Cults

Cults are non standard versions of world religions: some cults become world religions, i.e. Buddhism, a reform movement of Hinduism, Christianity, an outgrowth from Judaism. What transforms a cult from cult status to world religion status? Principally: how big it gets and how clearly differentiated it becomes from its parent religion.

There is no definition of cult that is universally accepted by sociologists and psychologists of religion. The term cult is popularly applied to groups characterized by some kind of faddish devotion to a person or practice that is significantly separate or distinguishing from the cultural mainstream. For example, certain kinds of activities may take on cult-like ritualistic characteristics (recent widespread interest in intense physical exercise has been termed the physical fitness cult). Movie stars, entertainers, and other public figures sometimes generate passionate bands of followers that are called cults (the Elvis Presley cult, to cite one). Groups that form around a set of esoteric beliefs - not necessarily religious - may also be termed cults (for example, flying saucer cults). When applied to religious groups, cult retains much of this popular usage but takes on more specific meaning, especially when contrasted with other kinds of religious organizations.

Cults and Other Forms of Religious Organization

The most commonly used classification of religious organizations is as churches or sects. Although there have been numerous modifications of the original distinction, the following points are generally retained.

Church refers to a religious organization claiming a monopoly on knowledge of the sacred, having a highly structured or formalized dogma and hierarchy, but also being flexible about membership requirements as the organization attempts to minister to the secular society of which it is a part.

Sects, on the other hand, are protests against church attempts to accommodate to secular society. A sect views itself as a defender of doctrinal purity, protesting what it interprets as ecclesiastical laxity and excesses. As protectors of the true faith, sects tend to withdraw from the mainstream of worldly activities, to stress strict behavior codes, and to demand proof of commitment.

Cults have some of the same characteristics as sects. In fact, some scholars prefer not to make a distinction. There are, however, some noteworthy differences. Cults do not, at least initially, view themselves as rebelling against established churches. Actually, the practices of cults are often considered to enrich the life of the parent church of which they may be a part. Cults do not ordinarily stress doctrinal issues or theological argument and refinement as much as they emphasize the individual's experience of a more personal and intense relationship with the divine. Most of these groups are ephemeral, seldom lasting beyond a single generation; they are transient and suffer from a fluctuating membership.

Mysticism is frequently a strong element in cult groups. Religious orders such as the Franciscans began as cults built around the presence of a charismatic leader who emphasized a life-style dedicated to attaining high levels of spirituality. Mormonism began as a cult, became a sect, and eventually evolved into a church. All the great world religions followed this same pattern of development as they accumulated members and formalized hierarchy and dogma.

Contemporary Cults

Cults are as old as recorded history, but contemporary interest in cults became amplified during the late 1960s and early 1970s as numbers of educated middle-class youths abandoned traditional religions and embraced beliefs and practices that were either culturally unprecedented (Eastern religions) or seemed to be throwbacks to an earlier era (Fundamentalist Christianity). During this period, young people were increasingly found living in various types of religious communes and engaging in unconventional behavior, such as speaking in tongues (glossolalia), faith healing, meditating (often under the tutelage of a spiritual leader or guru), and following leaders that conventional society tended to look upon with suspicion and distaste. Interest in cults turned to a combination of fascination and revulsion upon the mass suicide of the Jones cult in November 1978, and national attention was focused in a similar manner years later in Waco, Texas, when federal agents engaged in a shoot-out late in February 1993 with sect leader David Koresh.

Modern cults come in a bewildering variety of ideologies, practices, and forms of leadership. They range from those adhering to a sort of biblical Christianity to those seeking satori (sudden enlightenment) via the pursuits of Zen Buddhism. Some cults have a flexible, functional leadership, such as many groups in the Charismatic Movement emanating from the mainline Christian religions, and others have mentors who control and orchestrate cult events, such as the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification church. Some Hindu gurus, such as Bhagwan Shree Rajineesh of the Rajineeshee sect have been believed by their followers to be living embodiments of God.

The common denominator of all the modern cults is an emphasis on community and on direct experience of the divine. In a cult, participants often find a level of social support and acceptance that rivals what may be found in a nuclear family. Cult activity, which is often esoteric and defined as direct contact with the divine, generates a sense of belonging to something profound and of being a somebody. The modern cult may be viewed as a cultural island that gives adherents an identity and a sense of meaning in a world that has somehow failed to provide them these things.

Several factors have been suggested as contributing to the quests of modern youths for meaning and identity via cults. Each of these factors relates to a disenchantment with, or loss of meaning of, traditional ways of viewing reality. A list of these contributing elements would include the following: the turmoil of the 1960s, including the unpopular Vietnam War, the assassinations of several popular national leaders, and growing evidence of top-level political incompetence and corruption; continued widespread drug use among youths, which tends to disrupt family relations and fosters the formation of drug subcultures stressing esoteric experience; the rapid expansion of technological innovations such as computers, and social organizations, such as bureaucracies, that tend to erode the individual's sense of being in control of his or her own destiny; the apparent failure of traditional religions to solve problems of war, hunger, and alienation; the growth of humanistic education that tends to discredit traditional ways of believing and behaving; the threat of ecological and nuclear disaster; and finally, affluence, which provides the means to pursue alternative life-styles.

Cults are challenges to conventional society. As such, they engender intense questions concerning their possible impact. The modern cults have clearly raised anew the legal issue of how far a society is willing to go to guarantee religious freedom. Some of the cults have been accused of brainwashing members and thereby violating the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. Court cases involving young people who were forcefully removed from cults by parents are still being decided. Future court decisions could significantly modify traditional protection of religious diversity in the United States. Some cults, Hare Krishna being one, have established a legal defense and public education organization to fight for their rights to exist and practice what they believe.

Other impacts are less clear. This wave of cults could crumble into the dust of history as so many others have. Conversely, this age could also be one of those historical junctures that produces an enduring change in theories of human nature and in the structure of social organizations. If so, the new cults provide some idea of the nature of that change. Almost all of them represent an emotional and personal approach to religious experience; they emphasize continued adaptation in a changing world; they stress the attainment of individual power and excellence via the pursuit of cult practices; and they often stress the necessity of harmony between humankind and other aspects of nature. As such, contemporary cults reinforce many traditional American values, such as independence, achievement, self-mastery, and conservation or ecology, that have lost ground in the face of affluence and self-seeking. Just as the Protestant Ethic supported early capitalism, the general ethic of the cults may be the stabilizing element in future society. If so, cult members may well be the leaders of that new age. Clearly, however, a historical verdict must be awaited.

The Christian's Attitude Toward Other Religions

Paul's approach in Athens serves as a good example for the Christian to follow as he or she considers other religions. In Acts 17 the following is recorded:

The men who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.

It is instructive to note that although their idol worship disturbed him, when Paul talked to them he did not condemn them; rather, he found a point of agreement and moved from that point to a presentation of the Gospel without condemning them or overtly criticizing their religious beliefs. Why? Because he knew that once a person accepted Christ, the Holy Spirit would enter them and that such a transformation, such an encounter with the living God, would take care of their paganism once and for all.