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that the cult phenomenon has caused them difficult pastoral problems when families of cult
members and former cult members come to them for help and counseling.
Impact on Mainstream Membership
The most concrete, practical effect of cults on mainstream religions is the fact that these
new groups are taking members away. This is especially worrisome to the Jewish
community, where intermarriage and a declining birth rate already threaten the physical
existence of the Jewish people. Cults attract many Jews. The percentage of cult members
who are Jewish is far higher than the percentage of Jews in the general population of the
United States [now under three percent]. Estimates of the Jewish percentage of cult
members vary from 20-50%.24 Cults recruit orthodox and conservative Jews as well as
reform Jews and those unaffiliated with the Jewish community, and they attract Jewish
elderly as well as young people. Many Jews in cults hold high leadership positions, such as
the former president of the American Branch of the Unification Church, Mose Durst. Jews
express alarm at the growing numbers of religious cults successfully recruiting in Israel.25
Catholics are also concerned about losing high numbers to cults at a time when the Church
is beset with many other internal problems contributing to a decline in membership.26 The
Baltimore, Maryland Archdiocese asked the Cult Awareness Network office there to survey
the percentage of Roman Catholic membership in cults.27
Many Catholic leaders believe an even more serious threat to their Church‟s membership
rolls is the Protestant Fundamentalist movement, to which they estimate millions of
Catholics have been converted.28 These groups convert many young and very poor people29
and actively seek out Catholics in Latin America30 and in areas such as Queens, New York,
where many poor Latin American refugees settle.31 Since, according to the testimony of
former members, some of these Fundamentalist groups are cult-like, Catholics link the
“Fundamentalist problem” and the “cult problem” together.32
The liberal Protestant community does not appear to perceive cults as affecting their
membership. Peggy Shriver, the former Assistant General Secretary for Research and
Evaluation of the National Council of Churches, says that although once or twice a month
she gets phone calls from distressed parents of cult members seeking information, these
requests “have not filtered upwards through the grassroots congregational network.”33 None
of the NCC‟s thirty-two various denominations (major Protestant groups and black and
Eastern Orthodox churches) or their educational arms such as Sunday School boards and
seminaries has ever asked for information about cults from her office.34
The Reverend Dean Kelley, former Director of Religious and Civil Liberties for the NCC,
agreed that, when he was with the NCC, most pastors were not asking for help on this
issue, and there was a general apathy or lack of awareness of the cult problem. Kelley
received only about one letter a month about cults, and these were usually from overseas.
While new religious movements are seen as rivals by some mainstream Protestants, Kelley
said cults are perceived as a “localized” or “isolated” problem, and “in most Protestant
denominations they are just not a front burner issue.”35 Kelley said that one reason cults‟
taking members from their churches is not upsetting to mainstream Protestants is that “cult
membership is not seen as a defection from an ethnic group as it is for Jews, Catholics and
Evangelicals. We don‟t see it as catastrophic because religious identity is more peripheral to
us than it is for Catholics, Jews, and Evangelicals.”36
However, many Protestant parents of present and former cult members claim they have
voiced their concern about cults to their pastors and to the National Council of Churches,
but have received no response. “I resent Dean Kelley speaking for all Protestants on this
issue,” complains one such parent. “He doesn‟t represent us. Our outrage and cries for help
are not being heard.”37 These parents and other cult critics claim that Kelley, who appears

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1991, Page 11
on many panel discussions and radio and TV shows discussing religious cults, does not
officially represent the NCC on this issue and that he sweeps criticisms of cults under the
rug of First Amendment freedom of religion issues, thereby often aligning the NCC with
these questionable groups.38
Some cults have specifically targeted the black Protestant community for membership. The
Church Universal and Triumphant once had special recruitment programs directed at blacks
(and women).39 The Rajneesh Foundation, in an apparent attempt to swell the voting rolls in
its town of Rajneeshpuram (formerly Antelope), Oregon bused hundreds of homeless men,
many of them black, to its commune.40 In 1983 The Church of Bible Understanding raided
Covenant House, a shelter for homeless and runaways in New York City, promising the
predominantly black teenagers jobs.41 The Unification Church, pointing to its few black
members, has attempted to recruit others.42 However, with the exception of Jim Jones‟s
People‟s Temple, which had many black members among the 911 who perished in the
Guyana jungle,43 and such all-black cults as The House of Judah and the Black Hebrew
groups in the United States and in Israel, experts agree that most cult members are
white.44
Dr. James Polk, a prominent black churchman who was Executive Director of the Council of
Churches of the City of New York, explains that cults are just not a high priority issue for
the black community. “We have too much else to worry about, like employment and
education. The numbers of blacks in cults are not sizable enough to worry about, or else
we‟ve just ignored them. And because the black community is so pluralistic it is more
tolerant of religious diversity than the white community. We have Haitians and Jamaicans,
for example, that belong to unusual religious groups, some of them meeting in storefronts.
So cults are just not seen as a threat.”45
If there is any strong impact of cults on membership from the Protestant community it is on
the Evangelical segment. Although Sociology Professor Ronald Enroth of Westmont College
in California, himself an Evangelical Protestant, claims cults are not drawing many
Evangelicals46, most cult observers believe many more Evangelicals are joining cults than
are liberal Protestants.
Some groups, particularly cult-like Covenant Community Shepherding/Discipleship
organizations, drain away membership from mainstream religions not only by direct
recruiting of individuals and families, but through infiltration of existing church structures,
thus threatening the very identities of the churches themselves.47 The Bread of Life
infiltrated a Catholic church in Akron, Ohio48 the People of Hope --allied to the larger
charismatic body, “Sword of the Spirit” --troubled the Little Flower Church in Berkeley
Heights, New Jersey49 and the Lamb of God Catholic Church in Baltimore, Maryland.50 While
some of these Covenant Community groups are officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church,
others such as the People of Hope are challenging established Catholic hierarchical
leadership. So, the presence within Catholic congregations is troublesome not only because
they are cult-like, but because their attempts to operate either independently or under the
aegis of a parent covenant group, such as the Sword of the Spirit, cause jurisdictional
disputes and threaten the official structure of the Catholic Church upon which its authority is
based.
Mainstream Self-Scrutiny
Because religious cults are so successful in attracting members from other religions, one
major effect of cults on the mainstream Western religious community is the intense self-
scrutiny religious leaders have been forced to undertake. They are asking, “Why are people
turning to cults instead of to their own religions? Are our religions failing to provide spiritual
sustenance and emotional vitality? Are we driving lonely seekers into the arms of the
cults?”