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The Christian countercult movement or the Christian anti-cult movement is a social movement among certain Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist and other Christian ministries and individual activists who oppose religious sects that they consider cults.
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin, or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges that the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.
Cult is a lay term for a group perceived as requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant outside the norms of society. Such groups are typically perceived as being led by a charismatic leader who tightly controls its members. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, also used for new religious movements and other social groups which are defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or their common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a religious movement founded by Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibweteere in southwestern Uganda, notorious for the mass death of several hundred members of the group in a mass suicide in the year 2000. It was formed in 1989 after Mwerinde and Kibweteere claimed that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary.
The Legion of Mary is an international association of members of the Catholic Church who serve on a voluntary basis. It was founded in Dublin, as a Marian movement by the layman and civil servant Frank Duff.
The Magnificat Meal Movement International (MMMI) was formed in 1986 as a "missionary" offshoot of the 'Celtic Corma Adoration' group of Australia, which was founded in Melbourne in 1976 by J. Phelan, F. Eaton, D. Burslem and E. Burslem. The original name, "Celtic Adorers", was chosen by J. Phelan. This name changed in the early 1990s. The Magnificat Meal Movement is regarded by mainstream Christian churches as a cult. Debra Burslem, its most prominent ongoing leader, now lives in Vanuatu which some claim is for the purpose of avoiding the Australian Federal Police on multiple charges of embezzlement and tax fraud.
The Twelve Tribes, formerly known as the Vine Christian Community Church, the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, the Messianic Communities, and the Community Apostolic Order, is a new religious movement founded by Gene Spriggs that sprang out of the Jesus movement in 1972 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The group calls itself an attempt to recreate the 1st-century church as it is described in the Book of Acts. The group has been characterized by government agencies and by scholars as a cult.
Joseph Kibweteere was one of the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a group that splintered from the Catholic Church in Uganda and became infamous after 778 of its members were found dead. Although Kibweteere was assumed to have died in the incident, the Ugandan police shortly afterwards issued a warrant for arrest against the other leaders of the group. In 2014 it was announced by the Uganda National Police that there were reports that Kibweteere was hiding in Malawi.
Veronica Lueken was a Roman Catholic housewife from Bayside, New York, who, between 1970 until her death in 1995, reported experiencing apparitions of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and numerous Catholic saints.
Jan Groenveld was a member of the Latter-day Saints Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses. She spent fifteen years in these and other organisations before leaving them in 1975 and resolving to make more information about what she saw as "cults" available to the general public.
The application of the labels "cults" or "sects" to religious movements in government documents usually signifies the popular and negative use of the term "cult" in English and a functionally similar use of words translated as "sect" in several European languages. Government reports which have used these words include ones from Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, and Russia. While these documents utilize similar terminology they do not necessarily include the same groups nor is their assessment of these groups based on agreed criteria. Other governments and world bodies also report on new religious movements but do not use these terms to describe them.
Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement is a non-fiction book discussing new religious movements and the New Age movement, written by Ruth A. Tucker. The book was published in 1989 by Zondervan, a Christian publishing house. Another edition was released by the same publisher in 2004.
The Community of the Lady of All Nations, also known as the Community of the Lady of All Peoples or the Army of Mary, is a Marian sect that has been condemned as heretical by the Catholic Church.
David Koresh was an American cult leader who played a central role in the Waco siege of 1993. As the head of the Branch Davidians, a religious sect and offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists, Koresh claimed to be its final prophet. His apocalyptic Biblical teachings, including interpretations of the Book of Revelation and the Seven Seals, attracted various followers.
The Order of the Magnificat of the Mother of God, also known as the Apostles of Infinite Love is a traditionalist Independent Catholic religious group active in various parts of the world, with its headquarters being near Mont-Tremblant in Quebec. It was founded by Michel Collin, a French Catholic priest in Lille, who proclaimed himself Pope Clement XV, after receiving a vision from God crowning him with a papal tiara. Initially heading a religious congregation that had Catholic archdiocesan approval, Jean-Gaston Tremblay merged his religious community with the Apostles of Infinite Love and led it for a time. The Apostles of Infinite Love has attracted traditionalist Catholics unhappy with the modernizing changes made during the Second Vatican Council.
New England Institute of Religious Research (NEIRR) is a countercult ministry located in Massachusetts which provides information on groups which it considers to be cults. It provides training, counseling, and assistance to individuals who are involved with such groups. The organization also runs a retreat center called the Meadow Haven Retreat and Recovery Center.
The Dami Mission was a Christian religious movement founded in South Korea by Lee Jang Rim. It received worldwide attention after Lee predicted that the rapture and end of the world would occur on 28 October 1992. After the prediction failed, Lee was convicted of defrauding his followers out of millions of dollars.
Abajiri, roughly translating to "The People of the Gospel," and also known as 666, is a minor eschatological Christian sect in the Luweero and Nakasongola districts of Uganda, and has since spread over the country. It was launched in 1992, when its founders split it off from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The sect's most distinguishing practices are prohibiting the usage of mobile phones, attending local hospitals, state schooling for children, immunization, and census-taking. Members of the sect believe that when children go to a government school, or when people are subject to a census, they come into contact with Satan's number (666). Because of this, they prevent their children from attending. These beliefs are based on 1 Chronicles 21:1–16, in which David orders a census of Israel. God became angry, considering David's order a grave sin, and punished Israel. Since many of the children in this sect are not vaccinated and do not go to school, the local government in regions where Abajiri is prominent fears a possible outbreak of disease and illiteracy.
Heterodox teaching is a concept in the law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and its administration regarding new religious movements and their suppression. Also translated as 'cults' or 'evil religions', "heterodox teachings" are defined in Chinese law as organizations and religious movements that either fraudulently use religion to carry out other illegal activities, deify their leaders, spread "superstition" to confuse or deceive the public, or "disturb the social order" by harming people's lives or property. What exactly these definitions mean has been interpreted in various ways since their establishment in 1999/2000. Organizations that are found by local police forces in the PRC to be distributing heterodox teachings are targeted for disruption, and its leaders and organizers are severely prosecuted.
Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility, Secrecy and Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa is a book by Richard Vokes about the cult the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTC), notorious for the deaths of hundreds of its members in what was alternatively described as mass suicide or mass murder in 2000. The book was co-published by the Ugandan publisher Fountain Publishers and James Currey in 2009. An ethnography of the group, the book analyzes the MRTC in the context of the wider religious background of Uganda, and attempts to show what led to the deaths.
References
- ↑ Fisher, Ian (2 April 2000). "Uganda Cult's Mystique Finally Turned Deadly". The New York Times . p. 14. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- 1 2 3 "The preacher and the prostitute". BBC News . 29 March 2000. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
- 1 2 3 Cauvin, Henri E. (27 March 2000). "Fateful Meeting Led to Founding of Cult in Uganda". The New York Times . p. 3. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
- 1 2 3 4 "The power behind the cult". The Telegraph . 2 April 2000.
- ↑ "Winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Awards". Boston Globe . Associated Press. 29 September 2011. Archived from the original on 31 January 2012.
- ↑ "Wasabi alarm, beetle sex win Ig Nobel spoof prizes". Reuters. 29 September 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2022.