Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2009, Page 32
When asked if I regret my cult experience, and if I had to do it over again, would I, I have
consistently replied that yes, I do regret it and no, I wouldn‘t do it again. Sure, I met some
good people and I learned some things I can even say I learned a lot—with the caveat that
I would rather have learned those things another way.
But it‘s done. I did join a cult. I did spend more than 10 years constrained, confined, and
often conflicted. That background is part of who I am—and so the only sane thing to do as
far as I could tell was to turn a bad thing into a good thing.
Once out of the cult, after much inner turmoil, self-doubt, anxiety, and deliberation, I
enrolled in graduate school and obtained a Ph.D. Today I make whatever contribution I can
to bring to people in our society a better understanding of those controversial groups that
some of us some of the time identify as cults. I also hope I can help former cult members
better understand their own experiences and how they might come to some personal
resolution with all that.
I‘d like to review some of the relevant events in the 30 years since the deaths in Guyana, to
remember and honor some of the notable people in our field,2 and to suggest what we
might look to in the future. Several interlocking themes run through my ideas here.
Who better to start with than my dear old friend and colleague, the late Margaret Singer,
who would say, ―Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a cult.‖
And when I use the word cult, I‘m not talking about religion or belief systems I ―don‘t like.‖
Some of our detractors like to make this all about unjust religious persecution or
mainstream traditionalists picking on minority religions. Rather, I‘m talking about
imbalanced power relationships and ultra-authoritarian and controlling social systems.
I would add that we‘d do well not only to study cults, but also to speak out about the
consequences of membership in such a group and the controversial and sometimes harmful
behaviors of the group as a whole.
I do not deny that positive experiences occur in a cult context, but what is of interest for me
is the interactional dynamic found in cults that brings moral human beings to occasionally
engage in insidious or demeaning behaviors, or sometimes just the plain incomprehensible.
Over the years, we‘ve witnessed countless violent eruptions—either inward or outward—
related to one cult or another.
On November 18, 1978, more than 900 followers of the Reverend Jim Jones died at his
command and at the hands of their comrades in the remote jungle of British Guyana, a
small nation on the northern coast of South America.
These true believers at Jonestown—all of them U.S. citizens—were living and working in that
isolated community that they built from scratch—poorly fed, overworked, yet believing they
were creating a utopian society forged out of Jones‘s prophesies and fantasies.
How much coercion was involved? How much duplicity, manipulation, intimidation, threat?
We do know that once there, they couldn‘t leave without the blessing of the leadership
because each person‘s passport was taken from him or her.
We do know that Jones had his people engage in suicide drills, called White Nights—these
were loyalty tests.
Jones was not the first cult leader to ask, ―Will you die for me?‖ But he was certainly one of
the few to bring that to fruition on such a massive scale.
We do know that families and couples were separated from each other, made to live in
separate quarters, and that children were not raised by their parents.
When asked if I regret my cult experience, and if I had to do it over again, would I, I have
consistently replied that yes, I do regret it and no, I wouldn‘t do it again. Sure, I met some
good people and I learned some things I can even say I learned a lot—with the caveat that
I would rather have learned those things another way.
But it‘s done. I did join a cult. I did spend more than 10 years constrained, confined, and
often conflicted. That background is part of who I am—and so the only sane thing to do as
far as I could tell was to turn a bad thing into a good thing.
Once out of the cult, after much inner turmoil, self-doubt, anxiety, and deliberation, I
enrolled in graduate school and obtained a Ph.D. Today I make whatever contribution I can
to bring to people in our society a better understanding of those controversial groups that
some of us some of the time identify as cults. I also hope I can help former cult members
better understand their own experiences and how they might come to some personal
resolution with all that.
I‘d like to review some of the relevant events in the 30 years since the deaths in Guyana, to
remember and honor some of the notable people in our field,2 and to suggest what we
might look to in the future. Several interlocking themes run through my ideas here.
Who better to start with than my dear old friend and colleague, the late Margaret Singer,
who would say, ―Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a cult.‖
And when I use the word cult, I‘m not talking about religion or belief systems I ―don‘t like.‖
Some of our detractors like to make this all about unjust religious persecution or
mainstream traditionalists picking on minority religions. Rather, I‘m talking about
imbalanced power relationships and ultra-authoritarian and controlling social systems.
I would add that we‘d do well not only to study cults, but also to speak out about the
consequences of membership in such a group and the controversial and sometimes harmful
behaviors of the group as a whole.
I do not deny that positive experiences occur in a cult context, but what is of interest for me
is the interactional dynamic found in cults that brings moral human beings to occasionally
engage in insidious or demeaning behaviors, or sometimes just the plain incomprehensible.
Over the years, we‘ve witnessed countless violent eruptions—either inward or outward—
related to one cult or another.
On November 18, 1978, more than 900 followers of the Reverend Jim Jones died at his
command and at the hands of their comrades in the remote jungle of British Guyana, a
small nation on the northern coast of South America.
These true believers at Jonestown—all of them U.S. citizens—were living and working in that
isolated community that they built from scratch—poorly fed, overworked, yet believing they
were creating a utopian society forged out of Jones‘s prophesies and fantasies.
How much coercion was involved? How much duplicity, manipulation, intimidation, threat?
We do know that once there, they couldn‘t leave without the blessing of the leadership
because each person‘s passport was taken from him or her.
We do know that Jones had his people engage in suicide drills, called White Nights—these
were loyalty tests.
Jones was not the first cult leader to ask, ―Will you die for me?‖ But he was certainly one of
the few to bring that to fruition on such a massive scale.
We do know that families and couples were separated from each other, made to live in
separate quarters, and that children were not raised by their parents.
