Chapter 125. What Is a Cult? Sect, Cult, New Religious Movement and the Brainwashing Debate

Part 13 deals with groups that critics call “cults”, members call churches, foundations or movements, and academic specialists call “new religious movements” (NRMs). The choice of word already takes a side. This chapter sets out the vocabulary used in the rest of Part 13 and the dispute behind it. On one side stand the “destructive cult” and “mind control” model, running from Cold War “brainwashing” through Robert Jay Lifton, Margaret Singer and Steven Hassan, and the sociologists of religion who reject coercive persuasion as an explanation. On the other side is the political use of the label “cult” by states, churches and the accused groups themselves.

The word and its senses

Jim Willis opens American Cults with the Oxford definition: “a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object; a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister”. He then adds a caution: “One person’s cult is another person’s religion. It is best to tread lightly” [Willis, American Cults, #63203, Introduction “Crystal Balls and Conspiracies”]. Arthur Goldwag notes that the dictionary sense is “a system of worship”, but that in practice the word marks a movement “out of the mainstream”: “Christianity, for example, began as a cultic offshoot of Judaism, enjoying a similar status to the Essenes… or the Samaritans” [Goldwag, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, #73961, “What Makes a Cult Cultish?”]. His legal example is Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. Summum is “a tiny sect founded in 1975 by Claude Nowell” whose members mummify their pets and themselves, and it sought to place its “Seven Aphorisms” beside a Ten Commandments monument in a public park [Goldwag, #73961]. Willis applies the same logic to American history. He writes that Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell and Ellen G. White “founded movements that were, in the beginning, cults but went on to establish themselves as Christian religious denominations”, and he describes the separatist Puritans in cultic terms [Willis, #63203, “In the Beginning: Why Is America Such a Fertile Field for Cults?”].

The anti-cult checklist and the American seedbed

Willis’s working criteria are blunt: “Cults begin with a founder who is at least narcissistic and usually psychopathic. Cults develop a top-down hierarchy. Cults tend to separate followers from the world… The easiest way to spot a cult is to identify an obsession with crystal balls and conspiracies” [Willis, #63203]. His archetype is Shoko Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyō and its subway attack. Citing Library of Congress–sponsored research, he counts “between 3,000 and 5,000 active groups defined as cults” in the United States [Willis, #63203]. He attributes the American abundance to several factors. “Lip-service religion” promises a “Christian nation” that fails to deliver, although the Founders were largely Deists. “America was born in rebellion… and cults have long capitalized on that fact”, with Jemima Wilkinson, the “Publick Universal Friend”, as an early case. He adds entrepreneurship, religious freedom, social media and conspiracy culture. On recruitment, he cites AARP fraud research to argue that “it isn’t who you are that matters, but how you are when the pitch gets made” [Willis, #63203, Prologue; “Lip-Service Religion”; “Rebelliousness”].

From Pavlov to Korea: the genealogy of “brainwashing”

Joel Dimsdale traces the idea to the Soviet Union. There, sleep therapy “with sedatives like bromides and barbiturates was popular”, and “some historians trace the unusual confessions made during Stalin’s show trials to the shadowy influence of Pavlov”. The confessions divided Western observers: “The American ambassador Joseph E. Davies believed that the trials demonstrated proof of treason”, while the diplomat Charles Bohlen found them unconvincing [Dimsdale, Dark Persuasion, #62993, Part I]. The word itself came from the Korean War, when POWs “returned home, scarred by their immersion in Korean and Chinese ‘thought reform’ camps”. Dimsdale also records that experts “hated the term brainwashing, resenting its lurid imagery” and saw continuity with older interrogation methods [Dimsdale, #62993, Part I]. The reference shelf adds that the term first appeared in print in 1950 in an article by Edward Hunter, described by John Marks as “a CIA propaganda operator”. A 1956 US Army report found not “even one conclusively documented case” among American POWs. The CIA’s MKUltra programme, by Marks’s account, “found no reliable way to brainwash another person” [Wikipedia: Brainwashing].

Lifton’s eight criteria and their heirs

Lifton interviewed repatriated POWs and Chinese ex-prisoners. He likened thought reform to dying and rebirth, and he described the confessions as “ecstatic repentance and histrionic remorse” [Dimsdale, #62993]. His Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) set out eight criteria that later anti-cult writers all reuse:

Each writer uses the list differently. Hassan, a former Unification Church member, writes that he “was eventually able to see that the Moon organization uses all eight of those elements” [Hassan, #64506, ch. 4]. Rick Alan Ross calls the result “an intentional transformation of individuals through manipulation and control” that breaks down “critical and independent thinking” [Ross, #62875, ch. 4]. Kathleen Taylor shows that the themes also fit open societies, where “milieu control becomes milieu standardization” [Taylor, #77532, Part I].

Unfreezing, refreezing and the BITE model

Ross quotes Singer’s three phases. The first is “unfreezing”. The second is “changing”, which means “getting the person to drastically reinterpret his or her life’s history and radically alter his or her worldview”. The third is “refreezing”: “Put forth a closed system of logic; allow no real input or criticism” [Ross, #62875, ch. 5]. Stella Morabito quotes Singer’s definition of thought reform as “the systematic application of psychological and social influence techniques in an organized programmatic way within a constructed and managed environment”. She extends the concept to politics, calling political correctness “an instrument of thought reform that uses social pressure to extract conformity” [Morabito, The Weaponization of Loneliness, #65893]. Hassan uses the same three steps. He divides mind control into behaviour, information, thought and emotional control, the components later abbreviated BITE. Thought control, in his account, makes members “internalize the group doctrine, incorporate a new language system, and use thought-stopping techniques” [Hassan, #64506, ch. 4]. His typology has four kinds: “religious cults, political cults, psychotherapy/educational cults, and commercial cults. Religious cults are the best known and most numerous”. He warns that some lobby, electioneer and try “to influence United States foreign policy” [Hassan, #64506, ch. 3]. Ross narrows “destructive” cults to those that “deliberately mandate harm, which is then practiced systemically”. His examples are faith-healing churches that prohibit “professional medical treatment and prescribed medications”, the Children of God and polygamist groups [Ross, #62875, ch. 4].

Taylor and Levine: ordinary psychology

Taylor, a neuroscientist, compares cults and regimes directly. Of psychopathic groups and totalitarian governments, she writes: “Both prefer absolutes and tend to see the world in black and white terms, both espouse the doctrine that the end justifies the means”. In cohesive groups the leader “takes on the role of supernatural protector and relieves the individual of the need to make his own decisions”. Yet she concludes that “there does not seem to be a particular process called ‘brainwashing’ which is distinct from” group cohesion, bonding and diffusion of responsibility [Taylor, #77532, Part I]. Robert Levine admits that he once “shared the common stereotype that most joiners were psychological misfits or religious fanatics” and found it false. Cults are “some of the most effective exploiters of the reciprocity of liking rule”. For Unification Church recruits, joining “had little to do with Moon’s ideology” and followed three steps: “the pickup, the first date, and the love bomb” [Levine, The Power of Persuasion, #60339].

The scholarly counter-position

Most sociologists of religion reject coercive persuasion. In 1983 the American Psychological Association asked Singer to chair the DIMPAC task force. On 11 May 1987 its Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility rejected the report as lacking “the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur”. The external reviewer Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi called “brainwashing” “not a recognized theoretical concept” [Wikipedia: APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control]. Eileen Barker studied the Unification Church for nearly seven years for The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (1984). She rejected the theory because it cannot explain why most people who attend recruitment meetings never join, or why so many members leave of their own accord. James Richardson noted that groups with real brainwashing powers should grow fast, and most do not. Bromley, Shupe, Robbins, Introvigne, Dawson and J. Gordon Melton likewise argued that no accepted scientific theory supports brainwashing [Wikipedia: Brainwashing]. The courts followed. United States v. Fishman (1990) excluded Singer’s and Ofshe’s testimony under the Frye standard, Kropinski, George v. ISKCON and Ryan v. Maharishi went the same way, and Singer’s suit against the APA failed in 1994 [Wikipedia: APA Task Force…]. The debate is not closed. Benjamin Zablocki argued that the concept had been “blacklisted” despite a large body of testimony. Philip Zimbardo held that mind control “is neither magical nor mystical” but a combination of ordinary social-influence principles. The APA itself declined to take “a position on this issue” [Wikipedia: Brainwashing].

The politics of the label

Willis argues that broad First Amendment protection leaves American law unable to separate “legitimate religion” from dangerous groups. He cites the Supreme Court’s protection of Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused the flag salute, and observes that “laws are designed by people… And people are flawed” [Willis, #63203]. In Romania, Bogdan Papadie, whose Războiul spionilor surveys the SRI intelligence service (its roster of former officers includes one promoted to head a “cults-sects” sector of the SRI’s Constanța section), describes sects as having an exoteric doctrine “for recruitment” and secret levels that are “often… illegal, anti-state”. He cites Belgium’s 1998 law against “harmful sects” [Papadie, Războiul spionilor, #10897]. The retired police officer Traian Tandin offers his Secte criminale as an “alarm signal” that “satanism in particular” had reached Romania [Tandin, Secte criminale, #23557]. The opposite critique comes from Gabriel Andreescu. He describes the Orthodox hierarchy’s “visceral fear” of other confessions and asks whether a State Secretariat for Cults headed by an Orthodox theology professor can defend the equality of all recognised denominations [Andreescu, Polemici neortodoxe, #13658].

Accused groups also answer back. Mehran Tavakoli Keshe rejects the label outright: “We are a scientific organization and not a cult. The cult of stealing, and thieving, and killing has been the manner of the man”. In the same workshop he calls Mitra “the essence of the ‘love of the Creator,’ and it’s not a religion” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 447, #378159]. To his own followers he says: “As long as we don’t become a cult, .. a sect, as long as we stay a knowledge based organization…”. He adds that “when we separate ourselves to be unique and elite, that is the time the whole downfall of the knowledge comes… be a KS, but don’t become arrogant” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 354, #378066, “Don’t Create Elite Clique of Knowledge Seekers”]. This is Keshe’s description of his own organisation.

Key points

• “Cult” has a neutral sense (a system of veneration) and a pejorative one (a small group “regarded by others as strange or sinister”). Goldwag and Willis note that Christianity and several US denominations began as cults [Willis, #63203; Goldwag, #73961].
• Willis’s checklist names a narcissistic or psychopathic founder, hierarchy, separation and conspiracism. He explains America’s 3,000–5,000 cults by lip-service religion, rebelliousness, entrepreneurship, freedom and social media [Willis, #63203].
• “Brainwashing” grew out of Pavlov-era Soviet practice, the show trials and the Korean War POW panic. The Army found no documented case, and MKUltra found no reliable method [Dimsdale, #62993; Wikipedia: Brainwashing].
• Lifton’s eight criteria are the shared core of Hassan, Ross and Taylor. Singer’s unfreeze–change–refreeze model and Hassan’s BITE components build on them [Ross, #62875; Hassan, #64506].
• Taylor and Levine explain cult influence through ordinary group psychology. Levine found that joiners are generally not “misfits” [Taylor, #77532; Levine, #60339].
• NRM scholars reject brainwashing. The APA did not endorse DIMPAC, and courts since Fishman have excluded such testimony, while Zablocki and Zimbardo defend the concept [Wikipedia: Brainwashing].
• The label works politically. Romanian security writers use it against sects, Andreescu accuses the Orthodox establishment of using the state, and Keshe calls his foundation “a scientific organization and not a cult” [Papadie, #10897; Andreescu, #13658; Keshe, #378159, #378066].