Contemporary Cults
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Since the 1960s cults of one kind or another have regularly made headlines with outrageous, bizarre, and even lethal behavior and their number has increased enormously in the past four decades. Writers of all kinds--scholars, journalists, psychologists, and social critics--have frequently pointed out that cults have existed throughout recorded history and that the distinction between an established religion and a cult is often no more than a question of size, socialization, wealth, power, or longevity. But others hold that the sheer number of contemporary cults and the increasing levels of abuse, crime and suicide among many of them are phenomena that distinguish postindustrial society's cult behaviors from those of other eras. While it is difficult to cite any one or two principal causes of the expansion of the cult phenomenon in the present day, there are certainly a number of conditions that are conducive to cult formation on a large scale. Some, such as the approaching end of the millennium, perceptions of widespread immorality and social breakdown, and broad social change, have been significant factors in intensified cult behavior in the past. Others, such as vast increases in mobility, growth of communications media, an influx of ideas from very different cultures, and the existence of legal protections, while not unique to the present, have never reached such high levels before. Thus the argument that the reasons people join cults and the nature of their leaders
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ets of Heaven's Gate founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles, they were the two promised witnesses and they would, like Christ, "be assassinated on earth and rise to heaven after three days in a cloud of light--a UFO" (Thomas 29). Thus, while the Church of Yahweh forbids suicide and Heaven's Gate members chose mass suicide, and while Hawkins adheres to a very ancient code and Applewhite interjected a strong element of popular science fiction into his teachings, both cults drew on the same basic texts as a starting point.
The connection between what is viewed as mainstream religion and the doctrines of cults is, clearly, very strong. The apocalyptic views of the cultists reflect a 2,000-year-old tradition. As Kaihla notes, "practically every Christian Church embraces the concepts of the Second Coming and Judgment Day" and in a 1983 Gallup poll 62 percent of the people interviewed said they had "no doubt" that Christ would come to Earth again at some unspecified time (21). It would not be surprising if a number of today's cults evolved, therefore, into established churches. The same nineteenth-century wave of cult activity in western New York that produced the Millerites also produced the Mormons--certainl
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Some common words found in the essay are:
, Heaven's Gate, People's Temple, Ron Hubbard, Charles Manson's, Hare Krishnas, Texas March, Guy Fournier, Michael Langone, Christian Identity, apr 1997, heaven's gate, 7 apr 1997, clark 388, quoted clark, totalist cults, 7 apr, secret knowledge, christian identity, cult leaders, yisrayl hawkins, seventh day adventists, quoted clark 388, newsweek 7 apr,
Approximate Word count = 3403
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)
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