Sunday, October 25, 2020

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part I

No one wakes up in the morning, and after a shower and that first cup of coffee, decides that they’re going to join a cult. No one approached by someone with an engaging smile and an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible thinks “Cool! A cult! Just what I’ve been looking for!” Yet, every day in America, people join up with groups that are labelled cults. Sometimes the labeling is by former members of the alleged cult. The problem with the term “cult” is that there is no consensus on what a cult is. Sure, you can find lists that include things like “Has a charismatic leader” or “encourages an ‘us versus them’ mindset” while others go straight to brainwashing and sleep deprivation. Others, notably among fundamentalist denominations, label any group that deviates from their particular definition of orthodox Christianity as a cult.

I’m going to take you through my journey, before, during, and after, back in and kicked out, of a group that I have labeled in retrospect a cult. You can make up your own mind whether or not it really was a cult. I’ll tell you from the outset that no one asked me to drink any poisoned Kool-Aid, or commit any illegal acts. I didn’t live in a “cult compound”. During most of the time that I was involved I looked and acted “normal”. I worked a regular job, I got married and raised children. I did not wear any distinguishing clothing. The difference was in my mind, in my beliefs, in who and what I allowed to control and influence my actions.

My family was (and still are, mostly) Catholics. Our neighborhood of Rosedale in Queens, New York City was predominantly Catholic, mostly ethnic Irish and Italian with two Catholic parishes. One of the defining features of Catholicism is that you don’t stop “being Catholic”. If you’re unhappy with how things are, you don’t find another denomination that better fits your views, you either tough it out, or move into one of the categories of Catholics who aren’t regular churchgoers: “Ashes & Palms” Catholics, those who show up only for the major holy days and “Lapsed Catholics” – still Catholic, but not participating. You rarely hear about “ex-Catholics”, at least not back then. I was a fairly religious kid. I was an altar boy, I prayed (in private, as well as at church), I regularly went to Confession and attended mass every Sunday. Even during my late teen years, when sex, drugs and rock & roll began to exert their influence, I still prayed and went to church and got ash on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, but I wondered. I wondered why, if we were the spiritual descendants of the apostles, were there many denominations, I wondered how we knew if any of it were true.

My first foray into scratching that itch occurred in my mid-teens. There were several Protestant churches in our neighborhood, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopalian. I had no idea what a small slice of Christendom this represented. I attended services at all these churches and was struck by how similar they were to a Catholic mass. It didn’t really seem to make a difference where you went to church, none of them were excited about providing any solid answers. During my first year of college I took a comparative religion course. I did a lot of reading about the major world religions and was quite impressed with Buddhism, but it was still just people talking, without any actual evidence.

One of the things that cult scholars point out is that cults are always on the lookout for people like me, people who are unsatisfied with the status quo, who are not getting anything out of whatever religion they were raised in and are looking for answers, looking for meaning. They also point out the cults are also looking for people who meet other criteria, those who have hit rock bottom in some part of their lives, people who are lonely, who are outsiders. This latter category wasn’t me by any means. I had good parents, a stable family, decent middle-class opportunities, and access to a good education. I wasn’t down and out and at the end of my rope, but I was, inside, desperately seeking meaning and validation and I thought that religion was where I would find it.

Unlike the Protestant mainstream which emphasizes the Bible as the standard upon which to base belief, Catholicism emphasizes Church teaching embodied in apostolic succession, a chain of bishops stretching back to the original twelve apostles. The Protestant Reformation was in large part a rejection of this reliance on the opinion of Church leaders and a reversion, or so they thought, to a reliance of the text of the Bible, just like the early Church did. The problem with that was, for the early Church there was no "Bible". Of course there were the various gospels and epistles being passed around, but many of these weren't even written until many years after Jesus' ministry, and it wasn't until several hundred years later that a consensus of what precisely constituted "The Bible" was arrived at, referred to as "the canon of scripture". In Christianity's early days there was a proliferation of writings. In addition to those that we are familiar with, there were many other gospels, epistles, apocalypses and miscellaneous writings. There were contradictions among the many writings, some of which were clearly defending a particular point of view or condemning an opposing point of view. (This could also be said about the canonical writings, but that's another blog post!) A lot of stock was put in authorship. Something that was purportedly written by an apostle, or at least a close disciple of one, had a better chance of being accepted than an anonymous treatise or one written by an ordinary Christian. At some point, someone had to make the decision regarding what was legitimate and what wasn't.  The logic of the time was that the original apostles were most likely to have accurately passed on Jesus' teachings. Those who had been directly taught by those twelve also were thought to have transmitted the teachings of Jesus correctly. This was "logically" extended to anyone who was in an unbroken line of leadership from Jesus' time to the present, not allowing for human error or willful misconstruction. The leaders of the Church at the time the canon of scripture was decided believed that they, by virtue of unbroken apostolic succession, were able to determine which writings were genuine and which were not. During my time of searching for answers I knew none of this. I believed that Catholic doctrine and the Bible were identical.

I was wide open for someone who could point out the discrepancies.

Part II:

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