Are you or a Family Member a Victim?

The following statements, compiled by Dr. Michael Langone, editor of Cultic Studies Journal, often characterize manipulative groups. Comparing these statements to the group with which you or a family member is involved may help you determine if this involvement is cause for concern.

1. The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

2. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

3. The group is preoccupied with making money.

4. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

5. Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader.

6. The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).

7. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).

8. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.

9. The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).

10.The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).

11. The leadership induces guilt feelings or fear in members in order to control them. Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.

12. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.

13. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

Many of the above characteristics can apply to hundreds of seemingly normal churches and religious organizations throughout the country. Religious organizations are considered the most likely to be of cult status.

If your pastor shows either of the above signs, which is not a biblical principle, then they may be headed in the direction of cult status. For instance, there are hundreds even thousands of churches today preoccupied with making money or being prosperous, which leads to mind and action control.

Church leaders influence members in all the above areas, however, they use the words of the bible to do so. It is very important to read the bible and understand the overall concept of salvation. Knowing the difference between God's plan and a cult's method of influence is detrimental to your future.