What is the Difference Between a Cult and a Religion? — Part Four
Photo by Samuel Penn
The siege had begun at Mount Carmel — the Branch Davidian’s headquarters — with four ATF agents and six Davidians killed, after which a ceasefire was negotiated.
An arbitrator, in contact with David Koresh, asked for Koresh’s cooperation in releasing the children inside the building. Koresh told the arbitrator that he would let a certain number of people come out per day, especially children, if ATF would broadcast a message he had written to the world.
The arbitrator, feeling he had no choice, broadcast his message as promised for several days, which aided in the release of 44 members, mainly children. But the ATF and FBI wanted all of the Branch Davidians to come out, specifically Koresh himself. He promised he would come out if a sermon he wrote was then broadcast. Waiting for him to get it to them so that they could go forward, Koresh stalled. He kept saying that he wasn’t quite finished. Days went by.
Finally, he promised that more children would be released if the ATF kept their own promise of staying away from their house, which they kept by having all ATF and FBI members up on the road, or across a field, away from the compound. Time ticked away as the government people waited to see if more people would walk out of the building, but that wasn’t happening. There were no children or anyone coming out of the door. Koresh kept giving excuses.
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On the 51st day of the hold-out, tired of waiting for Koresh to fulfill his continuing promises but not following through, on April 19, 1993, the FBI began moving their tanks closer to the complex. They ran over the cars parked in front of the building to get closer and to destroy their transportation with their big tanks and then began throwing tear gas inside the house to force the people out the door to get away from the gas fumes. As more teargas was thrown through windows, instead of people fleeing the building, flames were seen erupting from three different sections. Nine people, not knowing what was happening, came running out from the side and the back of the building while the FBI waited at the front door for the rest of the group to come pouring out as the flames grew and spread. No one came out.
The seventy-five adults and children, including twenty-four from Britain, that remained in the building, died.
Everyone was stunned. How could that be?
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The ATF in charge of the operation didn’t know the FBI group was going to do what they did and felt hoodwinked by their actions. On-lookers felt that the whole procedure was a massive cluster-fuck by the government and are still convinced of that. The government blamed Koresh.
Whoever screwed up or prompted that event to happen as it did, there’s no going back for a re-do. Some will always wonder: did the victims reach their glorious Kingdom and are tasting Eternal Life as Koresh had promised? Or did they die in vain from a con man’s narcissism that convinced them to believe in a God that was he, himself — a charlatan?
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An effect of that day, which turned that tragedy into an even greater one was spawned by two of the onlookers: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. On the second anniversary of the Waco assault, the two men used the incident as their motivator for blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City in a protest that killed 168 people. What kind of warped minds would show their disagreement with the actions of the government by retaliating in such a deadly way? But that’s another story.
Photo by Jeff Kingma
In my continued quest to find definitive answers about the difference between a cult and a religion, trying to piece together a pattern or a sign that would be obvious, I read more horror stories than I expected. In many instances, as with the previous written accounts, the answers were obvious that those groups would be considered cults. But why? Was it the destructive ends? Would we have known that one of those organizations was a cult instead of a religion if there were no sensational ends? Likely not.
It took a ‘wake-up call’ by the media to broadcast the horrific aspects of identified unlawful actions within a ‘religion’ to even know about some of those groups. I was shocked to read of the multitudes of religious organizations that considered themselves ‘true religions’, but who were secretly manipulating and dictating to members what they must do or not do to their detriment as well as to the detriment of their families.
I asked ‘google’ what the true definition of religion was, which was vague when it said that religion was a system of organized beliefs and practices that generally related to the worship of a god or other controlling forces.
Okay. But that could describe a cult if the leader considered him or herself a ‘god.’
So, I asked: what made a cult? The Google answer basically said that the word is generally used as a disapproving term for groups that are led by a charismatic or self-appointed leader who requires ‘unwavering devotion’ to him or her that deviates from standard practices.
But what are considered standard practices? I wondered.
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It seems that in my research I have found ‘cults’ to have often started out to be an honest attempt at drawing people in to join a religious organization to help the people accept the end-of-days event and prepare for it. But then something goes awry when the leader sees the money pouring in and they begin wanting more. Or he or she sees the opportunities to have any woman or man they want for sex, placing it under the guise of ‘God’s will.’ Through drugs, in some cases, there is no end to the want for more and more and more of whatever some leaders’ thirsts are. But in all cases, the bottom line seemed to be their hunger for ‘power’ and ‘control.’
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Charlie Manson was a big example of someone with the need to feel the power of controlling his followers. When he instructed them to kill the people, they killed in such a brutal fashion because he wanted to make a statement.
Some might say that Manson was the quintessential cult leader — the person one might think of first when the word ‘cult’ pops up. There was no religious involvement in his quest for followers, only his warped need to start a race war that would bring on the apocalypse. He didn’t need the excuse of being a leader to satisfy his need for sex since that was the days of free love and sex was part of the movement. But many other cults I reviewed were replete with using sex as an ‘offering to God’, whether it be from the adult followers or from their children. Teenagers were used for sex in many of the examples of cult life I read about.
For example, in 1968, the Children of God was founded by David Berg in Huntington Beach, California — originally called ‘Teens for Christ’ — with Berg recruiting young teens and hippies of the area to go out and promise sex to potential recruits. Berg also took children away from their parents for them to live apart because he didn’t believe in the nuclear family, which enabled him to have sex with whomever without interference.
Geez!
Photo by Jon Tyson
I wanted to add this quote, which doesn’t answer my initial question, but it explains a lot:
“As long as there is orthodoxy, there will be heterodoxy, and there will continue to be gospels of the end of days that could be rooted in science or scripture, people seeking answers, and leaders will emerge who claim to have them. Whether their followers are cult members or parishioners will largely be a matter of time.”
So, how do people know the difference between a person being a true leader and one who just wants to be followed for their own narcissistic benefits? Are people so needful to follow a leader they can believe in that they will do anything to make the leader happy? No matter how unlawful or sinful?
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In trying to get a grasp on the truth of whether the church that our friends and cleaning ladies belong to is a cult or not, which was the original reason I began to write this story, I researched how cults originate, how they work and why people fall under their spell. Beyond the cults I’ve already written about that have been widely publicized, my findings have been surprising — astounding, in fact — and scary from their methods of coercion, motivations, their secrets, and their mind-numbing methods of devotion.
How could such warped minds lead so many people to such bad ends? And the ultimate question already asked: How can so many people be so gullible?
My search continues.
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Read the conclusion of this story series by clicking here for part five.
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If you missed it, read part one here.
Read part two here.
Or read part three here.