Introduction
Events in the last several decades have
clearly indicated just how dangerous some religious and secular groups
(usually called “cults” by those opposed to them) can be to their own
members as well as to anyone else whom they can influence.
“Brainwashing,” beatings, child abuse, rapes, murders, mass suicides,
military drilling and gunrunning, meddling in civil governments,
international terrorism, and other crimes have been charged against
leaders and members of many groups, and in far too many cases those
accusations have been correct. None of this has been very surprising to
historians of religion or to other scholars of what are usually labled
“new” religions (no matter how old they may be in their cultures of
origin). Minority groups, especially religious ones, are often accused
of crimes by members of the current majority. In many ways, for
example, the “Mormons” were the “Moonies” of the 19th century — at
least in terms of being an unusual minority belief system that many
found “shocking” at the time — and the members of the Unification
Church could be just as “respectable” a hundred years from now as the
Latter Day Saints are today.
Nonetheless, despite all the historical
and philosophical warnings that could be issued, ordinary people faced
with friends or loved ones joining an “unusual” group, or perhaps
contemplating joining one themselves, need a relatively simple way to
evaluate just how dangerous or harmless a given group is liable to be,
without either subjecting themselves to its power or judging it solely
on theological or ideological grounds (the usual method used by
anti-cult groups).
In 1979 I constructed an evaluation tool
which I now call the “Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame”
or the “ABCDEF” (because evaluating these groups should be elementary).
A copy was included in that year’s revised edition of my book, Real Magic. I
realize its shortcomings, but feel that it can be effectively used to
separate harmless groups from the merely unusual-to-the-observer ones.
Feedback from those attempting to use the system has always been
appreciated. Indirect feedback, in terms of the number of places on and
off the Net this ABCDEF has shown up, has been mostly favorable. For
example, it was chosen by and is now displayed on the website of the
Institute for Social Inventions, who paraphrased it for their “Best Ideas — A
compendium of social innovations” listing.
The purpose of this evaluation tool is
to help both amateur and professional observers, including current or
would-be members, of various organizations (including religious,
occult, psychological or political groups) to determine just how
dangerous a given group is liable to be, in comparison with other
groups, to the physical and mental health of its members and of other
people subject to its influence. It cannot speak to the “spiritual
dangers,” if any, that might be involved, for the simple reason that
one person’s path to enlightenment or “salvation” is often viewed by
another as a path to ignorance or “damnation.”
As a general rule, the higher the
numerical total scored by a given group (the further to the right of
the scale), the more dangerous it is likely to be. Though it is obvious
that many of the scales in the frame are subjective, it is still
possible to make practical judgments using it, at least of the “is this
group more dangerous than that one?” sort. This is if all
numerical assignments are based on accurate and unbiased observation of
actual behavior by the groups and their top levels
of leadership (as distinct from official pronouncements). This means
that you need to pay attention to what the secondary and tertiary
leaders are saying and doing, as much (or more so) than the central
leadership — after all, “plausible deniability” is not a recent
historical invention.
This tool can be used by parents,
reporters, law enforcement agents, social scientists and others
interested in evaluating the actual dangers presented by a given group
or movement. Obviously, different observers will achieve differing
degrees of precision, depending upon the sophistication of their
numerical assignments on each scale. However, if the same observers use
the same methods of scoring and weighting each scale, their comparisons
of relative danger or harmlessness between groups will be reasonably
valid, at least for their own purposes. People who cannot, on the other
hand, view competing belief systems as ever having possible spiritual
value to anyone, will find the ABCDEF annoyingly useless for promoting
their theological agendas. Worse, these members of the Religious Reich
and their fellow theocrats will find that their own organizations (and
quite a few large mainstream churches) are far more “cult-like” than
many of the minority belief systems they so bitterly oppose.
It should be pointed out that the ABCDEF
is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health
and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and
historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe
that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as
absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with
total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally
hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned,
however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate
the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so
since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth
rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large
scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political
inclinations to do so.
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