Caution and trigger warning. For those who were members of abusive cults, this post may be triggering, especially so the included video.

For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in a cult. Most of my family would vehemently deny it was a cult because I grew up ostensibly Roman Catholic, but it was a cult. Many evangelicals would claim that “of course it was a cult, you were in the Catholic Church and they believe so many wrong things.” Beliefs alone don’t define a cult, and there are plenty of evangelical cults out there.

So if the churches can’t define cults, why is that, and what, exactly then, is a cult? The first part of this question is simple: we’re actually discussing different things. In the Catholic Church, there are devotional cults, where the word has an entirely different meaning; it often applies in Catholicism to veneration of a particular saint, for example. This isn’t (ostensibly) the same thing as worship (the Catholic Church recognizes a difference between veneration, or dulios, and worship, hypetdulios – isn’t it nice to know some Latin words?, which is reserved for God alone. I have a great-grand-aunt, long deceased, who has been declared venerable by the Catholic Church. The religious order she founded, and the ordinary people who revere her could be considered the Cult of Catherine Aurelia. (Whether or not this is a cult in the next sense would depend upon how it would stack up to certain criteria.

So what then is a cult? How can we know one when we see one? Is there an easy way to identify and avoid them?

What a cult is can be tricky for most of us to spot. Most of us think of religious organizations, but this is only a part of the cult ecosphere. Cults come in many flavors, from martial arts groups, multi level marketing, Yoga and fitness groups, political and civic groups, and there are psycholgical and even one-on-one cults.

What common thread do all of these groups have? The one thing they share is undue influence. Every cult takes over an individual’s life. They begin to affect our behavior, our emotions,  our world view, they make us fearful to leave the group, they cause us to discount any information presented against the group or it’s leader,

Cults are dangerous because they hijack our identities and artfully use the best parts of who we are against our own best interests. They isolate us from our lives prior to joining, and if they can’t assimilate our families and friends along with us, they will isolate us from them to keep them from pulling us away. Their goal is to make dedicated servants, and nothing less. To what end depends upon the leader.

Some people think that they could never be caught up in such a thing, they feel they are too savvy. Well, are you intelligent? Are you passionate? Are you idealistic? Do you value your faith, the environment, fitness, diet, financial security, a political candidate or party? All of these, and more, are ways people have got involved in cults. Nobody joins a group because they wish to have their life hijacked. They join for a positive reason, either personal, or for a greater good. Cults prey on our ideals and thrive on our zeal.

Cults recruit and survive, for the most part, by not looking like cults. After all, if they advertised as being “most notorious”, or “best rated cult in the borough”, they wouldn’t do quite well. So cults look like ordinary churches, Yoga studios, therapy groups, MLMs (multilevel marketing companies) and other legitimate groups. When you first get there, they make you feel welcome, part of a family, like you belong, and always have. This is called “love bombing”, and it’s a very effective recruitment strategy.

Some groups will purposefully hide part of their doctrine or training from new members. (There are initiatory groups that teach in stages, which aren’t cults, so not being public with everything doesn’t automatically suggest that a group is a cult.) Some groups will dissuade seekers from looking for information about the group from unapproved sources. This IS a red flag.

Most groups will look exceptionally appealing at first blush – especially if you’re not looking out for cult-like behavior. It’s when they have you involved and invested that the demands start to pile on. These groups want you to feel dependent on them, that you need them, that your life revolves around them, and it is at this point that they will feel they have you safely hooked.

So what can you do to insure you don’t get stuck in a cult? The first thing that I would recommend is that you make sure, absolutely certain in your mind, that it’s always a possibility. Even a well established church can become a cult if the conditions are right. So it’s very important that we have constant vigilance and continuous evaluation of the groups we are a part of. We need to be willing to challenge the practices when we see them going awry, and we need to be willing to leave if those groups are unable to adequately address our concerns. This can be more troublesome for married couples and couples with children; while communication is always important within a family, if you begin to suspect undue influence from a group you belong to a a family, or from a group that one or more of your family members belong to, seek out someone knowledgeable about cult influence. It is important to be able to make your loved ones aware of that influence in a way that doesn’t harm your existing relationship. If, however, your loved one(s) refuse to leave, you are faced with a dilemma. Should you leave alone, or should you stay? And why? Staying should be for the purpose of trying to mitigate the harm done by the group, with the ultimate goal of freeing your loved ones from their influence. Gentle reminders of things pre-cut which you might have once enjoyed, or of people they knew on the outside may help stir memories, and may help to initiate a conversation about the negative aspects of the group.

But in the end, if you feel that you have exhausted all possibilities of extricating your loved one(s) from the group, it may be time to ask if you might be better off on the outside.

A very important lesson that I learned in a trauma program was that “Love is not a sufficient reason to remain in a destructive relationship.” your suffering does not mitigate their unknown or unacknowledged suffering. Not does it ease their felt suffering. And your exit might help them reconsider their reasons for remaining. But remaining helps neither them, nor you. On the outside, You, may be able to do more to expose the group than you could from the inside. But there may also exist the very real  possibility that your family will be lost to you. Some who have left have waited for many years for family members to join them; some have waited in vain.

This is the briefest look at why cults are so incredibly dangerous and destructive,and what an individual alone can do. It’s also  more reason to stay away in the first place, or to get out as soon as possible.

I am building a list of trusted resources in the curated links section of this web site. If you feel a need to reach out to someone, this can be a starting place.