Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 53
News Summaries
Details on these and other news reports are available in the ICSA E-Library.
Fifty-seven-year old Christhiaon Coie, Tony Alamo‘s stepdaughter, has spoken at length
with the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s Intelligence Report (Spring 2008) about the origins
of his cultic organization. She calls her late mother, Susan, a charismatic ―con artist with a
keen intellect and few morals‖ who worked with Tony to recruit and indenture marginal
families and individuals on the West Coast, eventually building the cult into the anti-
Catholic, anti-Semitic, money-making ministry it became. Coie notes that the Alamos
persuaded their followers not only to scrounge for food in dumpsters, but to collect welfare
checks by convincingly demonstrating that drugs addled their minds.
The Supreme Court has rejected former Aum Shinrikyo member Yasuo Hayashi‘s appeal of
his death sentence for conspiring with other members in the poison gas attack on the Toyo
subway in 1995.
Jim Bakker has moved his TV show from a converted restaurant near Branson, MO, to a
600-acre development in Blue Eye named Morningside that includes ―a surreal indoor
streetscape of Italianate store facades and condo balconies ...a grand chapel at one end
and a portico at the other, the entire scene playing out under a ceiling painted like a
cloudless blue sky.‖ The facility is similar to Heritage USA, the Christian theme park and
resort in South Carolina that was the center of Bakker‘s PTL empire before his fall. Bakker,
who still owes the IRS more than $6 million, and says he has renounced his ―prosperity
gospel,‖ has no registered ownership rights in Morningside. Many former followers still
support him, including the ―man behind Morningside,‖ Jerry Crawford, who has given Bakker
$25 million. Crawford, who credits the evangelist with saving his marriage, denies that
Bakker has ―suckered‖ him.
The recently released Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey, the most
comprehensive look at the American religious ―landscape,‖ which includes conversion
numbers, finds that half the population changes religious affiliation during their lives, and
that a third of native-born Catholics have left the Church — to be replaced by recent
immigrants. Although the U.S. still has a Christian majority, there is a religious marketplace
where people shop for affiliations, and churches tailor their teachings to attract new
members. In addition, there is a trend for younger Americans ―more likely to belong to
minority churches than to Christian ones.‖
Hahnemann University (Philadelphia) physicians say, in the November 2007 issue of Clinical
Psychology Review, that eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is merely the
latest in a series of widely touted but unvalidated therapies for the treatment of anxiety and
trauma. One of the authors asserts that such therapy is ―the same stuff psychologists have
been doing for 20, 30 years, exposing patients to the thing they‘re afraid of, and the
reprocessing or cognitive restructuring.‖
Members of The Family [formerly The Children of God] in Uganda — like The Family
communities elsewhere in the world still fighting the ―sex cult‖ stigma gained in earlier
years — say that they are more liberal than they used to be. For example, a parent allows
her daughter to marry a Muslim. ―We have changed our perception of non-members,‖ she
said, adding that the group no longer uses the term ―systemites‖ to refer to non-members.
The Family says there were 1,238 Family homes and 10,202 members worldwide in 2005.
Stephen Kent, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, who has studied and
written about David Berg, founder of The Family, believes Berg‘s repressed sexual emotions
―exploded‖ after the death of a mother who had punished him for sexual experiments as a
child, experiments he continued when he came to lead a group of free-love hippies. In
Lustful Prophet: A Psychosexual Historical Study of the Children of God's Leader, published
News Summaries
Details on these and other news reports are available in the ICSA E-Library.
Fifty-seven-year old Christhiaon Coie, Tony Alamo‘s stepdaughter, has spoken at length
with the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s Intelligence Report (Spring 2008) about the origins
of his cultic organization. She calls her late mother, Susan, a charismatic ―con artist with a
keen intellect and few morals‖ who worked with Tony to recruit and indenture marginal
families and individuals on the West Coast, eventually building the cult into the anti-
Catholic, anti-Semitic, money-making ministry it became. Coie notes that the Alamos
persuaded their followers not only to scrounge for food in dumpsters, but to collect welfare
checks by convincingly demonstrating that drugs addled their minds.
The Supreme Court has rejected former Aum Shinrikyo member Yasuo Hayashi‘s appeal of
his death sentence for conspiring with other members in the poison gas attack on the Toyo
subway in 1995.
Jim Bakker has moved his TV show from a converted restaurant near Branson, MO, to a
600-acre development in Blue Eye named Morningside that includes ―a surreal indoor
streetscape of Italianate store facades and condo balconies ...a grand chapel at one end
and a portico at the other, the entire scene playing out under a ceiling painted like a
cloudless blue sky.‖ The facility is similar to Heritage USA, the Christian theme park and
resort in South Carolina that was the center of Bakker‘s PTL empire before his fall. Bakker,
who still owes the IRS more than $6 million, and says he has renounced his ―prosperity
gospel,‖ has no registered ownership rights in Morningside. Many former followers still
support him, including the ―man behind Morningside,‖ Jerry Crawford, who has given Bakker
$25 million. Crawford, who credits the evangelist with saving his marriage, denies that
Bakker has ―suckered‖ him.
The recently released Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey, the most
comprehensive look at the American religious ―landscape,‖ which includes conversion
numbers, finds that half the population changes religious affiliation during their lives, and
that a third of native-born Catholics have left the Church — to be replaced by recent
immigrants. Although the U.S. still has a Christian majority, there is a religious marketplace
where people shop for affiliations, and churches tailor their teachings to attract new
members. In addition, there is a trend for younger Americans ―more likely to belong to
minority churches than to Christian ones.‖
Hahnemann University (Philadelphia) physicians say, in the November 2007 issue of Clinical
Psychology Review, that eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is merely the
latest in a series of widely touted but unvalidated therapies for the treatment of anxiety and
trauma. One of the authors asserts that such therapy is ―the same stuff psychologists have
been doing for 20, 30 years, exposing patients to the thing they‘re afraid of, and the
reprocessing or cognitive restructuring.‖
Members of The Family [formerly The Children of God] in Uganda — like The Family
communities elsewhere in the world still fighting the ―sex cult‖ stigma gained in earlier
years — say that they are more liberal than they used to be. For example, a parent allows
her daughter to marry a Muslim. ―We have changed our perception of non-members,‖ she
said, adding that the group no longer uses the term ―systemites‖ to refer to non-members.
The Family says there were 1,238 Family homes and 10,202 members worldwide in 2005.
Stephen Kent, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, who has studied and
written about David Berg, founder of The Family, believes Berg‘s repressed sexual emotions
―exploded‖ after the death of a mother who had punished him for sexual experiments as a
child, experiments he continued when he came to lead a group of free-love hippies. In
Lustful Prophet: A Psychosexual Historical Study of the Children of God's Leader, published
