Cults can even come to an end due to incidents such as Mass Suicide, as illustrated by The People’s Temple led by Jim Jones. Jim Jones developed a belief called ‘Translation’ in which he and his followers would all die together and move to another planet for a life of complete bliss. The People’s Temple movement generated a lot of negative attention, described as a “concentration camp” where people were kept against their will. This description led Leo Ryan to visit Jonestown (Home of the movement) in 1978. The visit itself went well, up until the point Ryan went to leave with members of the movement who had decided they wanted to leave with him. Ryan and four others were killed by gunfire at the Port Kiatuma airport by the Temple’s security guards. Fearing retribution, a consensus was later reached by the project members to commit mass suicide. 914 people died; 638 adults and 276 children. Most appeared to have died after drinking a drink which contained cyanide – others however appeared to have been murdered by lethal injection. The coroner said that hundreds of bodies showed needle marks, indicating foul play. Other signs of foul play include bodies found dead due to gunshot wounds.
The People’s Temple and similar incidents (EG; Heaven’s Gate headed by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles in the 1970’s) generate a lot of public support for Anti-Cult and Counter-Cult Movements. The Anti-Cult Movement (ACM) consists of individuals and groups who attempt to raise public consciousness about what they feel are extreme danger. As they see it, the threat comes from small, coercive, manipulative groups -- mostly new religious movements. Although they have been largely discredited in North America, their beliefs are accepted in many other countries, notably China and some countries in Western Europe. By comparison the counter-cult movement (a.k.a. CCM or discernment ministries) is composed primarily of conservative Protestant Christian individuals and agencies that attempt to raise public concern about religious groups which they feel hold dangerous, non-traditional beliefs. They are sometimes called heresy hunters or heresiologists. Adding ‘fuel to the fire’ of such movements allows them to increase the levels of public awareness about such cults; once members of the public are aware of such terrible accounts that have taken place at institutions such as Jonestown, people may take extra care in joining New Religious Movements in fear that a similar fate may lie ahead of them.
Sects on the other hand continue to thrive as they remove the radical division between God (Good) and people (Bad) which is instilled in Christianity (and major religions), traditional religion is about controlling the bad self, where as sects (and New Age Beliefs in general) deal with the belief that people are basically good and need to strip away bad experiences. Sects repudiate the compromises made by the church that are willing to accommodate themselves to the interests of the state and quite easily become the instruments of state policy. People are likely to join sects if they oppose to aspects of existing religious organisations, examples of sects that continue to thrive in the world today are Jehovah’s witnesses and Amish. One problem, which all sects have, is funding; sects are funded completely by the subscriptions of their members and if their following begins to fade the sect will inevitably follow in the same footsteps – leading to it’s demise.
Cults and Sects meet some of the criteria of the different theologies of society (Marxism, Functionalism, etc). Sects are somewhat like Karl Marx’s theory of religion, they provide people with a purpose in life, in may ways they live up to Marx’s “opium of society” description promising people a life of eternal bliss elsewhere – meaning, sects give their members a supernatural solutions to problems.
Both Sects and Cults fit into Bruce’s (1995) description of religion – they “consist of beliefs, actions and institutions which assume the existence of supernatural entities with powers of action, or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose” – A cult example being Heaven’s gate, a UFO cult who believed the body was a temporary container for the human spirit, if timed correctly suicide would free the spirit from it’s physical vessel. Jehovah’s Witnesses would be an example of a Sect that fits into this category, taking the bible to be “Gods word”.
Society is constantly changing and people no longer have the time nor lifestyle to commit fully to a traditional religion, this is where Sects and Cults both serve a purpose. Sects more so allow people to follow the teachings of a traditional religion without certain aspects that don’t suit their life. Cults offer a similar service, taking the “Whatever works for you” route. Sects and Cults therefore allow people to follow a faith with much more ease – hence another reason why they are not always shortlived.
To conclude, I would disagree with the view that “cults and sects are only fringe organisations that are inevitably short-lived and of little influence in contemporary society”. As illustrated in this essay you can quite clearly see that cults and sects have a huge influence on society, whether they are short-lived or not, incidents like The People’s Temple will forever haunt (influence) society. Evidence to disprove the fact that cults and sects are short-lived can be found in The Quakers move from a sect to a denomination in the USA over the past few hundred years. Sects and Cults meet some of the specifications of religions and with society starting to see a decline in traditional religion and an increase in Holistic Milieu (Based off the Kendal Project, conducted by Heelas and Woodhead) I would expect for them both to continue to live on and grow over the years, decades or even centuries.
