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.

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