Most people believe they know a cult when they see one. Do you? Can you pick the cult out of the description of the following three religious group?
A young man with physical strength and musical talent found himself ostracized from his religious community. Taking a few malcontents with him, he began a new commune in the wilderness, where an arsenal of weapons and survival gear was rapidly collected. Other drifters swelled the ranks of the commune, and the group was united by the music and scriptural teaching of the charismatic leader. Known for his skill in crafting song lyrics and poetry, he often blended references to himself and a messiah figure. Early on he began a practice of taking multiple wives. He had a sense of personal prophetic destiny, and encouraged a squad of “mighty men” to train militarily for a future, decisive showdown with government forces that would propel him to a position of authority.
A mature man, after years of administrative and legal conflict, felt that his people could not carry out their worship activities in their home country in peace. Emigrating to another land en masse, the religious community soon set up what amounted to a civil state in their new land. Outsiders were not allowed access to the encampment, except on very restrictive terms. Those in violation of the strict codes of the camp were severely punished, usually corporally—and, rumor had it, occasionally killed. Even children were subject to these harsh measures. Official representatives of the home country, sent after the illegally departing group, died under highly mysterious circumstances. Soon afterward, word came that thousands in the group were killed by fellow members after a frenzied ceremony around a cultic object.
A dead man was, ostensibly, still the leader of the new religious movement that worshiped him as divine. His followers “spoke” to him in both private and group ritual services, and celebrated the act of his death as their central theme—going so far as to mimic the eating of his corpse in secret ceremonies. The adherents shared property on a communal basis, and would cut ties with family, friends, and livelihood to follow their dead messiah. They had a practice of “shunning” those among their group who flouted his moral standards. They refused to pledge the required honor to the ruler of the state, and indeed broke certain laws of the state, explaining that their religion required them to do so.
Which is the cultic group? All of them—and none of them. The answer depends on when the question is asked and to whom. Most readers probably saw that the third scenario was a description of early Christianity, and avoided calling it a cult. But the average first-century Roman citizen, at least those who had heard of Christianity, would view it as one of the more bizarre Eastern cults. The first scenario is not David Koresh at Waco, but rather the early days of King David, the founder of the royal house of David and ancestor of Christ.1 And the second scenario? Not Jim Jones going to Guyana, but Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land.2 All three groups were viewed by their mainstream contemporaries as the type of unconventional, nonconformist, charismatic-led religious entities to which we attach the term cult. Today, however, each of these sagas is a respected, even hallowed, story in the pantheon of America’s respected Christian tradition.
These examples highlight the problem with the term cult. While it has a technical, nonpejorative meaning that refers to any organized religious group or practice, the popular meaning of cult is inherently negative. When most people identify a group as a cult, they almost always intend to identify what Webster’s calls “a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.”3 Thus, a cult becomes any religion that deviates from what the majority in society view as normal behavior and belief in spiritual matters. We use cult as a handy, thoughtless shorthand to describe religious movements with which we are unfamiliar and that we therefore view with suspicion.4 We forget that virtually all of us are cultists somewhere—it’s just that most of us, by definition, live where our religious views are the mainstream.
BATTLING THE "CULTS" IN MARYLAND
But being human, and inherently parochial, we tend to overlook this fact. Still, it came as some surprise when my own home state, Maryland, the original U.S. colony of tolerance, launched an anti-cult initiative in May of 1998. Promoted by legislators with backgrounds in the “anti-cult” movement, the effort came in the form of a task force to study cult activities on Maryland state university campuses.5 The initiative was unexpected, as there had been no recent incidents of significance on Maryland campuses involving minority religious groups. Indeed, Maryland legislation cited no problems with “cults” in Maryland, but rather referred to events outside the state—including “cult” related violence in Mississippi, California, and even Japan. The effort was justified on the grounds that “cult” recruitment activities are frequently “directed to students on college campuses.”
The resolution identified the task force members, which included politicians, educators, students, and, significantly, two parents of cult members. This last addition showed that prior to the first meeting of the task force, the government already viewed certain groups as being “cults.” To form the task force it had to choose parents with children belonging to the “cults.” The inherent bias of the job given the task force was further revealed by the list of groups from which the task force was directed to seek information. The list included cult awareness organizations (anti-cult groups), former “cult” members, campus ministers, families of “cult” members. Significantly, there were no instructions to speak with current members of any groups suspected to be “cults,” or any leaders or representatives of the groups themselves. The goals of the task force were vague and involved filing a report with the governor and the assembly by September 1999 on the type and extent of “cult” activities on Maryland campuses.
Armed with this ill-defined mandate, the task force embarked on a fishing expedition to find misconduct on the part of minority religious groups. The task force called a series of “anti-cult” hearings and presented experts who accused a number of groups, including the Unification Church, the International Church of Christ, and the Church of Scientology, of misleading and harming students. However, they gave very few examples of this occurring in Maryland, and their testimony was primarily hearsay and speculation, inadmissible in any court of law. A different view was presented by one invited speaker, William Stuart, professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, who cautioned the panel that defining a cult was inherently problematic and prejudicial, and was usually a cover for crude religious bias.
Indeed, the task force soon realized that it could arrive at no working definition of cult, and thus rewrote its mission statement, omitting the word altogether. The task force was now concerned with destructive and harmful “groups.” But this did not change the focus of the task force’s inquiry. The speakers at the task force’s meetings continued to testify about new religious movements of one sort or another. Recruitment by these groups was termed “proselytizing.” And no witnesses were called to discuss the “harmful” activities of campus fraternities, sororities, or clubs—whose widely reported binge-drinking and hazing scandals would seem a logical target of inquiry for any committee genuinely concerned with all groups that pose “harm” to students.
The final portion of each task force session was open to any speaker who wished to address the committee. It was during this time that the minority religious groups received a chance to speak, but on very limited terms, as these addresses were limited to five minutes. Those who spoke during this period received nothing of the respect or deference from the committee that the formally invited speakers received. Indeed, speakers during this period were frequently interrupted by defensive comments or questions by the task force members or chairman.
The frustration of the minority religious groups grew at each meeting, until the inevitable occurred, and a lawsuit was filed.6 The plaintiffs requested that the task force be enjoined from releasing its report and that the court declare its activities in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The task force responded by announcing it would hasten the release of the report in order to beat the court action. The chair’s haste to avoid constitutional strictures was unnecessary, however, as the federal court refused to prevent the release of the report and later dismissed the suit. An appeal of the dismissal is pending.
Vague and cryptic, the task force report itself did not reflect the extensive testimony about specific minority religions.7 In fact, no “harmful” groups were named in the report. Instead, it listed the names of witnesses at the various meetings and indicated that their testimony could be viewed at USM Headquarters. In some instance, it gave brief overviews of the testimony, with the deletion of names of criticized groups. This approach adds an aura of mystery to the document, as though the witnesses and questioners were speaking in code about topics to which only they were privy.
The report writers were no doubt trying to avoid constitutional problems. But the opaqueness of the report only makes apparent the inherent legal flaws in the exercise. A “cult” fishing expedition will result either in a detailed, specific, and unconstitutional report, or in a vague, ambiguous, and practicably unusable report. In either event taxpayers’ money and time is wasted. But more than this, the very existence of the Maryland report, for its relatively benign content, creates a dangerous precedent and justification for other states to engage in similar probes.
And perhaps even worse, the Maryland report comes at a time when a number of other countries, including some Western democracies, are engaged in their own “cult” and “sect” investigation programs. France, Germany, and Belgium all have ongoing government inquiries into new and minority religious movements. Eastern Europe and Russia are showing a renewed tendency to repress minority religions. China is involved in a notorious crackdown—involving mass arrests, beatings, and imprisonment—against the nonviolent Falun Gong meditation movement. The Maryland incident makes it more difficult for the U.S. government to bring moral pressure to bear on these countries to treat minority religions with respect and equality.
"CULT" COMMITTEES AND CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES
The Maryland saga illustrates some themes that are often common to state-sponsored “anti-cult” efforts, wherever they may be found. Certainly, governments have a legitimate interest in investigating the activities of violent or criminal groups, religious or otherwise. A focused and discrete inquiry into particular alleged criminal acts, however, is amenable to constitutional guidelines of due process and evidentiary fairness. But if an “inquiry committee” reflects some combination of the following failings in due process, openness, and fairness, chances are that the effort is an unconstitutional and improper inquisition, rather than a legitimate government inquiry.
THE PREJUDICING OF CERTAIN GROUPS AS ABNORMAL OR PATHOLOGICAL
While the Maryland legislation identified no particular “cult,” it named to the task force parents of “cult” members and charged the committee with interviewing “cult awareness” experts. Thus, prior to the task force’s reviewing one iota of evidence, the state was expected to identify certain groups as “cults” so the task force could be constituted.
Similarly, in France and Germany only certain “suspect” religious groups appear before the inquiry committees. None of the state or mainstream churches are forced to appear or undergo review. Rather, these churches help identify the “suspect” groups. Thus, the very fact a group is reviewed by the committee requires an act of prejudging. Prejudging is, of course, where the word “prejudice” comes from—and thus it is no surprise that this is what minority religious groups experience before these committees.
VAGUE TARGETS, STANDARDS, AND MANDATES
The Maryland task force soon realized that the term cult was so amorphous and ill-defined that they abandoned it as a guide to their efforts. Unfortunately, the replacement group, was so broad as to be meaningless. Similarly, in Germany the committee to review “sects and psycho groups” could not define psycho group, so put the label on the Church of Scientology just to fill the category.8
Further, as the initiative did not charge the task force with any concrete incidents to examine or review, there was no real guidance as to what evidence was material or relevant. This meant that the arbitrary biases of the committee members and the chair dictated what evidence would be accepted. “Anti-cultists” came and spoke disparagingly, and even slanderously, of groups from around the country, sharing incidents that allegedly occurred in other states or even overseas.
In at least one instance testimony and documents proffered by a major academic sympathetic to religious freedom concerns of the target groups was rejected by the chairman as irrelevant. The absence of clearly defined targets to investigate or incidents to review is an invitation to a due-process-free fishing expedition—guided only by the biases and whims of the committee members.
WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE FROM NATURAL ELEMENTS
The Maryland legislation listed seven groups from which testimony should be taken, but did not include representatives of the “cults” under investigation. Rather, the groups consisted generally of the natural enemies of these groups, such as anti-cult groups, former cult members, families of cult members, and campus ministers. The latter persons represent groups who are usually active opponents of new religious groups.
In Western Europe, where separation of church and state is nonexistent, the mainstream churches are often the driving force behind anti-sect activities, seeking to use the state to inhibit the activities of those they view as competitors.
In Germany church representatives will participate as “experts” in anti-sect inquiries and will work hand in hand with the state in educating the public about the dangers of “sects.”9 It is not surprising that the results of this unbalanced inquiry are unfavorable to the targeted groups.
AN AIR OF SECRECY
The Chair of the Maryland task force at one point ordered that no one was to communicate with any member of the task force except through his office. His command was not only rather arbitrary, but probably unconstitutional, as several members of the committee were elected state officials and anyone has a constitutional right to communicate with their representatives. But the unguided and divisive nature of the inquiry made some level of arbitrary control over information almost inevitable.
Other examples of the tendency toward secretiveness include a witness who refused to publicly release documents submitted to the committee and the choice by the chairman not to include any substantive testimony in the report released to the public. Overseas, “sect” committees make direct use of covert surveillance and intelligence gathering—an example being the formal surveillance that Germany placed the Church of Scientology under in 1997.
"INSIDER/OUTSIDER," "US/THEM" MENTALITY
While academics sympathetic to the plight of new religious groups were called to testify before the Maryland task force, no members of the “cult” groups themselves were asked to testify. Rather, any “cult” member or leader who wished to address the task force was forced to speak during the open forum time at the end of each meeting, where remarks were limited to five minutes. Apart from time limitations, these speakers were also accorded much less respect and deference than those formally invited. All this reinforced an “outsider” status that these groups had already been labeled with. If you were a member of a group under discussion, it was as though you were a “wayward child,” forced to listen to those in authority discuss what is in your best interests, with very little chance for you to speak for yourself.
The strengthening of this “insider/outsider” mentality is one of the common results of “anti-sect” committee work. In Germany the government’s reports on “sects” have produced a wave of anti-cult media coverage that has prompted much private sector harassment, including widespread employment discrimination against suspected “cultists.” In 1996, after a French commission on sects released a report identifying 172 groups as sects, the French paper Le Monde called for “something to be done about sects.” Shortly after this, the Unification Church headquarters in Paris was firebombed. Ironically, much of the violence associated with “cults” is of this type—violence by the community carried out against “outsider” groups.10 The evidence shows that “overwhelmingly, nonconventional religious groups have been free of reported incidents [violence or coercion] atypical of their day-to-day life.”11
One could conclude that the violation of due process, disregard of constitutional rights, and divisiveness of this type of inquiry is more of a threat to a community than any groups being investigated. Indeed, the Maryland task force perhaps tacitly admitted as much when, in its report as fact number one, it acknowledged that the “divergent views, [and] constitutional issues” may cause state “intervention [to] exacerbate the problem.” It then admitted, as fact number two, that the extent of the problem “is statistically very small considering the enormous number of students attending USM institutions.”
After-the-fact admissions, however, that discriminatory and divisive investigation may have been unnecessary is not much comfort to those “cults” caught in the sights of private interests and public scrutiny. While it is a relief to emerge relatively unscathed, the Constitution is meant to protect peaceful religious groups from having to undergo the gauntlet at all. In Maryland, while the original target may have been the “cults,” it is the Constitution that really got caught in the crossfire.
Footnotes
1 David’s exploits as an outlaw in the Judean wilderness are recorded in 1 Samuel 22-31 and 2 Samuel 1:2.
2 The story of Moses and the Exodus, including the drowning of the Egyptian army and the purging of the people after their worship of the golden calf, is found in Exodus 14-32.
3 Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (Random House, 1966).
4 Academics are becoming aware that the popular usage of cult is overshadowing its technical meaning, and many of them are now referring to minority religious movements as new religious movements, or NRMs. W. Cole Durham, Jr., “The United States’ Experience With New Religious Movements,” European Journal for Church and State Research (1998), p. 213.
5 Task Force to Study the Effects of Cult Activities on Public Senior Higher Education Institutions, H. J. R. 22 (May 21, 1998).
6 The present author, in his capacity as a citizen and taxpayer in Maryland, is a plaintiff in the suit.
7 The report of the Task Force to Study the Effects of Cult Activities on Public Senior Higher Education Institutions can be viewed here
8 Prof. Gabriele Yonan, “Religious Liberty in Germany Today: How the Public Debate on Sects Has Affected Religious Liberty in Germany.” Paper in possession of author.
9 Ibid.
10 Gordon Melton, Encylopedic Handbook of Cults (1992), pp. 366-369.
11 Ibid.
Nicholas P. Miller is an attorney in Washington, D.C.
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