Roundtree, Kendyl THST 100 Professor Sanchez 25 April 2012 Destructive Cult Leaders The human journey can

be seen as a questa search for knowledge, a search for comfort, and a search for understanding. Perhaps the greatest of humanities questions have been answered with faith or religion, where we look to a supernatural power, something bigger than ourselves, to gain an insight of the world in which we live. Our understanding of this mystic spirit, what most people identify as God, has changed over time, and is indeed still changing. What was once a world of few religions has turned into a multi-religious universe, containing both new and old practices of varying beliefs. As individuals, we all have a different perspective of the world, and traditional, more conventional religions may not have the answers that some people are looking for. In turn, these soul seekers gravitate to other types of groups where they can fill their innate need for belonging and acceptance. However, there are a handful of small countercultural groups that mask themselves as one thing, and turn out to be another. These organizations, known as cults, are led by people who have a psychological need for power and dominance, and they use manipulation and intimidation strategies to recruit and control their members. Some destructive cult leaders have even persuaded their members to commit unscrupulous acts, such as murder and suicide. Whatever the outcome may be, one thing is clear: cult leaders narcissistic desires, which stem from childhood trauma, lead to the manipulation and exploitation of innocent, vulnerable individuals.

The term cult can be defined in a number of ways. Originally, a cult was a small religious group whose views were unconventional to societies. Jesus and his 12 followers were even considered a cult by the Roman authorities because they started a movement that challenged all traditional values at the time. Their belief that Jesus was God himself is now a world religionChristianity. Though cults can evolve into established, more respected religions, most remain small and separate from society. Eileen Barker, James Beckford and James Richardson, authors of the book Challenging Religion, believe that cults develop in contrast to the dominant culture and its motifs, rather than in consonance or sympathy with them.1 However, when a series of flagrantly unorthodox groups emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars stopped using the term cult because of the stereotypical connotations that were developing alongside it. Since the media were using the words cults and sects to mean dangerous or even criminal religious organizations, most sociologists and historians of religion eventually [began to use] new religious movement (NRM) as a value-free, nonderogatory substitute for sect or cult.2 Nonetheless, NRM and cult tend to be used synonymously. Before the 1960s, a cult was simply a group whose views were unconventional to societies, but in recent years, its features have changed. Nowadays, cults are marked by five stereotypical characteristics: (1) charismatic singularity, or the idea that the group, especially its leader, has a unique and perhaps magical claim upon its members based upon a new and compelling vision; (2) quality of communal and/or familistic detachment that unites members together by literally or symbolically cutting them off from others; (3) the fusion of private selves with collective identities and the willingness to sacrifice the former for the latter; (4)
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Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford, and James T. Richardson, Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker (London: Routledge, 2003), 22. 2 Lindsey Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., vol. 10 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), s.v. "New Religious Movements: An Overview." 2

control through socialized ideology and mortality rather than through government, for example, and (5) the search for affirmation through shared ultimate experiencewhether in outer space or inner spaceas pathways to personal and/or societal change.3 In spite of this, cults tend to be very different from one another in terms of their organizational structure, authority, and commitment required of its members.4 People may make significant investments of time, money, identities, marriages, families, and careers to their group,5 and they often go to great lengths to serve the interests of their cult, even to the point of risking or sacrificing their own lives.6 Lastly, though every cult utilize[s] elements of earlier-religious traditions,7 they all differ in their modes of origination. Most founders simply assert themselves as religious fundamentalists, but others have claimed to be prophets, some even proposing to be God or Christ. Though there may be distinct differences, every cult tries to provide it members with guidance on the way in which they should lead their lives. Most new religious movements are nonviolent and harmless, but there are a handful of dangerous NRMs that are led by controlling, manipulating individuals. Saul Levine, a psychiatrist at UCSB, says that these leaders are paranoid, sometimes very disturbed,8 and have a physiological need to be in control. They often have early experiences of neglect, abandonment and disappointment of parental figures and authorities, which can eventually create narcissistic personality disordera personality type that causes extreme selfishness, a crave for
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Barker, Beckford, and Richardson, Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker, 24. 4 Jones, "New Religious Movements: An Overview." 5 Jones, "New Religious Movements: An Overview." 6 Hirofumi Shimizu, "Social Cohesion and Self-Sacrificing Behavior," Public Choice 149, no. 3 (December 2011): 427, doi:10.1007/s11127-011-9880-1. 7 Jones, "New Religious Movements: An Overview." 8 Tom Fennell, "Doom Sects," Maclean's 110, no. 14 (April 07, 1997): http://0-proquest-.umi-.com-.linus-.lmu-.edu/pqdweb-?did=11370095-&sid=11-&Fmt=3-&clientId=769 3-&RQT=309-&VName=PQD. 3

admiration, and a grandiose view of ones own talents. These types of leaders strongly believe that they have superhuman powers, in which their direct connection with God gives them ultimate authority over their acolytes. They make the focus of the cult themselves and their needs, as opposed to most religions, in which the focus would be on the community or upon worship. By convincing followers that he or she is of absolute power, the leader is able to fulfill his or her innate need of control and dominance. In order to have complete control, leaders use systematic programs to manipulate and brainwash the group members. They recruit people through deceptive techniques9 that rob them of their identity and individualitytechniques that experts call thought reform. Thought reform is a systematic effort that has two stages: one is the breakdown stage with heavy confession and a breakdown of ones psychic integrity, and the other is a stage of reeducation trying to remake a person into a new person.10 Lorne Dawson, author of Cults and New Religious Movements, argues, Individuals are likely to be subject to intense pressures to learn new ways of thinking and living,11 and they are often forbidden from contacting family and former friends. By being closed off from society, acolytes can no longer be exposed to the differing ideas and opinions that one would normally encounter in everyday life. Without this variety of thought, members are likely to be more easily persuaded to believe things they would not normally accept as valid.12 In other words, they become more susceptible to manipulation and control. The leaders enforce a lack of autonomy, in which followers are stripped of their selfdetermination and independence in order to conform closely to the doctrines, ideology and

Lorne L. Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader (Williston, VT: WileyBlackwell, 2003), 8. 10 Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 30. 11 Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 7. 12 Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 7. 4

social customs of the group.13 This erosion of autonomy forces members to depend on their leaders, which can lead to various kinds of exploitation, such as financial, sexual, physical or psychological. To facilitate their sovereignty and to prevent individualism, leaders create uniformity within the cult with strict requirements and prohibitions concerning diet and dress. However, this monotony also allows members to feel connected with one another. Paul Oliver, author of New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed, claims: The leader of a group may strengthen his or her influence over the members by encouraging a close sense of belonging within the movement. In a situation where there is a very close feeling of social cohesion, where the bonds between the individual members are very strong, a situation may be reached where the individual members only wish to relate to other members. In such a case, it is easier for a leader to control and even manipulate the members, since they may come to act almost as a single entity.14 As autonomy is lost, followers become more obedient to the leaders demands.15 Simply, it is easier to control a group of people when they are all in unison with one another. However a cult leader chooses to assert his power, there always seems to be an aspect of manipulation used to produce obedient followers. Because of the media, society has been well informed on the potential dangers a cult may have, so it seems strange that even with this knowledge, a person would still willingly become part of such a controlling and damaging movement. Conversely, Rae Corelli, author of the article Killer Cults, believes that a person does not actually set out to join a cult and that affiliation is

Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 8. Paul Oliver, New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing, 2011), 155. 15 Shimizu, "Social Cohesion and Self-Sacrificing Behavior," 429.
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not voluntary.16 Instead, they set out to join a new religion, work for a cause, or start a political movement, and are unaware of, what John Healy describe as, the accumulation of coercive and destructive psychological processes typically conceptualized as brainwashing or mind control.17 In other words, they are manipulated into joining the movement, rather than having joined of their own choice. From the inside, the group may seem noble and inspirational, but eventually a line is crossed, and the group stops functioning as it was originally advertised. For example, some cult leaders convince their followers to move to an isolated area of land, far from society, which theoretically would be made into a utopia with all the members living in harmony. It becomes evident, however, that what was supposed to be an oasis of communal living, has turned into a prison, in which the followers are cast under the leaders spell. By using faith as bait, leaders are able to reel converts into a world in which their obedience feeds the leaders need for power. People are drawn in to these so-called religious groups for a number of reasons. As a part of an individuals first encounter with a NRM, there are three important dimensions that can be used to determine a persons conversion. They are: the attractions of the NRM, how the NRM may support their prior beliefs, and how the new group can give context to an individuals prior religious experience.18 However, there is one particular psychological dilemma that accounts for such a major conversion. Dawson argues that a persons conversion represent[s] a radical attempt to resolve certain common and yet difficult problems with maturation.19 Though most young people eventually resolve these issues, strong family ties prevent these converts from
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Rae Corelli, "Killer Cults," Macleans 110, no. 14 (April 1997): OmniFile Full Text Mega. John Paul Healy, "Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From Discovery to Disenchantment," Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health 13, no. 1 (2011): 11, doi:10.1080/19349637.2011.547125. 18 Healy, "Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From Discovery to Disenchantment," 11. 19 Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 114.
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figuring out who they are and what their future holds. In the midst of their frustration a future arrives that promise[s] them a way to separate from their families and explore their own nature, while remaining surrounded by a supportive and highly structured group.20 Oliver argues that these individuals are psychologically vulnerable, or are passing through a period in their life when they feel vulnerable,21 which is especially common for people in their late teens and twenties. Additionally, young people often go through a phase when they reject the authority of their parents and want to establish their independence in the world. In this case, joining a new religious movement, with the promise of regular meals and accommodations, may thus be very attractive.22 Teenagers, however, are not the only people who are dependent on cults. The unemployed and homeless may turn to these groups because of their physical need for food and shelter, and though the religious belief system may be a fairly peripheral issue for them,23 they may develop a considerable feeling of indebtedness to the leader for providing them with a home. But unfortunately, when a person depends on someone, it makes him or her more susceptible to manipulation. By exploiting the physical weakness and idealistic aspirations of their recruits, leaders are able to satisfy their own desire of power24 and control over the people who depend on them. Whether a person is brainwashed into joining a cult, or if they join to be fed and given shelter, the disciples end up in a state of dependency, which puts them in a state of mind in which further, more radical manipulation becomes possible. Within the cult, leaders take steps to ensure and to deepen the loyalty that the acolytes have for him or her. In many cases, it is in the form of sexual exploitation. Dawson states, The

20 21

Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 114. Oliver, New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed, 155. 22 Oliver, New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed, 154. 23 Healy, "Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From Discovery to Disenchantment," 11. 24 Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 116. 7

sexual relationships happen within the confines of a larger and imbalanced relationship of power that places the student at a disadvantage.25 By looking up to the leader as a godly figure, the followersusually womenbelieve that it is their obligation to abide to the leaders requests or demands for sex. Some people may be manipulated into having sex, while others may be physically forced or drugged. These sexual violations are the result of the leaders need for dominance and control over the cult, and they use spirituality to exert this power. After creating faithful, yet delusional followers, the leaders are able to project their spiritual beliefs on the acolytes, which in some circumstances, can end in tragedy. End-time cult leaders believe that through death, they can take their followers to another level of existence,26 where they would live in a utopia, free from evil. Tom Fennel claims that the leaders of doomsday cults believe they have a modern prophet speaking directly from God. They believe that He is coming soon and the Earth is going to be destroyed.27 Destructive cult leaders commonly predict the exact day of the apocalypse, which to them, is the ultimate power trip because they can theoretically re-write the scripture. They promise their followers that there is a better life waiting for them, and with the world about to end, they ha[ve] nothing to lose by arranging their own deaths.28 Most logical people would reject these claims, but Rudd argues that this type of heavenly promise appeals to some troubled individuals who literally give their lives to their leader.29 Foreseeing the end of the world, the leaders persuade the acolytes to end their own lives, where they could then ascend to paradise as a group. However, this requires parents to first drug their children before they drug themselves. So not only has the leader

25 26

Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, 227. Fennell, "Doom Sects." 27 Fennell, "Doom Sects." 28 Fennell, "Doom Sects." 29 Fennell, "Doom Sects." 8

persuaded people to commit suicide, but he/she has also manipulated them into murdering their own childrenchildren who were too young to speak up for themselves. Because of the tight hold that the leader has on the followers psyche, he/she is able to convince them that drugging their child is a spiritual act, when in reality, its murder. The Jonestown massacre of 1978 exemplifies the terrifying potential of cults. Jim Jones had a troubling childhood, and religion offered him the hope and acceptance he needed, but like most leaders, it was power that he craved. He became a Methodist minister, and built a multiracial, quasi-religious, socialist organization in San Francisco called Peoples Temple, which to his followers, was a group dedicated to feeding the hungry, giving to the needy, and clothing the naked. Peoples Temple used good intentions to draw people in, but in all of his social programs and his congregational involvement in the community, he was simply trying to build his own sense of power by creating people that depended on him. Eventually in 1978, he claimed he was the messiah, and predicted that there was going to be a nuclear explosion that would bring an end to the world. As a way to be safe from annihilation, he ordered his followers to abandon their corrupt lives and move to a remote jungle compound in Guyana,30 a place that he named Jonestown. It turned into an insular world, where if a person was to try and leave, they would supposedly be beaten, and sometimes even shot. Then, on November 18, 1978, Jones preached to his followers that a nuclear explosion was no way for socialists to diehe said they should die with dignity, not tears and agony. As a result, he killed all of the children and senior citizens of the community, and then coerced the rest of his followers to ingest a mixture of cyanide and fruit punch.31 Nine hundred and thirteen people were left dead, of which two

30 31

Fennell, "Doom Sects." Rebecca Moore, "Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Cultural Transformation of a Tragedy," Nova Religio 7, no. 2 (2003): doi:10.1525/nr.2003.7.2.92. 9

hundred and sixty were childrenall at the expense of Jones and his manipulation, intimidation, and coercion. What started as a nonviolent, counter-cultural organization in San Francisco, turned into doomsday cult in Guyana, where new ideas could not get in, and people could not get out. Charles Manson is another example of a destructive cult leader, whose teachings transformed three young women into cold-blooded murderers. Manson was thoroughly neglected as a child, and his mother was in jail for the majority of his childhood. After being arrested numerous times for burglary, assault, and grand theft auto, he too found a life in prison, which prevented him from having a family of his own. When he was eventually released from prison, he recruited people into a small group that he called His Family, where he used a systematic program of drug use and sexual violation to break down his young recruits resistance, rendering them vulnerable to Mansons bizarre reeducation. By ridding his followers of their past identities, he was able to introduce his own philosophy and become their ultimate leader. For example, he gave the women doses of LSD up to three times a week, where in their fragile state of mind, he could manipulate them into having sex with men whom he was trying to recruit. Mansons strategy, however, took an unexpected turn one nighthe dropped four of his fanatic members off at a randomly chosen house in a wealthy white neighborhood, where they were ordered to beat, strangle, stab, and shoot the five occupants. They then used the blood of the victims to write cryptic messages on the walls as a symbol of their done deeds. The next night, he called for more murders, and he knew that the girls would obey his commands because of their dedication. The control that Manson had over these individuals ultimately led them to a lifelong sentence in prison. Similarly with the Jonestown massacre, Manson manipulated people into doing things that they would have never done in a clear state of mind.

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In conclusion, individuals do not set out to become members of a cultthey are drawn in with false promises of salvation, love, and acceptance, and are manipulated with deceptive techniques to become obedient, complacent followers. When a leaders narcissistic desires lead to excess personal influence on their members, problems begin to surface, because without objectivity, people can justify otherwise unthought-of crimes. Though most cults are nonviolent, society is still fearful towards them due to individuals like Jim Jones and Charles Manson. However, it is not the group itself that frightens peopleits the potential for cultic tragedy at the hands of manipulating, power-seeking cult leaders. In other words, society isnt fearful of the actual spiritual beliefs that a group may have. Instead, they fear how a leader may act on these beliefs. They fear that the narcissistic desires of a cult leader will lead to the manipulation and exploitation of vulnerable individuals that can, and has, lead to mass-suicide and murder.

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Bibliography Barker, Eileen, James A. Beckford, and James T. Richardson. Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker. London: Routledge, 2003. Corelli, Rae. "Killer Cults." Maclean's 110, no. 14 (April 1997): 44-48. http://sks.sirs.com.sharedcopy.com/cgi-bin/8df43c014a70082b9eec5914dd145fa8.html. Dawson, Lorne L. Cults and New Religious Movements a Reader. Williston, VT: Blackwell, 2003. Fennell, Tom. "Doom Sects." Maclean's 110, no. 14 (April 07, 1997): 48. http://0-proquest-.umi-.com-.linus-.lmu-.edu/pqdweb-?did=11370095-&sid=11-&Fmt=3-&clientI d=7693-&RQT=309-&VName=PQD. Healy, John Paul. "Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From Discovery to Disenchantment." Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health 13, no. 1 (2011): 2-21. doi:10.1080/19349637.2011.547125. Jones, Lindsey, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd ed. Vol. 10. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Lewis, James R., and Jesper A. Petersen. Controversial New Religions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Moore, Rebecca. "Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Cultural Transformation of a Tragedy." Nova Religio 7, no. 2 (2003): 92-100. doi:10.1525/nr.2003.7.2.92. Oliver, Paul. New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum International Publishing, 2011. Rhodes, Ron. The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions: The Essential Guide to Their History, Their Doctrine, and Our Response. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001.

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Shimizu, Hirofumi. "Social Cohesion and Self-Sacrificing Behavior." Public Choice 149, no. 3 (December 2011): 427-440. doi:10.1007/s11127-011-9880-1.

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