The last few years have been a good time for makers of shows and films about religious cults. Not too long ago, Netflix released a 1994 documentary called Children of God. It’s about an Australian New Age cult called The Family, a group that became famous in the 1990s due to revelations of child abuse, illegal drug therapy, and fraud. The past few years have seen at least two movies and a television series about one of today’s most famous cults, Scientology, along with other fictional treatments of cults like Hulu’s The Path and FX’s American Horror Story: Cult.
I’ve always been fascinated by religious cults. Not joining up with them, of course, but just the general idea. I’m not sure why they interest me. Still, who among us really understands why we ponder at length the things we do?
The topic of cults raises difficult questions: Why do people join them? Why do people start them? Do they do it for the tax exemption or notoriety, or is it about something more sinister? Are some more susceptible than others to being drawn in by cults? Are some people actually better off in them?
Before you answer that last question, run through the list of people you know and tell me there’s no one there who could benefit from the structured lifestyle offered by a cult. Not the bad ones, of course—maybe the ones who make and sell fruit preserves or macramé potholders. If there aren’t any candidates, you probably don’t know many people.
Maybe my preoccupation with cults stems from the idea that a person can make another person believe such radical, seemingly unbelievable things. It seems every cult leader in the news is claiming to be the reincarnation of or successor to Jesus or trying to convince followers he’s come up with a new revelation that changes everything—a revelation that may involve space aliens and depleted back accounts. We all like to think we’re too skeptical for that kind of thing, but folks join these groups every day.
Then there’s the word “cult.” It’s often laced with venom and derision, or at the very least, condescension. Sure, in many cases it’s useful for distinguishing between groups that pose real harm and those that just seem weird, but at best it’s a slippery term. The term “fringe religious group” works just as well.
Another possible reason I’m interested in cults is my early life experiences with a couple of them. The first happened when I was ten years old, with a group from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, better known as the Hare Krishna movement. My mom and I dropped my dad off for a flight to California, and as I’ve done on most days of my life, I wandered off the beaten path. While my mom and dad did adult things like looking for departure gates, I ended up chatting with a few members of the group.
If you weren’t out and about during the 1970s, or you haven’t seen the film Airplane!, you might not know airports used to be fertile hunting grounds for lesser-known religious groups looking to boost their memberships. The people I met that day didn’t frighten me, but I do remember being fascinated by their bald heads, pony tails, and sandals. We talked for a little while, and they left me with a copy of a book with a cover depicting beatific blue people dressed in gold and adorned with lots of flowers.
Years later, I realized that book was the Bhagavad Gita, but at the time, with my Baptist upbringing, I figured it was a free ticket straight to the cheap seats in hell. Still, I wasn’t about to turn down a free book, so I kept it for a while. Knowing now that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness makes a good deal of its money from book and paraphernalia sales, I’m flattered they didn’t charge me for it.
The next childhood memory I have of a fringe religious group was in 1978, when around nine-hundred people died because of a megalomaniacal jerk named Jim Jones. Jones thought it would be an excellent idea to relocate his church, the People’s Temple, from California to Guyana in South America, where he then decided to murder his followers and try to pass it off as a mass suicide. For cultural reference, the term “drinking the Kool-Aid” comes from the Jonestown massacre. This despite the reality that the cyanide Jones forced on his followers was actually mixed into the lesser known cheap drink Flavor Aid. Try bringing that bit of trivia up when someone uses the phrase to brand someone else as the epitome of gullibility.
For weeks, I watched television coverage of the events in Jonestown, wondering what could have possessed those people to place their faith in such an obviously insane man, to give him all their possessions and follow him to another country. Even at the age of thirteen, I knew at least part of the troubling answer to that question was they didn’t think he was insane, at least not at first. And then it was too late.
Before any of us get too haughty about cults, it’s useful to contemplate a few things. First, every religion was probably called a cult at some point in time, even today’s heavy hitters. Sure, they’re drawing the big crowds now, but once they were just offshoots of other religions or, worse, brand-new theologies that sounded made up and awfully blasphemous. Another thing to consider is that a true believer’s religion seems, to that person, to be the best way of explaining life, the universe, and everything. The most important thing to remember, however, is every religion seems inexplicably weird to someone.
So who decides what’s a bona fide cult and what’s just an offshoot of an existing religion with, let’s just say, a few new interpretations of things? Are there celebrities involved, or does the membership consist of mostly average people? Does the theology involve visitors from Andromeda and their shiny metal ships, or is it more of a “piggyback” religion, wherein most accepted tenets are unchanged, but everyone is now required to worship on a different day of the week?
In case you passed that last bit off as entirely a joke, think about some of the things the world’s major religions have fought about over the years.
