Introduction
Events in the last several decades have clearly
indicated just how dangerous some religious and secular groups
(usually called “cults” by those opposed to them) can
be to their own members as well as to anyone else whom they can
influence. “Brainwashing,” beatings, child abuse, rapes,
murders, mass suicides, military drilling and gunrunning, meddling
in civil governments, international terrorism, and other crimes
have been charged against leaders and members of many groups,
and in far too many cases those accusations have been correct.
None of this has been very surprising to historians of religion
or to other scholars of what are usually labled “new”
religions (no matter how old they may be in their cultures of
origin). Minority groups, especially religious ones, are often
accused of crimes by members of the current majority. In many
ways, for example, the “Mormons” were the “Moonies”
of the 19th century — at least in terms of being an unusual
minority belief system that many found “shocking” at
the time — and the members of the Unification Church could
be just as “respectable” a hundred years from now as
the Latter Day Saints are today.
Nonetheless, despite all the historical and
philosophical warnings that could be issued, ordinary people
faced with friends or loved ones joining an “unusual”
group, or perhaps contemplating joining one themselves, need
a relatively simple way to evaluate just how dangerous or harmless
a given group is liable to be, without either subjecting themselves
to its power or judging it solely on theological or ideological
grounds (the usual method used by anti-cult groups).
In 1979 I constructed an evaluation tool which
I now call the “Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation
Frame” or the “ABCDEF” (because evaluating these
groups should be elementary). A copy was included in that year’s
revised edition of my book, Real Magic.
I realize its shortcomings, but feel that it can be effectively
used to separate harmless groups from the merely unusual-to-the-observer
ones. Feedback from those attempting to use the system has always
been appreciated. Indirect feedback, in terms of the number of
places on and off the Net this ABCDEF has shown up, has been
mostly favorable. For example, it was chosen by and is now displayed
on the website of the Institute for Social Inventions, who paraphrased
it for their “Best
Ideas — A compendium of social innovations” listing.
The purpose of this evaluation tool is to
help both amateur and professional observers, including current
or would-be members, of various organizations (including religious,
occult, psychological or political groups) to determine just
how dangerous a given group is liable to be, in comparison with
other groups, to the physical and mental health of its members
and of other people subject to its influence. It cannot speak
to the “spiritual dangers,” if any, that might be involved,
for the simple reason that one person’s path to enlightenment
or “salvation” is often viewed by another as a path
to ignorance or “damnation.”
As a general rule, the higher the numerical
total scored by a given group (the further to the right of the
scale), the more dangerous it is likely to be. Though it is obvious
that many of the scales in the frame are subjective, it is still
possible to make practical judgments using it, at least of the
“is this group more dangerous than that one?” sort.
This is if all numerical assignments are based on accurate
and unbiased observation of actual behavior by the groups
and their top levels of leadership (as distinct from official
pronouncements). This means that you need to pay attention to
what the secondary and tertiary leaders are saying and doing,
as much (or more so) than the central leadership — after
all, “plausible deniability” is not a recent historical
invention.
This tool can be used by parents, reporters,
law enforcement agents, social scientists and others interested
in evaluating the actual dangers presented by a given group or
movement. Obviously, different observers will achieve differing
degrees of precision, depending upon the sophistication of their
numerical assignments on each scale. However, if the same observers
use the same methods of scoring and weighting each scale, their
comparisons of relative danger or harmlessness between groups
will be reasonably valid, at least for their own purposes. People
who cannot, on the other hand, view competing belief systems
as ever having possible spiritual value to anyone, will find
the ABCDEF annoyingly useless for promoting their theological
agendas. Worse, these members of the Religious
Reich and their fellow theocrats will find that their own
organizations (and quite a few large mainstream churches) are
far more “cult-like” than many of the minority belief
systems they so bitterly oppose.
It should be pointed out that the ABCDEF is
founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental
health and personal growth, and my many years of participant
observation and historical research into minority belief systems.
Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous
to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I
suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme
(high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to
physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records
and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the
greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring
groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small
that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale
atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations
to do so.
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