Word: cultism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...familiar problem, the ranks of secular Y2K survivalists may grow. But most early "roosters"--people who see apocalypse on the millennial horizon--came to their conclusions through a prism of religious belief. Though millennialism hinges upon the notion of Christ's return, there are pockets of religious Year 2000 cultism even in nations that are mostly non-Christian. Chen Tao, for instance, is a Taiwan-based group of cultists whose beliefs combine ufo lore with rough-and-ready bits of Christianity. In 1997 a group of them settled in Garland, Texas, to await the end, dressed in white outfits, including...
...modern era of cultism dates to the 1970s, when the free inquiry of the previous decade led quite a few exhausted seekers into intellectual surrender. Out from the rubble of the countercultures came such groups as the Children of God and the Divine Light Mission, est and the Church of Scientology, the robotic political followers of Lyndon LaRouche and the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. On Nov. 18, 1978, the cultism of the '70s arrived at its dark crescendo in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 members of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple died at his order, most...
Since then two developments have fostered the spread of cultism. One is the end of communism. Whatever the disasters of Marxism, at least it provided an outlet for utopian longings. Now that universalist impulses have one less way to expend themselves, religious enthusiasms of whatever character take on a fresh appeal. And even Russia, with a rich tradition of fevered spirituality and the new upheavals of capitalism, is dealing with modern cults...
...second recent development in cultism is strictly free market and technological. For the quick recruitment of new congregations, the Internet is a magical opportunity. It's persuasive, far reaching and clandestine. And for better and worse, it frees the imagination from the everyday world. "I think that the online context can remove people from a proper understanding of reality and of the proper tests for truth," says Douglas Groothuis, a theologian and author of The Soul in Cyberspace. "How do you verify peoples' identity? How do you connect 'online' with real life...
...Internet allows different belief systems to meet and mate," adds Stephen O'Leary, author of Arguing the Apocalypse, which examines end-of-the-world religions. "What you get is this millennial stew, a mixture of many different belief systems." Which is the very way that the latest kinds of cultism have flourished. As it happens, that's also the way free thought develops generally. Real ideas sometimes rise from the muck, which is why free societies willingly put up with so much muck...