Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 14
social privilege. If not in actual practice, Americans passionately believed in political and
social equality (except in matters of race).
Secondly (although not always observed), Americans accepted the concept of separation of
church and state. In this matter, they had no choice. In the establishment of the colonies
there was a myriad of religious sects and communities, preventing any one church from
emerging powerful enough to ally itself with the prevailing political powers. For instance,
Anabaptists (who were regarded as a cult in England and in Germany in their time and even
later)5 had founded the state of Pennsylvania. Today the Quaker tradition still remains
powerful in Philadelphia and communities of Old Order Amish, Schenkfelders, and Mennonites
dot the state. The Puritans who dominated in Massachusetts could not force their vision upon
those in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other states. The result was a fertile
intellectual climate for the development of newer, more daring and idealistic religious ideas.
Thirdly, America‟s physical terrain was particularly suited for the proliferation of a variety of
secular as well as religious beliefs. The frontier in the earliest days provides a perfect example
of how European institutionalized religious movements were altered by the new physical
environment. The Great Awakening during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
was the result of the Methodist movement and its religious fervor which had emerged earlier
in England. Methodist groups were widespread, influencing Presbyterian congregations.
Consequently, missionary societies went abroad to transmit to the new world the message of
Protestant Christianity. Its spirit permeated many other Protestant groups in Europe as well6.
When these groups sought converts on the continent they often ran awry of the powerful local
state churches7.
In contrast, on the American frontier there were no established institutionalized churches.
There missionaries found little organized resistance. Further, few formal demands existed for
religious training and many self-proclaimed preachers gained acceptance. Unlike the Anglican
and Presbyterian missionaries, Methodists demanded little rigorous training for their
preachers. These evangelicals capitalized upon frontier conditions that produced an anti-
intellectual and more pragmatic environment. Their appeal had always been directed to the
lower classes and, therefore, they preached a simple message of faith and emotional
participation8.
U.S. Fundamentalism
Fundamentalist Christianity emerged as a powerful cultural force in the United States. The
Pentecostal movement, the name later given to this development, encouraged a multitude of
minuscule and obscure sects. Sometimes their preachers were charismatic, their fervor
characterized by emotional and aggressive evangelical appeals to seek "rebirth" or "witness
for God." Like their predecessors the Anabaptists, they believed in a literal interpretation of
the Bible which led to unorthodox behaviors. Some sects believed in "speaking in tongues,"
faith healing, or snake handling9. The appeal of these sects continued unabated, even though
often their leaders were discovered to have been venal, hypocritical, or even fraudulent10.
The frontier was a particularly fertile area for the message of these religious missionaries.
Those who came west faced hardship and more often personal tragedy. Speaking to the
settlers‟ personal losses, their anxieties, and especially their fear of change (among those in
rural small towns), these ministers brought reassurance and support for traditional culture.
This heritage of homiletics, passionate oratory, and inspiration became firmly embedded in
the American tradition, personified in such figures as Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday, Aimee
Semple McPherson, and Billy Graham. These flamboyant preachers used vivid imagery to
arouse their audiences‟ emotions, and their performances lasted days and nights. Today‟s
television preachers (Oral Roberts, Robert Schuller, Jerry Falwell) have merely shifted their
pulpit from the rural revival meeting to the television screen.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 15
The Great Awakening also led to the development of the Baptist churches, which made their
greatest inroads among the poorer farmers and workers. In the wake of this revival, groups
organized around their favorite ministers, and sects such as the Stonites and Campbellites
appeared briefly. In essence, the missionary, oratorical, individualistic aspect of Christianity
became an important segment of the American religious experience.
Communes
During the nineteenth century, a vast economic transformation led to the burgeoning of the
secular spirit and with it the emergence of a variety of new teachings that would challenge
traditional Christian values. In France in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, new social ideals were
being enunciated by the Englishman Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Etienne Cabet. These
men advocated a new communal type of society predicated on economic as well as social
equality. Though some founded communes in France and England, it was much easier to
engage in communal experimentation in a more fluid and mobile society in which family,
village, and social status were less fixed, as it was in the United States at the time. Besides,
these socialist doctrines found in America a religious counterpart that fitted in with
contemporary evangelical Christianity.
Communal organization was one of the features of many of the contemporary, the older, and
fundamentalist religions. This type of arrangement established the psychodynamics that
promoted coherence, commitment, and obedience. Communes were groups of individuals
and their children, unrelated by blood, who agreed to live together, bonded by common goals
or beliefs, and who shared their resources and finances. Features common to communes --
whether cultic, secular, political, or psychotherapeutic --were that they could and did
renounce the established order as either sinful, unjust, or unhealthy. They stressed the
possibility of perfection through restructuring social institutions. They were utopian political-
economic (Owen‟s New Harmony, Modern Times, Llano Colony) or religious (Oneida
Community, Shakers, Hutterites) or psycho-social (Walden Two, Synanon)11.
Communes differed in their methods of control and governance. The Hutterites, who traced
their roots to the Reformation, relied upon physical isolation from the larger society and
massive indoctrination of the young. Coupled with censure and threats of expulsion, they
commanded absolute loyalty, although decisions were made democratically by the men.
Allegiance was firmly cemented by early adulthood12.
On the other hand, many of the socio-political communes such as Brook Farm, New Harmony,
or the Llano Colony were democratic, cooperative, and socialistic. They did not indoctrinate
they preached harmony and reform. For the most part they failed, torn by dissension and
economic disaster13. Other communes encouraged dependency upon the community and
conformity by reducing the emotional bonds of their members. Their methods included
separation from family and community and departure from normative family patterns.
Shakers encouraged celibacy 14 some Fourierist groups, such as the Oneida Community,
preached free love and some, like the Unification Church, advocated group marriages15.
Millenarianism was embodied in the Judeo-Christian religious heritage which looked to the
arrival of the Messiah or to his Second Coming. These beliefs, which were never abandoned,
were firmly entrenched in many religious sects of the nineteenth century (and are held even
today)16. Evidence of the deeply held vision of impending doom was expressed throughout
European history. The best-known movements were those that arose in the sixteenth century
during the peasant revolts in Germany and in the Anabaptist sects that were part of the
religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But those groups that persisted
ceased to be prominent in Europe, having migrated to the United States, where, in the more
fluid atmosphere of the new world, new cults manifested themselves and flourished.