming, brainwashing and the medicalization of deviant religious groups" Social Problems 29 pp 283–97.
• James T. Richardson: "Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative" Review of Religious Research 34.4 (June 1993), pp. 348–356.
• Rosedale, Herbert et al.: On Using the Term "Cult" [11]
• Van Hoey, Sara: Cults in Court The Los Angeles Lawyer, February 1991 [12]
• Zimbardo, Philip: What messages are behind today's cults?, American Psychological Association Monitor, May 1997 [13]
• Aronoff, Jodi; Lynn, Steven Jay; Malinosky, Peter. Are cultic environments psychologically harmful?, Clinical Psychology Review, 2000, Vol. 20 #1 pp. 91–111