Content warning: mentions of suicide and religious abuse.
On March 26, 1997, as the comet Hale-Bopp reached its nearest point in orbit, 39 members of a new age religious movement known as Heaven’s Gate downed a mixture of phenobarbital, apple sauce and vodka, and lay down to die in the hopes of ascending to their conception of paradise: “The Evolutionary Level Above Human (TELAH).” A day later, all 39 bodies, covered in shrouds and clothed in black shirts, sweatpants and Nike Decades were discovered in a 7,000 square-foot Rancho Santa Fe mansion. And a day after that, the press went into a frenzy.
Much of it was sensationalized. Time’s magazine’s March 1997 issue featured a grainy, harrowing photo of a wide-eyed Marshall Applewhite — the group’s leader — on its cover with the ominous headline “Inside The Web of Death.” People magazine detailed, also on its cover, “Personal Stories From Heaven’s Gate: BEFORE THE CULT.” Elsewhere, coverage was much more measured and pragmatic. The front page of the Washington Post, published a day after the incident in Rancho Santa Fe, read “AT LEAST 39 FOUND IN APPARENT MASS SUICIDE” and the following day, the New York Times deployed the subheading “Death in a cult.”
Amid the attempts to make sense of the calamity, there was one thing that everyone could agree on: Whatever Heaven’s Gate was, whatever belief had pushed those individuals to suicide, whatever “mind control” Applewhite had implemented, it was a cult. Nobody disputed it and no paper challenged it because only a cult would ever drive its believers to suicide.
But what that word — cult — means is highly subjective and often not very clear. In fact, there are at least two people who would still disagree that Heaven’s Gate was a cult — and they still consider themselves members, even continuing to run the group’s website in order to keep their message alive. So a few weeks ago, I decided to email them. They responded quickly and in a matter-of-fact tone reminiscent of something sent from a PR company — and they answered any questions I had. I asked them the basics. What drew them to their faith? What was life like in the group? Had their faith been at all shaken in the years since 1997? And did they ever feel sadness at being removed from the other members of their group? They answered with a numbered list — four terse bullet points reading exactly:
“1: We went to a meeting that Ti and Do held at Waldport Oregon in 1975. We listened to them and joined immediately.
2: We went on the road with them and lived in campground situations while learning of the Next Level.
3: Since 1997 our understanding has remained the same. There are no doubts.
4: We do not feel separated from them.”
At first, the shock factor of a response floored me, but as I continued a dialogue with them, I realized that we were speaking with different understandings of what Heaven’s Gate was. When I asked them questions about Heaven’s Gate, I was asking questions about what it was like to live in a cult. But when they responded, they were talking about a way of life — their way of life — as fact. Take, for example, how they later described TELAH:
“There is no spirituality of any kind. Think of it as NASA, not silly nobodies angels.”
When they speak about the doctrines of Heaven’s Gate, it isn’t a matter of faith or belief. It’s a matter of what is. In their minds, they aren’t in a cult, because they aren’t spiritual. They don’t believe, they know.
If you want, you can dismiss the last two remaining members of Heaven’s Gate as crazy cultists who have been brainwashed and traumatized. But, they can — and do — say the same about other religions. Hell, they even acknowledged as much on their website, where they predicted having their beliefs derided as heretical.
“It is clear to all of us, that to the Anti-Christ — those propagators of sustained faithfulness to mammalian humanism — we are, and will be seen as, their Anti-Christ.”
To the outside world, Heaven’s Gate is a cult. To those within it, all else is a cult. So, if we reach this point, where the word “cult” loses its value and becomes defined as a matter of perception, then does the word “cult” bear any meaning at all? This predicament raises an interesting question: How on earth do we define the word “cult” so that it actually describes something more than just the abnormality of belief?
Currently, the use of the word “cult” references a framework grounded in subjective belief. The first definition given by Merriam-Webster is: “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.” Oxford’s second definition is “A relatively small group of people having beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, or as exercising excessive control over members.” In the public psyche, “cult” is often defined by what a group believes — especially if it is strange.
But, how can you be objective enough about religion to deride one set of beliefs as cult and another as true religion? This has been debated for millennia, ever since the fourth century when early Christian apologist Lactantius described Christianity and other “pure” monotheisms as “vera religio” (true religion), and all else as “Falsae Religiones” (false religions). But Lactantius used this distinction to justify a disdain for all other beliefs that, in his eyes, weren’t religion, but merely superstition.
That sentiment still exists today. In more modern secular times, most people accept religious diversity and differing schools of divine thought. However, when it comes to faiths like the Latter Day Saint movement, Jehovah’s Witnesses or even Scientology, many balk at their respective doctrines. To many, it’s easier to define new religious movements not as “religion” — something we often feel should be kept holy — but rather as “cult.”
But deriding a new religion as a cult based on what they believe is not a sustainable practice because it is nearly impossible to be an objective arbiter of what “true religion” is. I will profess a Catholic faith but, for a moment, I want to critically compare Catholicism and Scientology.
Imagine a person born with the ability to reason, but with no knowledge of the outside world. If they were introduced to the Bible (Christianity’s holy book) and Dianetics (Scientology’s founding text), would they be able to point to the Bible and say “religion” and Dianetics and say “cult?”
I think the answer is an obvious no, even as a Catholic. This is understood by many scholars of religion, such as James Livingston, William & Mary professor of religion, who noted that cults are defined as “new movements that appear to represent considerable estrangement from, or indifference to, the older religious tradition” in his 1989 book “Anatomy of the Sacred.” And Megan Goodwin, a former Northeastern professor of religion, described the term even more simply: In her view, cult is a “shorthand for religion I don’t like.” Both definitions are incredibly ineffective ways to define a word that has serious social and even legal ramifications.
In Argentina, Scientology has been legally deemed a cult; in France, it was given the distinction of “sect,” and in Germany it has been declared unconstitutional. Additionally, dozens of countries have banned the religious practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it wasn’t until the early 2000s when France’s Court of Cassation deemed it a religion. But neither faith agrees with the court-offered definitions. Scientology proclaims on its website that it is a “religion in the fullest sense of the word” and the Jehovah’s Witnesses similarly disdains the use of the word “cult” in describing their faith. Funnily enough, Jehovah’s Witnesses acknowledge that “dangerous cults” do exist.
The word “cult” has lost all meaning. The debate over “true” and “false” religion that began with Lactantius still rages, and it hasn’t gotten any smarter. However, if we want the word to have an actual, useful definition, we need to remove all value judgments from it, and instead rely only on a comprehensive analysis of religious structure.
Cult, when looked at as an object, often does have a specific structure. Cults tend to be centered around one living individual who is seen as a prophet, or a messiah. Cults tend to emphasize physical or emotional separation from the outside world. And, cults occasionally characterize destructive practices like suicide or sexual abuse as a tenet of their faith. But what if we used this structure that cults tend to have as their sole definition?
I’ll propose a definition of cult based on structure, not because I believe it is perfect or would be lauded by religious scholars, but because it demonstrates the use of an objective, structurally based definition. I’ll say that a “cult” is “a religious group that is generally centered around one living person, revered as a prophet or a messiah, and who leads a group to physical or spiritual isolation, often involving the sacrifice of wealth and outside contact.” With a structure-based definition, the word has regained its use as a descriptor. You could objectively use the definition I provided to define and identify “cult” without drawing a line between a “true” and “false” religion.
In the case of Heaven’s Gate — a prime example of just how dangerous cults can become — it’s clear that definitions matter. A few months before their mass suicide, the group released a page on their website titled “Our Position Against Suicide.” But in it, they redefined suicide. Suicide, in their revision, became turning “against the Next Level when it is being offered.” The word was injected with value. Suicide was no longer just an action, but an action only comprehensible through the lens of an ideology and, as such, it lost all meaning. In much the same way, “cult” has lost all meaning in common vernacular.
But, if we can base the differentiation between cult and religion on structure — not faith — we can be objective about the matter. We can legally and colloquially define cults. We can analyze emerging religious practices for signs of potential danger or suicide, and we can do all of it without relying solely on religious discrimination against new movements that make us uncomfortable.
Cults have enormous, enormous power — over their followers, over the public psyche and even over what we understand about religion. The power they have can be incredibly destructive, and I think the simplest thing we can do to restrict that power is to actually, objectively, understand what they are — as structures of belief, not merely abnormality.
Statement Columnist Charlie Pappalardo can be reached at cpappala@umich.edu.