Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture

considers outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. Many cults are
destructive or suicidal though others, whilst being controversial, do not commit extreme acts. This is a list of the
top ten cults. In no particular order:

1. Church of Bible Understanding

Stewart Traill

The Church of Bible Understanding (formerly known as the

Forever Family) is a destructive cult started in 1971 by former
atheist and vacuum repairman Stewart Traill in Allentown,
Pennsylvania. The cult targeted teens as young as 13 by
drawing on their weaknesses. Throughout the 1970s, the cult
expanded to many other parts of the United States.

Traill, born in Quebec in 1936 is the son of a Presbyterian

minister, who teaches that he is the reincarnation of Elijah, and
that he knows the date of the return of Christ. Members of the cult live in a commune and donate 90% of their
income to the cult. Traill amassed a fortune and owns four planes and a half million dollar mansion. According
to former members, Traill controls every aspect of members’ lives through harsh criticism, shame, and public
humiliation.

Ron Burkes, a staff member at a residential treatment center for former cult members says this:

“[Traill] has one of most effective means of shutting down critical thinking I’ve ever seen. Of the hundreds of
people I’ve treated, COBU is definitely in the top five in terms of harm and psychological damage.”

The cult also runs a mission in Haiti, where some former members claim Haitian children are indoctrinated in
exchange for food and clothing. According to an article originally appearing in the Manassas Journal
Messenger, COBU receives government funds for its Haiti Mission as part of President Bush’s Faith Based
Initiative.

2. Manson Family

The Manson Family was a cult started by Charles Manson. Manson was born to
Kathleen Maddox, an unwed sixteen year old girl, in 1934. It is said that his
mother, an alcoholic, sold him to buy beer. When he was returned to her she
had him sent to a boarding school. After a number of years living with his
religious aunt and uncle, he returned to his mother who rejected him. After a
number of robberies, he was put in jail for the first time. One month before his
parole hearing in 1952, he raped a boy in jail by holding a razor to his throat.
Two years later he was paroled. Manson began to pimp a young woman he met
and eventually took her, and a second woman to New Mexico to work for him
as prostitutes. He was caught and tried under the Mann Act (a 1910 act that
prohibited white slavery and trafficking for immoral means).

In 1967 he was released (having spent more than half of his life in institutions).
Upon release, he requested permission to move to San Francisco which was
granted. When he arrived he became part of the Hippie movement centered
around the Haight-Ashbury region and he set himself up as a guru. He moved in with 23 year old student Mary
Brunner and convinced her to allow other women to join them. Eventually eighteen other women were living
with them – this was the beginning of the family.

By 1968, Manson had established a home for the “family” at a ranch owned by George Spahn. Manson
convinced one of the family members, Lynette Fromme, to sleep with Spahn in order to get free rent. Manson
began teaching his followers that social uprisings were coming – using the assassination of Martin Luther King
as evidence. He also told them that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by The
Beatles. The White Album songs, he declared, told it all, although in code; in fact, he maintained, the album
was directed at the Family itself, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the
impending disaster.

In 1969, on August 8, Manson told Family members at Spahn Ranch, “now is the time for Helter Skelter.” That
evening the family, under the direction of Manson, would commit the famous murder of Sharon Tate, leading to
other murders over the two day period.

3. Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo, is a Japanese religious group founded by Shoko

Asahara. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it
carried out a Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways. In 2000 the
organization changed its name to “Aleph” (the first letter of the
Hebrew and Arabic alphabet), changing its logo as well. In 1995 the
group had 9,000 members in Japan, and as many as 40,000
worldwide. As of 2004 Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph membership was
estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 people.

The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom

apartment in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward in 1984, starting off as a Yoga
and meditation class known as Aum-no-kai and steadily grew in the
following years. It gained the official status as a religious
organization in 1989. It attracted such a considerable number of
young graduates from Japan’s elite universities that it was dubbed a
“religion for the elite”. Aum’s PR activities included publishing. In
Japan, where comics and animated cartoons enjoy unprecedented popularity among all ages, Aum attempted to
tie religious ideas to popular anime and manga themes – space missions, extremely powerful weapons, world
conspiracies and conquest for ultimate truth.

Aum Shinrikyo had started as a quiet group of people interested in yogic meditation, but later transformed into a
very different organization. According to Asahara, he needed “to demonstrate charisma” to attract the modern
audience. Following his decision, Aum underwent a radical image change. The rebranded Aum looked less like
an elite meditation boutique and more like an organization attractive to a broader, larger population group.
Public interviews, bold controversial statements, and vicious opposition to critique were incorporated into the
religion’s PR style. The cult started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of
recruits, and of holding cult members against their will and forcing members to donate money. A murder of a
cult member who tried to leave is now known to have taken place in February 1989.

At the end of 1993 the cult started secretly manufacturing the nerve agent sarin and later VX gas. They also
attempted to manufacture 1000 automatic rifles but only managed to make one. Aum tested their sarin on sheep
at a remote ranch in Western Australia, killing 29 sheep. Both sarin and VX were then used in several
assassinations (and attempts) over 1994-1995. Most notably on the night of 27th June 1994, the cult carried out
the world’s first use of chemical weapons in a terrorist attack against civilians when they released sarin in the
central Japanese city of Matsumoto. This Matsumoto incident killed seven and harmed 200 more. However,
police investigations focused only on an innocent local resident and failed to implicate the cult. 11 cult members
have been sentenced to death, although none of the sentences have been carried out, nor the time and date for
the executions to take effect has been publicly established.

4. Restoration of the 10 Commandments

The full name of this cult is the Movement for the Restoration
of the Ten Commandments of God. The Movement for the
Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a
breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church that
formed in Uganda in the late 1980s. As the name implies the
group strongly emphasized the Ten Commandments. This
emphasis meant they even discouraged talking: out of fear of
breaking the commandment about giving false witness. They
also believed that their strict adherence to the Ten
Commandments would be advantageous after the apocalypse.

This proved significant as the group had a strong emphasis on the apocalypse, highlighted by their booklet A
Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Time. New members were required to study it and be
trained in it, reading it as many as six times. They also taught that Mother Mary had a special role in the
apocalypse, and communicated to the leadership. They saw themselves as like Noah’s Ark, a ship of
righteousness in a sea of depravity.

The group tended to be secretive and as mentioned above, was literally silent. Therefore it was relatively
unknown to the outside world until 2000, although in 1998 the school they ran was sanctioned by the
government due to unsanitary conditions and violation of child labor statutes.

In March of 2000, around 300 followers died in a fire in what is considered a cult suicide. Investigations
conducted after the fire discovered mass graves, raising the death toll to over 1,000. This may mean it was
larger than the Jonestown murder/suicide in 1978, but some speculate the death toll was around 800. There are
also allegations that the event was more of a mass murder by the leadership.

5. Raëlism

Founder, Claude Vorilhon (right)

Raëlism or Raelian Church is a UFO religion founded by a

purported contactee named Claude Vorilhon, who is known
recently for supporting Clonaid’s claim that an American
woman underwent a standard cloning procedure, which led
to the birth of her new daughter Eve in December 26, 2002.
National authorities, mainstream media, and young adults
have increasingly investigated the church’s activities as a
result of controversial statements by Clonaid’s head Brigitte
Boisselier the day after.
Members of the Raëlian Church consist of people who have been baptized by Raëlian clergy in quarterly
ceremonies, and among the converts are members of Raëlian-founded free love groups such as the Order of
Angels and Raël’s Girls. The organization—which preaches a sensual philosophy and a physicalist explanation
of the origin of life—could have as many as sixty-five thousand members.

Raëlians emphasize secular and hedonistic ideas, rather than worshiping a supreme metaphysical deity.[30] The
Raëlian Church members follow a UFO religion that favors a strong version of physicalism – the belief that
everything consists only of physical properties. Raëlians deny the existence of the ethereal soul and a
supernatural god, and believe that the mind is a function of matter alone. This ties into their belief that mind
transfer is possible and that it will be possible to create an identical human clone in terms of mind and
personality—as long as the clone and the original are not alive at the same time.

6. Scientology

The Church of Scientology is a cult created by L Ron Hubbard (Elron) in

1952 as an outgrowth of his earlier self-help system called Dianetics.
Scientology and the organizations that promote it have remained highly
controversial since their inception. Journalists, courts and the governing
bodies of several countries have stated that the Church of Scientology is
an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and abuses
the trust of its members. Journalists, governments, religious groups and
other critics worldwide have often referred to the organization as a cult.

Reports and allegations have been made, by journalists, courts, and

governmental bodies of several countries, that the Church of Scientology
is an unscrupulous commercial enterprise that harasses its critics and
brutally exploits its members. In some cases of US litigation against the
Church, former Scientologists were paid as expert witnesses and have
since stated that they submitted false and inflammatory declarations,
intended to be carried in the media to incite prejudice against
Scientology, and deliberately harassed key Scientology executives, by knowingly advancing unfounded
opinions, either to get a case dropped or to obtain a large settlement.

Although Scientologists are usually free to practice their beliefs, the organized
church has often encountered opposition due to their strong-arm tactics,
directed against critics and members wishing to leave the organization.

7. Order of the Solar Temple

Joseph Di Mambro

The Order of the Solar Temple also known as Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS)
in French, and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition
or simply as The Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the new age
myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar. OTS was started by
Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in 1984 in Geneva as l’Ordre International
Chevaleresque de Tradition Solaire (OICTS) and renamed Ordre du Temple
Solaire. It is believed that other members were also involved who have
remained unknown to the public.
In October 1994 Tony Dutoit’s infant son (Emmanuel Dutoit), aged three months, was killed at the group’s
centre in Morin Heights, Quebec. The baby had been stabbed repeatedly with a wooden stake. It is believed that
Di Mambro ordered the murder, because he identified the baby as the Anti-Christ described in the Bible. He
believed that the Anti-Christ was born into the order to prevent Di Mambro from succeeding in his spiritual
aim.

A few days later, Di Mambro and twelve followers performed

a ritual Last Supper. A few days after that, apparent mass
suicides and murders were conducted at two villages in
Switzerland, and at Morin Heights — 15 inner circle members
committed suicide with poison, 30 were killed by bullets or
smothering, and 8 others were killed by other causes. Many of
the bodies when found were drugged, possibly to prevent the
members from objecting. The buildings were then set on fire
by timer devices, purportedly as one last symbol of the group’s
purification.

In western Switzerland, 48 members of a sect died in another

apparent mass murder-suicide. Many of the victims were found in a secret underground chapel lined with
mirrors and other items of Templar symbolism. The bodies were dressed in the order’s ceremonial robes and
were in a circle, feet together, heads outward, most with plastic bags tied over their heads; they had each been
shot in the head. It is believed that the plastic bags were a symbol of the ecological disaster that would befall the
human race after the OTS members moved on to Sirius.

A mayor, a journalist, a civil servant and a sales manager were found among the dead in Switzerland. Records
seized by the Quebec police showed that some members had personally donated over $1 million to the cult’s
leader Joseph Di Mambro. There was also another attempted mass suicide of the remaining members which was
thwarted in the late 1990s. It is believed that The Solar Temple group continues to exist, with thirty surviving
members in Quebec at the St-Anne-de-la-Pérade center, with from 140 to 500 members remaining worldwide.

8. Heaven’s Gate

Heaven’s Gate is a destructive, doomsday cult centered in

California. 21 women and 18 men voluntarily committed
suicide in three groups on three successive days starting on
March 23, 1997. Most were in their 40′s; the rest covered an
age range of 26 to 72. Two months later, two additional
members, Charles Humphrey and Wayne Cooke attempted
suicide in a hotel room a few miles from the Rancho Santa Fe
mansion; Cooke succeeded. Humphrey tried again in the Arizona desert during Feb 1998 and was successful.

They followed a syncretistic religion, combining elements of Christianity with unusual beliefs about the nature
of UFOs. They interpreted passages from the four gospels and the book Revelation as referring to UFO
visitation. In particular, they emphasized a story in Revelation which described two witnesses who are killed,
remained dead for 3 1/2 days, were revived and taken up into the clouds. They look upon earth as being in the
control of evil forces, and perceived themselves as being among the elite who would attain heaven. They held a
profoundly dualistic belief of the soul as being a superior entity which is only housed temporarily in a body.
Applewhite said that bodies were only “the temporary containers of the soul…The final act of metamorphosis
or separation from the human kingdom is the ‘disconnect’ or separation from the human physical container or
body in order to be released from the human environment.”

Members called themselves brother and sister; they looked upon themselves as monks and nuns; they lived
communally in a large, rented San Diego County (CA) home which they called their monastery. Most members
had little contact with their families of origin or with their neighbors. Many followed successful professional
careers before entering the group. Some abandoned their children before joining. They were free to leave at any
time. They dressed in unisex garments: shapeless black shirts with Mandarin collars, and black pants. They
were required commit themselves to a celibate life. Eight of the male members, including Do, submitted to
voluntary castration. This seems to have been a form of preparation for their next level of existence: in a life
that would be free of gender, sexual identity and sexual activity.

Thirty-eight group members, plus Applewhite, the group’s leader, were found dead in a rented mansion in the
upscale San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe, California, on March 26, 1997. The mass death of the
Heaven’s Gate group is said to be one of the most widely-known examples of cult suicide. In preparing to kill
themselves, members of the group drank citrus juices to ritually cleanse their bodies of impurities. The suicide
was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital mixed with vodka, along with plastic bags secured around their
heads to induce asphyxiation. They were found lying neatly in their own bunk beds, with their faces and torsos
covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried five dollar bills and a few quarters in their wallets. All
39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes, and
armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”. The suicides were conducted in shifts, and the
remaining members of the group cleaned up after each prior group’s death.

9. Branch Davidians

The Branch Davidians are a religious sect who originated from a schism in 1955
from the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, themselves former members of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church who were disfellowshipped during the 1930s.
From its inception in the 1930s, the splinter movement inherited Adventism’s
apocalypticism, in that they believed themselves to be living in a time when
Christian prophecies of a final divine judgment were coming to pass. They are
best known for the 1993 siege of their Center near Waco, Texas, by the ATF
and the FBI, which resulted in the deaths of eighty-two of the church’s
members, including head figure David Koresh. However, by the time of the
siege, Koresh had encouraged his followers to think of themselves as “students
of the Seven Seals” rather than as “Branch Davidians,” and other Branch
Davidian factions never accepted his leadership.

Some former members of Koresh’s group alleged that he practiced polygamy

with underage brides, physically abused children, and stockpiled illegal
weapons, legal authorities investigated these charges. On February 28, 1993, the
U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted a raid on Mount
Carmel, a property of the Davidians. The raid resulted in the deaths of six Davidians and four ATF agents after
a firefight broke out. Following this confrontation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) laid siege to
Mount Carmel for 51 days, during which time the FBI and ATF conducted around-the-clock operations
including psychological warfare (psyops) on the occupants of the complex.

The government’s siege on the Branch Davidians ended on April 19 when federal agents released CS tear gas
into the compound. During the assault, several fires broke out and spread quickly through the buildings, killing
approximately 79 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were children. Autopsies confirmed that many of the victims,
including David Koresh, had died of single gunshot wounds to their heads.

The government put some of the survivors on trial. All were acquitted of conspiring to murder federal agents
but some were convicted of aiding and abetting voluntary manslaughter.

10. Unification Church

The Unification Church (Mooneyism) is a new religious movement

started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s. The beliefs of
the church are explained in the book Divine Principle and draw
from the Bible as well as Asian traditions and include belief in a
universal God; in the creation of a literal Kingdom of Heaven on
earth; in the universal salvation of all people, good and evil as well
as living and dead; that Jesus did not come to die; and that the Lord
of the Second Coming must be a man born in Korea early in the
20th century who must marry and have children.

In the United States in the 1970s, the media reported on the high-
pressure recruitment methods of Unificationists and said that the
church separated vulnerable college students from their families through the use of brainwashing or mind
control. Moon dismissed these criticisms, stating in 1976 that he had received many thank-you letters from
parents whose children became closer to them after joining the movement. Moon and his wife were banned
from entry into Germany and the other 14 Schengen treaty countries, on the grounds that they are leaders of a
sect that endangered the personal and social development of young people. The Netherlands and a few other
Schengen states let Moon and his wife enter their countries in 2005. In 2006 the German Supreme Court
overturned the ban.

In 1993, Chung Hwa Pak released the book Roku Maria no Higeki (Tragedy of the Six Marys) through the
Koyu Publishing Co. of Japan. The book contained allegations that Moon conducted sex rituals amongst six
married female disciples (“The Six Marys”) who were to have prepared the way for the virgin who would marry
Moon and become the True Mother. Chung Hwa Pak had left the movement when the book was published and
later withdrew the book from print when he rejoined the Unification Church. Before his death Chung Hwa Pak
published a second book, The Apostate, and recanted all allegations made in Roku Maria no Higeki.

Bonus. Jonestown

On 18 November 1978, more than 900 people died in the largest mass
murder/suicide in American history. Most of the deaths occurred in a
jungle encampment in Guyana, South America, where members of a
group called Peoples Temple lived in a utopian community and
agricultural project known as Jonestown. Most died after drinking a
fruit punch laced with cyanide and tranquilizers, although some may
have been injected; two residents died of gunshot wounds. Earlier that
day a few other residents of the group had assassinated a U.S.
congressman along with three members of the media and a departing
Jonestown resident. And in Guyana’s capital city of Georgetown, yet
another member of the group killed her three children and then herself after receiving word of the deaths in
Jonestown. In all, 918 Americans lost their lives that day.

Since that time, Jonestown and its leader Jim Jones have entered American discourse as code for the dangers of
cults and cult leaders. The expression “drinking the Kool-Aid”—which means both blindly jumping on the
bandwagon, and being a team player—is one manifestation of this. The story of Jonestown, and of its parent
organization Peoples Temple, however, is more complicated than sound-bites comparing strict parents to Jim
Jones, or pundits relating religious violence (such as the suicide air strikes of 11 September 2001) to Jonestown.
Instead, Jonestown serves as a lesson in how a combination of media, government, and citizens can create a
climate of persecution and fear. It also provides an example of how uncritical acceptance of the status quo and
social and geographic isolation can lead to violence and even death.

Notable Exclusions: The Children of God, Mormonism, Jevhovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists
Presentation for Cults
Students were given a list of cults to research and were required to write a one-
page paper on any they choose from the list. Spend one day in the lab on research.

Students then must give a presentation to the class on the cult they chose.
Students in the audience must be able to answer these questions (each on
separate notecard) for at least 4 of the cults presented in class.

1) What is the cult’s name?

2) What do they believe?
3) What is their story?
4) How will you remember them?