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03/07/93
Groups may prosper by offering security in rapidly changing world
By Victoria Loe / The Dallas Morning News
Ever feel like life is spinning out of control? Has the world begun to look strange and scary? Does it seem, sometimes, that none of the old values apply?
Join the club-or the cult.
When people-ordinary, average people-get overwhelmed by the
uncertainties of life, they may gravitate to any individual or organization that promises a secret key to security and happiness. So say sociologists, psychologists and professional cult-watchers who have studied the origin and dynamics of such groups.
From age to age, fringe groups have flourished in times of social, political or economic stress, times when average citizens might well fear that the world-as they know it-is falling apart.
"Down through history, whenever there's a breakdown of the social structure, there tends to be a burgeoning of cults,' says Margaret Singer, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.
From the fall of the Roman Empire to the black plague, from the French Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, from the social upheavals of the 1960s to the demise of the Soviet Union, scholars say, traumatic change is mother of all manner of peculiar inventions.
In particular, millenarian movements such as the Branch Davidian, which believe that the new world is about to replace the old, thrive in "times when people's way of seeing the world no longer makes sense to them,' says William Martin, who teaches the sociology of religion at Rice University.
Both Islam and Christianity also tend to millenarian outbreaks around the turn of each century. A 1979 attack by Islamic militants on the Great Mosque in Mecca came in the first hour of the first day of the first year of a new century in the Islamic calendar. The Crusades grew out of a millenarian movement that began about A.D. 1000.
So here we are: just seven years shy of the new millenium, in an era when, as Dr. Martin says, "Everything that's not nailed down is coming up.'
Not always odd
Even the most bizarre cults cater to perfectly normal needs: for a philosophy that makes the world comprehensible, for security and fellowship, for improving the society in which one lives. Millions of organizations, from churches to self-help groups to political parties, exist partly to satisfy those needs.
Countless groups that strike nonmembers as weird-crystal gazers, whirling dervishes, UFO watchers, millenarian sects-may be perfectly harmless or even salutary for those who join them. Strangeness does not a cult make.
A cult, experts say, is defined by the power relationships within it. Members give up their personal power to a leader who purports to have special, magical knowledge denied to the rest of the world.
Some cults even trick people into joining and then use behavior modification to break down their autonomy so that they will not leave.
Cynthia Kisser of the national Cult Awareness Network calls those "destructive cults.' In rare instances, they can become dangerous not only to their members but also to the surrounding community.
A nasty argument is raging over how many destructive cults exist.
Ms. Kisser's number -- 2,000 to 3,000 -- is quoted by many scholars.
But J. Gordon Melton, founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religions, counts 600 to 700 "nonconventional religions' nationwide, of which 200 to 250 qualify as cults. Only a portion of those are abusive, he says, and only a handful ever become dangerous.
Dr. Melton calls cult-watch groups such as Ms. Kisser's "paranoid.'
She calls him "an apologist for cults.'
The vulnerable
Who joins cults-or mainstream churches or legitimate religious sects or birdwatching societies, for that matter? Most often, psychologists say, it is people in need of connection.
The classic example is a college student, away from home for the first time. But it might be someone who's just been divorced, lost a job or undergone a crisis of faith.
"All of us have vulnerable times, transitional periods when we are in between meaningful relationships,' says Dr. Singer.
The more alienated the person is, says Dr. Martin, the more likely he is to join a radical fringe group, led by an alienated, marginal figure such as David Koresh of the Branch Davidian.
Once absorbed into a cult, members' wills are slowly subverted- in the most extreme cases to the point that they will kill themselves or others.
The leader is venerated as the keeper of the "sacred science,' the unique knowledge that only he possesses and that is the path to salvation.
Giving up freedom
In return for surrendering critical judgment and free will, members are given "the feeling that they're making sense of the world and that they have special knowledge that gives them control,' says Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
The acts that society considers unthinkable -- 900 people drinking poison at Jonestown, cult members beating their children to death at the leader's direction-are the result of a thousand tiny steps down the road to personal surrender.
Horrified outsiders never understand that "it's a step-at-a-time process,' says Dr. Singer.
For centuries, millenarian cults have tended to flout taboos, especially sexual taboos such as incest, says David C. Rapoport, a professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"They have to prove that the conventions don't apply,' Dr. Rapoport says.
Violence, however, is a recent phenomenon. Although many cults expect persecution and view the outside world with hostility, few turn violent.
Some scholars say it's no wonder that cults have become more violent-so has America. "It's no surprise that these people have these kinds of firearms,' says Lester Kurtz, an associate professor of sociology and former director of religious studies at the University of Texas in Austin. "The cultural norm is to have the best weapons you can.'
Power trip
And what of the monsters who batten on others' degradation? Some see them as true believers corrupted by power, others as cynical charlatans who deliberately exploit their followers for wealth, sex or power.
"There's such a fine line between Mother Teresa or John F. Kennedy and Hitler or Jim Jones,' says Dr. Kurtz. "Even Jim Jones was relatively benign at first-it's the process that turned sour.'
"The leader gets amazed at how easy it is to make people feel guilty and inadequate,' says Dr. Singer, who has interviewed more than 3,000 former cult members. "They (the leaders) get addicted to their own power.'
Dr. Melton, who has studied nonconventional religions for more than 20 years, says he rarely has encountered groups in which anything but sincere belief was operating.
However, Richard Ofshe, a Berkeley sociology professor, says some fringe groups don the mantle of religion as a shield against society's prying eyes. Many officials are reluctant to investigate valid claims of wrongdoing by cult leaders because they fear they'll be accused of religious prejudice, says Dr. Ofshe, who shared a 1979 Pulitzer Prize with the Point Reyes Light in California for an investigation of Synanon, a therapeutic group turned cult.
"It's one thing to criticize or regulate a psychotherapy cult,' he says, "and another thing to criticize or regulate a religion.'
Or, as Dr. Kurtz says, "with divine justification, you can get away with almost anything.'
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