How to Recognize a Cult
It's Not Always EasyFour Signs to Look For
There are signs to look for which may serve as early warnings that one is dealing with a cult; here are four of them. There are other signs, but it seems to me that these four are most likely to be evident to the less-experienced eye, though it should be stressed that because cults specialize in disguises and deceptiveness, it is still not so easy, even when supplied with good clues, to recognize one for what it is.
The cult will be set apart, opaque and, though perhaps not obviously so, secretive. Read More
Cults take advantage of people who are vulnerable. They attract, and even seek out people who have suffered a loss, who are feeling lost and lonely and needy. Cults exploit these circumstances in the lives of such men and women using words and actions that promise much, that allure, entice, flatter, flirt, snare, enmesh and trap in order to bring susceptible new people into their confines. The primary instruments employed for this are other members of the cult, for these people—having suffered some loss, or who were lost, needy or lonely, and so have themselves been “taken in”— become themselves the unwitting tools of the cult leader. Read More
Look for a leadership structure in which the one at the top is not accountable to anyone and is seen as the one with all the answers. Read More
Cult members become akin to children as the group becomes mother and father to them. The individual, trusting the organization to take on his or her adult responsibilities, gives the cult authority to preside over his or her life. This is an effect of the cult as it promises freedom from all the cares of the outside world, once one surrenders to the “truth” the leader holds. Then, renouncing the responsibilities the outside culture expects of mature individuals, cult members become infantilized. Read More
FIRST SIGN: The cult will be set apart, opaque and, though perhaps not obviously so, secretive. More on the First Sign of a Cult…
Every cult has a “culture,” a set of ways of behaving, of instructing members, and of seeing the world. What do I mean by “culture?” Here are some examples: we can have French culture, Japanese culture, “the youth culture of the 1960s,” the business culture at such and such corporation, and so on. We speak of people being raised in a certain kind of culture and so we understand that a culture can be a medium on which something is bred or raised. This is the case on a broad scale, say, with French culture, but in a narrower and concentrated sense it is also the case with the cult.
I would like to explain this line of thinking further by using another illustration. In the world of microbiological research, colonies of bacteria can be grown on a medium called agar, a gelatinous substance derived from various kinds of red seaweed. When this is done it’s called a “culture” and it’s created in a special container called a petri dish. There the culture is grown in a way to keep it separate from the larger environment so that it’s not contaminated by outside influences. Though one might see the relevance of this picture in broad and general terms when referring to something like French culture, the culture-in-the-petri-dish analogy more precisely fits the cult, for that illustration shows so plainly how the cult is a “culture” that must be kept strictly away from the surrounding world outside of itself, lest a broader, surrounding culture contaminate the extremely defined limits that constitute it. This special culture being grown in such a well-separated environment is a notable sign of a cult.
Let me try to go a little further in this vein. The leader of the Children of God began in 1970 calling the group’s communes, “colonies.” These were spreading from the group’s initial bases in West Texas and Los Angeles, California. “Colonies,” then, became the term we all began to use, under our leader’s guidance, for the houses the group populated.
The dining hall in the first large “colony” of the Children of God, 1970-71. It was here that the group’s leader first named the Children of God’s communes, “colonies.”
Now when David Berg—Moses David—chose this term, “colonies,” he revealed the truth of the petri dish analogy we have used above, though unwittingly. His chosen terminology, while coming more from historical notions, such as the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish colonies in the Americas, nonetheless revealed a great truth: the communes of the Children of God (to which I belonged and in which I was acculturated for nine years) were like the colonies the researcher in microbiology creates in petri dishes; they were not to be contaminated by the broader culture but were, in their limited scope, to nourish in the strictest manner the particular social and spiritual life of the group. These were “cultures of the cult,” so to speak—each new outpost was a new colony (speaking in terms of the microbiological allusion) of the cult’s culture. Each colony was a sort of petri dish, separated from surrounding influences as much as possible.
A “colony” growing in agar in a Petri dish
All this to say that the first thing to bear in mind when thinking of what a cult looks like is that one should look for something—a culture—very much apart, something somehow cut off from the rest of the world and from the surrounding culture—though this cut-off-ness may at first be hard to discern.
To underscore the separateness of the culture in the colonies of the Children of God, I offer this example: each member took a new name—a “Bible name”—even as our leader did; David Berg became “Moses David.” I became “Lazarus Carpenter,” and so I was known for a number of years. This was a way of setting people apart, isolating them from their past for the task of acculturating them to the cult’s special, set-apart culture. The cult begins, then, in a cultural petri dish and the cult grows by creating new colonies and then keeping them all apart from the broader culture, lest they be contaminated. While certainly not every community that’s set apart from the surrounding culture is a cult, no cult is without this distinctive and strict set-apartness.
But where does the “bacteria,” so to speak, from which the cult’s culture is grown, come from? What’s the source of the culture that grows in the petri dish of the separated space of the “colony?” This germ always originates with the leader of the cult. With the Children of God, the “germ” or “bacteria” came from David Berg, aka Moses David, who was still later known as “Father David” and who often signed his Mo Letters, written regularly to all the colonies of the cult, “Dad.” This “Dad” had, and sought to maintain, very strict control of the cult’s culture, aiming to keep the Children of God’s colonies very much set apart from the world surrounding them.
Such terms as “Father David” and “Dad” were indications of another aspect of the cult’s “set-apartness”; they helped illustrate that the group was a new family with a new father. At the same time it was how all the group’s members were set apart from the family and father—and culture—that each member originally came from. Thus the cult becomes a new “family.” Indeed, the Children of God became known as “The Family of Love,” and finally, “The Family International.”
A new family, a new father, a set-apart culture, and new names—all employed the better to inculcate the followers with the ideas of the leader. In time, particularly as we became more international, Moses David also began to call the group “God’s New Nation.” This in some sense lessened the significance of our nationalities as Americans, or Britons or say, Peruvians or Japanese; we were all now more importantly part of something else—something new, something separate. The group’s magazine became “The New Nation News,” serving to underscore in one more way the group’s “set-apartness.”
The whole project involves obscuring things so that there’s always something opaque and hard to discern about cults. Why is there this murkiness and secrecy associated with the cult and what does this have to do with its being set apart?
It has to do with intentions and motivations of the leader. A hard-to-penetrate secrecy was a characteristic of false teachers noticed long ago. It’s written of in the Bible: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies.” Why secretly? Because the false teacher or prophet—the cult’s leader—does not want what he is doing to be detected; he wants to do his deceptive work undisturbed, the better to gain followers. This is because he knows what he is doing is liable to be called into question and then interfered with; thus his real intentions must be kept hidden. Secrecy is the evidence of intentions that do not want to be exposed to questioning eyes.
A sign, then, that you’ve come upon a cult is that there will be a group of people set apart, the organization of which is in some way secret.
It is true that in the New Testament Christians were called out of the world—the very term “church,” an English translation of the Greek term ecclesia, means “to come out from.” There is a sense of separateness and “set-apartness” in the life of the Christian. Jesus prays to his Heavenly Father for his disciples not that they would be taken out of the world but that they would be kept from evil. But Jesus did say that they “were not of the world,” just as he was not.
But the truth that they were “not of the world” is not the same thing as being “taken out” for some secret purpose, a sort of separation Jesus did not pray for. Jesus compares his disciples being “not of the world” with his own being “not of the world,” but he did not speak secret things or of secret purposes; there was nothing opaque or hidden about what Jesus was saying.
The effect of what Jesus taught was to separate his followers from self-centered lives in order to live lives empowered by the Spirit of God, so that by the love of Christ they would go out into the world “as salt and light,” as Jesus put it. We see by Jesus’ example that he was always among the people, seeking to help and teach them. Jesus occasionally took those whom he had called to be apart (“sanctified,” as the New Testament term—hagiason—is sometimes translated), to teach and refresh them and to show them how to look up to his Father, but then he sent them into the world again to be outward-oriented and upward-looking:
Then the apostles returned and reported to Jesus all that they had done. Taking them away privately, He withdrew to a town called Bethsaida. But the crowds found out and followed Him. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and He healed those who needed healing.
The separation Jesus called for with his church was not to be a secretive “cutting off” from the world but a setting apart of each disciple’s life in the midst of this world for service to Jesus Christ and the Father. This was to be a life dedicated, first of all, to the spreading, via sacrificial love as exemplified in Christ, of the true Gospel. This was a call not to be out of the world, but to be in the world. There was no opaqueness. It is worthwhile to recall what Jesus said to those who questioned him just before the crucifixion, “I have spoken openly to the world….I always taught in the synagogues and at the temple…I said nothing in secret.”
The separation from the world that cults call for is entirely different from the setting apart we find in descriptions of the Christian church, for in the cult separation from the world is for the acculturation to the teachings of the cult leader, who, unlike Christ, gives his life for no one; others are expected, instead, to give their lives for him. The cult turns its followers toward the cult leader, excluding the outside world. But the cult does imitate Christianity inasmuch as the cult leader wants to be regarded as a “chosen one,” a “Christ”—the central character in his followers’ lives, and their savior, but this is a role only the true Christ can fulfill, and he does it by teaching his followers to love God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength and love their neighbor as themselves.
David Berg, aka “Moses David” and “Father David,” around 1970, two years after he founded the group.
The members of a cult may become involved in outward-looking activities, but the dominant orientation is always toward the cult leader as he exercises broad, even total control. This control and this separateness is not for the sake of the world, but for the sake of the cult leader—a deeply flawed, self-glorifying, vain human being dressing himself as something he is not.
All this may not be immediately apparent, for there will be an effort to disguise it. But if one looks hard at the cult and its leadership one discovers a reluctance to reveal things, and a secretiveness. Ultimately this secretive, set-apartness serves to accentuate a tendency in the cult leader to promote the worship of a mere man—himself. So first of all, look out for this separateness, this opaqueness, this secretiveness—it’s a sign of a cult.
SECOND SIGN: Cults take advantage of people who are vulnerable. They attract, and even seek out people who have suffered a loss, who are feeling lost and lonely and needy. Cults exploit these circumstances in the lives of such men and women using words and actions that promise much, that allure, entice, flatter, flirt, snare, enmesh and trap in order to bring susceptible new people into their confines. The primary instruments employed for this are other members of the cult, for these people—having suffered some loss, or who were lost, needy or lonely, and so have themselves been “taken in”— become themselves the unwitting tools of the cult leader.More on the Second Sign of a Cult…
When I joined the Children of God, I was delighted to have found them—I’d only become a Christian myself a few months before. I was challenged—if I was serious about my faith and wanted to serve God full time and totally, I could join them. That was the message I received from talking to them. I was young in my new faith and quite ignorant of so much about real Christianity. I was at the time living far from my parents, bored and uninspired at work. I was looking for a challenge. I had dropped out of university ten months earlier and despite my new-found Christian faith was still somewhat “at loose ends.” Young and naïve, I didn’t pause to look carefully before I joined; the day after I met them I drove back out to their camp, “forsaking all,” as the group called it, to be part of it. At the time my circumstances made me most susceptible to the group’s charms.
Jesus said there would be “false Christs and false prophets [who] will appear and perform great signs and wonders that would deceive even the elect, if that were possible.” If the truest disciples and strongest followers of Jesus were said by Jesus himself to be that vulnerable to such persuasion, what then of so many, many others? Enticing words and people can be so alluring and powerful when we are in a vulnerable season of our lives, and these vulnerable seasons can come along suddenly. When they do, a person may be very receptive to new ideas and quick solutions that may rescue them from painful or boring or unhappy situations.
To attract people in such circumstances, the cult uses bait of all kinds: affection, camaraderie, music, glittering and beautiful words and ideas, stirring calls for commitment to a cause, sex appeal, promises of escape from problems, promises of success, of happiness or of world change—all of which have their charms. These play an important role in the cult’s appeal to the vulnerable, who are like naïve, ignorant and unaware little birds or dumb, lost sheep.
The group can be very appealing….the Children of God in Britain around 1973
I didn’t realize when I joined that David Berg—Moses David—was running everything from behind the scenes and that all the people I got to know when I joined were already filled with views of the Bible originating from this hidden source. Even when I knew a little about the leader I didn’t understand his role or power. I didn’t see that the very attractive young people, their wonderful music—all those guitars!—and how they were living—were unwitting forms of disguise, shielding and hiding not only the behind-the-scenes-role of David Berg, but also the secrets of his heart which were finally in such conflict with the appealing appearances which initially won me.
Children of God, Southern California, 1970-71
David Berg clothed himself with the beautiful group and its seemingly-so- biblical way of life, using them to cover up “the false Duessa” that lay within. In Edmund Spencer’s great sixteenth-century epic poem, The Faerie Queen, Duessa is a magically beautiful woman who effectually seduces a gallant knight from his true love. But the truth of Duessa is that she’s false–she’s actually an utterly repulsive and grotesque, though this is only revealed when the gallant knight accidentally sees her bathing; when she’s naked, her true nature is revealed.
I was completely vulnerable to all the outward charms of this company of exceptionally appealing believers in Jesus. I did not realize that I could be so deceived, nor that what I was beholding was a deception. Those who were attracting me were utterly sincere and had no idea they themselves had been deceived and were being used. I became just like them.
The Children of God dancing, circa 1970-71
You could—and should—be a little wary of charms that take you by surprise, by invitations that are unexpectedly so friendly. You could—and should—be a little suspicious as you sit in their bus or their tent or the living room of some house surrounded by friendly, smiling, apparently very caring lads and lassies and hear the stories of how they all were saved by joining this group, of how they’ve at last found the truth. Maybe one of them will challenge you: “If you are looking for the truth, it’s in Jesus, and once you come to him, the best way to serve him, if you have what it takes, is to forsake all and follow him with us.”
But you might just ask yourself, Why is it that everyone here has a tale of neediness or a tale of lostness only capable of remedy through their being here with this group? Ask, Why is it, to a person, that these people are so enthusiastically plugging their beliefs and their community as the answer to all my problems? Is there nothing here that requires pushing in this way? Or ask, Why are they suggesting to me—if not outright challenging me—to leave everything and join them right now? Someone might say, “Here, read this,” as theypresent you with a Bible opened to something Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke: “So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he has, he cannot be my disciple.” “Do you really want to follow Jesus?” you might be asked. The argument consists in equating being with this group with being Jesus’ disciple, and the accompanying notion is that to do anything less than let them lead me in a prayer and then join them, is to admit I don’t love truth or God very much. I do love Jesus–and I want to prove it–I think I should join! That’s how it can be. So beware!
THIRD SIGN: Look for a leadership structure in which the one at the top is not accountable to anyone and is seen as the one with all the answers.More on the the Third Sign of a Cult…
It is the leader, with no accountability to any other authority, who determines what the group does and thinks. It may not be immediately evident that the top leader exercises unexpectedly great authority over vast portions of the daily life of the community, for his overriding hand may be hidden through the existence of a screen of lieutenants, but over time it becomes very plain to members that the leader has such authority, authority which is explained as perfectly innocent, right and reasonable.
In the process of acculturation to this situation, the freedom of the individual becomes more and more limited. But this is all dressed up to appear as something other than what it really is—the individual is persuaded by the able manipulation of his or her imagination through the exercise of the cult leader’s charm, to think that true freedom is actually the very definition of life in the cult while at the same time life outside of the cult is characterized as bondage.
Does the individual member in any way mind the situation in which he now finds himself—persuaded that freedom is only found within the cult and miserable bondage is all around on the outside? No, the training cult members receive—call it “cult acculturation”—makes this understanding seem perfectly natural. Having been acculturated in this way, cult members are hardly willing to criticize their group or their leader. Nor in a cult is there any such thing as “friendly opposition,” nor any contradiction whatsoever allowed of the leader. This is the implicit understanding that goes along with everyone’s unbounded praise for, and trust in, the leader.
Reverend Jim Jones is given a humanitarian award on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in San Francisco in 1977. Photo by Nancy Wong.
Think of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple which Jones himself totally destroyed in the jungles of Guyana in 1978, rather than surrender to forces trying to rein in his complete authority over the group, or consider Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, arranging the marriages of thousands of his followers with no complaints from anyone in any of these couples, or Marshall Herff Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult, whose members he led to commit mass suicide, or David Koresh of Waco, Texas’ Branch Davidians, whose rule ended in flames as his followers continued to look to him, or think of “Moses” David Berg, leader of the Children of God/ Family of Love, to whose group I belonged for nine years, teaching that believers in Jesus can sleep with anyone they wish, as long as it’s “done in love.”
“Each and all of these cult leaders answered to no one; they were the sole authority at the top and were understood to be endued with the great and special knowledge that leads to liberation and which constitutes true wisdom.”
Husbands were taught to “share” their wives, and neither husbands nor wives balked—or if they opposed the idea, they had little choice but to leave, shame heaped upon them for their supposed “selfishness” and “lack of love” in Christ for not being willing to give their spouses to the Cause. Almost everyone went along, at least for a while.
Each and all of these cult leaders answered to no one; they were the sole authority at the top and were understood to be endued with the great and special knowledge that leads to liberation and which constitutes true wisdom. Each taught that they alone were the authority “in the know,” while the world outside was characterized by lies that enslave.
How total can one person’s authority over a group become? At Jonestown on the day of the great self-liquidation in November, 1978, a few who were recalcitrant to drink the Kool-Aid were “helped along” by willing lieutenants, but most, following one another in a kind of “groupthink” spirit of conformity, obeyed Jim Jones and surrendered readily enough to the pressure to drink the poison. Perhaps not every cult’s reach is so complete, but there is plenty of evidence that too many do possess such frightening power over their members.
To recognize a cult, then, look for a culture shaped around one person or perhaps one couple whose view of reality governs every aspect of life within the organization. He will appear as a savior to those who follow him. His writings or tapes or CDs or podcasts will be the focus of much interest and attention. Much of the talk will be on topics developed by the leader. Such would-be saviors want to be worshipped and adored—they are “jealous gods” who will have no one else beside them.
This, then, is a third indicator of the presence of a cult—enormous, even absolute power and authority in a leader who answers to no one. But such overarching power concentrated in one person’s hands won’t usually be immediately clear—one must look for telltale signs of it.
A FOURTH SIGN: Cult members become akin to children as the group becomes mother and father to them. The individual, trusting the organization to take on his or her adult responsibilities, gives the cult authority to preside over his or her life. This is an effect of the cult as it promises freedom from all the cares of the outside world, once one surrenders to the “truth” the leader holds. Then, renouncing the responsibilities the outside culture expects of mature individuals, cult members become infantilized. More on the Fourth Sign of a Cult…
The lie at the heart of the cult is that only with the cult are you both wise and safe. The cult argues that losing a great deal of personal freedom is a small price to pay to gain wisdom and safety. Indeed, the cult teaches that the freedom on offer in the outside world is a fraud—it is really oppression, while the strictures inside the group represent an escape from that oppression. Thus what we might call bondage to the cult is actually seen by those inside it as true freedom.
The cult’s argument is, “Why would anyone want to endure the meaninglessness, the isolation and loneliness of modern life—especially when truth and love and friendship and certainty await here with us?”
A relevant book here is Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, a study of the appeal of Nazism published over eighty-five years ago. Fromm, a German-Jewish psychologist who fled Germany in 1934, just after Hitler came to power, argued that freedom, at least in modern democratic societies, brings with it burdens and pains that many find too hard to endure; they wish to escape these, and certain kinds of leaders are only too willing to help relieve a person of such burdensome freedom. Fromm writes that this was part of Hitler’s great appeal when he came to power in 1933. Fromm saw that freedom in the modern world is not infrequently seen by many not as some “good” that everyone cherishes, but as something hard to bear, something which they would gladly escape.
Though this desire to “escape from freedom” doesn’t exhaust the range of explanations for why people join cults, it is not a factor that can easily be dismissed. Looking at the matter in this light, one can see there is relief to be found in life in a cult in which the burden of responsibility for oneself has been lifted. In the cult one’s responsibility is limited to giving one’s all to a group, which styles itself as the highest choice for a life of purpose and meaning.
You may be in the neighborhood of a cult, then, when you find a group promising to relieve you of all the responsibilities the outside world insists you must take upon yourself. A teaching which asserts you can find great relief if you relinquish your freedom to do as you please and put your trust in the group’s wise leader, will not work unless someone takes on the responsibilities formerly held by the individual. These, the cult teaches, will be taken on by the group’s leadership.
Published in 1941 as he fled Nazi Germany, Erich Fromm’s widely read “Escape from Freedom” is a meditation on why human beings can prefer submission to authoritarianism to freedom.
In the Children of God we understood that there was no freedom on the outside—only slavery. Since there was no true freedom except in the group, it seemed most reasonable to give up everything that pertained to your life on the outside and make yourself dependent on your new family, so becoming a child again. You need the group to tell you what to do, to take care of you—and thus you increasingly rely upon the authority of the leader for these things.
Peter Pan, who wouldn’t grow up.
The cult to which I belonged was called “The Children of God,” and that was truer than we realized—we became like children and were led by David Berg, whom we were taught to call “Dad.” It is interesting to note that the most frequently sung song in the group—a song we learned to sing in many languages, was called “You Gotta Be A Baby (To go to Heaven).” We became like babies—thinking giving up adult responsibilities was the godly thing to do. There is a word for this: infantilization. If you witness something akin to this among those you have been charmed by or in whose camp or house you are visiting, pause to wonder why.
In Summary…
These, then, are four indicators or signs of a cult: something set apart and secretive; something filled with vulnerable people who view the group as their salvation and perhaps as the only salvation; something with a leader accountable to no one; and something promising freedom from an outside world that’s characterized as total bondage, if members will only give up former responsibilities and become like children.
Though often these signs are hidden, they are not entirely so, so that one little glimpse of one may alert a person that something is not quite right. Thus warned, the careful bird about to be lured into the cult’s trap can hop or fly away. Still, the fact remains that a cult’s disguises are remarkably hard to penetrate. And there exist clever fowlers out there who know how to catch little birds when those birds aren’t watching carefully.
