Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 4
Education and Reeducation in Ideological Organizations
and Their Implications for Children
Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D.
Abstract
This article attempts to identify commonalities among alternative religions
and other high-demand ideologies that explain why so many of these groups
have failed to keep their young ―in the faith‖ as adults. I hypothesize that, in
conjunction with ongoing demands entailed in sectarian membership, the
ways in which these groups resocialize first-generation converts frequently
make the education of the second generation insufficient to ensure their
loyalty into their own child-bearing years.
An unanticipated consequence of the widespread conversions of young people to
controversial sects and so-called cults in the 1960s and 1970s has been the wave of
defecting adult children during the 1990s and into this century. Although no studies exist
that systematically identify how many second-generation members have abandoned the
adopted beliefs of their parents, one is hard pressed to name any prominent sectarian group
from thirty years ago that now has substantial numbers of adult children carrying on the
faith and raising their own offspring in it. A recent book, for example, by the San Francisco
Chronicle‘s religion reporter, Don Lattin, contains interviews with many adults who grew up
amid the American sectarian explosion of the 1960s and 1970s. Lattin did find that some of
these individuals had ―kept the faith and even passed it on to a third generation‖ (Lattin,
2003:3). More common, however, were those adult children who had renounced the faiths
of their parents. The ―one theme that runs through nearly all‖ of the stories that he
gathered from those adult children of the Aquarian Age, and which probably goes a long
way toward explaining why they have chosen not to continue in the faiths of their parents,
―is the feeling that Mom and Dad just weren‘t around enough‖ (Lattin 2003:240). ―While
their parents were out spreading a counterculture gospel, the kids were often left behind at
nurseries, boarding schools, and communal farms. Some were abandoned and abused and
left the fold as soon as they could‖ (Lattin, 2003:2-3).
Most notable have been the defections of the dissatisfied children of various groups‘ leaders
and elite. Among these individuals are the Unification Church‘s first ―perfect child‖ born from
Western converts, Donna Collins, who has spoken out regularly about her life in and
departure from, Reverend Moon‘s organization (Lattin, 2003:189-199 Orme-Collins, 2002).
So, too, has one of Moon‘s former daughters-in-law, Nansook Hong, whose book about her
tragic marriage to one of Moon‘s sons paints a disturbing portrait of the Moon family (Hong,
1998).
Regarding another group, the rebellion by second-generation people against first-generation
abusers in the Hare Krishnas took on near-epic proportions as the young adults placed on
the Internet heart-wrenching stories of their childhood violations (VOICE, 1996), and nearly
eighty of them banded together in a lawsuit against particular older members and the
organization itself (United States District Court, 2000 see Lattin, 2003:81-95). Very similar
dynamics currently are going on with adult children from the first-generation Children of
God members, who are seeking attorneys to launch a lawsuit on their behalf over the
abuses that they allegedly experienced. The group‘s recent biographer, James Chancellor,
concluded that almost all people who were born in the Children of God sect during the early
1970s have left the organization (Chancellor, 2000:242). His prediction that many more

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 5
people from the next cohort (presumably born in the late 1970s and 1980s) will stay in the
group remains to be seen (Chancellor, 2000:242).
This failure to keep the loyalty of the first generation‘s children bodes ill for these sects
because ―without effective socialization a movement will suffer damaging rates of defection
as its youngest members grow up and leave the faith[s]‖ (Stark, 19877:24). If in fact I am
correct in suggesting that youth defection is a sectarian problem that cuts across the
ideological spectrum, then one must ask whether commonalities across belief boundaries
might be factors. In essence, the ways that sects, cults, and high-demand ideologies work
as units of social control alienate large portions of the second generation, whose members
were either born into, or brought into, groups not of their choosing. If research on second-
generation defections from major religions provides indications for what has gone on within
the smaller groups, then data suggests that poor relationships between parents and children
frequently contribute to the children‘s defection when they get old enough to leave (Hood,
et. al., 1996:98). Deficiencies apparently exist, therefore, in the socialization or education of
the young, but these deficiencies appear to be systemic to sects and ideological groups,
given that so many of them are witnessing the failure of the children to continue in their
parents‘ footsteps.
Certainly the doctrines, beliefs, and practices of particular groups heighten or lessen the
content and quality of second-generation education, and the unique chemistry of family
personalities has long-term consequences for all of the parties involved. Nevertheless, a
recently presented model about what psychologist Anthony Stahelski called ―the five phases
of social-psychological conditioning‖ (Stahelski, 2004:32) used by terrorists and cults
provides a construct within which I can identify those commonalities among first-generation
converts that likely have an impact upon members of the second generation.
Anthony Stahelski’s Five Phases of Social-Psychological Conditioning
Stahelski‘s primary concern was with the creation of terrorism. His research, however,
overlapped with studies on the origins of cults because he reported, ―[t]errorism
researchers have compared terrorist groups to cults, and they have concluded that the cult
model is applicable to terrorist groups‖ (Stahelski, 2004). That ―cult model‖ that he
identified, however, appears to have been his own creation. The model expanded upon
some concepts (such as dehumanization and demonization) that are commonplace in social-
psychological literature, but Stahelski also gave creative twists to the commonly used term
deindividuation, and apparently introduced a new term, depluralization, as part of his
resocialization model. He argued that ―[m]ost cults center on a charismatic leader‖ who
supplies ―joiners with meaningful existences‖ and fulfills ―their affiliative needs,‖ and in
return ―requests and receives unquestioning obedience from the joiners‖ (Stahelski,
2004:32). These joiners or recruits are ―extremely vulnerable to the five-phase social-
psychological conditioning process used in violent cults.‖ The phases are as follows:
 Phase 1—Depluralization: stripping away all other group-member identities.
 Phase 2—Self-deindividuation: stripping away each member‘s personal identity.
 Phase 3—Other-deindividuation: stripping away the personal identities of enemies.
 Phase 4—Dehumanization: identifying enemies as subhuman or nonhuman.
 Phase 5—Demonization: identifying enemies as evil (Stahelski, 2004:32).
As a means of distinguishing among types of groups, Stahelski claimed, ―[t]he
dehumanization phase separates extremist hate groups and terrorist groups from non-
violent cults, which do not dehumanize out groups‖ (Stahelski, 2004:35). Apparently, too,
nonviolent cults do not demonize others since this phase prevents ―the occurrence of after-
action killing remorse‖ among those who seek to murder their presumed enemies
(Stahelski, 2004:35). Nor do nonviolent cults kill either defectors or their families