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,
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.”
S T A T E M E N T
michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily
Wednesday, February 15, 2023— 8
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
CHARLIE PAPPALARDO
Statement Columnist
Redefining cult
Design by Abby Schreck
Breaking away from
college rankings
I
remember
Tuesday,
April
6, 2021, well. It was Ivy Day,
an
occasion
when
many
Ivy
League
colleges
and
other
selective universities release their
admissions decisions, and certainly
a day circled on the calendar for
many bright high school students. It
was also a day when, after opening
three straight rejection letters from
Harvard, Columbia and Princeton,
I realized my dreams needed… a
little restructuring.
“What if I’m worthless?” I jotted
down in my journal. “What were
the last four years for?” All those
late nights spent in turmoil, every
obsessive detail, crossed t’s and
dotted i’s and now-meaningless
accolades, striving for that perfect
résumé. My fiery desire to be a
Harvard man scorched through
my extracurriculars, friends and
my sense of worth, dealing damage
that I’m only now starting to
understand as I begin the process
to replant who I am. So when that
meticulously constructed house of
cards fell, well, there didn’t seem
to be anything except for darkness
beneath.
For others, Ivy Day is a joyful
culmination of everything they’ve
worked for, but for every ecstatic,
tearful
reaction
video
posted,
there are at least 19 unrecorded
moments - jagged, tearful breaths;
a quiet, unceremonious exhale for
an opportunity lost. Regardless, no
matter the outcome, our lives after
the fact are never the same.
Starting in middle school, many
of us felt the seismic pressure of
getting into a prestigious university
placed on our backs, culminating
into a roaring earthquake by our
senior years when the purpose of
our entire lives up until that point
seemed to revolve around getting
into a top 10 college. And, every
year, the chokehold those forces
have on students only gets tighter;
the theatrics, clamor and genuine
— maybe unfounded — heartbreak
only seem to increase.
How did we get here?
***
Created in 1983 by Robert
Morse, the U.S News and World
Report college rankings quickly
became the center of college
admissions
nebula
over
the
four decades it’s been annually
published. Everything regarding
an institution’s prestige revolves
around this list, affecting how
students
fundamentally
think
about college admissions. Even a
slight one-rank improvement for
a university leads to a 0.9 percent
increase in applicants, a Harvard
Business Review paper found.
The word-of-mouth, grapevine
prestige of a university now follows
what the U.S. News rankings say
instead of previously defining the
rankings themselves, becoming so
tantamount to how our colleges
are perceived to the point that
numerous colleges have made
explicit efforts to increase their
rankings number, from Baylor
University offering incentives to
their incoming freshman class
to retake the SAT to increase the
University’s average SAT scores
to Northeastern’s focus on gaming
the rankings in their core strategic
plan, pushing them from a rank of
162 to 49 in 17 years. Additionally,
there are numerous cases of
misreporting school information
for a rankings advantage, most
infamously
with
Columbia
University,
whose
dizzying
descent from a rank of 2 to 18 was a
result of being caught red-handed
with distortion of class sizes,
faculty statistics and spending on
instruction.
The status of the U.S News
rankings
as
the
gravitational
center of college admissions isn’t
exactly justified, either; the goal of a
comprehensive ranking of academic
institutions in and of itself is a
semantically meaningless endeavor.
U.S. News uses indicators such as
small class sizes, high student-to-
faculty ratios, graduation metrics,
school and student selectivity, and
institutional spending on student
and faculty to measure a university’s
worth. This fails to capture the
rich, kaleidoscopic nature of higher
education in America — mostly
because such a task is impossible
under the current rankings system.
As a result of how metrics are
weighted, smaller, well-endowed
institutions that focus on selecting
students with academic aptitude
will be rewarded with a higher
spot in the rankings. Essentially,
the defining qualities of an Ivy
League school are treated as
being synonymous with academic
excellence itself, according to the
U.S. News college rankings. While,
schools with a differing set of core
ideals are discarded. For example,
schools like Penn State University
that focus on varied admissions
classes
with
socioeconomic
diversity are naturally put at a
disadvantage, since indicators like
graduation rates are intrinsically
tied to factors like family wealth
instead of institutional quality.
Penn State is punished because it
admits underprivileged students
and tries to give them a quality
education instead of admitting
high-achieving, wealthy students.
DARRIN ZHOU
Statement Columnist
You will get there.
Still finding
your way?
Figuring out life as a college student can feel a bit
overwhelming at times. We’re here for you.
Connect with tools and resources at U-M that can
help you thrive — from wellness classes and apps to
useful information and counseling options.
Helping Leaders Feel Their Best:
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