Is The Church Of Christ A Cult?
September 10, 2006
By: Sellers S. Crain, Jr.
The recent arrest of Warren Jeffs, the cult leader of a break away sect of Mormonism (The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has brought the subject of cults back into the American consciousness. This sect is polygamist meaning the male members can have multiple wives. The opposite of that is polyandry where women are permitted to have more than one husband. Jeffs himself had 50 wives. He encouraged and arranged marriages between older men and younger women and girls. One former female member of the sect said that she was forced to marry a 50 year old man who already had other wives when she was only 15. An investigation of Jeffs' sect gives us a clear picture of what a true cult is like.
Not long ago on the nationally televised Nancy Grace CNN cable news network show a Baptist preacher leveled the charge that the Church of Christ "has cult-like characteristics." Although I responded to that charge at the time, I have done some more thinking about the specific unsubstantiated claim and felt that it needed to be addressed further. Webster's Ninth New World Collegiate Dictionary gives the definition of a cult as "a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also its body of adherents... a small circle of persons united by devotion or allegiance to an artistic or intellectual movement or figure."
In that article I pointed out that according to Abraham Meerlo (Rape of the Mind) there are at least seventeen characteristics of a cult. Let me share a few of those characteristics with you along with some comments regarding them. The charge may be made that some of the seventeen characteristics do apply to us. However, adherence to one or more of these does not necessarily make a religious group a cult. The same charge could be made against any religious group if only a few of these characteristics are considered.
Leaders are strongly directive. To put it another way, the leaders are controlling, and most attempt to control every aspect of their followers lives. They impose on the members a burden of guilt or feelings of worthlessness. They emphasize important rites and rituals. They repeatedly warn that something fearful will happen to nonconformists. Members are estranged from former friends and even family as they are more and more isolated from anyone outside of their particular group. Cults are usually formed by people following a strong charismatic leader. They may believe that they are following Christ, because they believe this individual is Christ-like, when in fact they are following a mere man.
The group stresses confession and self-denial. There is certainly nothing wrong with either of these things unless they are being used as a form of control. This was certainly true in the case of the prayer partner arrangement employed by the discipling movement that started in Churches of Christ at the Crossroads church in Florida. Later the movement was overtaken by a charismatic leader from the Boston Church of Christ, named Kip McKean. The result was a group that called themselves the International Churches of Christ. This group eventually imploded, but there are remnants of it still remaining.
The group is authoritarian or totalitarian. The leader or leaders exhort total control through fear, threats and intimidation. However, this control can be subtle through emphasizing exclusive truth and special insight. Any opposing view is strongly rejected. The leaders claim to have enlightenment and powers beyond human understanding. A highly charged emotional environment exists. Members are expected to become completely immersed in the affairs of this group, and if they don't, they are criticized, chastised, and often ostracized by shunning.
The Church of Christ does not fit any of these classic characteristics of a cult. The church is not now, nor has it ever been, a cult. The church follows only Christ and His teaching recorded in the New Testament. We believe that the Lord's church began on the first Pentecost after Christ's resurrection (Acts 2:1ff). We believe that by following the inspired instructions of the Lord's apostles and the example of the early church, we can recreate the church today as it existed from the beginning.
Brotherly,
Sellers
