areeverywhere but you just do not see them. Every person in the worldhas been in contact with them in one way or another in many cases youcannot see them. The closest cult we know of is on Rice Lake calledthe Moonies led by Reverend Myung, where I have currently visited. Cults can be involved in churches and even are earliest religions arecalled cults.
Cults are not the strongest groups’ sects are thestrongest group. When you join a sect you cannot get out of them but acult you can leave without having any problem or commitment. Sectswill not let you out because many times it’s illegal and they areafraid that you will say something to the public. Cults sometimes areillegal to. Religious cults are in every town and village there is nodefinition of a cult that is accepted by sociologists and psychologistor religion many types of activities will take cult like structures,an example would be any popular trend like physical exercise this iscalled the physical fitness cult.
Famous athletes are a big figurewhen it comes to cults, many times Movie stars, professional athleteswill endorse a product and a trend will start, making it turn into acult. Also people who generate beliefs of something like flyingsaucer, aliens or any unknown figures can be cult. In religion whenpeople call a church they are referring to a sacred organizationhaving a highly structured or formalized dogma and hierarchy, but alsoallowing a bit of flexibility about membership requirements allowingyou to go to a church and leave church when you want to. Althoughsects are against church attempts to accommodate to secular society. Sects believe that they are protecting a true faith or belief. Sectstend to stay away from world events , and also they believe in astrong strict behavioral code and demand a commitment out of theirpeople.
The differences between cults and sects are sometimes thesame. Many scholars do not make distinctions between the two. Cultsare different because they do not expect as much commitment. Manytimes’ cults do not expect couples to become apart. Cults do not lastas long as sects.
Many times’ cults survive through a decade, and alsocults allow you to come and go as you want. Leaders of cults buildaround a charismatic leader who has a lifestyle dedicated to aspecific spirituality group that they know other people will follow. The word Mormonism began as a small cult then grew bigger until itbecame a sect and eventually into a church. All the new religionsfollowed the same thing by beginning small and getting bigger thanbecoming a church. Cults go back as far as we know of life, cults began to getbigger and be known throughout the world in the late 1960’s and early70’s as people were better educated and better understood how theywere formed and how they were run and people began to join. Duringthis time Youths and middle class people began to join cults becauseof the in thing to do and they felt more secure about themselves.
Cults really started to fascinate people when Jimmy Jones cult beganin November of 1978 when all attention was focused on the masssuicide in Jonestown, a similar event happened in 1993 when federalagents engaged in a shoot out with cult leader David Koresh. Modern cults have many different practices and many different ways ofleadership. Some cults have a flexible functional leadership, likethe groups in the charismatic movement coming from the mainlandChristian religion, other cults have people who run and orchestratecult events, like Reverend Myung Moon leader of the unificationchurch. The reason people are attracted to modern cults because itputs emphasis on community and on direct experience with the divine. In cults’ participants often find a level of social support andacceptance that they do not find in a nuclear family.
This makes andgenerates a sense of belonging to something profound and a feel ofbeing somebody. People who often join cults such as this, joinbecause they think they are getting something the world did not givethem. Several factors have been looked at to figure why people likeare modern youths join cults. Factors that were looked at were drug’swar assignation of many unpopular presidents. Cults have beenquestioned 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. Cultmembers believe that goods belong to themselves and that , with thehelp of ancestral spirits, the goods can be returned to them throughmagic religious means. Brainwashing is the process of deliberately subjecting peopleto physical and psychological hardship in order to alter theirthoughts and attitudes, and actions. It also is a process of totallycleaning a mind of one set idea and replacing them by another thoughtor belief. This is called to indoctrinate cleaning a thought andputting a completely new thought in mind.
Indoctrinating can takeplace without brainwashing. There are 2 aspects of brainwashing theyare confessions of past crimes or errors of the past and re-educationto new beliefs. Prisoners sometimes are made to confess by lack ofsleep and food and other forms of intense physical discomfort, alsoisolation from victims’ families and from familiar surroundings. Cult leaders show obedience, and humility and make other members givesocial pressure to the new member to make them join. And the lastthing they do is make mutual criticism and self criticism sessions,which make them have a generalized guilt feeling that all people haveacceptance of new ideas is again fostered by group pressure and theanticipated reward of freedom.
People who have a better understanding of psychology andneuophysiology have made larger groups create extremely effectivebrainwashing programs. Their techniques however have been usedfor centuries as inquisition making people give excited confessionsfrom alleged heretics. Religions sometimes use these methods likescourging, rhythmic dancing and drumming and sometimes inducing atrance like state in which the individual is open to conversion. Inthe 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 membersbelieved that by means of the performance of particular secret ritualsthey would gain knowledge that people in the normal world would nothave and that would make a mystical union with the divine.
Mysterycults make their members feel they are god and give them a feel ofimmortality that they cannot be destroyed. Many times in mysterycults, cult leaders feel they died and were brought back to be god orJesus. In today’s society, cults are one of the many unfortunateaspects endure in life. Leaders of Cults should be dealt with in amore serious matter.
Cult leaders are con-artists and are people thatlike to control others. Cults should be controlled to protectinnocent citizens from being taken advantage of. —BibliographyCDROM: Religious Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc. . 1993CDROM: Contemporary Cults.
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CDROM: Religious Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc. . 1993. CDROM :Contemporary Cults. Grolier Electronic Publishing Inc.
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