In cultic groups, the push for ideological purity and perfection is intense and incessant for adults and children alike. Public displays of unquestioning commitment to the imagined perfection of the belief system (and the leader) become a required activity that often leads to the enforced eradication of any traits, behaviors, or ideas that challenge that imagined perfection. Privately, the internalization of this unquestioning commitment often creates members who become willing to suppress or even erase their own critical thinking and individuality.
A young man raised in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church remembers having to prove his devotion in very public ways:
The church services were supposed to break down your natural boundaries, or you were supposed to do that willingly. You know, so that visitors would see how powerful being in the church was, I guess. We were supposed to get up there, I mean, all up there and cry. Cry, cry, cry … just have these emotional breakdowns in front of everyone for attendance purposes or something. It always made me really uncomfortable. But, I just tried to participate, and I remember constantly feeling these panic sensations, because we were supposed to be in these emotionally really extreme states—every Sunday!
A young woman who was born into the Church of the Living Word cult remembers proudly telling other children of the benefits of being physically abused:
Our leader told my parents to have lots of babies to serve the church. But when I was born, he ascertained psychically that I was rebellious and so they had to break my spirit. They started spanking me at three months old and I remember going to kindergarten in my church school for Show and Tell and saying that when your parents spank you, it’s good for you. It was kind of like a proud thing, even in kindergarten: That’s why I’m a good person, because they were hitting me. But I also started to dissociate when I was five. I remember the first time it happened. I was sitting in my room and this overwhelming feeling came from out of the blue, and I did a deep internalization thing where everything got really small. But sometimes it would happen when they would just spank me and spank me and spank me so that my spirit would be better. You know, if you have a bad spirit or whatever, then that spirit gets spanked. So I remember having no internal life; I felt like they could see right through me and they could see what I was thinking, and I really didn’t feel I was allowed my own thoughts. That was my young life.
These children grew up in the shadow of powerful belief systems that severely restricted their choices, their psychological development, and their lives. Each one of them was destabilized and damaged by their cult upbringing; yet all of them found a way out and were able to build new lives for themselves. How did they cope? How did they endure?
Coping Mechanisms for Surviving in a Closed Belief System
Throughout this book, we’ll focus on the resilience and coping mechanisms our narrators relied on; these traits helped them escape and build new lives for themselves. But it’s also important to understand the ways they coped when they were children, and the different ways they guarded themselves against their groups’ all-encompassing, all-exclusive, and self-denying belief systems.
Imagination was one escape, and many children in abusive or neglectful environments create a private world for themselves. For instance, Joseph escaped into forbidden novels and dreamed of living wild in the forest instead of being trapped inside the Exclusive Brethren’s world. Some children, like Iris and Samantha, became hyper-responsible as a way to avoid too much notice. Samantha managed the mental health care of her overburdened mother (who was expected to look after thirty or more of Samantha’s siblings), and Iris took care of herself and her brother whenever her parents abandoned them to go on extended TM retreats.
Many children in controlling and abusive environments create alternative social structures or secret codes. Iris’s friends in TM had complete freedom twice every day when all of the adults in the compound meditated for hours. The children’s close relationships with each other helped them deal with the group’s rules and the continual absenteeism of their parents. And though Matthew’s deafness prevented him from joining in, the children in the Twelve Tribes used the Hebrew they learned in school as a secret language among themselves.
One unusual (though painful) form of protection came from being an outsider. For instance, Matthew’s deafness and Jessica’s asthma marked them as unclean or evil in the belief systems of their cults. Though each of them endured enforced isolation, exhaustive prayer and confession sessions, and abusive punishments, both fought persistently to maintain their own dignity and autonomy. The humiliation and abuse they endured took a harsh toll on both of them, but it did not break them; instead, it made them more stubborn and more determined.
Unhealthy transcendent belief systems are very powerful; and though they can entrap and imprison people, our narrators’ stories show that people can escape. If you are or have been involved in an unhealthy belief system, it’s important to know that you, like our narrators, can get away and rebuild your life. Healthy transcendent belief systems do exist, and the checklists below can help you learn how to clearly identify them.
Evaluating the Transcendent Belief Systems in Your Own Life
The following checklist can help you identify whether a transcendent belief system is healthy, hope-filled, and supportive—or controlling, perfectionistic, and dehumanizing. Healthy groups with a transcendent belief system encourage critical thinking, debate, and individuality. Unhealthy cultic groups use their transcendent belief system as a form of control, and don’t allow any questioning.
If you’re involved in any group with a transcendent belief system, you can use this checklist to gauge the health of your group. Place a check mark by any of the following statements that are true.
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The group’s sense of purpose is intense and urgent.
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The belief system is rigid, righteous, and exclusive; other beliefs are criticized or ridiculed.
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Members are expected to become perfect true believers; there is no room for doubt.
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The belief system is elitist; it is the only true path and the ultimate solution.
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The belief system promotes specific and demanding tools, practices, and rules, and has a structure that converts members into perfect followers.
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Members endure extensive indoctrination sessions—through Bible lessons, political training, recruitment training, self-awareness lessons, meditation, criticism sessions, group rituals, study and lectures, punishments, and so forth.
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The belief system is perfectionistic, with all-or-nothing requirements that must be followed to the letter.
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Members are rewarded for subordinating themselves utterly and/or shedding their previous identities (family, job, home, finances, name, etc.).
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The group is strongly hierarchical, with an inner circle of true believers who have special access, power, and privileges.
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Members are expected to contribute their money, their time, their resources, and their labor to the group in order to be seen as serious and loyal followers.
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The belief system is transmitted personally by the leader, who cannot be questioned. If the leader is deceased, this may be done through writings, videos, and/or audiotapes, as well as by top leaders’ testimonials.
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The group creates internal and external enemies who are portrayed as threatening the very survival of the group.
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Members who question, break the rules, or leave are shunned or demonized, and may lose all contact with group members, including their own family members.
If you checked yes to one or more of these statements, your group may be under the influence of a controlling and unhealthy belief system. However, this doesn’t mean that your group is dangerous, and it doesn’t mean that it’s a cult. Your group would need
to have all four dimensions of bounded choice active (which includes a charismatic leader, systems of control, and systems of influence) before it could be considered a cultic group. However, if your group’s transcendent belief system feels unhealthy to you (even if the other dimensions of bounded choice aren’t present), you may be able to suggest changes and see if your group is willing to alter its troubling behaviors.
You can share the features of healthy transcendent belief systems below to help your group understand the specific ways in which it is veering toward controlling and abusive behaviors. If the group or its leader(s) can’t or won’t change, you can use the following list to find a group that provides hope and answers without rigidly enforcing its beliefs, controlling its members, or shutting out the outside world.
Signs of a Healthy Transcendent Belief System
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Members have the right to question, to doubt, and to think their own thoughts.
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The belief system makes room for other beliefs and other ideas.
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Members are treated as equals, and are not expected to be subordinate or perfectionistic.
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The belief system allows for personal autonomy, dignity, and freedom.
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Members retain their identities, finances, relationships, personal time, and private lives.
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The belief system includes rather than excludes people and ideas.
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Members can leave without being shunned or forced to abandon their friends and family.
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The belief system opens members to the world rather than isolating or segregating them from it.
When a transcendent belief system is healthy, people have choices. When it’s not, their choices get tangled up with the group’s rigid vision of perfection and purity. With the help of Janja’s bounded choice model, we can see that unhealthy belief systems can create an entrapping situation for believers. They work hard to be devoted, to live up to the group’s beliefs, and to become perfect. These actions are admirable; they require energy, intelligence, and dedication. However, because cultic belief systems are perfectionistic and unhealthy, all of this hard work and devotion only serve to exhaust and ensnare followers (and their children) in a never-ending cycle. Breaking free is very difficult, but it can be done, and people can find healthy groups with healthy systems of belief.
In the next chapter, we’ll look at the individuals or groups who create these unhealthy transcendent belief systems in the first place: the charismatic authority.
Notes
1.
This group is also known as The Children of God.
2.
Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1915) is the classic sociological study of religion and cults. He wrote: “In reality, a cult is not a simple group of ritual precautions which a man is held to take in certain circumstances; it is a system of diverse rites, festivals, and ceremonies which all have this characteristic, that they reappear periodically. They fulfill the need which the believer feels of strengthening and reaffirming, at regular intervals of time, the bond which unites him to the sacred beings upon which he depends” (80).
3.
See D. Tourish and N. Vatcha, “Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron: The Elimination of Dissent, The Promotion of Conformity and Organizational Collapse,” Leadership 1, no. 4 (2005): 455–80.
4.
According to Durkheim, both the physical and mental effects of the cult’s rites and practices generate forces that “are … necessary for the well working of our moral life … and it is through them that the group affirms and maintains itself, and we know the point to which this is indispensable for the individual.” Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 427.
5.
Durkheim explains that the outcome of these processes in the cult “awakens this sentiment of a refuge, of a shield and of a guardian support which attaches the believer to his cult. It is that which raises him outside himself; it is even that which made him” (Ibid., 465). In that sense, the believer psychologically merges with the cult and the cult leader.
6.
This is a complex phenomenon. The higher calling of the cult comes with a moral imperative (i.e., you must do this now) that is intricately linked to renouncing your own needs and desires. Thus, the lure of freedom (salvation) leads to self-criticism, denial, and loss of self. But the strength of this moral imperative makes your selfdenial feel, strangely, like a source of pride. See Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) for a comprehensive explanation of this key process of cult membership.
3
CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY
Exhilarating Vision, Electrifying Charisma, and Total Domination
She claims that she is the world’s highest-ranking female martial artist. She says she has a doctorate. Doctor Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim! And then she compared herself to Jesus. You know, we would sit in a Bible class and read a passage about him and the disciples, and then her students would be like, “wow, ma’am”—we always referred to her as ma’am or Grandmaster—“This is like how Jesus and his disciples were. And we’re following you, and you’re teaching us all these things, ma’am, and I can see the similarity.” And sometimes she flat out would compare herself to Jesus, but most of it was indirect. But you could see what she was trying to imply.
Lily
I know the charismatic leader has always been part of TM. My mother definitely said things to me like, “A reason for doing something or not doing something is because Maharishi said.”
Iris
The Exclusive Brethren changed radically when Jim Taylor took the reins. I remember an excommunication that was done in a way that was a radical departure from the due process that had been practiced for more than a hundred years. Instead of discussing the facts and principles at stake and taking a communal decision in accordance with established practice and long-established principles, the Brethren acted purely in response to the instructions of Taylor, who lived thousands of miles away. It was merely a rubber-stamping exercise, and we were not even told why we were to do it.
Joseph
I remembered hearing that all the adults in the Twelve Tribes were really mad because this one elder used to be able to take all of his kids to Kentucky Fried Chicken. I had no idea what Kentucky Fried Chicken was, but I just knew everybody was really mad about it. I remember that those kids were really heavy and so they used to say that while all of us were starving and skinny, they were overweight because they got to go out and eat Kentucky Fried Chicken. They were up in leadership, so that was allowed. They just said, “Well, that’s the way it goes. You can’t question our authority.”
Matthew
What Is Charismatic Authority?
We can all identify charismatic people in our lives, from actors, musicians, and politicians to the best player on our favorite sports teams. Charismatic people are appealing and magnetic, and they draw us in with their skills, appearance, talents, or perhaps a special quality that we can’t quite put our finger on. Charismatic people can stimulate hero worship or feelings of being wildly in love, as many of us may have experienced in our adolescent and early adult infatuations. In healthy relationships, these wild and worshipful moments tend to fade, and we become able to view those individuals in more balanced and calm ways. But in unhealthy relationships and groups, charismatic people find ways to continually activate that intense infatuation and devotion. Successful charismatic authority figures keep followers captivated and entrapped through exhilarating utopian visions, constant displays of power, demands for commitment, demonization of outsiders (or of less committed group members), and incessant emotional manipulation.
Charismatic authority is the powerful emotional bond between a leader and his or her followers. It makes the leader seem
deeply legitimate and visionary, and it grants authority to his or her actions. Anything he or she does is portrayed as vital to the utopian vision and the survival of the group. The ends always justify the means because the charismatic authority figure isn’t merely right; he or she is anointed, chosen, or blessed. When followers internalize the sense that their leader is utterly perfect, they may convince themselves that anything they do in service to the leader is righteous and justified. Eventually, the leader’s needs justify the behaviors and actions of everyone in the group. At the same time, a shared sense of urgent duty reinforces each member’s dedication and binds them tightly to the leader’s ideas, goals, and desires. The deep relationship followers have with their leader’s charismatic authority is the hook that keeps them engaged, susceptible, and willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy their leader’s every whim and desire.
Magicians, Heroes, and Saviors: Max Weber on Charisma
The concept of charisma was introduced by one of the founders of sociology, Max Weber, in his classic work on ancient religions, bureaucracy, and institution building.1 Weber is regarded as the leading scholar on charismatic authority, and he identified a follower’s response to charisma as an ecstatic state, or a “psychological state accessible only in occasional actions … as intoxication.”2 Some of the people he identified as being charismatic were magicians, heroes, prophets, saviors, shamans, and even the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith.3 According to Weber, these charismatic leaders are a revolutionary force in society, in the sense that they offer new radical promises and solutions that may lead to great change or upheaval.4
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