Contemporary Cults

Cults are as old as recorded history, but contemporary interest in cults became amplified during the late 1960s and early 1970s as numbers of educated middle class youths abandoned traditional religions and embraced beliefs and practices that were either culturally unprecedented (Eastern religions) or seemed to be throwbacks to an earlier era (Fundamentalist Christianity). During this period, young people were increasingly found living in various types of religious communes and engaging in unconventional behavior, such as speaking in tongues (glossolalia), faith healing, meditating (often under the tutelage of a spiritual leader or guru), and following leaders that conventional society tended to look upon with suspicion and distaste. Interest in cults turned to a combination of fascination and revulsion upon the mass suicide of the Jones cult in November 1978.

Modern cults come in a bewildering variety of ideologies, practices, and forms of leadership. They range from those adhering to a sort of biblical Christianity to those seeking satori (sudden enlightenment) via the pursuits of Zen Buddhism. Some cults have a flexible, functional leadership, such as many groups in the Charismatic Movement emanating from the mainline Christian religions, and others have mentors who control and orchestrate cult events, such as the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification church. Some Hindu gurus, such as Bhagwan Shree Rajineesh of the Rajineeshee sect have been believed by their followers to be living embodiments of God.