by Paul Cooke | Oct 13, 2025 | Cult Lessons
A real charmer and con man: The Music Man—known on both the stage and screen, with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, concerns con man Harold Hill, who charmingly poses as a boys’ band organizer and leader. He sells band instruments and uniforms to...
by Paul Cooke | Jul 1, 2022 | News
Announcing the publishing of a new page on the website under the menu heading “Children of God.” It’s a chapter taken from the forthcoming memoir on the author’s nine-year experience with that group, a group which has earned the appellation, “Cult.” The chapter is...
by Paul Cooke | Apr 26, 2022 | What is a Cult?
Defining the Cult The Oxford English Dictionary offers this definition of the cult: “a small group of people who have extreme religious beliefs and who are not part of any established religion.” They illustrate the term with this example: “Their son ran away from home...
by Paul Cooke | Apr 26, 2022 | What is a Cult?
The Cult Member But what of the other key ingredient constituting a cult—the followers? P.T. Barnum is supposedly the source of the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and though the saying is probably not originally his, the notion that there are...
by Paul Cooke | Apr 20, 2022 | Cult Lessons
Don’t give up thinking for yourself. The caravan of cars created as the Children of God moved from one campsite to another stretched out at times for a mile–this was in the early days of 1969 to February of 1970. We followed our leader, trusting in him...
