I wonder how much the cultural appropriation helps cult leaders sell their product, as it were. I mean, if I set up some kind of weird ritual initiation ceremony and claim that it is based on Christian spiritual practices, and try to sell it in a majority-Christian country, then the more my target market is actually familiar with Christianity, the more likely they are to say “hey, that’s not Christian” (or talk about their experiences with a priest/pastor who tells them the same thing). But if I seem to be following some Hindu or Buddhist or Native American or even European-pagan practice, I can just Make Shit Up in whatever way is convenient for me as an aspiring cult leader.
Then again, there are certainly cults that riff off of Christianity.
Then again, again, the two Christian-influenced cults that I know the most about (Jim Jones’s group and the Boston Church of Christ network) were in a sense splinters off established Christian churches (Jones got ordained by the Disciples of Christ, and the BCC has its roots in the decentralized “churches of Christ” movement), so the leaders had enough background to make their ideologies look authentic; someone coming from absolutely no pastoral background might not have been able to pull it off so well.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-10-08 04:51 pm (UTC)Then again, there are certainly cults that riff off of Christianity.
Then again, again, the two Christian-influenced cults that I know the most about (Jim Jones’s group and the Boston Church of Christ network) were in a sense splinters off established Christian churches (Jones got ordained by the Disciples of Christ, and the BCC has its roots in the decentralized “churches of Christ” movement), so the leaders had enough background to make their ideologies look authentic; someone coming from absolutely no pastoral background might not have been able to pull it off so well.