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These groups were varied, peculiar, and widespread. The Oneida Community, the Shakers,
the Hutterites, and the Mormons were religious communes that expressed millenarian
aspirations. Some, like the Millerites under the leadership of William Miller, were short-lived.
Miller predicted that the end of the world would come by 1840, but he was forced to change
the dating. His failures may have ended the cult but those who believed in the Second
Coming followed Ellen G. White into the more enduring Seventh Day Adventist faith, while
others joined the Jehovah‟s Witnesses. These sects flourished because they adapted to
realities and could temper some of their prophetic interpretations without changing their
fundamentalist beliefs17.
In contrast, Owen‟s New Harmony, Brook Farm, and The House of David were more secular.
Most of these failed since they rejected the established order and sought to create a perfect
society, focusing on socialist economic utopian alternatives18. The contemporary communal
cults that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and the Kibbutz utopian movement in Israel are
simply variants of the older ideals. Today, however, communes tend to be more narcissistic,
quasi-therapeutic, or Eastern-oriented. Nevertheless, they represent, as did the earlier
communes, an attempt by many to escape the injustices or emotional scars of a fast-paced
post-industrial society19.
Black and Native American Developments
Another factor in the emergence of more cultic and evangelical ardor in the United States was
the presence throughout the South of the Black slave. In both the Caribbean and the slave
states, Blacks torn from their roots were forced to develop new ways of coping with their
subordinated and psychologically damaging life. Religion was one of their most dependable
solaces. They adapted the Christian church to their needs, gradually creating their own Black
religious experience. As they were freed and subjected to the vagaries of unfeeling economic
competition and insecurity, subjected to the racist discrimination of the North and Jim Crow in
the South, Blacks found in cultic movements a source of comfort, assurance, and self-
expression20.
Groups led by Marcus Garvey, Black Muslims, Father Divine, and Move21, all spoke to Black
economic frustrations, abject poverty, and racist victimization. Their charismatic leaders
preached self-help, separation, racial pride, and sometimes simply comfort22. Garvey and
Father Divine were charismatic figures who, in their lifetimes, were able to attract funds,
admiration, and love. Garvey, however, was convicted of mail fraud while Father Divine
(George Baker), though accused of manipulation and exploitation, remained the head of his
cult until his death, and his wife has preserved his memory and his work.
Native Americans, too, found religious cults a useful way to confront the dominant culture,
which denied them their lands and their traditional values. Like the Blacks, they developed
cults that embodied both ancestral practices and many new Christian beliefs propagated by
zealous missionaries. The two most pronounced of these cults were the Ghost Dance
movement and the Peyote cult. The Ghost Dance differed from the Peyote because it stressed
hostility toward the dominant white culture, while the latter used drugs to induce Christian
ecstasy, remaining passive and inward. The Ghost Dance cult was eventually suppressed. The
Peyote cult was ignored until the 1960s when apprehension over the increasing use of drugs
caused its practices to be challenged. In spite of a series of court decisions and the passage of
the Drug Abuse Act, permission to use peyote for religious purposes is still pending23.
Both Native Americans and Blacks turned to cults that reflected the frustrations of
displacement, poverty, and racism. Their responses to the prevailing society were attempts
to assuage communal despair and anger. Acculturation and assimilation were far more
difficult and almost impossible because of racial discrimination. Their religious responses
ranged from a return to traditional fundamentalism and "born again" churches to adherence
to a host of cults that denied the values of the intrusive majority. Appearing bizarre, these

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1991, Page 17
cults were generally ignored by dominant groups and regarded as aberrations, such as Father
Divine‟s group or the Peyote cults. They did not challenge society either in their doctrines or
by excessive proselytization. If, however, cults emphasized ideals that offended the mores of
the prevalent political state or if they stressed group conflict, opposition arose to curtail, limit,
and even suppress such movements24. More often the belligerent, aggressive cult did not
prosper and as it became more acculturated and less bellicose, it faded away to be replaced
by newer and even more strident groups25.
Western Europe
Although the United States proved a more fertile environment for the spread of dissenting and
different religious or secular movements, western Europe, which also underwent a process of
rapid change caused by industrialization, was not immune to the growth of cults and sects.
Changes created by new production, transportation, and communication unraveled and
challenged existing precepts, while the generational gap became more divisive. Prosperity
and education accelerated technological progress increased urbanization created new classes
and sharper antagonisms, stimulating worldliness. These factors also created anomie,
alienation, apprehension, and often nostalgia for traditional values. Responses to these
changes led to a variety of choices. Established churches, the voice of the status quo and the
propertied classes, did not always meet the aspirations of the new classes or the displaced
young. Responses were sometimes secular, with an avowed interest in revolutionary activity,
or in adherence to the new spirit preached by Karl Marx, culminating in the twentieth century
in allegiance to new totalitarian ideologies.
However, not everyone reflected alienation by retreating to secularism. Religion is too potent
a force and too significant in the binding of family and community. People did not abandon
the church but rather sought a more communicative, emotionally satisfying variant: It was
expressed in Catholic France, Italy, and Portugal by the growth of innumerable miracle
devotions and prophetic movements, Lourdes being the most illustrious example26.
The expression of religiosity was acknowledged by widespread devotion to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus and even more intensely to the cult of Mary27. Almost spontaneously a number of
visions of Mary were widely reported. These apparitions were accompanied by prophecies
and warnings28. Churches were dedicated to Mary, and confraternities such as the Association
of the Living Rosary, the Children of Mary, and Our Lady of Victories were dedicated to her
service. Visions were most commonplace in Italy and although the church avoided
delineating them as genuine miracles, it acquiesced in the folk respect given to the young
witnesses29. These visions did not cease in fact, world crises increased apprehensions and
their occurrences accelerated (e.g., Fatimah in Portugal, current experiences in Yugoslavia, in
Ireland, and in Philadelphia).
Protestants in France and England, in response to their alienation, also underwent a
movement similar to the Great Awakening in America. A new religiosity appeared that was
marked by an increased piety and emotional expressions of belief by the faithful --a more
vibrant rebirth of a spiritual relationship between Jesus and his followers. These Protestants
did not reject Christian dogma, but they possessed no doctrinal unity, and often loyalty was
given to individual preachers. Heavy emphasis was placed on homiletic and especially
missionary activity30.
The greatest difference between the United States and Europe did not rest on a lack of
religious activity but rather on the fact that most of the leaders preaching in European
societies relied on variants of the mainstream faiths, and for very good reasons. The Catholic
church and the Anglican and Lutheran churches enjoyed much real support from the political
authorities, even in regions that practiced religious freedom. To the contrary, in the United
States, the absence of a firmly established state church, along with a weak, newly emerging