From Cultwatch




Cults are easy to spot, they wear strange clothes and live in communes.
Well some do. But most are everyday people like you and me. They live in houses. They wear the same clothes. They eat the same food. Cult leaders don't want you to know that you are being recruited into a cult and so they order their recruiters to dress, talk and act in a way that will put you at ease. One cult has even invented a phrase to describe this, they call it "being relatable".

Cults are full of the weak, weird and emotionally unstable.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skilled. The reality is that all sorts of people are involved in cults. One of the few common denominators is that they were often recruited at a low point in their life — more about that later.

Cults are just a bunch of religious nut cases.
This is a common mistake people make thinking that cults are purely religious groups. The modern definition of a mind control cult refers to all groups that use mind control and the devious recruiting techniques that this article exposes. The belief system of a religion is often warped to become a container for these techniques, but it is the techniques themselves that make it a cult. In a free society people can believe what they want, but most people would agree that it is wrong for any one to try to trick and control people. In the section "Types of Cults" we will examine the various types of cults you may come across.

Christians call all other groups cults.
Basically Christians have said that if a group claims to be Christian and yet teaches something fundamentally different from what the Bible teaches then they are a cult. ie. a Buddhist group that claims to be Buddhist is not a cult, but a Buddhist group that pretends to be Christian is. This definition is not used in this article.

So what is a cult anyway?







The modern definition of a mind control cult is any group which employs mind control and deceptive recruiting techniques. In other words cults trick people into joining and coerce them into staying. This is the definition that most people would agree with. Except the cults themselves of course!







Religious
Cults that use a belief system as their base are very common. Their belief system could be standard Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or any other of the world religions, or they may have invented their own belief system. What makes them a cult is the fact that they use mind control, not what they believe.

Commercial
Cults that use commercial gain as their base are called "cults of greed". They will promise you that if you join them and follow their special programme for success then you will become very rich. Often they will hold up their leader as an example and explain that if you do what he or she says then you will be successful too. Commercial cults use mind control to get you working for them for free, and to make you pay for an endless stream of motivational tapes, videos, books and seminars all of which are supposedly designed to help you succeed, but in reality are designed to enhance the cult's mind control environment and keep you believing in their almost impossible dream of success. Of course they never mention that the primary way the leaders make money are by selling these motivation materials to their group! For more information see below under the section, "Pressure Selling".

Self Help & Counselling
Cults that use "self help" or counselling or self improvement as their base often target business people and corporations. By doing their courses and seminars they claim you and your staff will become more successful. Business people locked away in hotel rooms are subjected to quasi-religious indoctrination as they play strange games, join in group activities, and share their innermost thoughts with the group. Once you have completed one course you are told you need to do the more advanced course, which naturally costs more than the last. These cults will sometimes request that you do volunteer work and that you help recruit your friends, family and work mates. These groups specialize in creating powerful emotional experiences which are then used to validate your involvement in the cult. The religious overtones are couched in terms which don't sound religious. They usually come to the surface as you near the end of a seminar. Many people have been bankrupted by involvement with these cults.

Political
Cults that use political ideals as their base are well known throughout history. Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's Communist USSR were classic examples of mind control on a very large scale. On smaller scales white and black supremacists, terrorists, and rebel groups commonly use forms of mind control to recruit and dominate their members.





Mind Control is a suite of psychological techniques that cult leaders attempt to control their members with.

Cultwatch does not consider Mind Control to be some magical device which can take away peoples' free will. In other words it does not turn people into some sort of remote control robot. Rather we see Mind Control as a dishonest influence placed covertly on cult members by the cult. So instead of Mind Control being some sort of irresistible force like the aliens in the movies that take over peoples minds, rather it is more like a gun. The cult leader points the Mind Control "gun" at a member and says, "if you leave us then you will lose all of your friends and family

Here's one definition by Walter Marton author of The Kingdom of the Cults. "By the term cult I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified. A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in some one or more aspects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expression of religion in our total culture."

"If you leave us you will lose all your friends and your family."

They held the gun, and I did lose them.

CULT. sorry, delicate ears...once more, CULT! They don't seek out people who will be unprofitable to them. They need productive tithe-payers to build a giganto-mall. Monson don't live in a shack, folks.




Cults are easy to spot, they wear strange clothes and live in communes.
Well some do. But most are everyday people like you and me. They live in houses. They wear the same clothes. They eat the same food. Cult leaders don't want you to know that you are being recruited into a cult and so they order their recruiters to dress, talk and act in a way that will put you at ease. One cult has even invented a phrase to describe this, they call it "being relatable".

Cults are full of the weak, weird and emotionally unstable.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skilled. The reality is that all sorts of people are involved in cults. One of the few common denominators is that they were often recruited at a low point in their life — more about that later.

Cults are just a bunch of religious nut cases.
This is a common mistake people make thinking that cults are purely religious groups. The modern definition of a mind control cult refers to all groups that use mind control and the devious recruiting techniques that this article exposes. The belief system of a religion is often warped to become a container for these techniques, but it is the techniques themselves that make it a cult. In a free society people can believe what they want, but most people would agree that it is wrong for any one to try to trick and control people. In the section "Types of Cults" we will examine the various types of cults you may come across.

Christians call all other groups cults.
Basically Christians have said that if a group claims to be Christian and yet teaches something fundamentally different from what the Bible teaches then they are a cult. ie. a Buddhist group that claims to be Buddhist is not a cult, but a Buddhist group that pretends to be Christian is. This definition is not used in this article.

So what is a cult anyway?







The modern definition of a mind control cult is any group which employs mind control and deceptive recruiting techniques. In other words cults trick people into joining and coerce them into staying. This is the definition that most people would agree with. Except the cults themselves of course!







Religious
Cults that use a belief system as their base are very common. Their belief system could be standard Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or any other of the world religions, or they may have invented their own belief system. What makes them a cult is the fact that they use mind control, not what they believe.

Oh, and Joe had sex with 14 year old Helen Mar Kimball. Great. The cult leader is a pedophile. Follow the prophet, follow the prophet....

If he were alive today, would you allow your teenager to marry him? (As if you would have a choice, her parents objected and so did she but it happened anyway)

Kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here's one definition by Walter Marton author of
> The Kingdom of the Cults. "By the term cult I
> mean nothing derogatory to any group so
> classified. A cult, as I define it, is any
> religious group which differs significantly in
> some one or more aspects as to belief or practice
> from those religious groups which are regarded as
> the normative expression of religion in our total
> culture."


This actually contradicts the definition given by CultWatch. CultWatch states:


"...What makes them a cult is the fact that they use mind control, not what they believe."

There is a neutral, objectively meant definition of the term "cult" that most anyone studying religions from an academic point of view would use. The term is simply meant to apply to any splinter group or relatively new group (new in terms of certain practices or beliefs). All religions started out as cults on this view and grew into the mainstream if they survived and flourished long enough.

"Cult" is also a common term for a group that practices organizational abuse (using deceptive practices for recruitment, using heavy handed mind control techniques, indoctrination, thought control, etc.)

Because the term exists so commonly in two such different, opposed registers is why the word "cult" slips strongly, forcefully, in and out of favor among different people, depending on what they are trying to illuminate (the genesis of religious phenomena, whether dangerous and damaging or not, or the actual freedom of real individuals and their psychological dignity).

The academic like Jan Shipps for example, is not interested in understanding individuals' pain from organizational abuse. As an academic she is only interested in the historical constitution and construction of a given proto-religious group, bracketing its truth claims and ignoring its methods.

People more vitally interested in the welfare of particular individuals' psychological health, safety, and integrity restrict their use of the term cult to organizations that use deception and forms of power to gain and hold members.

People who confuse these two obviously different meanings and intentions behind the various uses of the term "cult" generally are not well informed of its uses or they pretend to not know the difference between the sociological study of the ways religions begin and the psychological interest in the ethical uses of influence.

Excellent summary of the different definitions used for cult.

Many Evangelical Christians like to call ANY religion or church that is outside of their narrowly defined definition of mainstream Christianity a cult. However Christianity used to be a cult in its earlier days too.

When I speak cults I use the definition of groups that use coersive and dishonest methods of (mind) control.

Xtianity is still a cult.