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Two Critical Steps to Getting Started:
- Novel Ideas
- Social Acceptance
Sources of Novel Ideas
- Evolve from Existing Traditions
- Invent
- Lift (steal, barrow) from Another Group or Cultural Form
Where Do Cults Get Their Novel Ideas (Beliefs)?
- Personal Experience
- Host Secular Culture
- Other Religious Groups
- Internal Social Processes
Gaining Social Acceptance
- New religions must recruit new members.
- Virtually all new religions experience high tension with thehost culture.
- This tension is both a threat to the group and a potentialsource of attraction for potential recuits.
Models of Cult Formation
- Psychopathological Model
- Entrepreneurial Model
- Subcultural Evolution Model
- Normal Relations Model
The Psychopathological Model
- Most popular view of cult formation
- Emerges out of psychoanalytical view of religion and magicas neurotic wish-fullfillment
- Closely linked to deprivation theories of revolution
- Also linked to anthropological theories about "revitalization"or "natiivistic" movements.
Revitalization Movements- The ideas emerge from the study of "primitive"cultures that have experienced invasion and domination by westernculture.
- Anthropologist Anthony Wallace postulates that religions andsocieties to through cycles of:
- DECLINE
- REVITALIZATION
- STABILIZATION
From the psychological perspective, new religions emerge during period of social crisis:
- beset by serious personal and social problems
- person(s) become preoccupied and w/draw from social life
- self-initiated sensory deprivation
- supernatural vision
- cognitive reorganization
- share vision with others.
Examples that seem to fit the model:
- Ann Lee -- lost 4 children in infancy
- Mary Baker Eddy - classic case of hysteria
- John Humphrey Noyes - manic depressive
- Love Israel - drug induced delusions
The Entrepreneurial Model
- Brainbridge and Stark note that while not widely recognized, many cult founders are self-consciously entrepreneurs.
- Can you identify the most successful entrepreneur in the historyof religion?
- Paul
- Cults are in the business of production and distributionof novel religious ideas.
- The entrepreneur:
- creates a new product
- which is manufactured and
- marketed
- Successful entrepreneurs:
- are open to experimentation and restructuring of their products.
- are quickly copied by other entrepreneurs
- From the perspective of the entrepreneurial model, cults in business of providing a product to customers (clients)
- Selling novel compensators, freshly packaged
- Supply is manufactured and sold
- Entrepreneur motivated by product
- Motivation often stimulated by prior involvement in a successfulcult
- Cults tend to cluster in lineages
- Successful leaders carefully experiment and introduce newproducts.
Examples:
- L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology)
- Charles Dietrich (Synanon)
- Werner Erhart (est)
The Subcultural Evolution Model
- This model emphasis the role of the group in the creationof new religions.
- Beliefs and practices emerge out of group interaction processes.
- Mutual conversion is key mechanism for gaining commitment.
Example: Satin's Power
- William Sims Bainbridge
- Sociologist
- Group studied: "The Process"
- A psychotherapy group
- Volunarily isolated itself
- Transformed into a religion
The Normal Revelations Model
- Bainbridge & Stark described three ways that cult formationmight occur.
- Might there be other ways?
- Stark reasoned that there should be.
- He coined the concept "normal revelation" to characterizethe process of attributing extraordinary meaning to otherwisenormal, even mundane social activity
Examples of Normal Revelations
- Mundane mental phenomena experienced as contact with supernatural.
- Apparitions
- Externalizing creativity
Some Implications of "Normal Revelations"
- None of these activities will necessarily lead to cult formation.
- Each has the potential to inspire the recepient of the revelationto perceive himself/herself to be visited by God and charged with special activities .
- Such activities are not necessarily destined to lead to cultformation.
- Sect formation; even incorporation within the establishedgroup, is possible.
Types of Cults*
- Audience Cults
- Client Cults
- Movement Cults
* For elaboration of the meaning of these three types of cults, see: Stark and Bainbridge, "Of churches, Sects, and Cults"
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Lecture last revised:
8/15/97