✦ Most beliefs of the Church are based on the Bible. Consequently, the Moonies (the followers of the Church) consider Moon as their Messiah. ✦ At the age of 16, Moon claims to have had a divine vision in which he was told to complete Jesus Christ’s incomplete mission on earth. ✦ In 1954, a Korean religious leader and business magnate, Sun Myung Moon founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, known commonly as the Unification Church in North Korea. ✦ With their offices in as many as 70 countries, the group is still active, even after Berg’s death in 1994. ✦ COG, later named as Family of Love and now known as The Family International, led to the formation of the first ever organized anti-cult group in the United States and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. However, all these practices were formally ended by the group when some of their members contracted some sexually transmitted diseases in the late 1980s.
✦ They also encouraged sex with children and claimed it to be natural and right. Through the practice of “flirty fishing”, they used sex as a means to attract more followers. ✦ What made the cult particularly infamous was their belief in open sexual relationships. The cult members shifted their headquarters to Arizona, when Berg claimed to have had a revelation that California would be struck by an earthquake. ✦ The group is known for its belief in the Apocalypse. ✦ The first recruits of the cult belonged to the hippie culture, who were instantly attracted to Berg’s attitude towards the system. ✦ The leader of the cult was a Christian minister named David Berg, who established the cult on account of his anti-establishment ideology. ✦ One of the nastiest cults in the world, the Children of God (COG), came to be established in the 1960s, in the city of Huntington Beach, California. Because the cults or NRMs seem to deviate people from the established systems of beliefs and practices, they are often viewed as dangerous and malevolent. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a new religious movement (NRM) is, any religion originating in recent centuries having characteristic traits including eclecticism and syncretism, a leader who claims extraordinary powers, and a “countercultural” aspect. To make matters even more complicated, sociologists consider the term ‘cult’ as derogatory, and rather prefer to call such groups/ideologies as ‘new religious movements’, simply because the latter is a little easier to define than the former. This is probably the reason why the term is often used rather loosely, to refer to any group that seems to work against the tide.
What might mean a ‘cult’ for one, may not hold true for the other. Owing to this, it is needless to say that defining the term is rather tough, and more often than not, a subject of personal opinion.
These are just two of the numerous interpretations, which most people tend to make when they think of a ‘cult’. Some people also think that ‘cult’ constitutes a group of people, coming together with a sinister motive and engaging in anti-social activities. The term ‘cult’ often comes to refer to a group of people, engaging in activities, which seem to be far from those which are socially, politically, and/or religiously accepted. Most beliefs and ritual practices of these cults are aimed at achieving material wealth from the commercially developed colonizing countries. The name Cargo cults has been given to a number of cults in the Melanesian region.