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"We're not operating a cult any more than Jesus was..."
-- Al Baird; see full quote
Leaders of the International Churches of Christ (ICC) have promoted several myths about cults and mind control while defending the ICC from accusations of being a “cult.” We will dismantle some of the more common myths here.
Myth 1. All cults physically detain their members
“No, we’re not a cult. People are free to come and go as they please…”
Sam Powell (Geographic Sector Leader), FOX5, New York, November 20, 1997.
All cults do not physically isolate their members. Many are highly effective at psychologically isolating members, and therefore have no need to shelter them in compounds. In fact, a group can more easily meet its goals for recruiting, etc., when members freely move about and interact with society.
Steve Hassan addresses this “free to leave” myth in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control:
When cult leaders tell the public “Members are free to leave any time they want; the door is open,” they give the impression that members have free will and are simply choosing to stay. Actually, members may not have a real choice, because they have been indoctrinated to have a phobia of the outside world. Induced phobias eliminate the psychological possibility of a person choosing to leave the group merely because he is unhappy or wants to do something else. (1)
Ultimately, ICC members’ ability to move about physically means little if members are not psychologically free to leave the group. We have found many ICC practices and teachings that psychologically isolate ICC members from society.
ICC leaders may faultily say that because people leave the ICC at all, it can’t be a cult – as ICC World Sector Leader Steve Johnson said, “If we were a cult, how could they get out?” (2) But in reality, people leave cults every day – despite the hurdles cults put in their way.
Myth 2. Cults cannot be big or successful
“Although it is hard to believe some would call a worldwide movement with over 100,000 members a cult, some people will say almost anything. Aces OL [online ministry for the ICC’s ACES World Sector] believes that if any reasonable person examines our movement, although they may not join us, they will certainly see that we are not a cult.”
ACES World Sector, “Here's some news from Singapore,” Acesonline.org, November 10, 1998.
Size does not preclude a group from being a cult. There are cults with many more than 100,000 members – and some of these groups dwarf the ICC. Considering that a cult’s primary activities according to Psychologist Margaret Singer are 1. to recruit and 2. to raise money, (3) it should not surprise us that some cults are large or successful.
Myth 3. Cults do not help others
“Cults are not known for their service and their sacrifice for the needs of others. They are known for isolating themselves from society. They develop a bunker mentality. They become far more concerned about their own ‘salvation’ than the welfare and salvation of others.”
Thomas A. Jones (Senior Editor), “Why the Controversy”, in Discipling: God’s Plan to Train and Transform His People, Gordon Ferguson, DPI, Woburn, MA, 1997, p. 246.
ICC Senior Editor Thomas Jones is clearly wrong on this point. Cults are among the most likely groups to seek helping others because 1.) helping others might suit the idealism of the group, 2) it could provide opportunities to recruit others into the group, and 3.) it could create positive publicity for the group.
Few people know that the People’s Temple was well known for involvement in social causes in San Francisco before its mass-suicide in Guyana. People’s Temple leader Jim Jones – perhaps the most reviled of all 20th century cult leaders – once served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, (4) and in 1975 was named San Francisco’s “Humanitarian of the Year.” (5)
Myth 4. A group that diligently uses the Bible can’t be a cult
“First of all, cults are characterized by ultimate devotion to a human leader. …While in some of these cases, the Bible is touted, the ultimate authority in such groups is the leader himself. The Bible is not the standard by which the leader and everyone else is measured. The Bible is a tool used by the leader when it is useful to him and his goals.”
Thomas A. Jones, “Why the Controversy,” p. 245.
The most useful definitions of a “cult” are based on the behavior of groups rather than their beliefs. A group can therefore be a cult and use the Bible; hence the term “Bible-based cults.”
When Jones suggests that cults don’t try to follow the Bible, he misses the sophistication of Bible-based groups: it is precisely their ability to convince their members that the leader’s agenda is from God that makes Bible-based cults so potent and so effective at winning the support of their members.
“Most people are not at all willing to become what Jesus called us to become. The easiest way to dismiss his real call to cross-bearing and unselfish living is to label genuine [ICC] New Testament practice as cultic.”
Thomas A. Jones, “Why the Controversy,” p. 244.
This myth seeks to deflect questions about the high commitment level expected by the ICC, by turning scrutiny back upon the questioner. Yet the commitment level of individual ICC critics is irrelevant to whether the ICC is cult or a healthy environment.
In truth, there is a problem with the commitment level in religious cults: cults deceive potential members about the degree of commitment required by the group, they ratchet up the commitment level once someone joins, and they misdirect that commitment away from God (or the supernatural) and toward the group. The line between God and the group becomes blurred and commitment is manipulated to serve the group’s aims.
Myth 6. Mind control is absolute
“Occasionally I hear concerns expressed about the possibility of someone’s mind being controlled by a discipler. If it weren’t such a serious charge, it would be absolutely laughable… Controlling another person’s mind seems to me impossible, but I would not want to do that even if I thought I could.”
Gordon Ferguson (Kingdom Teacher), Discipling: God’s Plan to Train and Transform His People, DPI, Woburn, MA, 1997, p. 151.
Ferguson engages here in what psychologist Paul Martin calls the “all-or-nothing fallacy” of mind control, “that every cult member is completely under mind-control, and totally and always unable to think for himself or herself.”(6)
Not even mind control’s proponents see it as an absolute, external form of control. Robert Jay Lifton notes there is a misconception of “‘brainwashing’ as an all-powerful, irresistible, unfathomable, and magical method of achieving total control over the human mind. It is of course none of these things…” (7)
Mind control is not absolute, nor does it mean that people affected by it lose all personal discernment. ICC members may understandably feel that they have “come to their own convictions” in believing what the group believes, but they may underestimate the role that influence played in causing them to reach these views. Dozens of identical “convictions” are also likely shared by the person who taught them, and that person’s discipler, and so on, all the way to the top of the ICC recruitment/discipling pyramid. Does the ICC truly encourage people to come to their “own convictions”? Perhaps more accurately, it gets them to make the ICC’s convictions their own.
Just as mind control is not absolute, neither is it uniform in a group. The intensity and severity of mind control may vary widely throughout a cult (8) – not every member may experience the same degree of control. Depending on the methods of one’s immediate ICC leaders and peers, it would be possible to have a fairly “mainstream” religious experience in the ICC – although perhaps not permanently.
Finally, mind control is not necessarily intentional. Leaders can learn techniques of undue influence by modeling their behavior after superiors in the group, or by just “doing what works.” Some ICC leaders may sincerely be trying to do what is best for members according to the doctrine and practice they have learned, without having any awareness that their techniques are unethical. Other leaders who are aware of systematic problems in the ICC may have bought into the idea that the end (saving the world) justifies the means (excessive control and influence over members).
Myth 7. Cult members can’t be productive, successful people
“But you know, there’ll be good hearted people saying, ‘Now hold it, how can they get 5,000 people in the [Boston] Garden and be this weird cult. How can they have lawyers and businessmen and people from all different backgrounds, I mean this is incredible what they’re doing.”
Kip McKean (ICC founder), Follow-Up Study 4: The Mission, DPI Archive Cassette Series, Tape # 10079, recorded circa 1989.
It is a complete misconception that cultists are weird and unsuccessful people – a myth the media has encouraged by mainly covering the most bizarre cults. As Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich of Captive Hearts, Captive Minds put it: “people who join cults are not stupid, weird, crazy, or neurotic. Most cults members are of above average intelligence, well-adjusted, adaptable, and perhaps a bit idealistic.” (9)
It shouldn’t surprise us that the ICC has many successful and productive members – especially when we consider the ICC’s relentless efforts to attract the best and brightest.
Myth 8. “Cult” is just a buzzword
“There are a lot of things called ‘cults.’ When I was growing up in the McCarthy days in the 50s, everything was called ‘communist.’ That didn’t make it so, but that became the buzzword, and ‘cult’ is a buzzword in our day…”
Gordon Ferguson, Consumed by Faith, Part 2, WCVB TV report, Boston, May 20, 1993
Writing off “cult” as a buzzword implies that the word lacks real meaning. Most experts do not throw the word ‘cult’ around lightly, and are happy to give detailed definitions and criteria for cults. They may recognize that the term “cult” has limitations, but that is worth using because it refers to a real phenomenon, and because the term has reached popular acceptance.
ICC leaders, on the other hand, seem reluctant to even acknowledge that cults exist. Some leaders cite vague dictionary definitions of “cult” to ridicule the use of the term altogether:
"If you look at the definition of what a cult is, then everybody fits that category…"
Marco Pellizzeri (Evangelist) in Derrick Engoy, “Controversial religious group returns to Cal State-Long Beach,” Daily Forty-Niner, March 5, 2001.
While it’s true that many dictionaries define “cults” very broadly, all this proves is that many dictionary writers have a poor understanding of destructive cults. (10)
Other ICC leaders like Thomas Jones admit that “there are dangerous groups that practice dangerous forms of ‘spirituality’” (11) but ignore how experts define such groups. In Why the Controversy, Jones tries to defend the ICC of charges of mind control – but rather than using the definitions and criteria of cult experts to make his points, he compares the ICC to some misguided set of criteria for which he doesn’t even list a source. (12)
Myth 9. Jesus was a cult leader
“We’re not operating a cult any more than Jesus was…”
Al Baird (World Sector Leader), quoted in Lynette Clemetson, The Alarming Growth of Campus Cults, Newsweek/Kaplan, 1999, p. 35.
This myth says it doesn’t matter if the ICC meets the criteria of a cult, because Jesus or the First Century church would have qualified as one also.
The best cult criteria do not implicate the biblical Jesus as a cult leader, or the First Century church as a cult. For example, the reFOCUS cult characteristics cited in the RightCyberUp article Is the ICC a Cult? conflict with several things the Bible says about Jesus:
It is a myth that all cult models would implicate the biblical Jesus as a cult leader, or the First Century church as a cult.
Myth 10. All cults must be violent or apocalyptic
Not all cults are violent or apocalyptic, like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple or David Koresh’s Branch Dividians. Most cults use similar techniques to less extreme ends and thankfully never resort to physical violence or suicide.
Despite their tragic climaxes, apocalyptic groups were probably not always so threatening – especially when recruiting their members. (If Heaven's Gate had advertised itself as a suicide cult, would anyone have joined it?)
Moving stories from former members of all cults indicate that they all, to some extent, have shared in the same experience – the cult phenomenon. Former Jim Jones disciple Deborah Layton puts it eloquently:
There are essential warning signs early on. Our alarm signals ought to go off as soon as someone tells us their way is the only right way.
When our own thoughts are forbidden, when our questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts and friendships outside the organization are censored, we are being abused for an end that never justifies its means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment, and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult.
If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong. If I, as a young woman, had had someone explain to me what cults are and how indoctrination works, my story might not have been the same. (13)
(1) Steven Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 1990, p. 65.
(2) Dave Saltonstall, “New York congregation grows from 18 to 6000,” New York Daily News, October 22, 2000, 9.
(3) Margaret Singer & Janja Lalich, Cults in Our Midst, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1995, p. 11.
(4) Deborah Layton, Seductive Poison. A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the People’s Temple, Anchor Books – Doubleday, New York, 1998, p. 104.
(5) Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre, A&E, November 8, 1999.
(6) Paul Martin, Lawrence Pile, Ron Burks & Stephen Martin, “Overcoming the Bondage of Revictimization: A Rational/Empirical Defense of Thought Reform”, Cultic Studies Journal, Vol 15, No 2, 1998.
(7) Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1989, p. 4.
(8) Madeline Landau Tobias & Janja Lalich, Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships, Hunter House, Alameda, CA, 1994, p. 52.
(9) Ibid., p. 28
(10) One has to wonder how many curious cult members have found a vague dictionary definition of “cult” and stopped their research on the spot, content that their group was not a cult.
(11) Thomas A. Jones (Senior Editor), “Why the Controversy,” in Discipling: God’s Plan to Train and Transform His People, Gordon Ferguson, DPI, Woburn, 1997, p. 244.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Deborah Layton, Seductive Poison…, 1998, p. 299.
Copyright © 2001 Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
