Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:57, 24 April 2006

The term "destructive cult" sometimes called doomsday cult refers to a small number of religious groups that have intentionally killed people - either themselves or others.

The term "doomsday cult" literally only refers to a group that has as an important part of its belief system the expectation of the imminent advent of the Last Judgement, but this apocalyptic world-view is seen by some as increasing the chance of a violent, destructive outcome.

There are a handful of well-documented cases on record, and there is little controversy about them:

• The "Ant Hill Kids commune" formed by Roch Theriault
• Aum Shinrikyo - Shoko Asahara
• the RLDS splinter cult formed by Jeffrey Lundgren
• Lord's Resistance Army - Joseph Kony (Called a cult by Czech Wiki and Taiwan News Online)
• Manson Family - Charles Manson
• Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God - Joseph Kibweteere
• Order of the Solar Temple
• Peoples Temple - Jim Jones
• Takfir wal-Hijra - Shukri Mustafa
• Heaven's Gate (cult) - Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles

Note on religious terrorist and paramilitary organizations

There is an ongoing debate about whether religious terrorist or paramilitary groups fit in categories like this. Some have deemed the Tamil Tigers, and Al Qaeda to be cults. Others refute the idea they qualify as destructive cults and feel terrorism or paramilitarism is still a better explanation. See List of purported cults, Cults and terrorism and Al Qaeda.'

Takfir wal-Hijra and Lord's Resistance Army are also disputed, but listed in the main group for now. In Takfir's case during the period of Shukri Mustafa's leadership, according to French scholar Gilles Kepel, they lived as a series separatist religious communes. In these communes Shukri claimed religious power to arrange marriages, encourage withdrawal from society, and theologically reject the world. As for the LRA it also has increasingly emphasized a religious component that revolves around Kony's alleged mystic abilities.

References

Hall, John R. and Philip Schuyler (1998), Apostasy, Apocalypse, and religious violence: An Exploratory comparison of Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, and the Solar Temple, in the book The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements page 147 "Thus, apocalyptic religious movements may be especially prone to violence, but that tendency is only realized under specific additional conditions." edited by David G. Bromley Westport, CT, Praeger Publishers, (1998). ISBN 0-275-95508-7,

• Cults