In today’s post:
Cults in The Wild Avoiding recruitment on college campuses.
The Big Post 1930s newspapers tell us a lot about cults.
Cults in the Wild | In an article about cult recruitment on college campuses, Andrew Winslow explores what would have helped him avoid spending 24 years with an unnamed cult. Winslow provides tips on how students can avoid cult recruiters on their college campuses. The piece is short, but offers us a great deal to sit with, especially where recruitment can happen. His article also urges us to rid ourselves of the notion that any person is above spiritual manipulation.
The Big Post | I am still reading Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell and it is very good. In an early chapter Montell discusses the word cult and how its connotation has shifted over time. Many of the scholars she interviewed see “cult” as a loaded descriptor. Much of the chapter is dedicated to interrogating this position and of course laying the foundation for the word cultish as a more useful option. One sentence in particular stood out to me,
…[cults] weren’t considered much of a societal threat or criminal priority until the Manson Family murders of 1969, followed by the Jonesetown massacre of 1978 (54).
While conducting research for my series on Father Divine, I came across a very messy article published by Time in 1937. “Religion: Messiah’s Troubles” explicitly labeled the group a cult and lists a series of criminal allegations against Divine and the church. I am not contesting the validity or extent of Montell’s research. I agree that my findings are an “exception to the rule” and many media outlets did shift their approach to reporting on cults post-Manson and Jones. Montell’s comment that cults were not typically considered threats until the Manson Family Murders and the Jonestown Massacre should push us to explore the few examples that chafe against her argument. Assuming that the Times article about Divine is a deviation from typical cult coverage in the 1930s, we should ask why? Such an inquiry means asking what actions might qualify as threatening in a given period.
I should preface the rest of this post by saying, I think the driving culprit of this particular journalistic decision was racism. Early in the article the author describes Father Divine’s audience as “howling blackamoors.” If your vintage racism is as rusty as mine, here is a brief primer on blackamoor,
“Hugely popular from the 16th to the 19th century, “blackamoor” style featured stylised African figures and was widespread in sculpture, jewelry and furniture. Today we see the racism behind the trend for the blackamoor, that the schematic appearance of the figures is perpetuating racist tropes and romanticising the treatment of slaves and life in the colonies.”
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