Skip to main content

The Anti-Cult Movement

In last week’s post, we discussed New Religious Movements, highlighting Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Davidians, and whether they could be classified as cults. At the end of the post, I gave a tease that this post would discuss the process and stress associated with escaping cults. However, that topic would be better served as the final blog post, so this week’s topic will instead focus on anti-cult movements.

You might be asking yourself, what’s that? It’s a fair question, because this aspect of cult culture is simultaneously rarely discussed but arguably the most obvious. Any new societal movement is going to have detractors. Think about the world of music. In the 1950s and 60s, just as rock and roll was taking off and super famous bands like The Beatles were immensely popular, there was a significant cultural push against it. In the 70s, hippie culture (a key element of the Manson Family) took off, and saw huge pushback as well. So, there is established precedent for societal backlash towards ideas deemed deviant or unconventional.


The term “anti-cult movement,” or ACM, originated in 1981 from sociologists David Bromley and Anson Shupe in their work studying cults in America. The most common definition of this term is that which describes individuals or groups that oppose new religious movements and cults (Bromley & Shupe, 1981). Jeffrey Kaplan expanded this definition to describe “a small core group of highly motivated individuals who function in a largely autonomous organization which may obtain resources from religious denominations or governmental entities, but which is in no sense under the control of these larger entities” (Kaplan, 1993, p. 269). That seems oversimplified, doesn’t it? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in society who isn’t a member of a cult that actively supports them. So does that make everyone part of the ACM?

Technically, no. Although most everyone would agree that cults are generally destructive and lead individuals down dark paths, being part of the ACM requires individuals to actively participate in working to undermine the power that cults have both within their organizations and in society at large. Some ACM’s deal strictly with religiously-oriented organizations, while others focus on secular cults, and others still provide individuals with “de-programming” assistance and exit counselling.

Another sociologist, Eileen Barker, lists five types of cult-watching groups (CWGs) which aim to alter public perception of and change public policy towards cults and NRMs through the dissemination of damaging information against these organizations (Barker, 2001). They are the following:

  1. Cult-awareness groups (CAGs) focus on “destructive cults” (i.e. Peoples Temple, Manson Family)
  2. Counter-cult groups (CCGs) focus on countering teachings of fringe groups
  3. Research-oriented groups (ROGs) focus on deconstructing beliefs and practices of cults
  4. Human-rights groups (HRGs) focus on the human rights of religious minorities
  5. Cult-defender groups (CDGs) focus on defending cults and exposing CAGs


Naturally, anti-cult movements are not without their own controversy. Barker (2001) points out that while “most members of cult-awareness groups eschew the path of violence for themselves, some do feel that a “just war” may be necessary in certain circumstances” to rid cults from existence. Scholars frequently debate about the harm caused by cults in cases that aren’t as apparent as the Peoples Temple or Heaven’s Gate. Concerns have also been raised about the allowance of cults to operate based on freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression.

Furthermore, validity of accounts by former cult members is one area where ACM groups struggle, due to the varied experiences of individuals in different organizations. For example, some former cult members describe their “de-programming” sessions as violent, while others have much more merciful experiences that do not cause further harm or trauma. Therefore, different ACM groups use different strategies, and illicit different responses from those they are trying to help, which makes it difficult to uniformly summarize and clearly define their tactics.

Groups that oppose cults also rely heavily on the media to assist in their mission. One of the most well-known facts about Tom Cruise, for example, is that he’s a member of the Church of Scientology. Most people know this because Cruise is a well-known pop culture icon, and receives a lot of press (and judgement) for being a Scientologist. Similarly, Leah Remini, a comedic actress arguably best known for her role on King of Queens, was also involved in the Church of Scientology for decades until she left and became one of the most outspoken critics of the faith. She created the docuseries Escaping Scientology, which made her one of the Church’s enemies.

The media plays arguably the most significant role in how the public views cults and new religious movements. We’ll take a closer look at how the media influences perceptions about these groups in the next blog post!

 

Cheers!


References

Bromley, David G. & Shupe, Anson. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press. 1981.

Barker, Eileen. Watching for Violence: A Comparative Analysis of the Roles of Five Types of Cult-Watching Groups. London: Centre for Studies on New Religions. URL: https://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/barker.htm

Kaplan, Jeffrey. “The Anti-Cult Movement in America: A History of Culture Perspective.” Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture 2. 1993.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cults in the Media

In the previous post, we discussed the anti-cult movement and several variations of it that target specific types of cults. We briefly touched on the topic of the media and how they both portray and attempt to peel away the veneer of cults, so that people have a better understanding of how they work. This week, we’re taking a deeper dive into media coverage of cults, and how big of a role the media can play in a cult’s downfall. Media is arguably the most powerful tool of the twenty-first century (aside from technology). It shapes the way we view the world, and our perceptions of particular topics, people and events are heavily influenced by what we read and watch, and where we are getting that information from. Just think about how the media has been reporting about the COVID-19 Pandemic over the last year, and how differing opinions about the virus and the measures being taken to mitigate its spread are influenced by where people are receiving their news from. There is always bias i
Post a Comment
Read more

New Religious Movements: Are they Cults?

In the previous post, we discussed how cults operated and recruited members prior to the Internet age. We discussed two prominent cults that existed during the second half of the 1900s: the Manson Family and the Peoples Temple. The latter of these organizations was technically considered to be a New Religious Movement (NRM). But what does that mean? Defining new religious movements has been difficult because of the terminology used to describe them. The term “new” indicates that the organization has not been around for a long time, but that can be said about any religion at one time or another; every religion was once “new.” Additionally, NRM’s have become synonymous with the word “cult” for main three reasons: they operate on the fringes of society; they have a marginal group membership in comparison to traditional religions; and they often represent beliefs that deviate from the norm (Saliba & Melton, 2003, p. 10). For our purposes, New Religious Movements can be defined as m
Post a Comment
Read more