Analysis Of Religious Cults Essay, Research Paper
There are many types of cults in the world, cults are
everywhere but you just do not see them. Every person in the world
has been in contact with them in one way or another in many cases you
cannot see them. The closest cult we know of is on Rice Lake called
the Moonies led by Reverend Myung, where I have currently visited.
Cults can be involved in churches and even are earliest religions are
called cults. Cults are not the strongest groups’ sects are the
strongest group. When you join a sect you cannot get out of them but a
cult you can leave without having any problem or commitment. Sects
will not let you out because many times it’s illegal and they are
afraid that you will say something to the public. Cults sometimes are
illegal to.
Religious cults are in every town and village there is no
definition of a cult that is accepted by sociologists and psychologist
or religion many types of activities will take cult like structures,
an example would be any popular trend like physical exercise this is
called the physical fitness cult. Famous athletes are a big figure
when it comes to cults, many times Movie stars, professional athletes
will endorse a product and a trend will start, making it turn into a
cult. Also people who generate beliefs of something like flying
saucer, aliens or any unknown figures can be cult. In religion when
people call a church they are referring to a sacred organization
having a highly structured or formalized dogma and hierarchy, but also
allowing a bit of flexibility about membership requirements allowing
you to go to a church and leave church when you want to. Although
sects are against church attempts to accommodate to secular society.
Sects believe that they are protecting a true faith or belief. Sects
tend to stay away from world events, and also they believe in a
strong strict behavioral code and demand a commitment out of their
people. The differences between cults and sects are sometimes the
same. Many scholars do not make distinctions between the two. Cults
are different because they do not expect as much commitment. Many
times’ cults do not expect couples to become apart. Cults do not last
as long as sects. Many times’ cults survive through a decade, and also
cults allow you to come and go as you want. Leaders of cults build
around a charismatic leader who has a lifestyle dedicated to a
specific spirituality group that they know other people will follow.
The word Mormonism began as a small cult then grew bigger until it
became a sect and eventually into a church. All the new religions
followed the same thing by beginning small and getting bigger than
becoming a church.
Cults go back as far as we know of life, cults began to get
bigger and be known throughout the world in the late 1960?s and early
70?s as people were better educated and better understood how they
were formed and how they were run and people began to join. During
this time Youths and middle class people began to join cults because
of the in thing to do and they felt more secure about themselves.
Cults really started to fascinate people when Jimmy Jones cult began
in November of 1978 when all attention was focused on the mass
suicide in Jonestown, a similar event happened in 1993 when federal
agents engaged in a shoot out with cult leader David Koresh.
Modern cults have many different practices and many different ways of
leadership. Some cults have a flexible functional leadership, like
the groups in the charismatic movement coming from the mainland
Christian religion, other cults have people who run and orchestrate
cult events, like Reverend Myung Moon leader of the unification
church. The reason people are attracted to modern cults because it
puts emphasis on community and on direct experience with the divine.
In cults’ participants often find a level of social support and
acceptance that they do not find in a nuclear family. This makes and
generates a sense of belonging to something profound and a feel of
being somebody. People who often join cults such as this, join
because they think they are getting something the world did not give
them. Several factors have been looked at to figure why people like
are modern youths join cults. Factors that were looked at were drug’s
war assignation of many unpopular presidents. Cults have been
questioned about brainwashing people, and found it to be true.
Cargo cults are usually neutralist and are in it for money.
The word cargo refers to foreign goods possessed by Europeans. Cult
members believe that goods belong to themselves and that, with the
help of ancestral spirits, the goods can be returned to them through
magic religious means.
Brainwashing is the process of deliberately subjecting people
to physical and psychological hardship in order to alter their
thoughts and attitudes, and actions. It also is a process of totally
cleaning a mind of one set idea and replacing them by another thought
or belief. This is called to indoctrinate cleaning a thought and
putting a completely new thought in mind. Indoctrinating can take
place without brainwashing. There are 2 aspects of brainwashing they
are confessions of past crimes or errors of the past and re-education
to new beliefs. Prisoners sometimes are made to confess by lack of
sleep and food and other forms of intense physical discomfort, also
isolation from victims’ families and from familiar surroundings.
Cult leaders show obedience, and humility and make other members give
social pressure to the new member to make them join. And the last
thing they do is make mutual criticism and self criticism sessions,
which make them have a generalized guilt feeling that all people have
acceptance of new ideas is again fostered by group pressure and the
anticipated reward of freedom.
People who have a better understanding of psychology and
neuophysiology have made larger groups create extremely effective
brainwashing programs. Their techniques however have been used
for centuries as inquisition making people give excited confessions
from alleged heretics. Religions sometimes use these methods like
scourging, rhythmic dancing and drumming and sometimes inducing a
trance like state in which the individual is open to conversion. In
the 20th centuries, most noticeably by the people’s temple of Guyana,
whose membership committed mass suicide.
Mystery Cults are usually in the ancient times whose members
believed that by means of the performance of particular secret rituals
they would gain knowledge that people in the normal world would not
have and that would make a mystical union with the divine. Mystery
cults make their members feel they are god and give them a feel of
immortality that they cannot be destroyed. Many times in mystery
cults, cult leaders feel they died and were brought back to be god or
Jesus.
In today?s society, cults are one of the many unfortunate
aspects endure in life. Leaders of Cults should be dealt with in a
more serious matter. Cult leaders are con-artists and are people that
like to control others. Cults should be controlled to protect
innocent citizens from being taken advantage of.
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Bibliography
CDROM: Religious Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993
CDROM: Contemporary Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM: Cargo Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM: Contemporary Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM: Religious Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM :Contemporary Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM :Contemporary Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.
CDROM :Cargo Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc… 1993.