Defining Cults - Cult Types
To understand cults we must examine structure and practice, not beliefs. As will be explained in later chapters, it is the thought-reform techniques used by skillful manipulators to ensure compliance and obedience among their followers that is, in the final analysis, what makes cults so worrisome and harmful.
Sayfa 15
Defining Cults - Cult Types
In the United States, there are at least ten major types of cults, each with its own beliefs, practices, and social mores. The list below is not exhaustive, but most cults can be classified under one of the following headings:
1. Neo-Christian religous
2. Hindu and Eastern religious
3. Occult, witchcraft, and satanist
4. Spiritualist
5. Zen and other Sino-Japanese philosophical-mystical orientation
6. Racial
7. Flying saucer and other outer-space phenomena
8. Psychology or psychotherapeutic
9. Policital
10. Self-help, self-improvement, and life-style systems.
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This kind of listing could go on and on, exposing the sheer numbers and scope of the cults around us. Yet, on one level, all cults are a variation on a single theme. And ultimately, that theme has nothing to do with belief. In cultic groups, the belief system -whether religious, psychotherapeutic, political, New Age, or commercial- ends up being a tool to serve the leader's desires, whims, and hidden agendas. The ideology is a double-edged sword: it is the glue that binds the member to the group and it is a tool exploited by the leader to achieve his goals.
Sayfa 13