Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs.
I wonder how interested we should be in those murderous cults of the postwar era that led their devotees to commit mass suicide. It is such a bizarre extreme that interest seems somewhat ghoulish. Dutch tulip-mania was odd. Christianity is odd, and in some forms very odd. But these cults strike me as impossible to understand.
I am thinking of the seventies cult of "the jungle poisoner", Jim Jones of Jonestown, and his "Peoples Temple" cult that culminated in 1978 with 'revolutionary suicide' in the Guyanan jungle, and of David Koresh's "Branch Davidian" cult that ended (in 1993) in the Mount Carmel siege near Waco (Texas). The third example that comes to mind is less well known in the Anglophone world; it climaxed in French-speaking Switzerland in the nineties. I looked it up on Wikipedia –– 'L' Ordre du Temple Solaire'.
"The Order of the Solar Temple (French: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS), or simply the Solar Temple, was a French-speaking religious group, often described as a cult, notorious for the mass deaths of many of its members in several mass murders and suicides throughout the 1990s. The OTS was a neo-Templar movement, claiming to be a continuation of the Knights Templar, and incorporated a mix of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and New Age ideas. It was led by Joseph Di Mambro, with Luc Jouret as a spokesman and second in command. It was founded in 1984, in Geneva, Switzerland."
It seems to me that these three murderous cults of the postwar era were each started by charismatic pranksters who were amused at their ability to hoodwink people, but who grew to believe their own nonsense, even to death. This Swiss cult was said to contain many "intelligent middle class adherents". (!)
Part of my interest comes from the realisation that essentially all religions are cults; it is hard to find a definition of a cult that does not include the Church of England. There may be a spectrum, running from Jim Jones on the one hand to the archbishop of Canterbury and the Quakers on the other. But Quakerism is undeniably a cult; its followers proudly and stubbornly following their charismatic (though long dead) leader. On that spectrum running from Jim Jones to George Fox there lies all the great religious names: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Guru Nanak,......; men with magnetism, and a message that appeals.
The number of adherents who follow a cult determines its social standing but that may depend on marketing as much as on appeal; think of Spanish thumb-screws and the 'Auto da Fé.
Popularity may relate less to the plausibility of the claims, than to their desirability, their ability to meet a human need. Some people crave status. But many people need a friend, and many need hope.
I have remarked elsewhere [1] that the outstanding popularity of Christianity as a world religion may derive from the hope of life after death. After all, how plausible is 'life after death'? And how desireable?
The Quaker cult seems to be 'odd man out' in that there seems to be essentially no claim. Followers are offered (a) friendship, and (b) the sense of doing the right thing. Nothing more (in the present century). That may be why the cult is dwindling.
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