Section, this is one of the the three movements that were spending a lot of time on. The reason that i like to end with the Branch Davidians and to end with this particular or tex to talk about them is because it seems to really bring together a lot of the big themes that weve been talking over the course of the quarter. So on the one hand, we are finishing up our conversation about the Branch Davidians, but on the other hand, were using the entire course as a text to lift up these these points. So here is the agenda for today. And we spent some time about the cult perspective, which really is the anti cold perspective and then apply that and about how that shaped the events that took place in waco with the Branch Davidians in 1993. And then think through some of the consequences and implications of what happened there and then of of the way that the cult has been applied in context and and others. So so thats thats roughly the the agenda for today. I want to start out since this is sort of reflecting back on the course to one of our first discussion is when we were talking about what the word cult means. Right. And you actually wrote definitions of that. So lets kind of refresh our memories and think about what are the popular connotations of the word cult that operate our culture. Now, when when say the word cult or we hear the word cult, what are the things that immediately jumped to mind . Just shot them out. Small, exclusive, exclusive if we what else . Unorthodox, fanatical, fanatical devotion. Now were getting going. What else . Charismatic. Charismatic leader whos in seclusion . Controlling, controlling maybe violent, violent or brainwashing . Okay. Yeah. Lots of really good happy, positive thoughts that makes everyone want to be a part of a cult, right . I mean, so this this is the sort of dominant popular framework, the common framework that when we hear the word cult, these are sorts of things that we think and what we want to do today is think a little bit about why is the case and what are the. Of that sort of thinking of the word cult. And this, of course, has a long history in religion in the United States. And even before that. So even though we have been focusing in the last few weeks, particularly on the way that word has function in relationship to mid to late 20th century movements like the peoples temple, like silent theology, like the Branch Davidians. So that word has a longer in the United States its it up in newspapers here in california in the late 19 century and certainly those connotations those ideas go way back the history of religion in the United States. So ive thrown up here to refresh our memory the that weve looked at over the course of this quarter and where i thinking about those terms that we just shouted out where have we seen that sort of thinking and how have we seen that sort of thinking applied to some of the groups that we have looked at quarter. Can you think of any examples of sort of those negative descriptions or impressions, these groups . Yeah. Charismatic leader or founder, a charismatic leader of the movement where like what what movements have we seen that in that Scientology Movement movement. Long basically sort of, yeah, yeah. So that we we see this and we have certainly our conversations of these religious movements have we around the leaders and their central that so that sort of without necessarily them in a negative light the the bigger than kind of role of these leaders is yeah having definitely casting it in a negative then with the peoples temple and i think we spoke of violence with the murder of ryan isolation in guyana and just the whole mess suicide part. Yeah yeah. So a in a lot of ways the peoples or what happens in guyana in jonestown is becomes the epitome of of these characteristics of what a cult is. And a little bit later, i want to come back and think about how that plays out in relationship to the Branch Davidians. Can you think of other sort of negative views about these groups that have emerged or the sorts of things that theyre doing . Yeah, the argument can be made in scientology in kind of the aspect i dont like not using word brainwashing, but similar to it in the sense of, of like reshaping the way youre thinking to fit a certain like way maybe, not reshaping, but believing in a certain way of thinking or ideas that along with a lot of scientologys mission. Yeah. So some modifying ways thinking is central to to the auditing in scientology and thats sometimes cast in this language of brainwash teaching. Right. And another thing about cults that often comes up. I didnt happen to come up in our quick brainstorming today, but is the relationship to money and we talked about how scientology theres a lot of skepticism criticism about how it comes as a fee for service sort organization. Right. What those early 19th century groups mormonism oh night is what were of the concerns or criticisms of so for i think a lot of them there was this element of them being so far from what was orthodox christianity in america at time while them were based that but made changes that the rest of the religious community kind of shunned. Okay all right. So theres that unorthodox piece there and what in particular those groups was was unorthodox. I think one of the unique Sexual Practices is amongst a good few of them. Yeah. Yeah. Sexual, Marital Family relationships. Right. So polygamy with mormonism celibacy was shaken and what do we call the Oneida Community right. Complex, right. Where everybody is married to every everybody else. So so sex, marriage, this is another one of these characteristics often associated with the word cult. Okay, we could on for a whole class doing that but just to remind ourselves these sort of connotation about new religious movements go way back in our nation religious history well before the branch and certainly well before even jonestown. Okay, so im lets think little bit more then about when we bring together various connotations of the word cult. What what is the picture that is emerging . What is what is the cult perspective that that word us and at a base level, you know, its a way to other to distance to marginalize people, right . Those people are not us. Those people. Those religions are not normal. Maybe theyre not even really any religion. Right. And again, those are the sorts of accusations that were made of these. Right. All of these groups were accused of being sort of thing. So. A scholar of new religious movements, of the real sort of founders of this field of scholarship defined it call a religion i dont like that thats his definition of the cult of a cult and he says hes only partially facetious when he says that right. You know my religion is a church. Your religion a cult. If i dont like its always bad, isnt it . Right. It always has those negative connotation and in such a way that it kind of focuses like, you know, sort of come up with a good analogy to this. If you if something jumps to mind, let me know. But its like a lens that focuses things so that we only see them in a certain light. So, i dont know, maybe its a certain of sunglasses. Thats a better analogy right. So that its very hard escape those associations and those negative connotations once. That word is in play right . Its very hard to do to get past that. Its so pervasive and its absolute right. Its an either or of word, right theres, theres theres not a middle ground right. Because when were trying to make ourselves feel good about were not like them, how were like the peoples temple, for example in going to do what happened there right. There cannot be a middle ground. There cannot be gray area in between. There needs to be a firm barrier, doesnt there . So we know which side of that line that were on. And another thing that it does i think that weve seen is it homogenize is it simplifies it everything uniform right there is a cult and all cults are the same we know what theyre like charismatic leaders sex money manipulation, brainwashing, mind control right that whole mantra. Its very for us to call that. And so any group that gets labeled a right automatic becomes associated with all those attributes, right . So the absolute worst attributes associated with a group that is identified as a cult then become the attributes of every group for which the name of cult is used and there are a lot, you know, if you were to do a search of newspapers, even just in the 20th century or late 20th century, there would be hundreds or even thousands of groups that at one point or another have been labeled by somebody as a cult without any definition of what that meant. Like an assumption in a newspaper article or a news program or Something Like that, that when we say the word cult, we know what that means, right . So so it is this powerful thing that assumes, you know, so so a cult the language of cult commands and ices and makes uniform all the groups being defined as a cult. But the opposite is is well write the word cult depends on a comparison to the normal the not cult right. And so it often assumes that, you know, this homogenous, unified norm or religion over and against which a cult is right so in some its doing the same thing on on both sides and it you know when we we did our definitions have cult you remember that in the first week right we have 26 students and we had probably 35 different definitions of cult just in one day. Right. So theres actually when you start pressing people, not always strong agreement on or there is intentional vagueness of it. Right. Its hard and people are reluctant to pin down exactly what they mean when. They use the word cult. And most of all, i think a cult label, what it does is it makes us lazy in analysis. Right, because what it says is, you know, everything that you need to know about this group or this person, right back to that list of things that weve ticked off. And so you dont need to make effort to humanize the people who belong to a group. You dont need to make the effort to figure out what do they actually believe, how do they actually behave who are they as fellow human right, the word cult puts up that hard and fast barrier that stops us from crossing that line. And so that becomes a problem and sort of a challenge to study of religion, right . Because thats not the way we do religion. Right. Thats thats not where we want to stop. Thats. What were about doing in studies and looking at religious history. So i want to pull couple of lines from the section that we read from taber and gallagher in the waco book where theyre really doing examination of, the Branch Davidians as a case study of the word cult. They describe the word as not descriptive. Right. So that that that fits that summary thing, that it reveals as much about outside observers as it does to the movement described. Right. So that when someone uses the word cult theyre actually revealing more about themselves and how they think about things than they are the group theyre describing and how it functions in how it thinks about things and. So they conclude that the of the word cult is a choice of perspective if and a description of fact. But we dont think about that that way. Right. I think in Popular Culture there is an assumption that in fact we all know what the word cult means and that it is descriptive and that it it is helpful. Okay. So thats thats the cult. Now, the dominant of that or the adoption of that use of the word and those sorts of meanings of the word cult is what the anti Cult Movement does, right . So basically the anti Cult Movement would really emerges in the early 1970s and goes through the midtolate. 1990s is a somewhat loose of folks who are basically presenting this cult perspective as the way to understand what weve been calling new religious. So in some ways, when say the anti cult perspective and the culprits active, im talking about the same thing the the anti Cult Movement is sort of leveraging or weaponizing using that that that sort of language. And they have been quite in doing that right in making view of cults the dominant perspective. One of the reasons that we all share is because of the success of the anti movement, which they will describe as this pervasive destroy dangerous influence. Hence that is a threat to all of american society. And so it needs to be with and it needs to be stopped it. Now, this a movement emerges in Southern California in the 1970s by some parents who children whose children joined some of these new religious movements emerging in the sixties and seventies and were distressed that their their college age and young Adult Children were dropping out of college, that they were leaving their sort of successful careers, nurses and businesspeople and teachers and so forth, to go live on a commune under a charismatic leader with, alternative marriage and sexual and family relationships. And this is not what their were supposed to do right . Like good middle class, white. And so they began to cooperate and find ways to get Adult Children out of groups. And that often involves literally kidnaping or removing them against them. There will and trying to convince them leave the group in a process that they called deprogramming right. But this this is the the origins of the movement that will come to so what happens in in the Branch Davidians. So for of us in california it a home grown movement right as parent groups began to connect each other they began to be a little bit more organized and, to offer programs, Educational Programs to schools, colleges, University Law enforcement agencies, parent to to get the message about how dangerous cults were right and notice how using that language as this uniform homogenizing things theyre not saying were talking about how dangerous the x y, z movements are just that cults are right. So you see that that uniformity thing. They start establish themselves as a resource, as experts on the topic if you want to know about cults, contact us and we will give you information about this dangerous trend taking place in the United States. They became supporters and Referral Services for people did that deprogramming that sort of kidnaping and removing folks and they got to the point where in a couple of moments in time theyre even advocating for legislative heat hearings and for changes in laws that would restrict the ability of the groups that they cults to function none those laws ever passed but there were a of hearings held in in various states around the country so. So thats thats what theyre doing. Now it turns out the anticult is not very big relative to the size of the nation. Right. Its mostly made of family members of people were in these sorts of groups and of people who had been a part of them and left me. Those are the two groups of people that were really opposed to two cults. And so they really form the core of the cult in anticult network and much like the word cult does, right . Theyre using language to evoke passion and emotion rather than fact in an object to to whip up concern about them and central to this rhetoric of, the antiCult Movement and the cult language suggests, is this notion of brainwashing and mind control. Right. That is so, if youre a parent, how do you explain that . All your efforts to provide for your children and give them a good education in every opportunity, how come then they left all that and ran off and joined one of these groups . Right. So what brainwashing does one of these groups whose beliefs and practices are just incomprehensible . Would everyone, anyone join that right and brainwashing and mind control becomes the explanatory mechanism for that . Well, they couldnt help it. They were poor, helpless victims to the mind control and brainwashing of the charismatic leader. And thats why they joined so so mind control and brainwash teaching become this way to explain how these groups recruit members and how they retain them right and notice then what that does is that alleviates blame or responsibility for the families and for the individuals who join right because they were acted by this of irresistible power and the use of mind control control of of of these religious. Now that raises, doesnt it, because very people actually joined these sorts of movements. So if everybody is vulnerable right as these Movement Groups suggest, did you know these parents would . Right. No happened to me. It can happen to you. Anyone is vulnerable to this. But if thats true why did so few people actually join . And why did most people who end up leaving entirely their own right . So theres this disconnect between that explanation and what happens, but it is worth noting that despite the number of people who actually have a personal experience with one of these new religious movements, either themselves or an immediate family member, the thinking and the movement actually has a pretty sizable influence. Right, because we all know what a cult is. Right. And thats a large part, not exclusively, but the work of the antiCult Movement to spread and and promulgate this notion of what a cult and the danger that they present. Okay. Another way. The anticult frames what it means is they try to play off of a sort of, you know god nation and apple kind of what are understood be, you know, sort of fundamental american values, right. So one of those is freedom. So the anticult perspective says that cults deny peoples because of that mind control brainwashing thing. Right. Those people who are supposedly affected by that are being denied their freedom to choose, which is why you have to deprogram them and forcibly them so that they can have their freedom and choose to leave the movement. Many did not. A lot of people who were deprogrammed actually escaped and went right back. The community that they were a part. But so there is this debate about freedom, right . Those who oppose the antiCult Movement say youre ones who are denying freedom, saying people shouldnt explore these opportunities people shouldnt be free to decide them. The antiCult Movement on the other side is saying no. These sorts of practices, sup