Cults are sometimes referred to as “high-demand” religious groups because of the rigorous regimen and the unusual degree of commitment required of members.*

A former member of the Alamo Christian Foundation used biblical language in a letter to her parents to describe the kind of total commitment she was experiencing.

One indicator of cultic commitment is a willingness to strive for goals that seem impossible to achieve. A “shepherd” of a Children of G-d colony once told his fundraisers: “God wants you to go out in the field and do more than you’re supposed to do. Come back and say that you’re profitable servants and ask what more you can do.” Sun Myung Moon admonished the “true believer” to “invest yourself until you are consumed.”

Cults are defined as religious organizations that tend to be outside the mainstream of the dominant religious forms of any given society. In this sense, cults are not new to the American religious scene. Nineteenth-century America provided fertile soil for the growth of such culture-rejecting religious communities as the Shakers, Oneida, Arnana, Zoar, and the Harmony Society. Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter presents a comparison of these nineteenth-century utopian communities with today’s cults. It lends itself to an analysis of the extremist cults we have been considering. The similarities between some of the communitarian groups of the 1800s and today’s religious cults give credence to the notion that there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

In the commune movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and in some of the New Age cults, the metaphor of the family remains. Dr. Kanter mentions a hippie commune that calls itself the “Lynch family.” And from the world of religious cults there is the “Love Family,” one of the front names for the Unification Church.

Dr. Kanter found that for communes — past and present — the problem of securing total and complete commitment is crucial. Group cohesiveness refers to the ability of members to “stick together,” to develop a common response to perceived threats from the “outside” or from “Satan.” And control involves the development of obedience to leaders and unquestioning conformity to the beliefs and values of the group.

There are a number of ways in which current cult groups generate commitment. These include:

1. Sacrifice

When a young person is required to make certain “sacrifices” as a test of his faith or loyalty, his motivation to remain in the group rises considerably. All cult programs demand that new recruits “give up” something for joining.

Celibacy is a requirement or an encouraged ideal in a number of the New Age cults, and the diet was also consciously controlled to eliminate sexual stimulation in some groups.

Membership in a group like the Hare Krishnas means sacrificing attractive clothing, make-up, and other forms of personal adornment.

An austere life style, without the comforts and affluence of middle-class America, is an effective sacrifice mechanism. Hard work, substandard living conditions, non-indulgence, and little or no monetary reward — all may characterize the committed cultist. Moon once gave this instruction: “You can put some dry food in your pockets, and you can eat as you walk.”

Through the process of investment, cult members’ commitment grows stronger. Tangible resources like cars, stereos, bank accounts, and stocks are turned over to the group upon joining.

According to the text of a formal report on the activities of the Children of G-d conducted by the Charity Frauds Bureau of the State of New York, “No ex-member was permitted to retain any of the possessions he ‘contributed’ nor to take them out when he left.”

Strong commitment is also built by means of renunciation, or “the relinquishing of relationships that are potentially disruptive to group cohesion.” The process of severing all past associations is a part of the pattern of thought reform common to all cults. After the initial phase of brainwashing is completed, there continues to be an emphasis on disengagement from the old and engagement with the new.

Renunciation usually involves relationships in three categories: with the outside world, within the couple, and with the family.

According to Dr. Kanter, “The outside society, a changing, turbulent, seductive place, poses a particular threat to the existence of utopian communities, so that most successful communities of the past developed sets of insulating boundaries — rules and structural arrangements that minimized contact with the outside.”

The world outside the cult is viewed as a corrupt, evil place to be ventured into only for proselytizing, fund-raising, and other necessities. The threat to new converts is particularly real, and therefore “older” members are required to accompany the neophyte.

Some groups maintain facilities that are geographically removed from the “beaten path.”

Specialized terminology and linguistic patterns form what Kanter terms a “psychic boundary,” distinguishing the group from the larger society. In-group jargon emphasizes the separation of “thorn” from “us.”

Newspapers, TV, magazines, books other than certain “approved” religious literature — all are prohibited in most groups.

Distinctive styles of dress also serve as insulating boundaries, as with Hare Krishna devotees whose saffron robes and hair styles gain attention and promote demarcation from the general population.

Cult groups also discourage relationships based on two-person attraction or friendship because such attachments pose potential threat to the group. Such “worldly attachments” as family and friends stand in the way of complete devotion for most cultists. Friendship was even discouraged.

Parents are referred to as “the devil in disguise,” and relatives are considered to be “just flesh relationships.”

Communal cults, past and present, frequently find that children are disruptive to the community and remove them them the group for rearing or schooling. This is illustrated by the comment of an ex-Hare Krishna member: “The young children were treated like a problem. The people were friendly toward them, but they were not openly or affectionately loved.”