What causes people to join religious cults?

[scapularkid8]

I think of a religious cult as:
Any group that is socially suspect (keeps to itself, isn’t involved in mainstream society like most churches), has a leader that claims to be God or receive direct and literal messages from God or claims prophecy, is unusually controlling of the members’ lives in decisions that shouldn’t be made without much thought in the first place (such as what to wear, how long to sleep, who to talk to, how to spend small amounts of money) as well as large decisions (who to marry, how many kids to have, how to parent their children, how to talk to God).

I don’t necessarily think of the word cult as a bad thing inherently or all cults as bad. I, in fact, might maintain that Catholic Christianity, my own religion, could be seen as a cult and I can definitely see why Christianity was seen as a cult in its early years:

-We believe we are “separate” from others who are not in our group.
-We believe we possess a “unique” knowledge that no other group has (Scripture + Tradition, Real Presence)
-We maintain the first leader of our movement besides Christ Himself was a man charged with that duty directly from God. (You are the Rock, and upon that Rock I shall build my Church)
-The early Christians that shared all they owned.

 

[ricko]

It’s great to hear one cult member talk about another cult as though they were any different. Your ripping on cults and then spitting out the same load as the cults your ripping on. Read your post again and then ask yourself why a non believer could possibly call you a hypocrite and laugh at you. Your conclusion describes the Catholic church “don’t believe what they tell you, they’re lying” lmao

Everything in my post is based on objective factual evidence of the two cults mentioned.

The Catholic Church does not tell any prospective member any thing like “don’t believe what they tell you , they’re lying” In fact if you would ever go to a Catholic Mass, they don’t even discuss other religions. They’re too busy worshipping God.

There is a statement in Catholic documents that says the Church does not in any way coerce anyone to become a Catholic. A decision to become a Catholic must freely be done by the person so interested.

 

[survive]

The word cult has several different meanings today. In the sense of “any group that uses deception, seduction and manipulation to recruit, change, control and exploit members”, they join for the reasons people join non-cults. These groups present themselves as regular denominations, political movements, health and self-improvement programs, diets, businesses, art movements, you name it. They act legit and mainstream on the surface when they are recruiting. The manipualtion begins immediately. It takes many forms at once to override the recruits’ particular awareness and defenses. Everyone is vulnerable. People have been recruited by cults while investigating them as professional anti-cult activists.
The times people are most vulnerable are times when they are already going through any change. Because no life change is simple, it’s natural to let defenses against change drop a little when moving house, changing jobs, getting engaged, leaving home, or being promoted, among other transitions. In those times we are more willing to talk to strangers, more willing to break a routine, and more willing to consider an argument we would normally have an answer to.
You’re pumping gas into your car. The man at the next pump says he wonders what the price will be next month. A normal conversation between strangers follows. It develops as a very normal, average casual-friend relationship over the weeks that follow. After a few weeks, he does you a favor you desperately need – say, he just happens to be around to pull your car out of mud – and washes it and has his brother, a mechanic, tune it up. Soon you are in debt to him and his brother and his girlfriend and don’t know how to repay them. They say it is their outlook on life that makes them do favors for people and no one owes them anything, and besides they know you would do the same for soemone in need; they can see your good heart. Before long, you are occasionally going to the community potlucks they give. You run into intelligent people you know there and all kinds of ideas and opinions fly around the dinner tables. This starts to be your new routine, an intellectiual, free, diverse scene, the furthest thing from a cult you can imagine. The mechanic says he can lend you a tiller for your grden but he needs it back Thursday. All day Thursday he answers his cell saying he is helping with a self-help seminar and finally suggests you just bring the tiller to the classroom. You get there. You end up listening in on part of the seminar and for something to pass the time you read their paper and stack chairs. You agree with parts of the public relations paper they have up front but object to part. You assume that’s OK. The teacher shakes your hand. He seems like a humble, approachable, healthy, down-to-earth guy with some interesting takes on common self-help theory. He acts interested in learning your ideas too.
You begin to feel at home among these people, whom you still don’t think of as a group – just some folks around town who mostly know each other.
Eventually they need an extra hand for a charity project. It sounds easy and fun and you certainly owe some of them, and it’s not for them but for the needy. There you see one of them attacked by a member of the public for doing a plainly good thing. You step up to defend him and end up defending yourself and the philosophy of the class, which the stranger is attacking as well. Afterward they reassure you that it happens all the time. They encourage you to think of times when you were unfairly treated. They say people like you and them, nice, wise people, deal with that a lot. You’re too tired to care how manipulative that sounds. More and more of your new circle of friends sign up for the classes, and finally one of your new friends asks why you aren’t interested. You can’t articulate why. She says it’s free the first year. You sign up. Before long your backlog of questions about ideas and practices that don’t seem right to you is washed out of your memory by the flow of activity and ideas you like, and you can’t remember what it was that didn’t seem right back when you had time to analyze things.
Then the group starts changing. In response to one crisis after another, the authority of the teacher, the urgency of unity and dedication inside the group, and the assumption that questions show a problem with the questioner, gradually but quickly intensify. Then raising money is urgent, then staying together, then bringing new people in, always due to a different crisis, alway supposedly temporarily. One day you wake up from a nightmare of being trapped in a carnival show, and you feel your mind split down the middle – you need out and leaving would be a betrayal, frightening and sad. You decide to give it another chance. If things get worse you’re leaving. But when things get worse you can’t leave. There is nowhere to go out there.

 

[Answersplease]

Cult is derived from the Latin word Cultus which means care or worship.

Modern secular definitions of the word “cult” are broad enough to encompass any religion, although the words “outside the mainstream” are usually used in the definition, anyone who hates religion in general can argue that there is no single religion that has the majority of the worlds population in it and so any religion can be considered a cult.

One should not fall into the secular trap of looking at spiritual things through secular definitions.

In ages past, the word “cult” was used in conjucntion with pagan worship and has received a negative stigma.

In these modern times, the word “cult” is used in conjunction with religions that have dangerous practices like the Jim Jones cult and the Heaven’s Gate cult.

Fundamentalist “Christian” groups that say Apostolic Churches are cults are:
1.) Weak in their positions as valid religious organizations and must tear down others in an effort to make themselves look better, OR
2.) Demonically controlled, OR
3.) Both 1.) and 2.).

As to your question about why people would join a cult, do not rule out demonic activity as having something to do with it.

 

[Answersplease]

Cult is derived from the Latin word Cultus which means care or worship.

Modern secular definitions of the word “cult” are broad enough to encompass any religion, although the words “outside the mainstream” are usually used in the definition, anyone who hates religion in general can argue that there is no single religion that has the majority of the worlds population in it and so any religion can be considered a cult.

One should not fall into the secular trap of looking at spiritual things through secular definitions.

In ages past, the word “cult” was used in conjucntion with pagan worship and has received a negative stigma.

In these modern times, the word “cult” is used in conjunction with religions that have dangerous practices like the Jim Jones cult and the Heaven’s Gate cult.

Fundamentalist “Christian” groups that say Apostolic Churches are cults are:
1.) Weak in their positions as valid religious organizations and must tear down others in an effort to make themselves look better, OR
2.) Demonically controlled, OR
3.) Both 1.) and 2.).

As to your question about why people would join a cult, do not rule out demonic activity as having something to do with it.

It should be noted that Jim Jones used physical brainwashing (loud speakers spouting propaganda all night, and intimidation tactics via firearms) and psychological brainwashing (instilling paranoia) to control his “followers” and prevent them from leaving.

 

[cthulhubryan]

By the way, how did you arrive at your definition?

Cordially,
Mick

I access the second most theological book in the world: The Dictionary.

BTW: I have a friend whose Aunt and Uncle are members of a cult because their flyer starts with why they are not a cult. One of my definitions of a cult is that if your literature starts with “Why we are not a cult” the you probably are a cult

 

[excaliber]

I was a Jehovahs witness.
Let me explain somethings.
If you were visited by Jehovahs witnesses, its not like you would join right there and then.

No but you would ask questions,
and they would be more then happy to answer them. Showing you in your bible the word Jehovah
and showing you in your bible a scripture saying that the earth was
made to be inhabited, and that everyone was not going to heaven.
Also scriptures about the dead not
knowing anything let alone being
in Hell.

Now while you are thinking about these scriptures (which I can post
if you don’t think they exist)
Lets say you get sick and go to
the hospital. Guess who will come
and visit you, most people are impressed by this and if they go
to a kingdomhall they are in for a shock as they see people talking happily before and after the service, and they see how nice friendly and interested everyone is
in them.

Basicly from that point, you WANT
to believe them. They seem special as if God is guiding them
making them so nice and peaceful.

Then you are a convert, knowone
said or acted like they were in a cult. You are absorbed in meetings
and reading materials, and eventualy will be Jehovahs witness.

And yes they will also give you a sence of family, a church where
most people know you and speak to you.

I called a morman church after leaving JW. They were even more
intense, they would come to my house then and there. And some of the members went out of there
way to sit with me during a service that was not there own.
One of them said something a quote about Joseph smith, they said it in a low tone and both looked at me…they said, did you notice anything when I said that…
The truth is that I DID notice something like a glowing shadow
or the room getting blury. To this
day I wounder what that was also
I was invited to parties and game night.

That is why

 

[Korotkov]

About the donuts, when I was younger we used to have religious summer camps and the food there was really good.

However they also taught about pregnancy control and other earthly stuff among things of faith so you would not have liked those camps!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that some kids that were not Lutheran could join the camps and be baptised if they wished it.

 

[survive]

The word “cult” has many definitions, some of which are so new that dictionaries are still debating them or hammering out the wordings, and the derogatory sense of the word is one of the newest.
It started off meaning a garden plot. Then it also meant any system of devotion, religious, political, recreational, literary/artistic, philosophical or any otehr kind. Later it came to mean a sect; any subgroup within a complex system of devotion, as devotion to one god within a polytheistic system, or in terms of modern entertainment, the cult of one concept album within the fandom of a band with many concept albums. These are value-neutral uses. Members of them were willing to call themselves cult members, because it didn’t mean anything bad in that usage sense.
Later, dictators cultivated (note the root word) cults of personality around themselves. This became a notorious source of horrible unthinking cruelty and nightmarish group behavior. it meant that even a whisper that the leader had said something could move millions of people to obey regardless of what it was. They were too afraid not to.
Meanwhile, Evangelicalism was developing as a grouping within Protestantism and wanted to define itself. Evangelical leaders suggested that the term for other belief systems, especially christian ones that strongly differed from Evangelicalsim, was “the cults”, in the sense of subgroupings of devotion. It was still value-neutral, but it was getting a connotation of “other people, not us.”
The post-Reformation period saw a gradual rise in utopian communalism. by the year 1901, many utopian comunes were int ehir second generation and spreading and were not even religious groups – but they acted as close-knit as members of a new religious group. These communes were based on claims of health improvement, economic improvement, or other non-religious goals.
In the 1960’s, a huge number of people going through transitions and living alone coincided with a huge number of people learning about ways to control people. Interest in other cultures and religions, health and fitness, and reinventing business, among other changes then, made a foothold for new religious, business, health, etc. movements and some of those movements had leaders who were skilled manipulators who controlled and endangered followers in scarily new ways. They were using a gradually crafted combination of techniques from military training, childrearing, animal training, psychotherapy, education, advertising, political persuasion, drama, music and stagecraft, and learning to misrepresent themselves to prospects.
When someone asks if a religion or any other group, worldview or movement is “a cult”, I ask in what sense.