Amy Scobee and I did a YouTube video livestream about scientology and Christianity on Good Friday. If you haven’t watched it, please do so. The documents on screen in this video can be found in this earlier post: Can Scientologists be Christians or Jews Too?
In the video, I mentioned the “White Paper” Pastor Willy Rice had put together on this subject some years ago and promised to try to get a copy and post it for viewers of the video to watch.
I include the title page of the 25 page document below. You can click here to read it in its entirety: Scientology- A Christian Response to Scientology
I have looked at the issue of “cult or religion” and what is a cult or religion more than a little bit.
For these purposes I am discussing the use of the term cult as a high control group or harmful group.
Cult expert Margaret Singer defined a cult as a group that tries to control all or nearly all the decision making of members.
A religion is a set of beliefs and these involve things like spirits, gods, and so forth.
A religion can also be defined as the people who hold religious beliefs in common and often these groups have specific rituals and a hierarchy of their own that to some degree defines members and practices. They may establish orthodox and esoteric practices and orthodox and apocryphal doctrine.
So, you might say what difference, if any, exists between cults and religions?
Singer made it clear that in her career she interviewed over four thousand ex members of cults and cults do not require religious elements to any degree. She encountered religious cults, exercise cults, therapy cults, drug rehab cults, business cults, carpet cleaning cults and even a horse grooming cult.
She elaborated on this in her superb book Cults In Our Midst and a series of interviews available on YouTube.
She described the qualities required to be a cult leader as being willing to lie to and exploit people.
Now when you combine a willingness to lie to and exploit people with a desire to totally or nearly control people in a group of two or more people you have a cult.
The key difference between this and other groups was perhaps most clearly described for lay people in the book The Discipling Dilemma by Flavil Yeakley.
A group was hired by a church to get information on the difference between cults and religions.
The group examined members of several groups including the Moonies (Unification Church), Scientology, Hare Krishnas and A few other cults and several more accepted religions.
A key difference between the cults and other groups was discovered through using personality tests on the members.
In most groups the members have a variety of personality types and traits. You can be a Christian or Jew or a Baptist or Episcopalian and you might be open or reserved or conservative or liberal. You basically have a personality that is established to a significant degree outside of the influence from your religion.
You can be grouchy or friendly and so on. You are accepted for the most part whether you have one set of personality traits or something else.
Now, the members of the groups like Scientology, the Moonies, Hare Krishnas and so on displayed a different pattern.
The members of the high control groups ALL took on the personality traits of ONE person – the leader or founder of the group!
This was found very consistently in these groups!
Various names of this phenomena have been presented in the literature on cults. Pseudoclone and mental clone and false self are all used and all to some degree are accurate.
People who describe their children as becoming a different person and not being the child they raised when they join a cult have noticed these extreme personality changes and also that they can occur with shocking speed.
The research described in The Discipling Dilemma included the result that the church that began this all was found to have members who were changed to become the same personality type as the leader! Oopsies!
They set out to find a way to prove that they were just a Christian church and established a way to prove that they in fact are a cultic group and that cultic groups are not determined by whether they are Christian or not!
So, I think the actual research and science regarding cults is well worth examining and there has been a lot of work in this area from the crucial eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton to the work of Alexandra Stein in Terror, Love and Brainwashing, to Daniel Shaw in Traumatic Narcissism, to Steve Hassan in numerous books to Janja Lalich and of course Jon Atack in numerous books and articles, Atack probably has researched Scientology more thoroughly than any other cult expert.
I think that lots of people have bits and pieces of understanding regarding the difference between cults and religions but the experts who have extensively studied this simply are on a different level.
Most of us who drive cars know something about them but I can assure you I do not understand how the internal components work in fine detail and understand that an engineer or mechanic who is extremely competent will understand what a car is in a way that I never will.
You don’t need that level of education to understand the difference between a cult and religion, you do in my opinion need to be willing to consider that their may be a difference between the common understanding of the two and the truth.
Very interesting! I’ve got to look up some of your references here on cults. Can never be too informed! Thank you so much.
Thanks!
I have a blog that has over five hundred posts on Scientology and cults!
https://mbnest.blogspot.com/2020/07/blog-archive-by-topic.html
Re: “We must love our enemies. Scientologists are not our enemy.”
Someone should inform Pastor Willy Rice that scientology does not and will never look at Christianity through the same lens as he does scientology.
Scientologists will never love their enemies.
Ever.
To be more precise, the soul of L. Ron Hubbard is in a constant, permanent state of Hate.
Absolutely spot on!
Absolutely, Koos Nolst Trenité.
(The words “state” and “hate” actually rhyme. With Hubbard in mind, it’s almost chilling.)
About the cross. Somewhere I read that Hubbard got his eight-pointed cross from something he saw in the Phoenix Arizona area, some kind of old-style Spanish colonial cross.
Of course, after stealing it he had to make up a silly story about the eight points being the eight dynamics. Right.
But actually, the Hubbard cross is really the Aleister Crowley “crossed-out cross”. Hubbard didn’t invent it.
It’s been said of many a man, but in Hubbard’s case it rings true like no other: “If his lips are moving, you know he is lying.”
Bruce, the hermetic cross is one of many things Crowley took from the Order of the Golden Dawn, and it in turn has older roots, and was used in variants by other occult organizations Hubbard would have been familiar with as well.
I think Hubbard and Crowley were much alike, though at least Crowley had more dedication to studying others’ work and being a serious student in other organizations like the Golden Dawn, whereas Hubbard seems to have mostly picked things up from others around him who were better read and better students.
Bruce!!! Hello my dear friend from long ago!!! The crossed out cross. Wow! That makes the most sense of all, knowing Hubbard’s roots.
The crossed out cross.
Is that like the Party of the Double Cross that Dictator Adenoid Hynkel was the leader of?
TrevAnon posted several links yesterday. After following the “Chronology” link a bit, I discovered it was a wonder of information about the early workings of and about Hubbard, his wife, son and daughter, as well as Dianetics and Scientology itself. Like a pot lock supper there is something for everyone.
In particular I liked the decision to not allow the tax exempt status to be renewed. It is entitled “The FOUNDING CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY v. The UNITED STATES.
No. 226–61. United States Court of Claims. July 16, 1969” (link below)
The Tax Exemption formerly granted to Scientology was lost on the basis of monies inuring to Hubbard and his family. Scientology sued to reverse that decision, and this 1969 document lays out the reasons the court decision denying tax exemption for inurement were valid. It is quite specific, even mentioning things like a loan to Kay Hubbard, daughter, and monies to wife Mary Sue and son Junior. Fascinating reading, to me at least, and it cleared up any wonderment about how and why Scientology initially lost its tax exempt status.
Main link:
https://whyweprotest.fandom.com/wiki/Chronology_of_publications_on_Scientology
Tax exemption denied, final ruling:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/irslegal/160769.html