Just kidding.Different Types of Cults
Eastern Cults
Practices and influence techniques include extensive meditation, repeated mantras, altered states of consciousness, celibacy or sexual restrictions, fasting and dietary restrictions, special dress or accouterments, altars, and induced trance through chanting, spinning, or other techniques.
Religious Cults
Practices and influence techniques include speaking in tongues, chanting, praying, isolation, lengthy study sessions, faith healing, self-flagellation, or many hours spent evangelizing, witnessing, or making public confessions.
Political, racist, or terrorist cults
Practices and influence techniques include paramilitary training, reporting on one another, fear, struggle or criticism sessions, instilled paranoia, violent acts to prove loyalty, long hours of indoctrination, or enforced guilt based on race, class, or religion.
Psychotherapy, human potential, mass transformation cults
Practices and techniques include group encounter sessions, intense probing into personal life and thoughts, altered states brought about by hypnosis and other trance-induction mechanisms, use of drugs, dream work, past-life or future-life therapy, rebirthing or regression, submersion tanks, shame and intimidation, verbal abuse, or humiliation in private or group settings.
Commercial, multi-marketing cults
Practices and influence techniques include deceptive sales techniques, guilt and shame, peer pressure, financial control, magical thinking, or guided imagery.
New Age Cults
Practices and influence techniques: magic tricks, altered states, peer pressure, channeling, UFO sightings, "chakra" adjustments, faith healing, or claiming to speak with or through ascended masters, spiritual entities, and the like.
Occult, satanic, or black-magic cults
Practices and influence techniques include exotic and bizarre rituals, secrecy, fear and intimidation, acts of violence, tattooing or scarring, cutting and blood rituals, sacrificial rituals, or altars.
One-on-one or family cults
Practices and influence techniques include pleasure/pain syndrome, promoting self-blame, induced dependency, induced fear and insecurity, enforced isolation, battering and other violent acts, incest, or deprivation.
Cults of personality
Such groups revolve around a particular theme or interest, such as martial arts, opera, dance, theater, a certain form of art, or a type of medicine or healing.
Facts About Cults
Scholars and religious leaders, as well as the public, often have debated the defining characteristics of religious groups known as cults.Others argue that all religious movements, Western or non-Western, begin as cults and, as they grow in popularity and power, evolve into sects and, finally, churches.
Using this second argument, one could identify the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Mormons, and the Christian Scientists as groups that successfully shed their cult status and acknowledge utopian communities like Oneida, Amana, New Harmony, and the Shakers as religious groups that failed to survive as churches.Basically, the categorization of religious alternatives as cults rests on the extent to which they challenge mainstream religious institutions.The nation's ensurance of disestablishment (that the state would not designate a particular religious group as favored by civil authorities) and the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom allowed a number of alternative religious groups to take root and flourish in the United States.Indeed, the same national guidelines that allowed nontraditional religious groups to establish themselves in the United States also created a climate favorable to religious expression and may account for the generally religious character of most Americans.Decline of religious authority, increase in contact between people of diverse backgrounds, and development of mass communication allowed cult leaders to gain personal followings through newspapers and other periodicals, radio, television, and computerized mailing lists.Academics who study groups targeted by anticultists prefer the term "new religious movement," to the term "cult" and criticize anticultists for jeopardizing religious freedom in the United States.They emphasize that destructive cults are rare, that few cult members are coerced into joining, and that most cult followers leave groups of their own accord.Concern over the dangers presented by cults that stockpiled arms achieved national prominence in 1993 when a clash occurred between federal authorities and the Branch Davidians, a Bible-based cult led by a former rock musician named David Koresh, who claimed to be a messiah.
Using this second argument, one could identify the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Mormons, and the Christian Scientists as groups that successfully shed their cult status and acknowledge utopian communities like Oneida, Amana, New Harmony, and the Shakers as religious groups that failed to survive as churches.Basically, the categorization of religious alternatives as cults rests on the extent to which they challenge mainstream religious institutions.The nation's ensurance of disestablishment (that the state would not designate a particular religious group as favored by civil authorities) and the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom allowed a number of alternative religious groups to take root and flourish in the United States.Indeed, the same national guidelines that allowed nontraditional religious groups to establish themselves in the United States also created a climate favorable to religious expression and may account for the generally religious character of most Americans.Decline of religious authority, increase in contact between people of diverse backgrounds, and development of mass communication allowed cult leaders to gain personal followings through newspapers and other periodicals, radio, television, and computerized mailing lists.Academics who study groups targeted by anticultists prefer the term "new religious movement," to the term "cult" and criticize anticultists for jeopardizing religious freedom in the United States.They emphasize that destructive cults are rare, that few cult members are coerced into joining, and that most cult followers leave groups of their own accord.Concern over the dangers presented by cults that stockpiled arms achieved national prominence in 1993 when a clash occurred between federal authorities and the Branch Davidians, a Bible-based cult led by a former rock musician named David Koresh, who claimed to be a messiah.
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