eve that cult behavior should be outlawed as a religion because cults operate only on the fringes of religion, and are really nothing more than a way for a charismatic leader or group to gain power, adulation, and money (Sidney 48-50; Hexham and Poewe 2-5).
Moreover, one of the ways of explaining the rise in cult behavior over the past three decades is to look at three very clear stages in American religious and social history. The first, roughly from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, was the period of diffusion and counterculture. This period was character
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