So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part XII - The Ethics of Deprogramming

I've been blogging about cults for several years now - my own history in one cult, The Way International, as well as more generic discussions of cult methods and practices. I'll argue that cults are generally bad things and people shouldn't get involved in them, but is it justified to forcibly remove cult members from the a cult?

No.

During my involvement with The Way International my parents considered "deprogramming" me in order to "free" me from my supposed mental imprisonment. They went so far as to consult with a deprogrammer, who actually talked them out of the attempt, pointing out that failure would mean that I'd likely never want to have anything to do with them ever again. They chose not to risk it. Mom and Dad never spoke of it, but many years later one of my sisters spilled the beans. At the time there was a lot of media focus on cults in the wake of the forced mass suicide at The People's Temple in Guyana. Parents whose children were in cults assumed that all cults were potentially going to end up like Jim Jones' followers. The cults that attracted the most attention also tended to have beliefs or practices (or both) that were far enough outside the mainstream as to appear "weird". The assumption was that the only reason that anyone would get involved in a cult was that they were brainwashed. Mind control was the only way to explain it.

Family members often point to how their loved ones "changed" after getting involved with a cult, not only their beliefs, but their behaviors and loyalties. But is that so unusual when new recruits to a cult are more likely to be young and actually looking to change their lives? Many people who have had family members join the military, especially those who have seen combat, could attest to the changes in the outlook of their loved ones. A new cult member typically is looking for some meaning in their life and a cult provides that meaning. Is it any wonder that they are often exceedingly gung-ho about their new life's focus? 

What about when the honeymoon period of cult involvement has ended and the cult member begins to experience some of the abusive treatment? Surely that's brainwashing? Not so fast! We can compare someone who stays in a harmful cult to someone who stays with an abusive spouse, sure that she loves the man who beats her every day, or is afraid that she won't be able to survive on her own. Or someone who hates their job but won't look for a new one. Justified or not, logical or not, people continue in harmful situations either because they fear that the alternative is worse, or have made the calculation that the perceived benefits outweighs the downside. I personally have done both - I stayed in a marriage that was mentally abusive because I was afraid that I'd lose my children and afraid to be perceived as a failure, rather than get out; I continued in a job that was terrible on many, many levels because I judged that the financial benefits outweighed the negatives that I had to endure. 

People join cults because they make a decision to get involved in something that they believe gives them what they want...whatever that may be. People stay involved in cults because they make a decision that staying in is the better alternative to getting out. Are they making the "right" decision? Who knows? Unless one knows all the variables in another's life, how can you decide what is best for that person? Spoiler alert: you can't. 

So what about deprogramming? You don't hear too much about deprogramming these days, or cults for that matter. But back in the eighties there were a lot of people making big money from the families of young people involved in cults. I know of several people who were the target of deprogrammers, some succumbed and left their cult, some escaped the deprogrammers and went back. What did deprogrammers actually do? Their first step was kidnapping the target of the deprogramming. Kidnapping! Often violently. The head deprogrammer would hire muscle to abduct the target who then be locked away from the world, often in an isolated farm house of hotel room. The abductee didn't usually even know what city they were in. They were allowed no contact with their fellow cult members, were not allowed to leave and sometimes were physically restrained. In extreme cases they were sleep deprived. Various methods of persuasion were employed - the cult's beliefs were questioned or mocked, accusations made about the cult leader, and in one case that I am familiar with, the abductee's fiancée was accused of cheating on him! The methods used by deprogrammers appear closer to what would be consider brainwashing than what the cults actually engaged in. 

If cults, in particular the one I was involved in, had brainwashed their members, it would stand to reason that it would be difficult for someone to leave. Yet during my own involvement I saw people freely walk away, new people, as well as those who had been in for decades. My own cousin, who got me involved, walked away within a year, presumably because she decided that it wasn't providing anything that she wanted or needed that she wasn't getting anywhere else. 

Finally, in the United States we have the right of free association, as well as the right to the religion of our choice. No one has the right to forcibly convert (or de-convert) someone else...even if they think the other's beliefs are harmful...or weird.

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part XI - Hidden Knowledge & The Pseudo-Caste System

Among the many ways that cults use to recruit and retain members is by the hint of a special or secret knowledge that is only available to the initiate. It's reinforced by a hierarchical structure where more special knowledge is revealed as you move toward the center of power. 

The Way's initial appeal for many was that they claimed to be able to teach you the Bible "like it hadn't been known since the First Century". Anyone who has studied the Bible from a scholarly, disinterested point of view knows that t is full of contradictions. I won't spend time here pointing them out, but they are numerous. They range from historical and archeological mistakes to different Biblical authors describing the same events in mutually exclusive ways. There are also many instances where the average Christian believes something about the Biblical narrative that is totally at odds with what it actually says. The founder of The Way was well aware of these things and did a great job spotlighting them in his Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class. His purpose, of course, was to undermine trust in mainstream Christianity and its leaders and traditions in order to substitute his own foundation for belief. 

At face value, he was substituting simply "reading what was written" for tradition. But the Bible is not a simple book. It's not "a" book at all, but a collection of more than 60 books by almost that many different authors. Despite his "keys to interpretation" that emphasized reading what was right there on the page, in the context, the contradictions and difficulties still existed. They called them apparent contradictions, and set about constructing logic-twisting explanations to harmonize the various discrepancies. One of The Way's more obvious doctrinal deviations from mainstream Christianity was a disbelief in The Trinity. The Trinity is the doctrine whereby God is a threefold entity, consisting of The Father, the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. You can't find it detailed explicitly anywhere in the Bible, but is the result of centuries of early Christian theologians attempting the reconcile the conflicting descriptions of Jesus' nature set down in the Bible. The Way's unitarian view of Jesus was a similar attempt, albeit one that took significantly less time than the development of The Trinity. 

But the fact that a different conclusion about Jesus' nature was reached isn't the point, it's the use of that unique take, that special knowledge which was part of The Way's hold on people. The undermining of trust in mainstream Christianity, replaced by reading what was written, cemented a trust in what Way leadership was teaching, making it clear that The Way was the only place where you could find Biblical truth. If that was important to someone, that was a powerful tool to keep people from straying. In fact, so much emphasis was placed on the trustworthiness of the teachings of Victor Wierwille, The Way's founder, that any questioning of his conclusions were brushed aside. However, it was never framed as "Wierwille is infallible", but suggested that you should hold your questions "in abeyance" until you understood more, i.e. became as knowledgeable as Wierwille...which was effectively never. 

The special knowledge did not end with what was presented in PFAL. The class itself was only part of a series of classes, culminating in the "Advanced Class". This class was billed as training in more special, secret knowledge, including spiritual healing, discerning of spirits, and revelation from God. As I look back on it 40 plus years later, it was a bit of a disappointment, but Advanced Class Grads still had that elite cache, and got to wear a special nametag identifying them as such. (The Way was big on nametags identifying which caste you belonged to) But taking the Advanced Class only took a couple of weeks out of your life and a few hundred dollars. The next circle included participants in The Way Corps "leadership training program", which was effectively a lifetime of servitude. 

The structure and time commitment of Way Corps training varied during my time in The Way, but it was never less than two years, spent at one of The Way's properties. Graduates of the Way Corps training made up the leadership cadre of The Way. Upon their graduation they were given assignments, either at Way headquarters or "in the field", i.e. running fellowships, or state programs. Although initially billed as a program to turn out the best "Twig" (aka local fellowship) leaders, in reality, you were in it for life. Dismissal from the Way Corps was viewed as shameful, a failure. 

These Way Corps grads typically had a higher level of commitment and loyalty and helped standardize fellowships around the country and world. To the rank and file "believers", Way Corps leaders were the authorities. You didn't question leadership. They themselves were recipients of more special and secret knowledge that the non-Corps weren't privy to, tantalizing their egos and locking them more firmly into the system while simultaneously keeping the non-Corps in a state of obedience. If you weren't a Corps graduate you were conditioned to trust Wierwille and in turn, logically accepted the virtually infallibility of those he had deputized to lead in his place. There was a balance between feeling above the riff-raff of the world due to being holders of secret knowledge that the non-Way didn't possess and being inferior to the Way Corps who had even more secret knowledge and who were spiritually incapable of steering you wrong (God just wouldn't allow it). 

Those who came to The Way because they were lonely, or fell in love with the person who "witnessed" to them, typically did not stick around. The Way's appeal was intellectual. I don't mean that intellectuals were attracted to The Way, although some were, but that it was a search for answers based on logic (with the Bible's inerrancy as the basic premise) and not faith, that attracted the vast majority and kept them around, often for decades, if not their whole lives. The hook that snared many of us was the declaration that on one hand God's will was easy to understand and apparent to anyone who could read, yet at the same time hidden away from the ignorant hordes of mainstream Christians. 

The seeds of The Way's destruction were sown from the first days, although it took 40 years for them to come to fruition. The special, secret knowledge had always been based on the promise that The Bible was very literally an open book. Anyone could read and understand it without the aid of priests or theologians. This was never strictly true, but it was the selling point and it kept people around. The trust that was engendered in Wierwille and his successors sealed most people's compliance. But that required unity among the leadership. It also required a membership body that was unskilled in actual Biblical research. Wierille's "research" was shoddy and incomplete. He quoted scholars such as E.W. Bullinger without understanding the points that they were making and had no understanding of Hebrew or Greek grammar beyond what could be looked up in a concordance. His definitions of Greek words would have surprised anyone who had studied Biblical Greek. But most Way members had no such expertise, so they were easy marks. 

Internal dissension was usually handled by kicking people out, often in the middle of the night. And in pre-internet days, the dissenters might never be heard from again. In the late eighties though, there was a very public "civil war" amongst Way leaders in the wake of the death of founder Wierwille. Instead of one voice parroting what was coming down from the top, various leaders began developing their own followings and "ministries", people began to see this lack of direction and began doing what they had been promised they could do - read, study and understand the Bible and make their own decisions. Eventually this all began to be played out on message boards and websites all over the internet. The Way splintered into dozens of groups all competing to be the true heirs of Wierwille's mantle. 

The Way still exists, as well as a multitude of Way-derived groups promoting various versions of Way doctrine. But it's no longer what it was, and the control mechanisms that were in place for many years were no longer effective. I have no idea if the raggedy remains of The Way can still be considered a cult, since I have been out and away for over 20 years, but cults proliferate and they don't ahve to be religion-based.