Now They Come for Jesus: Anti-Cultist Admits She Aims to Destroy Christianity

In an exceptional (if ugly) book, “cult hunter” Be Scofield attacks Jesus as the ultimate “cult leader.” She is not alone.

by Massimo Introvigne

Sometimes, I meet respected religious leaders who tell me that I am unduly concerned with campaigns accusing “cults” of “brainwashing,” “coercive control,” or “human trafficking.” After all, the argument goes, these campaigns concern marginal religious organizations. Mainline religion is different and, by implication, safe. Some religious leaders even believe they can stay safe by aligning themselves with the anti-cult establishment, as Catholic and Evangelical official bodies did in France.

This argument is untenable today. In Australia, a Victoria Inquiry is proposing to legislate against “coercive control” allegedly practiced by religious groups, explicitly targeting Christian churches, particularly those with conservative political views. New South Wales has just set up an inquiry this month that specifically targets a conservative Baptist group and its schools, which are also accused of “coercive control.” In Argentina, prosecutors are expanding the local broad definition of “trafficking” to include faith-based volunteer labor and are prosecuting Opus Dei and the large international Evangelical charity REMAR. In the United States, trafficking cases are pending against Pentecostal churches, and even the Catholic Maryknoll Sisters were sued in a civil trafficking lawsuit by a former novice nun.

The two female leaders of OneTaste, an organization promoting female spirituality and sexual awareness, were hit by the first-ever U.S. forced-labor conspiracy conviction against the leaders of a meditation and spiritual-teaching organization—without any allegation of physical restraint and solely based on “coercive control.” While OneTaste’s roots are more in Eastern spiritualities than in Christianity, the first-degree convictions constitute a precedent dangerous for Christian churches as well.

In fact, the argument that mainline religion would not be targeted by anti-cultists (particularly if it supports them in their crusades against “cults”) was never valid. Although we disagreed on almost everything, I had a respectful relationship with the late Danish Lutheran counter-cultist Johannes Aagaard and was repeatedly a guest at his home in Aarhus. As early as 1991, he warned against parents of young members of new religious movements who used the “brainwashing” argument against “cults,” because he understood it could be easily used against Christian churches as well.

Ultimately, he wrote, these “parents against cults are also parents against Christianity” (“A Christian encounter with New Religious Movements and New Age,” “Update & Dialog,” I(1), 19–23).

Aagaard was an insider in the European anti-cult movement and knew Roger Ikor, one of the founders of French anti-cultism. Ikor had written that “There isn’t between a cult and a religion a difference of nature, or rather of principle; there is only a difference of degree and dimensions… If it were up to us, we would put an end to all this nonsense, that of cults, but also that of large religions.” Ikor also cited “Muhammad, Christ, and Moses” as predecessors of today’s “cult” leaders (“Les sectes et la liberté,” “Les Cahiers rationalistes,” 364 [1980]:73–94).

I have heard the objection that Ikor did not represent the entire European anti-cult movement. Certainly, early anti-cultism also included religionists who wanted to eliminate competition and the “heretics.” However, masks are increasingly falling, and the voices of those who, like Ikor, start with “cults” to create legal precedents to attack mainline religions are increasingly dominating the debate.

A book recently published by Be Scofield exemplifies this trend. Scofield was once considered a marginal anti-cultist, and others and I have discussed elsewhere how her reliance on messages from angels and extraterrestrials makes her somewhat unique in the anti-cult landscape. However, she is taken seriously and applauded by mainline anti-cultists such as Janja Lalich and by board members of the anti-cult organization FECRIS. Her slander campaign against the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL) has been taken seriously by respectable media and perhaps even by the British police.

She has now published “The Savior Complex” (n.p.: Serapis Books, 2026), which aims to expose “the cultic foundation of Jesus’s movement” (219; unless otherwise indicated, page numbers refer to “The Savior Complex”). Her argument is simple: “Christianity is far more than a religion. It is a full-stack system of control” (318). Jesus was a “cult leader” comparable to Charles Manson (213). As a “prominent cult reporter” (back cover), Scofield claims to be uniquely positioned to prove that Christianity is a “cult” by using standard anti-cult models.

The unnecessarily long first part of the book assembles, in a hopelessly disorganized patchwork, miscellaneous criticism of Jesus and Christianity, ranging from the anti-Christian Roman “pagan” apologists to the Enlightenment, Marxism, and beyond. No serious publisher would have printed a book built this way, and in fact, none did. I was unable to find other books published by the elusive “Serapis Books” or any corporate information about this company. Most probably, “Serapis Books” and Be Scofield are one and the same.

Some of her comments are not false, but they are not new. She draws parallels from both academic and popular sources linking Christianity and pre-Christian Judaism to Egyptian, Greek, Assyrian, Zoroastrian, Roman, and even Buddhist myths. This is well known to any undergraduate student of religion, but few would, as Scofield did, mistake parallels for derivation or plagiarism.

Christians have long acknowledged these parallels, dating back to earlier centuries. They have taken them as proof that “semina Verbi,” “seeds of the Word,” were disseminated by Divine Providence across many cultures and religions. Scofield might have read, for instance, the extraordinary work of Cyrill von Korvin-Krasinski, a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Maria Laach, whose knowledge of Tibet was outstanding. He devoted a voluminous body of work to exploring parallels between Tibetan Buddhist classics and Christianity and to what these parallels meant for Christian theology. He would have found it laughable that anyone would use these parallels to accuse Christianity of plagiarizing Tibetan Buddhism (or vice versa, since some Tibetan classics were written after the Gospels).

Scofield argues that Christians used these disparate sources to build an “apocalyptic cult” (50) capable of competing with the other religions of their time. They were “showrunners… shaping a marginal prophet into a cosmic hero relatable to the Roman market” (61). To achieve this aim, they did not merely repackage old myths. They, and Jesus before them, used sophisticated techniques of “coercive control” and “trafficking.” “As a cult reporter, I see this dynamic often,” Scofield writes (65).

Some criticism of Jesus and Christianity by Scofield parallels early anti-Christian Jewish sources. However, for Scofield, the first villain is the Jewish God, or rather the Jewish leaders who invented him. “He is the special man. You are the extras. Therefore, you hit your marks and obey” (85). Ancient Judaism was also a “cult.” “For the Israelites, serving the God meant living in a state of permanent anxiety about cleanliness and presentation. It meant constantly checking yourself for ‘impurities.’ Modern cults use this same tactic. They implement rigid dietary laws, dress codes, or cleaning rituals. NXIVM demanded calorie restrictions. The Sea Org in Scientology demands military-grade uniform inspections. Why? Because a follower who is obsessed with the details of the ritual is a follower who isn’t looking at the exit” (147).

Unlike in other pre-Christian contexts, where a devotee could worship multiple gods from different traditions simultaneously, in Judaism “the follower is not allowed to have ‘other gods’… this is coercive control” (149–50).

Jesus built on this “cultic” and “coercive control” tradition within Judaism and “rebranded” it (155). To achieve this aim, “Jesus employed a known cult tactic: isolation from biological family” (188) through “social and emotional control” (189).

That Jesus was constantly traveling, Scofield explains, was part of his strategy “designed to turn twelve fishermen into a cult-like unit” (193). “Jesus used his traveling road show to reshape his followers’ identity. His disciples were sleep-deprived, indoctrinated by the messaging, and exhausted from the non-stop moving” (192). As a “cult” leader, Jesus used the typical strategies of “cults”: “programming… information control… raise the exit costs” (197).

He was also guilty of “trafficking” because he liberally used the “unpaid—invisible labor of women” (194)—and of men as well. Scofield denies that the community around Jesus or the early Christians truly helped the poor. “The money flowed in from the rich but did not flow out to the poor. It stayed in the circle” (206).

Anti-cultists interpret any teaching by “cult” leaders, no matter how noble or benevolent it may seem at first glance, as part of the “coercive control” allegedly typical of “cults.” Scofield applies this model to Jesus.

Non-violence, “turning the other cheek,” and giving possessions to the poor? These teachings “served his [Jesus’] broader cultic indoctrination effort of his followers. A follower who does not resist or push back, and is trained to release possessions on command, is easier to move, exhaust, and keep dependent” (212).

Preaching love? Jesus’ nice words can only fool naïve “cult apologists.” “Apologists will say, ‘But Jesus talked about love!’ Sure. But it’s a specific kind of love. It resembles the ‘protection’ offered by a mafia don… Functionally, this operates like a divine protection racket. In cult psychology, this is the classic mix: love-bombing on the inside, phobia indoctrination on the outside” (258).

Praising poverty and welcoming the poor? “Cult leaders often employ this strategy. It is the ultimate weaponization of grievance and can easily be confused with actual social change. Framing poverty as piety and wealth as wickedness, a leader can transform the followers’ suffering into a status symbol. Charles Manson did this” (213). Scofield also tells us that “from a cult analysis perspective, outcasts and the poor are the easiest to recruit” (214).

With some contradiction, she affirms at the same time that “leaders of high-demand movements will often intentionally recruit people with access, resources, or political power. Jim Jones mastered this technique. Keith Raniere did it with extremely wealthy followers. Jesus may have done the same. He recruited Matthew, a tax collector,” and other prominent Jewish leaders (214).

In short, all Jesus’ teachings can be examined “through the lens of coercive control” (226), leading to the conclusion that he exhibited “the classic behavior of a high-control leader” (250).

Christian leaders who followed Jesus were also “cult leaders.” Paul the Apostle? He “implemented elements that would map onto Dr. Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of cultic control (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control)” (287). The Church Fathers who defined the Gospel canon? “When we view the formation of the Bible through the lens of high-control groups, the function becomes clear. Information control serves as a pillar of Dr. Steve [sic] Hassan’s BITE model. To control a group, you must curate their reality” (339). If we needed confirmation that the pop-psychology pseudo-scientific Hassan BITE model can be applied to all religions, here it is.

Scofield dismisses the objection that Christianity was persecuted, and this proves that its message was new and not aligned with the oppressive structures of the Roman Empire. Christians, Scofield argues, created the so-called persecution, which should instead be understood as “conflict marketing” (263). “The movement needed an external threat. In the world of cult analysis, this is a key component of milieu control” (260). When “cultists” are persecuted, they are the ones who should be blamed for the persecution.

Scofield believes that the anti-cult ideology has enabled her to build the ultimate anti-Jesus and anti-Christian machine. “For millions of people today, faith is just a code word for managing the anxiety that Jesus planted” (259). The good news is that Be Scofield is now here to remove this anxiety.

In a way, we should be grateful to Be Scofield, just as we should be grateful to Scofield’s academic counterpart, Stephen Kent, for his 2025 book “Psychobiographies and Godly Visions,” whose subtitle points to “disordered minds” at the “origins of religiosity” (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan). There, he argues that, like modern “cult” leaders such as L. Ron Hubbard or Reverend Moon, figures such as the Biblical Prophet Ezekiel, Paul the Apostle, and Muhammad were either schizophrenic or epileptic. “A good number of religions,” including the largest ones, “were founded by mentally disordered minds,” he concludes (“Psychobiographies,” 258).

Making mistakes is now inexcusable for Christians, Jews, and everyone else. The next time Be Scofield, Stephen Kent, Steven Hassan, or Janja Lalich explains to you that “cults” engage in “coercive control” and “trafficking,” understand that they are not there to destroy AROPL, Scientology, OneTaste, or the Unification Church alone. Their ultimate aim is to destroy religion, except perhaps in some mild, liberal, and diluted forms. Even Jesus finds no mercy.

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