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What is a cult?

What is a cult?. small group that wants to secede from its social origins disciples of heretical leader gather around leader or ideology, for religious or nonreligious purposes use strict discipline/mind control methods organized around master/specific ideology. Characteristics of leader.

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What is a cult?

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  1. What is a cult? • small group that wants to secede from its social origins • disciples of heretical leader • gather around leader or ideology, for religious or nonreligious purposes • use strict discipline/mind control methods organized around master/specific ideology

  2. Characteristics of leader • Charismatic • Demanding • Possibly Abusive • Controlling • Only one in contact with answers (God) • Claim “Big event around corner”

  3. Cults based on charismatic leadership follow routinization of charisma, described by German sociologist Max Weber

  4. Types of Cults • Doomsday • Satanic • Religious • Other world • New Age • Christian Abberational

  5. Well-known Leaders & Their Cults • Rev. Sun Myung Moon-The Unification Church, The Moonies • David Koresh-The Branch Davidians • Jim Jones-The People’s Temple • Shoko Ashara-Aun Shinri Kyo (Sacred Supreme Truth) • Charles Manson-The Manson Family • Heaven’s Gate – Ron Appelwhite

  6. Cult Prospects People with: • deprived childhoods • Confusion about religion • Low and wandering self-esteem • Searching for new identities • Feel alienated • failure/personal crisis • Freshmen/seniors/ Jobless

  7. Recruitment

  8. Tactics • Milieu control: manage inner communication - control over all person sees, hears, reads, and writes • Mystical Manipulation: extensive personal manipulation (mostly God centered) • Demand for purity: dividing world into pure/impure groups - everything in group is pure - everything outside group is evil

  9. TATICS • Cultic confession of sins: subjected to patterns of criticism and self-criticism by group members • Sacred science: aura of sacredness around cults doctrine • Loading the language: words are given new meanings according to organization IE: MARRIAGE REDEFINED TO INCLUDE ONLY LEADER

  10. TATICS • Doctrine over person: cults doctrine more valid, true, and real than any aspect of human character and/or experience • Dispensing of existence: idea that people who are not in group can’t be enlightened or saved

  11. Ways to exit cult • Deprogramming • Family Intervention • Thought Reform • Exit Counseling • Run fast

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