Enroth makes distinctions about such groups from an evangelical, Christian perspective. Enroth’s description of a destructive cult is largely religiously based and essentially an extension of what has been called the “counter-cult movement” (CCM). The CCM is mainly composed of “discernment ministries” that view Bible-based cults as aberrational and heretical religious groups that have deviated from what they define as a correct doctrinal Christian perspective. The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, a prominent website that is critical of the CCM, says it is “composed primarily of conservative Protestant Christian individuals, agencies, and para-church groups who attempt to raise public concern about religious groups which they feel hold dangerous, non-traditional beliefs.”495
The CCM seems to have influenced Enroth’s view of cults, though his position in the field of sociology has tempered it. He points out “that when the word ‘cult’ is used to describe a contemporary social phenomenon, it nearly always refers to groups seen as dangerous or destructive.”496
Enroth lists the following four primary, defining features:
A charismatic, living leader
Claims of omniscience or divine descent for the leader
Absolute obedience to the leader
Social boundaries that separate and polarize members from mainstream society
These features again correspond to criteria Lifton established. Enroth also notes “nine common characteristics” and says that “all of the cults have some of these features; not a all cults have all of them.”497
Authoritarian—“A crucial dimension of all cultic organizations is authoritarian leadership. There is always a central, charismatic (in the personality sense), living human leader who commands total loyalty and allegiance.” This would correspond to Lifton’s description of charismatic leadership.
Oppositional—“Their beliefs, practices, and values are counter to those of the dominant culture. They often place themselves in an adversarial role vis-à-vis major social institutions.” This characteristic would contribute to the social isolation of the group and eliminate any competing frames of reference.
Exclusivistic—“Related to the oppositional character of cults is their elitism and exclusionism. The group is the only one which possesses the ‘truth,’ and therefore to leave the group is endangering one’s salvation.” Again this contributes to continued isolation and control. Any information outside the group’s control can be labeled as outside the “truth.” This would also fit within the framework of Lifton’s coercive persuasion process.
Legalism—“Tightly structured autocratic groups operate within a legalistic framework which governs both spiritual matters and the details of everyday living. Rules and regulations abound.” This characteristic can be done through distorted biblical references, typically taken out of context, for the purpose of personal manipulation. Though this can be seen as a doctrinal issue of the CCM, it also contributes to the coercive persuasion process that locks people into a destructive cult.
Subjective—“Cultic movements place considerable emphasis on the experiential—on feelings and emotions. Subjectivism is sometimes linked to anti-intellectualism, putting down rational processes and devaluing knowledge and education.” This might include excessive “speaking-in-tongues” and/or “strong prayer” used to still the mind. The special revelation of the group or leader can also become a subjective means of proving almost anything without the requirement of objective evidence. This again can be seen as a piece of Lifton’s “thought reform” process.
Personal—Conscious—“Perceived persecution is one of the hallmarks of virtually all new religious movements.” The claim of persecution can be used to reinforce social isolation and also be a means to dismiss critics or criticism. Those who criticize the group are “persecuting” it. Bible-based destructive cults have often equated bad press, litigation, and even criminal investigations with the persecution of Jesus at the hands of unbelievers and authorities. In this sense, despite its destructive behavior, the group may redefine reality by casting itself in the role of the victim and pointing out that any opposition or criticism is proof of its holiness.
Sanction Oriented—“Cults require conformity to established practices and beliefs and readily exercise sanctions against the wayward. Those who fail to demonstrate the proper allegiance, who raise too many questions, disobey the rules or openly rebel are punished, formally excommunicated or merely asked to leave the group.” This characteristic is used as a tool of coercive persuasion to intimidate and threaten members through the threat of punishment.
Esoteric—“Cultic religion is a religion of secrecy and concealment. Eastern spirituality, especially, has been described by Brooks Alexander [research director of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, a discernment ministry within the CCM] as ‘split level religion, with an inner truth (the real truth) and an outer truth (an appealing, but limited and somewhat misleading face). This kind of esotericism,’ Alexander continues, ‘accepts the appropriateness (and practical necessity) of a deliberately created gap between the picture that is projected to the general public and the inner reality known to the initiates.’” 498 Many destructive cults are deceptive. What the newly recruited member thought was the group’s “truth” was only its outer shell shown to the world. The principle of “secrecy and concealment” can be used to play a game of “bait and switch.” That is, the new initiate is first presented with an undemanding, pleasant picture of the group, which progressively evolves during his or her continued involvement into almost something else entirely. This is how people can be tricked into joining destructive cults without their informed consent.
Antisacerdotal—“Cults tend to be organizations comprised of laypeople. There are no paid clergy or professional religious functionaries like those in traditional groups. That is not to say that cults do not have spiritual hierarchies or titles applying to specific roles.” This is a relevant issue for the CCM, but it also underlines the fact that many cult leaders are self-taught and self-proclaimed. They have often not been formally educated or sanctioned by an organization, through which they can be held accountable. They typically exercise absolute authority without any meaningful accountability.
Even though Enroth’s nine characteristics include faith-based religious references, they also coalesce around the same three central themes based on behavior and structure, as Lifton established. Like Lifton, Enroth identifies the importance of a central charismatic leader who is an absolute authority and demands virtually total obedience. Enroth, like West, projects and expands upon the process of thought reform as identified by Lifton and understood by Ofshe and Singer in their descriptions. Enroth does this through his explanation of legalism and emphasis on subjective feelings, increasing isolation, exclusivity, perceived persecution, and the denigration of critical thinking. Enroth also notes the potential for related damage done through harsh sanctions and punishments as a consequence of disobedience.
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance website is quite critical of what it calls the “anti-cult movement” (ACM) and can be seen as an apologist for many groups called “cults.” According to the website, the ACM “consists of individuals and groups who attempt to raise public consciousness about what they feel is an extreme danger. As they see it, the threat mainly comes from small, coercive, manipulative groups—mostly new religious movements—who use deceptive recruitment practices and…advanced psychological manipulative techniques to reduce their followers to near-zombie state.”499 Despite its apparent antipathy regarding the ACM, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance website includes a page titled “Common signs of destructive cults.”500 It lists there “a number of organizations that have lost membership through suicide or killing.” The website has chosen to label such groups “doomsday destructive cults” and specifically includes the Solar Temple, Aum, the Waco Davidians, and Heaven’s Gate. Noting the common attributes of such groups, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
say that doomsday cults “exhibit most or all of the following ten factors.”
Apocalyptic Beliefs
1. The leader’s preaching concentrates heavily on the impending end of the world.
2. The group expects to play a major, elite role at the end-time.
Charismatic Leadership
3. A single, male, charismatic leader leads them.
4. The leader dominates the members, closely controlling them physically, sexually, and emotionally.
Social Encapsulation
5. They are a small religious group, not an established denomination.
6. The group or at least the core members live together in an intentional community isolated from the rest of society.
7. There is often extreme paranoia in the group; members believe they are in danger and that governments or people outside the group are closely monitoring and heavily persecuting them. People on “the outside” are demonized.
8. Information and contacts from outside the cult are severely curtailed.
Other Factors
9. The group leadership assembles an impressive array of guns, rifles, other murder weapons, poison, or weapons of mass destruction. They may prepare defensive structures.
10. They follow a form of Christian theology (or a blend of Christianity with another religion), with major and unique deviations from traditional beliefs in the area of end-time prophecy.
Even though this definition narrowly focuses on so-called end-times or doomsday theology as its prerequisite, nevertheless it again conforms to the three categories of characteristics Lifton identifies. That is, the so-called doomsday cults are personality driven, and a charismatic leader dominates all of them. They also exhibit “social encapsulation” factors, which correspond to various aspects of the thought-reform process. And they have all done harm, which in the groups cited was so horrible that it became historically noteworthy.
Intentional Communities or Cultic Compounds?
We should note that thousands of counterculture communities were created and developed during the 1960s and 1970s.501 Many of these intentional communities, or communes, have endured to the present. Benjamin Zablocki, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, broke down such communities into ten categories.502
Alternative families
Cooperatives
Countercultural
Egalitarian
Political
Psychological
Rehabilitation
Religious
Spiritual
Experimental
Zablocki studied hundreds of intentional communities, everything from an Israeli kibbutz to a Hutterite collective. He found that the dropout rate in many of these communities was approximately 25 percent. People who left often cited as a primary cause questions that arose concerning the group’s internal dynamics; typically their concerns centered on the exercise of power and authority.503
Sociologist Stephen Kent, in his own study of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, found that what was initially an idealistic movement focused on social and political activism in certain instances later contributed to various forms of spirituality or morphed into guru worship. This development could be seen in such groups as the Unification Church, Hare Krishna (ISKCON), and the Children of God.504
At times destructive cults with group compounds have tried to portray such heavily controlled environments as intentional communities or benign communes. A cult compound, however, can be differentiated from a benign community in the following three ways. These ways are noted in the handbook Cults and Consequences, which the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles produced.505
Cults are established by strong and charismatic leaders who control power hierarchies and material resources, but communes tend to minimize organizational structure and to deflate or expel power seekers.
Cults possess some revealed “word” in the form of a book, manifesto, or doctrine, whereas communes vaguely invoke general commitments to peace and liberation freedoms and a distaste for the parent culture’s establishments.
Cults create fortified boundaries, confining their membership in various ways and attacking those who leave as defectors, deserters, or traitors; they recruit sums of money; and they tend to view the outside world with increasing hostility and distrust as the organization ossifies.
Jayanti Tamm relates a firsthand account of life in a destructive cult in her book, Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult.506 Ms. Tamm became a visiting professor at Queens College in New York, but a New York group, which the guru Sri Chinmoy led, raised her. Her parents had been followers of Chinmoy before Tamm was born. It wasn’t until she was an adult of twenty-five that Tamm left the community to begin a life of her own making outside the group. Eventually her parents also left some seven years later.
Tamm describes Sri Chinmoy’s “masterful tactics of manipulation.” The guru’s group included more than one thousand followers, and he once had celebrity admirers, such as musician Carlos Santana, singer Roberta Flack, and Olympian Carl Lewis. Chinmoy died in 2007.507
Tamm offers the unique perspective of someone a destructive cult directly affected. She opines, “Perhaps it is more useful to discern what a religious movement is or what a cult is by comparing its impact upon members’ lives: does it complement or control?”508 Tamm says that cults “are surprisingly similar in their methods…tactics and techniques used to recruit and maintain and disown noncompliant” members; these tactics and techniques seem to be “pulled from a universal handbook.”509 She emphasizes the “absolute and unconditional control”510 destructive cults express.
Again, the structure, methodology, and overall tactics Tamm describes can be largely grouped in Lifton’s three general categories or criteria regarding cultic characteristics as follows:
The Nature of the Leader
Tamm points out, “Cults are fueled by and thrive on control,” which comes from “excessive devotion to the leader and the leader’s vision.” She explains, “The leader’s personal agenda is presented as a universal elixir, one that will eradicate both personal and global moral, ethical and spiritual maladies.”511 According to Tamm the leader is seen as “an agent used to unify a disparate collection of strong individuals.” And he or she possesses “unquestioned, absolute authority over [group] member’s lives.”512 The leader is also made to “seem infallible, to possess the answers, solution, the only route to salvation.”513
The Group Process of Coercive Persuasion and Control
Tamm says that Chinmoy isolated and controlled members in his group by fostering a sense of spiritual elitism, which led to social isolation. Tamm says, “There is a clear separation between those ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ Members are holy, special, chosen; outsiders are unholy, ignorant[, and] toxic.”514 She also explains that the group became all encompassing. “Contact with the outside world—often including family—is discouraged, and family is redefined as the group itself…The group assumes all roles—family, friends, church, home, work, community,” Tamm says.515 She also explains that members in the group were influenced to subordinate their thoughts and emotions to the dictates of the leadership. Tamm explains, “Subjugation and subservience is expected and obedience and control demanded.”516 Tamm further recalls how the group emotionally manipulated its members. She explains, “Conformity is enforced through notions of guilt, shame and failure, by both the leader and other members.”517 This drive for conformity can be seen as part of Lifton’s thought-reform process the group and its leader used to mold a mind-set.
Harmful Consequences
Tamm notes that the group diminished virtually anything that might reflect independence and promote self-esteem. She says, “Individual achievements [are] discouraged, downplayed and finally eradicated while the group’s achievements are encouraged, celebrated and memorialized.”518 The net result was that members of the Chinmoy group continually concentrated their energy and efforts on the guru’s goals, not their own
. For example, Chinmoy “didn’t want his disciples to get an education,” Tamm said in an interview.519 She says that the net result of involvement with the Chinmoy group produced “narrow, claustrophobic existences whose singular purpose is the cult itself” and that “logical reason and facts [became] blurry and nonsensical.”520
Tamm’s mother was reportedly once told to have an abortion and put the guru first. And when Tamm became disillusioned, she was “banished.” Tamm says that Sri Chinmoy “sent a message to my parents that I should be evicted and not be spoken to.” Such family estrangements, which cult leaders order, can have devastating results. In Tamm’s case she attempted suicide.521
Can destructive cults change?
After the death of the founding leader, many cults begin to disintegrate. Without their defining elements and driving forces, most cultic groups eventually fade away. But in some situations, especially when there is a large membership or substantial residue of remaining assets, the cult may continue under new leadership. Professor Benjamin Zablocki recognizes that some cults may evolve and eventually become generally accepted churches or denominations.
Zablocki has defined a cult as “an ideological organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding total commitment.”522
In his classic book The True Believer, Eric Hoffer w writes about a similar progression for some mass movements. Hoffer said that such movements go through stages of development. He called the initial and most volatile stage of that development the “active phase” and observed “there is a natural point of termination once the struggle with the enemy is over or the process of reorganization is nearing completion.”523
In this sense Hoffer, like Zablocki, provides for the possibility that controversial or revolutionary movements like destructive cults might eventually evolve into relatively reasonable and more mainstream movements. Hoffer notes, “The personality of the leader is probably a crucial factor in determining the nature and duration of a mass movement.”524
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