Hi!

I'm John Green.

Welcome to Crash Course Religions.

So, picture this: you’re in a cozy room, surrounded by   people welcoming you with good food and kindness.

They’re showing interest in your questions,   your anxieties — in you.

Hold on a second: is this a cult?

We’ve all read the headlines,  watched the documentaries,   and worried about the MLM our cousin joined.

But without the stereotypes of  white robes, wilderness compounds,   and tinfoil hats, can we really tell the  difference between a religion and a cult?

[THEME MUSIC] When we think about cults, we often  think about groups that are bizarre,   outlandish, and dangerous.

Like Heaven’s Gate,   a doomsday group whose members  died by mass suicide in 1997.

Or Aum Shinrikyo, a group that piped deadly gas into the Tokyo subway system in 1995.

Stories like these gain notoriety, capture  our imagination – and make bank on Netflix.

But the word hasn’t always been so…loaded.

Historically, cults were a little eccentric,   sure, but for the most part accepted by society.

In ancient Rome, the word “cultus” was used for   small, elite groups devoted to  worshiping particular deities.

Like fan clubs for obscure gods, whose temples were   closer to frat houses than doomsday compounds.

The rites of Dionysus got pretty wild, y’all.

Even what we know as Christianity began as a cult—and was viewed as a pretty   weird one in its early days.

I’m Christian; I can say that.

In fact, many belief systems and traditions that we consider religions today were called   cults when they first emerged.

Let’s head to the Thought Bubble… In the 1820s, a man named Joseph  Smith said he was visited by an angel.

The angel led him to unearth a golden book written in a language Smith called “Reformed Egyptian.”  In ninety days, he translated it using special stones, gave the gold book back to the angel,   and published all 588 pages.

He called it the Book of Mormon.

And with it, he started the  Latter-Day Saints movement.

Smith argued that Christianity needed a  total makeover, and the Book of Mormon,   which recounts Jesus’ visit to the  Americas, was the start of that makeover.

Smith’s movement drew tens of thousands of followers, but also countless haters.

Fleeing persecution, Smith led his  flock– who had picked up the nickname   Mormons– west from New York to Ohio, then on to Missouri, and eventually, Illinois,   where, after the locals got wind of his  teachings, he was killed by an angry mob.

But the Latter Day Saints movement didn’t die with Smith.

It spread and grew, at first on the margins…then, more mainstream.

By 1972, historian Sydney Ahlstrom  wrote, "One cannot even be sure,   whether [it] is a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people,   a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these.”  Whatever it’s called, two hundred  years and millions of believers later,   the Latter-Day Saints movement isn’t the fringe movement it was when it started.

Thanks Thought Bubble!

The way we think of the   word “cult” today started in the 1950s, when fears of brainwashing took hold during the Korean War.

To the American public, brainwashing was a scary but convincing answer to the question,   “Why would anyone become a communist?” And before long, it became a way to explain   people’s interest in other movements that society deemed abnormal, like new religions.

That’s what happened with the Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954.

The church itself was influenced by traditional Christian ideas, but became known for holding   mass wedding ceremonies and recruiting new members by showering them with attention.

Fears of brainwashing swirled around the Church, even though research showed very   few people recruited actually joined.

Like other small religions before it,   the movement got slapped with the “cult” label – only this time, the word picked   up associations with scientifically unfounded  ideas like mind control that continue today.

So where’s the line?

Can we really separate cults from religions?

[Cell phone vibrates] Well, if it isn’t the Devil’s Advocate –  I forgot rhetorical questions summon you.

[DEVIL’S ADVOCATE] Hey Johnny boy!

Yeah, the answer is simple.

Cults have obvious tells: For  one, charismatic leaders like L.   Ron Hubbard, of the secretive – and  litigious – Church of Scientology.

[JOHN] Please don’t sue us.

But religions have Jesus, Muhammad,   and Siddhartha Gautama, who I’d argue were a lot more influential than L. Ron Hubbard.

And better writers.

Even the ones who didn’t write.

Seriously though, please don’t sue us.

[DEVIL’S ADVOCATE] Sure, sure, but what about the rigid social norms that cults enforce?

Like how The Family International required its members to “forsake all”: school, voting,   doctor visits, even having a job.

Seems sus.

[JOHN] Dude, wait until you find  out about Catholic nuns and priests.

[Devil’s Advocate] But think about it.

Cults exploit people.

Members get manipulated into forking over cash in hopes of gaining enlightenment,   salvation, or belonging.

And there’s abuse.

We’ve seen it with the Branch  Davidians, The Family International—.

[JOHN] —and with Catholic, evangelical, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu communities.

Lots of religious leaders gain  wealth from their followers,   including millionaire pastors  of evangelical megachurches.

And sadly, abuse and suppression of victims’ stories happen in many religious traditions.

[Devil’s Advocate] But what about– [JOHN] See you’re just going  to do this for literally ever.

That’s how these arguments work.

I’ve been on Twitter.

[Devil’s Advocate]: It’s actually called X now.

[JOHN]: And…I’m done.

The harms we associate with   “cults” aren’t unique to them.

Listen, I have to go.

I have a dental procedure I would  prefer to this conversation.

So, as I was about to say, many scholars of religion today think we should ditch the word   “cult” altogether because it implies  that things like abuse, exploitation,   and violence only happen within those communities  – when the truth is they occur across religions.

Communities labeled “cults” are often viewed as doing religion “wrong,” even if their beliefs   aren’t that different from accepted religions.

Like, devotees of Santa Muerte follow many   Catholic traditions, like praying with  rosaries or placing offerings on altars.

But they do it in honor of “Saint Death,” who often appears as a   skeletal woman in a white dress.

And, because “Saint Death” isn’t   recognized by the Catholic Church,  her followers get labeled as cultists.

So, some scholars argue that the “cult” label reveals less   about the group itself, and more about whoever’s using the label.

So again I’m not saying that religions–including religions with few followers that demand total   obedience–can’t cause harm.

They cause harm all the time.

Any system that has both secular and  spiritual power is always going to be   at risk of causing terrible, terrible harm.

I’m saying that this harm is always a threat,   and always something to pay attention  to in the context of religion,   regardless of the novelty of belief and practice.

Most experts today prefer less charged terms, like new religious   movement or minority religion.

Words that don’t label a religion   as necessarily “bad,” just “recent”  and “practiced by fewer people.”  By that definition, many movements  qualify: Shakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses,   crystal enthusiasts, and the “spiritual but not religious.” Because here’s the thing: maybe we want to call an unfamiliar group a cult because   we’re worried about its members and we want to highlight that they might be in danger.

But the problem is that sometimes calling something a cult brings on new types of danger.

And in groups already disproportionately targeted by the police, further marginalization   can be especially dangerous.

Take what happened in 1985 between   the Philadelphia police and a primarily  Black new religious movement called MOVE.

MOVE’s members were dedicated to resisting racist systems through what they saw as a   “natural” lifestyle, with practices  like composting and communal living.

But law enforcement repeatedly misunderstood MOVE’s beliefs and labeled them a cult.

Ultimately, when neighbors complained about members shouting on bullhorns and children   living in reportedly filthy conditions,  police bombed a home where members lived.

The bombing killed eleven people and  destroyed the homes of 250 neighbors.

A report one year later condemned the  police’s actions as “unconscionable.”  But no one associated with the  bombing was ever criminally charged.

So, while we tend to associate  the word “cult” with violence, we have to also account for how the  label itself can escalate violence.

Calling a community a “cult”  can change how it’s policed,   sometimes bringing more harm to vulnerable people.

At the end of the day, the word “cult” is… complicated.

It’s changed over time and stretched  to include everything from “drinking   the Kool-Aid” to being a little too obsessed with Disney World.

Though the word tries to draw a hard line between traditional and non-traditional   religions, time tends to blur that line as  new religions gain following and acceptance…   and old religions participate in some of the abusive practices we associate with cults.

That line eventually gets so fuzzy that  many scholars argue it doesn’t exist.

So, what is a cult, really?

Well, many contemporary scholars argue it’s   often a way of saying, “This group is too weird or threatening or dangerous to count as a religion.”  Now, some of those groups are weird  and threatening and dangerous!

But that label doesn’t bring us closer to  addressing harms within or beyond them.

The members of these movements seek the same things followers of any other   religion seek – belonging, meaning, and acceptance.

And when we look at it that way, the line  isn’t just fuzzy, it’s practically invisible.

Next time, we’re going to examine some more fuzzy lines, specifically, the ones between