Ten Marks of a Cult Religion

The horror of the Koresh cult tragedy (or the destruction of the World Trade Towers in New York by Islamic cultists, ed.) gives us opportunity to ponder the differences between true and false religion; between healthy and unhealthy spirituality. There is some admixture of good and bad religion in all of us. The differences are matters of degree along a continuum. To analyze the extreme or grotesque forms of cult religion like that of Koresh's Branch Davidian community is a way of being more vigilant to false religion in us all.

What we confront in this situation is what we could call "the mystery of evil." There is an inexplicable "more" that turns simple sin into an evil of tragic dimension. We also encounter here the religious expression of a massively unhealthy personality. David Koresh was mentally ill. We can only wish he had received some help along the way.

We could say, unhealthy religion is the kind of religion unhealthy persons have. But we should also say that we are all vulnerable to false religion and unhealthy spirituality, some more than others.

So here are ten marks of false or "cult" religion. The word "cult" is a slippery term. It is used to label any religious group you think is wrong. Early Christians were thought of as a cult by the majority culture. One person's saint is another person's religious fanatic. So we should move carefully. That is why I think it is important to try to describe specific characteristics.

1. The leader assumes God-like authority over its members. In the book of Acts the townspeople at Lystra think Paul and Barnabas are the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes, and they begin to worship them. Paul and Barnabas show their integrity by being horrified at this worship. They tear their clothes and say, "Stop, we are humans like you" (Acts 14). Leaders like David Koresh enjoy and encourage the worship. They assume perfect knowledge and goodness. They become like a god.

Contrast this with the words of Jesus. When someone addressed him as "good teacher," Jesus responded, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:18). The apostle Paul said of his leadership style as opposed to "super apostles" of his day: Not that we lord it over you in faith; we work with you for your joy (2 Corinthians 1:24). And Peter gave this instruction: Tend the flock of God that is in your charge not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over them ... but being examples ... (1 Peter 5:2-3).

2. It provides an escape from reality. Reality has to do with the truth of things, truth which can be validated by other people. Cult religion provides few "reality checks." A reality check is when you go to another person or to a group and say, "I'm not sure I'm perceiving things correctly. Would you test my perceptions with me?" Cult religion is characterized by distorted thinking and false perceptions. Their doctrinal convictions or views of reality have no checks and balances. There are no external reference points by which to judge the truth of its claims. John Wesley provided his followers a four-fold criteria for the truth of doctrine: scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. Cults have only one reference point: the powerful subjective interpretations of its leader.

T.S. Eliot said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." Good religion helps us bear a bit more so we might live more healthily. False religion helps us to flee reality. It traffics in magical thinking. Magical thinking imagines magical solutions to problems not based in reality. It says, "If I do or say this, I can get God to act in this way or the world to respond in this way."

3. Cult religion traffics in guilt and shame. It preys upon people with heavy guilt and shame and offers a false solution: total commitment to the cult. Guilt and shame, when healthy, move us to life-changing behavior which leads us to a happier and healthier life. But they can be manipulated to promote unhealthy allegiance to a leader or group.

4. Cult religion demands a complete break from life to this point. All the "past" is bad or evil. Only present life in the cult is good. God and God's Spirit are not to be located "back there" in earlier experiences of life. Because of this message it offers a special allure to people who have suffered a painful or abusive past life. But it is false hope, as they will find out.

5. Cult religion thrives in secrecy. It creates a secret garden of perfect religion. It hides its doctrines, its rules, its community behavior under the cloak of secrecy. There is a closed circle of membership. Its doctrines are an "esoteric" body of truths which only insiders can know and appreciate.

6. It breaks moral laws from "above." Sometimes people break moral and societal laws from below--they aren't "good" enough. Others break laws because they think they are too good for them. They think themselves creatures who live above the laws which "ordinary" people need to observe. Dostoevski paints the portrait of such characters in Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov: brilliant elitists who think common laws do not pertain to them. Cult religion often thinks its hold on perfect truth excuses them from common ethical, moral, and legal structures of life.

7. It promotes a complete break with the "world." The Bible speaks of "the world" in two different ways; these balance each other. One use of the word refers to the good creation of God: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1). The other refers to the systems and ways of the world which are organized against the way of God: the epistle of John calls us to be "in the world but not of it"(1 John 2).

Cult religion does not see the world as the good creation of God. The world is under the spell of the devil. It is unalterably corrupt. The world will always be against the true and righteous cult. Such a view aids and abets paranoid thinking. The cult sees itself as children of light living in the midst of children of darkness (everybody else).

The famous Yale church historian Jeroslau Peliken noted that heresy always takes one of two paths. One is the heresy of too much continuity with the world. Its followers identify too much with the ways of the world. This is the liberal tendency; taken too far it becomes heresy. The other way is the heresy of too much discontinuity with the world. The world is corrupt. Redemption has to do with another realm. This is the tendency of fundamentalist thinking; taken too far it becomes heresy.

Cult religion often errs in the second direction. It cuts itself off from the world as the good creation of God. Legal, medical, and social authority is questioned. Reason, science and the common sense shared realities of most folk are mistrusted.

8. It is abusive in its way of treating people. Authoritarian rule is imposed. The leaders have perfect truth and goodness and they "lord it over" the rest. They use coercive power, fear, intimidation, and manipulation to keep people in line. If one disagrees with leadership, s/he is of the devil.

Abused people often seek refuge in cults only to re-enact their earlier abuse. Personal boundaries are violated by the leader and other members of the community. Healthy boundaries are not honored.

The apostle Paul spoke of the way the Corinthians had been abused by the super apostles who had taken over: For you bear it if a man makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face (2 Corinthians 11:20-21).

9. Everything is black and white. There is no gray. There is little sense of personal humility or of the Mystery of God. There is no reverent "not-knowing" about God and truth. Everything is perfectly known. The world is divided into the absolute good and bad, the children of God and the children of the devil. Its psychological mechanism is to blame everything on people outside them. It projects its own evil, sin and darkness onto others. Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie says the root of human evil is denying any darkness or sin inside us and projecting it onto those around us.

10. It uses scripture to defend its subjective version of the truth and to condemn all others. Cult religion especially likes the apocalyptic books of Revelation and Daniel. Apocalyptic literature is highly charged poetic religious literature written in very bad times. For example:

Revelation was written during the first empire-wide persecution of Christians by the Roman state. Apocalyptic means literally "unveiling" and apocalyptic literature unveils (or reveals) the truth about what is going on now and the truth about how everything will end up at the end of time. Its basic message is that life is a fight to the finish between the forces of good and evil but that with God's help the forces of good will prevail. Some of the bizarre imagery is code language to refer to what was going on at the time the book was written. For example the "beast" in Revelation 13 refers to Rome. Historical circumstances are illustrative of a larger spiritual battle between God and Satan. And there is a vision of final blessedness when the kingdom of this world will give way to the kingdom of God and eternal blessedness.

False interpretation of the book by cult religion ignores the first century context and jumps to the present. The cult leader presumes to know the secrets of the book which no one else has ever known. (For example, David Koresh's belief he alone knew the meaning of the seven seals.)

Because apocalyptic literature points to the final culmination of things, cult interpretation of the book often uses its new knowledge to prove that now is the final end of things. A person deluded into thinking s/he is the new incarnation of the Messiah may link his or her death with the final battle and end of all things. This may well be what David Koresh thought: his martyrdom would set into motion the end of the world.

In light of this, hear the words of Jesus of Nazareth about the final things when the end is to come: But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, NOR THE SON, but only the Father (Mark 13:32).

Cult leaders like David Koresh presume to know more than Jesus claimed to know. When someone claims to know more than Jesus, that's a bad sign.

There is mixture of good and bad, true and false, healthy and unhealthy religion in all of us. Powerful unhealthy personalities have the capacity to victimize people when they use religion to prop up their cause and justify their claims. As Pascal said hundreds of years ago: Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction (Pensees, No. 894).

So let us be vigilant to the false, the bad, the unhealthy in us and in those who would lead us.

From a sermon by Dr. Stephen Shoemaker