• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / From the World / Featured Global

The Anti-Cult Movement. 2. Counter-Cult vs. Anti-Cult

02/04/2022Massimo Introvigne |

There is an important difference between counter-cultists as heresy hunters motivated by sectarian reasons, and the more secular anti-cultists.

by Massimo Introvigne

Article 2 of 7. Read article 1.

Heretics burned at the stake. From the 15th-century Grandes Chroniques de France. Credits.
Heretics burned at the stake. From the 15th-century Grandes Chroniques de France. Credits.

In 1993, I published in a Danish magazine critical of “cults,” Update & Dialog, an article whose title was “Strange Bedfellows or Future Enemies?” It went through several reprints and versions. It proposed the idea that the genus of the movements opposing “cults” includes two different species, the “anti-cult movements” and the “counter-cult movements.” The anti-cult movements are mostly secular. The counter-cult movements are mostly sectarian. The article was criticized by some enemies of “cults,” as if my intention were to sow the seeds of discord in their camp. However, the terminology I proposed has now been widely adopted by scholars, and even by some critics of “cults.”

I did not argue that secular and sectarian critics of “cults” do not cooperate—after all, as the old saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—nor did I deny that they cross-fertilize each-other and may end up adopting similar arguments. What I meant is that both their origins and their goals are different.

Sectarian opposition to “cults” is, in fact, much older. From its early years, Christianity has opposed heresy. The word “heresy” derives from the ancient Greek haíresis, which means “choice.” It was used to indicate those who chose their own doctrines, with the implication that they were different from the doctrines of the Christian Church. The early Christians called, for instance, the Gnostics “heretics.” After the Constantinian turn of the 4th century CE, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, “heresy” was listed as a crime, and “heretics” were executed. Similar concepts prevailed in other religions as well, including Islam, but the terminology is of Christian origins.

“Secta” in Latin was used as a synonym of “heresy,” with a Latin etymology deriving either from sequor, “to follow,” or from secare, “to saw,” meaning that by following heterodox leaders members of “sectae” were sawing themselves out of the mainline Christian Church. As mentioned in the previous article, today the Latin word “secta” and its derivatives in modern languages should be translated as “cult” rather than “sect.”

What the Christians criticizing the “cults” or “heresies” were stating was that they were dangerous because they proclaimed false doctrines. Occasionally, “cultists” or “heretics” were also accused of immorality, fraud, and even murder. However, the root of the criticism was theological. One could have been a law-abiding citizen and could still have been prosecuted and even executed for the simple fact of professing a “heretic” doctrine.

Burchard Precht (1651–1738), “The Church Triumphs over Heresy,” sculpture in the Gustaf Vasa Church, Stockholm, Sweden.
Burchard Precht (1651–1738), “The Church Triumphs over Heresy,” sculpture in the Gustaf Vasa Church, Stockholm, Sweden. Credits.

In the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, “heresiology” became part of theology and was regarded as a science, whose experts were able to classify the different “heresies.” Later, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant heresiologists also emerged. Protestants were promptly attacked as “heretics” or “cultists” by Catholics, but they prosecuted “heretics” as well. The fate of Spanish theologian Michael Servetus (1509?–1553), burned at the stake in Calvinist Geneva for heresy, is just one example that heresy hunting was at work among Protestants too.

With the emergence of modern secular states, heresiologists no longer asked that heretics be burned at the stake, but they still denounced them as members of dangerous “cults.” One important point is that heresy hunters focused on “cults” that were successful, which they accused of “sheep-stealing.” “Cults” that did not represent a serious competition for the mainline churches were largely left alone.

Between the 19th and the 20th century, Christian counter-cultists focused on what they will eventually call “the four major cults”: the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Latter-day Saints (popularly known as Mormons), the Christian Scientists, and the Bible Students (which later evolved into the Jehovah’s Witnesses). The Jehovah’s Witnesses figured prominently in such 20th-century counter-cult classics as Jan Karel Van Baalen’s (1890–1968) The Chaos of the Cults (1938), Anthony Hoekema (1913–1988) The Four Major Cults (1963), and Walter Martin’s (1928–1989) The Kingdom of the Cults (1965). In fact, a survey by American scholar J. Gordon Melton concluded that in the 20th century the Jehovah’s Witnesses were the first target of the Christian counter-cult movement, based on the number of books published against them.

A anti-cult classic: Walter Martin’s The Kingdom of the Cults (1965).
A counter cult classic: Walter Martin’s The Kingdom of the Cults (1965).

A look at these books immediately shows four main differences with what will later emerge at the secular anti-cult movement. First, the counter-cultists were (and are) pious conservative Christians with some theological training—many anti-cultists are secular humanists with a limited or no knowledge of theology. Second, while also mentioning some practices they regarded as harmful, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal of blood transfusions, classical counter-cultists focused more on creeds than on deeds—anti-cultists proclaim that they are not interested in creeds, only in deeds. Third, the aim of the counter-cultists was not simply to persuade “cult” devotees to abandon their faith. They wanted to bring them back to the conservative Evangelical fold. Fourth, counter-cultists tried to achieve their aims through lectures, publications, and preaching. They came from an Evangelical tradition jealous of religious liberty, and aware of the risks of involving the states in the repression of “cults.” Later anti-cultists asked for governmental support and put their faith in court cases and lobbying for anti-cult laws. In Catholic countries, Catholic counter-cultists had some differences with their Protestant counterparts, but the general attitude was the same.

When a secular anti-cultism emerged, religious counter-cultists were aware of the difference. Johannes Aagaard (1928–2007), a Danish Lutheran theologian, was one of the most famous European counter-cultists. In 1991, he launched a magazine critical of “cults” called Update & Dialog. In the very first issue, he wrote that, “the anti-cult movement is in trouble,” because it “tends to set the truth-question aside.” Secular anti-cultists, Aagaard wrote, insist that “they do not care about ‘creeds,’ only about ‘deeds.’” “This, Aagaard objected, is of course a distinction which cannot be upheld. One has to understand that a creed is a deed. And if one wants to stop the evil deeds one has to react already against evil creeds. But that makes an alternative creed necessary!” He also noted that no good purpose was accomplished if “cultists” were persuaded to leave the “cults” but not converted back to orthodox Christianity, and that the parents of “cultists” who had founded the anti-cult movements also objected to the involvement of their adult children in orthodox but high-demand Christian groups. The risk, Aagaard noted, was “that parents against cults are also parents against Christianity.”

Johannes Aagaard. Source: CESNUR.
Johannes Aagaard. Source: CESNUR.

Not surprisingly, it was Aagaard who asked me in 1993 to elaborate on the distinction between a Christian counter-cult and a secular anti-cult movement I had discussed in a conference, and published my first article on the issue in his Update & Dialog.

As mentioned before, the distinction does not mean that anti-cultists and counter-cultists do not influence each other. Several counter-cultists have imported themes born in the anti-cult movement such as “brainwashing” into their rhetoric. While anti-cultists focused originally on new religions born in the 20th century that recruited primarily young Americans and Europeans whose well-off families hated to see them “wasting their time” as religious activists or missionaries, eventually they imported from the religious anti-cultists targets they originally did not particularly care for, starting from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

We have seen in recent years in the United States anti-cult activists such as journalist Tony Ortega or actress Leah Remini, whose main business was to criticize the Church of Scientology, opening a second front against the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The anti-Witnesses material they produce is of very low quality, and betrays a naïve attempt at becoming “experts” on the Jehovah’s Witnesses overnight. However, their activities confirm that the counter-cult and the anti-cult movements, while different, continue to cross-fertilize each other.

Tagged With: Anti-Cult

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • Anti-Cultism à la Mode de Caen: To Avoid a Court Hearing, MIVILUDES Humors Scientology

    Anti-Cultism à la Mode de Caen: To Avoid a Court Hearing, MIVILUDES Humors Scientology

  • Russia: Anapa Pastor Sent to Labor Colony for Contacts with “Undesirable” Foreign Churches

    Russia: Anapa Pastor Sent to Labor Colony for Contacts with “Undesirable” Foreign Churches

  • Anthroposophy: French State Television Censored for Its Anti-Cult Bias

    Anthroposophy: French State Television Censored for Its Anti-Cult Bias

  • Argentina: How the Jesus Christians Defeated Pablo Salum and PROTEX

    Argentina: How the Jesus Christians Defeated Pablo Salum and PROTEX

Keep Reading

  • Did French Diplomacy Support an Anti-Cult Extremist Who Calls Buddhists and LDS “Cultists”?
    Did French Diplomacy Support an Anti-Cult Extremist Who Calls Buddhists and LDS “Cultists”?

    Argentinian Pablo Salum includes among “cultists” even the Catholic Discalced Carmelite nuns. He claims that in 2013 he was offered collaboration by the French Embassy.

  • MIVILUDES, from Tragedy to Farce: Bailiff Compels Georges Fenech to Pay His Debts to Scientology
    MIVILUDES, from Tragedy to Farce: Bailiff Compels Georges Fenech to Pay His Debts to Scientology

    Former MIVILUDES chief and member of its Orientation Council had € 5,000 plus interests seized from his bank account.

  • Trial for the Dissolution of the FECRIS: The Anti-Cultists Lose the First Round
    Trial for the Dissolution of the FECRIS: The Anti-Cultists Lose the First Round

    On May 15, the Court of Marseille rejected FECRIS’s motion to dismiss, and sentenced the anti-cult organization to pay the corresponding expenses.

  • Detroit: Anti-Cult Pro-Russia-and-China Activist Arrested After She Assaulted a Scientology Church and a Synagogue
    Detroit: Anti-Cult Pro-Russia-and-China Activist Arrested After She Assaulted a Scientology Church and a Synagogue

    The interesting story of Randi Nord opens a window on the American and international ramifications of bigotry.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • There Are Christian Uyghurs, Too: New Organization Launched in London by Ruth Ingram
  • Hui Muslims Clash with Police Over Mosque’s “Sinicization” by Ma Guangyao
  • Russia: Lunatic Theory that Yellowstone Volcano Caused the War in Ukraine Gains Momentum by Massimo Introvigne
  • Xi Jinping: Beijing’ National Art Museum Is Not Socialist Enough by Hu Zimo
  • Occupied Ukraine: Anti-Cult “Experts” Target Moscow Patriarchate Dissident Priest by Massimo Introvigne
  • Chinese Agents Tried to Bribe U.S. Tax Officer in Anti-Falun-Gong Plot by Massimo Introvigne
  • Hong-Kong-Style National Security Law Comes to Macau by Gladys Kwok

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY