Are there cults

Scientology is now recognized by the state as a religion, with tax-exempt status. Mormonism was considered such a deviant form of heterodoxy its founder was lynched. Now the Mormon Church has more than 14 million members worldwide. It is a term to demonize a movement that is controversial. It is considered a threat to mainstream society. But sometimes the state determines whether a group is a cult, and not popular culture. Falun Gong, for example, was an extremely popular Chinese religion that was labeled a cult abruptly by the Chinese government when it became so popular that its followers exceeded the number of Communist Party members.

Nearly overnight, Falun Gong was designated as a cult, and something to be feared. In the U. As long as there is orthodoxy, there will be heterodoxy, and there will continue to be gospels of the end of days that could be rooted in science or scripture, people seeking answers, and leaders will emerge who claim to have them. Whether their followers are cult members or parishioners will largely be a matter of time.

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Reign of Terror. Empty Desert. Around five, we would reconvene at one of the houses to prepare dinner. We would eat between 6 and p. Once every few weeks, there was even a surprise evacuation drill. We had prophecy time at least three nights a week. Everyone said similar things, although many of them ended up being proved wrong later. Those who disagreed were called out for being arrogant and rebellious and were forced to repent.

By the end of that summer, even the slightest gesture, no matter how innocent, could be misconstrued as evidence of demonic influence. As a precaution, I was isolated, and two of the boys kept constant watch over me. Once, Micah accused me of manipulating someone into coming over and hugging me. After a woman in the group had her bedroom door and Bible taken away from her, she complained to IHOP. And I was beginning to face my own doubts. My questions about the group had been accumulating for years, but one night, I heard the group praying against me in the next room.

My friends and I were all being whipped into a frenzy by the delirious tonic of prophecy and persecution fantasies. At first I was distraught. If I moved out, I would be walking away from all my best friends. I had hoped I could push the group in a more positive direction. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew it was time for me to go. On the first day of April, I moved out. Even the logistics of grieving were complicated; on the day of her visitation, Tyler tried to have me removed from the funeral home.

Meanwhile, IHOP sent several leaders to investigate the prayer community. The boys who still lived with Tyler were asked to move out immediately, and current and former members were questioned. And then they interrogated Micah, the person who had been charged with guarding me during one of my periods of isolation from the group.

During questioning, he broke down and confessed that he had suffocated Bethany. There, he told a lurid tale: He and other men in the group had sexual relationships with Tyler, and together, they had ritually assaulted Bethany.

She had been killed, Micah said, because they were afraid she would tell her therapist about the assaults. This raised intense questions in the IHOP community, and Bickle and others held information sessions to address them. When one student asked how this kind of dangerous group could have existed with hardly anyone noticing, they explained that my friends and I were transplants from Texas who had developed an intense loyalty to one another and a spiritual leader who operated in secrecy.

But they had given up their goals for the vision of this one man. I joined a church in a liturgical tradition and formed a new circle of friends, many of whom had also left IHOP. I began to rethink my views on homosexuality and other marginalized groups. I also underwent counseling with IHOP leaders.

His ideas had been challenged for years, particularly because he had a habit of turning his self-help workshops into grueling, physically dangerous marathon sessions. The Rajneeshpuram was a commune created by followers of Osho Rajneesh, an Indian mystic who emphasized meditation, and whose teachings are still in wide circulation today.

By all accounts, unlike many of the cults herein, Rajneeshpuram was a peaceful community, whose extremes were exacerbated by one small group of tyrannical leaders who constantly clashed with the local populace — and each other.

These tensions escalated throughout the decade and finally culminated in a heinous climax: One commune leader and her loyalists wreaked vengeance upon the surrounding locals of Dalles, Oregon, in what would become the largest bioterrorist attack in US history. But hey, many of the surviving cult members still say the experience was one of the best times of their life!

The other documentary, The Lost Women of NXIVM , is a minute Investigation Discovery exploration of four women who lost their lives while involved with the cult — which may have indirectly or directly played a role in their deaths. Find it on the Investigation Discovery website or Amazon Prime. See also: If podcasts are more your style, there are several good resources.

All cults are to some extent horrifying, but there are some cults that are seriously lose-your-lunch frightening, like real-life horror movies. This particular cult even inspired several actual horror movies in its wake. Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was a powerful Mexican drug lord with a very large following of family members and minions who believed he had magical abilities.

Constanzo was drawn to the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Mayombe but distorted its tenets to justify his abuse. As part of his warped belief, he required his followers to abduct young men, upon whom he enacted sadistic rites in order to replenish his magic. Constanzo carried out this gory practice for years as an open secret on his Mexican compound Rancho Santa Elena — until he ritualistically dismembered the wrong man.

Mark Kilroy was a plucky, average Texas college student who vanished off the street while partying over spring break in , in the Mexican border town of Matamoros. What to watch and listen to: The Casefile true-crime podcast has an excellent episode on this case, as did the true crime podcast Red Handed.

See also: Two longreads, one in Rolling Stone and one in Texas Monthly , both go into detail about the case and the cult. Another cult arose in the mids thanks to Michael Wayne Ryan, a raging white supremacist who first joined one radical fundamentalist cult and then left it to pursue his own distorted neo-Nazi spin on evangelical Christianity.

In April , some 75 members of the millennial sect known as the Branch Davidians—including their messianic leader, David Koresh—perished in the blaze that destroyed their compound near Waco, Texas, after a day siege by federal agents.

The Branch Davidians fell from public The Texas town of Waco has, for many Americans, become synonymous with tragedy—ever since the day Waco siege in between the federal government and an extremist religious sect called the Branch Davidians ended in a deadly fire.

The group, led by controversial The Waco Siege began in early , when a government raid on a compound in Axtell, Texas, led to a day standoff between federal agents and members of a millennial Christian sect called the Branch Davidians.

The siege ended dramatically on April 19, , when fires consumed