Most people who are involved in religion begin their involvement because it was their parents' religion. Some embrace their family's faith wholeheartedly, some observe the outward forms, others question it and start to follow a different faith. Of the outward observers, if you never discussed religion with them (it's a taboo subject after all) you might never know they weren't inwardly religious. Of the questioners, some of them give up on all religion, some, for various reasons, pick a new one. Some of those "new ones" turn out to be cults.
But what makes a cult a cult? Not their beliefs. Every faith has beliefs that seem bizarre to those outside the faith, but seem perfectly normal to those who grew up surrounded by it. The religion that I grew up in believed:
- The creator of the universe somehow caused a virgin to become pregnant with himself
- The resulting child, when he reached adulthood, had to be killed in a blood sacrifice either for atonement, forgiveness of sins or as a sign of his love, or all three
- He rose from the dead after three days
- He physically levitated into the sky after a further 40 days
- This man, God, and the "holy spirit" are all "God", yet at the same time distinct "persons"
- This man and his followers could break the laws of physics at will
- It was possible to break the laws of physics yourself by praying to, not only this three-in-one God, but his mother (who also levitated into the sky without dying) and any sufficient holy followers who were coincidently dead
I could go on and on. Naturally this isn't how a Catholic would describe their beliefs, but it's the way it looks to an outsider. And a majority of the people in this country would subscribe to most of these beliefs. Non-Catholic Christians wouldn't pray to Mary or to saints, but you can't really argue with the rest. The purpose of the previous listing isn't to make fun of Catholics or their beliefs, but to point out that if you're going to make judgments about the "weirdness" of cult beliefs, take a look at your own.
A related measure of cultishness is whether a group calling itself Christian has beliefs that are in line with Christianity. If you are of the opinion that you can objectively determine whether any group's doctrines are authentically Christian you're likely part of one of those groups that think they have a lock on the truth. The number of mutually exclusive versions of Christianity that exist is staggering. Sometimes the difference is their opinion on church governance - episcopal or by committee? Other times it comes down to the minutiae of Christology, which the rank and file don't understand anyway. And does anyone really understand the doctrine of The Trinity? If the Bible was as clear and unambiguous as "Bible believers" think it is, wouldn't you assume that there would be fewer competing versions? Or are they all Satanic, except your version.
Some people get it right and determine that a cult is a cult because of actions rather than beliefs. But again, they fail to pick the beam out of their own eye, such as the widespread coverup of child rape by the clergy of one major denomination or the ostentatious lifestyles of many ministers running megachurches.
There are a lot of reasons why people join and stay with cults. My reasons are pretty simple.
As a young man I was dissatisfied with the lack of answers I felt that my church offered. There was too much "take it on faith" for my taste. So I started looking around. I went to services in the churches of other denominations. I read about different religions. I was getting nowhere fast. I was introduced to The Way through a family member who was attending Way meetings. This relative worked in the same office as the local Way leader. I have no idea what her motivations were, what she was looking for, or what attracted her. I do know that she stuck around for a few months and lost interest. So either she was immune to the brainwashing, or maybe there wasn't any brainwashing. I stuck around though.
Why did I stick around? Because it made sense. They tried to make it make sense. Granted, it was all based on the premise that the Bible was inspired by God, but that was no different than any Christian denomination. There was no "take it on faith". Anything that we were expected to believe was documented in the Bible. This appealed to me. Even though I didn't have the theological background to be able to separate the serious Biblical research from what turned out to be pretty shoddy exegesis, it was more than I was getting from my church leaders. In fact, I gave my parish priest the opportunity to address the discrepancies between Catholic and Way Biblical interpretation. All I received was a reference to 2000 years of history. If I was going to go with longevity I'd become a Hindu.
During my early days in The Way it was obvious that my family disapproved. Almost 50 years have gone by, so it's difficult to ascertain exactly what they disapproved of. The most obvious thing earning their disapproval was that I was leaving the church. All branches of my family that I am aware of have been Catholic for many generations. In addition to the religious devotion, Catholicism was cultural. Our particular neighborhood was made up mostly of White Catholic ethnic groups. I don't think I was aware of Protestants until I was in high school. My own parents were very religious - my father attended mass every day if possible. I still remember the look of anger/disappointment on my Dad's face when I told him I was no longer going to mass since I no longer considered myself a Catholic. The theological grounds for disapproval were probably related to the disapproval of simply being not-Catholic, but since most Catholics were not steeped in the myriad details of the Bible they were unable to address my confident (or arrogant) assertions that I now was in possession of The Truth. It's possible that they were swayed by the long shadow that had been cast by The People's Temple mass "suicide" in Guyana a year after my initial involvement. A group that had been labeled a cult had done something heinous, therefore, in the minds of the general public, any group labeled as a cult was equally dangerous. Unfortunately the cult appellation had been applied without any subtlety, usually slapped on any group that differed doctrinally from what was perceived as the mainstream. Down deep, I think what made my parents think I was "blinded" or "brainwashed" was their perception that I had somehow "changed".
There's nothing like the enthusiasm of the newly converted. Whether it's religion or politics or the newly sober, it's the new recruit who is loud and in your face about it. And I sure was in everyone's face about it. It started out during the three-week introductory class. I'd come excited about some new thing I had learned and want to talk about it. To be clear, this wasn't some doctrine spun about billion year-old space aliens storing souls in a volcano, or Jesus appearing the the native Americans, this was stuff that you could trace directly to a Bible verse or two. Of course I was excited, this is what I had been searching for: answers! In response to the obvious discomfort that my parents had with what I was sharing, my mode became less excited and more arrogant that I had The Truth and they didn't. I suppose I had changed.
What my parents didn't know that in addition to my search for spiritual truth, I was also kind of drifting. I had no real goals, was doing poorly in school (not due to lack of intelligence, but lack of ambition) and was drinking a lot. I wasn't taking any hard drugs, but it's likely that I would have gone that path if not for The Way. Being involved in The Way gave me a sense of direction that came of being intimately involved in something greater than myself. I had a mission, I had purpose that I didn't have before. Making "moving the Word", i.e. proselytizing, maybe my priority seemed weird to my family, and evidence of an unwelcome and unhealthy "change", but I don't want to see that alternate history where I didn't have that set of goals.
After a year I moved into a series of "Way Homes" with other Way people, and a year later left the state as part of the missionary program called Word Over the World (WOW). I had planned on entering the Way's leadership program, The Way Corps, but was unable to put together the tuition. A lot of people, including my family thought that my wanting to cut ties and move to another state as a WOW was prima facie evidence that I was in a cult. The truth was that only a small percentage of Way members at any given time were part of any of their programs, and some never were involved beyond the twice-a-week "Twig" meetings. The heavy involvement was mostly people my age (19-22 at the time) - people with children at home, or retirees, or men and women with professional careers tended to live normal lives. In my early days I saw few attempts at controlling the daily lives of Way members by the leadership, and there was no concerted effort to keep people from leaving. (People left all the time)
After one year as a WOW I elected not to return to New York and got married, getting two stepsons in the deal. I lived pretty normally for a while, even dropping out of Way involvement (but not Way beliefs) for a few years. When my wife and I returned to active involvement we found that The Way's founder had died and that a power struggle had broken out. When the broken glass had all settled, the founder's designated successor was still in charge, but 80% of the members and leadership and split off to start their own groups. The leader, having survived the coup attempt, became increasingly paranoid and instituting greater and greater controls. Public pronouncement's became more and more unhinged and practices and doctrines became more oppressive. There were purges. I stayed through all of that. Why?
Why does anyone stay in an uncomfortable, or even dangerous, situation? Why do people stay in crappy jobs or women with abusive husbands? I had decided, at least early in that ten-year period, that an accurate "true" teaching of the Bible was worth something. Right or wrong, I thought that The Way taught the Bible correctly, and I didn't know of any church which taught it any better. Certainly not the church of my youth, my return thereto being the subject of many family prayers. The abuses and attempts at control didn't come all at once, like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water, and it was a while before they came for me. For me, I was balancing the pros and the cons every day. Eventually the cons outweighed the pros.
Rather than following along blindly, or being pitifully brainwashed, I made decisions every step of the way. Were some of these decisions based on false information? Absolutely. The Way's founder wasn't the great Biblical researcher that he made himself out to be. Were some of them based on wishful thinking. Also absolutely. Are "cult" members unique in making decisions that turn out to be bad, or get involved with and stay in bad situations? No.
Don't assume that us ex-cultists are somehow different from the rest of you.
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