Campus Ministries: Catholic Ministries
A CULT ON CAMPUS CAMPUS ADVANCE
a k a, THE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHES OF CHRIST "HOPE for Kids"
Colleges provide wonderful opportunities to know and be enriched by people of many diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious heritages. There are beautiful people of faith here from most every religious tradition.
Unfortunately, however, colleges and universities are also hotbeds of cult recruiters who foster extreme dependency and fanaticism. One such group aggressively recruiting on campuses is Campus Advance, part of the International Churches of Christ (ICC). Each semester college chaplains counsel students, and their families, whose lives have been devastated by clean-cut, super-friendly, enthusiastic cult recruiters. The academic community must remain aware that: (1) mind control cults do exist on campuses, (2) they are dangerous, and (3) although what they do is bad, they are very good at doing it. Anyone can fall victim to the overtures of professional cult recruiters. If you, or a friend, are being pressured by Campus Advance, or any other group, you can avoid a lot of grief by speaking immediately to a chaplain.
There are no neon lights on recruiters' foreheads blinking: "CULT! CULT! CULT!" Rather they are carefully trained to find some way to strike up a friendly conversation with you, and to disarm you by their niceness. Soon they change the focus to their real agenda: an invitation to a so-called "nondenominational" Bible study, or to another of their church activities. During your conversation they have been sizing you up, so that they can tailor the invitation to you and your interests. They are so nice, and persistent, that it is hard to say no. Their immediate goal is to get you to attend one of their meetings, or to give them your address or phone number, so that they can continue to work on you. It would be wise to nicely, but firmly, say "No" to any such invitations, until you can first check the particular group out. You can take their phone number and so follow up with them, if you so desire, after you've had time to find our who is really inviting you, and why.
Don't let any student, or group, high pressure you. If they refuse to leave you alone once you have said "No," that is harassment, and is expressly forbidden by college codes of contact. You are strong encouraged to immediately report such harassment to your college Dean of Students, the campus security, or to ask a chaplain for assistance.
WHAT IS A CULT?
A cult is not a group whose teachings we don't like. What defines a cult is not so much what it teaches, but the dishonest and coercive methods it uses to recruit and retain its members, and to raise funds. Lower level student recruiters are as much deceived as deceivers. Many sincerely think they are bringing people to know Jesus. They have been taught to believe that only their church is doing God's work and able to save souls from eternal damnation. They have also been convinced that their unique rightness with God gives them the right to deceive, manipulate, high pressure and harass potential new recruits, if that's what it takes to bring them into their elite group. They believe the end justifies the means.
In order to make an informed decision we need (1) to be free and (2) to have accurate information. Cults never let their new recruits have both at the same time. In the beginning, when the recruits are still free, they are deliberately not told about the true nature of the group and the demands it makes upon its members. It is only after the recruits' freedom has been seriously compromised by a deep dependency upon the group, that the new members are informed of what is really expected of them, namely, that they turn their whole lives over to serve the demands of the cult.
HOW DOES A CULT ENTRAP ITS MEMBERS?
While anyone might be approached, on or off campus, most vulnerable seem to be people in painful transitions, such as new students trying to fit in on a large campus, or those recovering from a loss or crisis. The friendliness of the recruiter, and his or her church friends, seems to be the answer to an unspoken prayer. Potential recruits are, in cult jargon, "love-bombed," that is, the group lavishes all kinds of flattering attention on them. Cult members meet to share what they know about the perspective recruits and to plan who will phone them, who will invite them to church, etc. The cult leader selects and assigns three to six cult members to each of the recruits to feign friendship with them, in order to help "tie them in" to the cult. The recruits discover instant "friends," a feeling of belonging to a loving community. It's all very seductive.
Quickly, before the recruits can reflect on what is really happening to their lives, their new cult friends start to monopolize all of their time, increasingly weaving them into the group and its activities, isolating them from former friends. Cult members may phone them six or seven times a day, and at all hours of the night. Members sometimes camp themselves outside a new recruit's room, especially if the recruit is trying to avoid them. New recruits are made to feel guilty if they do not respond. What is, in fact, happening is that the cult is trying to dominate the recruits' lives, making them ever more dependent upon the group.
All potential recruits are encouraged to do one-on-one "Bible study," without being informed that the real goal is to baptize them into the ICC. Each student actually meets with two ICC members. Together the members prey upon the student's inadequate knowledge of his or her faith, the Bible, or Church history. They guide the student through carefully structured cult recruitment sessions. A series of Bible verses are selected for consideration. The ICC members give the "correct," that is, the ICC interpretation. Other interpretations, plus whole important sections of the Bible, are ignored. Some beautiful Bible teachings are presented, but laced with cult poison. Rather than love, the emphasis is on sin, guilt, carrying one's cross. Valid Biblical practices, such as confession, baptism and discipleship, are twisted to meet the cult's self-serving demands. There is a deliberate, underhanded effort to undermine the student's faith, to try to convince the recruit that he or she is not a Christian. Lesson by lesson the student's options are progressively narrowed, until the only option left is the student's agreement that the ICC is the only church, the only way to heaven.
Once the leader feels the recruit has been sufficiently wooed, the group begins to close the trap. The very cult members who have become most important to the student, who have been befriending and love-bombing the student, now turn on the student. They condemn the recruit, his or her faith, family, and whole past, as belonging to Satan! The nice, faith-filled, knowledgeable cult members with whom the student has been studying the Bible, look into the trusting student's soul and ask: "Are you sure you are saved? You know how we have been studying the Bible together. Do you really think your baptism was valid? Do you think you are truly living as a disciple? I'm worried about your eternal salvation." The impact on the unwary student can be unnerving.
The stunned victim is now systematically overwhelmed and worn down. School work is cast aside as weekly meetings turn into daily sessions. Should the student need to miss a church meeting, they are pressured and confused by false choices like: "What's more important, God or your school work?" God wants students to do their school work, but the new recruit is taught to think simplistically that saying no to this group's demands is saying no to God. The ICC equals God!
To become a disciple and be rebaptized into the ICC, the student must confess, in detail, all his or her sins. Unfortunately this is not done privately and confidentially for the purpose of building the student up. On the contrary, confidences are betrayed, the sins are made public, written down on "sin lists" and passed around, so as to shame the student, break down wholesome self-esteem and increase emotional dependence upon the cult.
Church meetings expand into exhausting all-nighters. Deprived of food and sleep, the weakening student is confronted with rotating teams of "teachers" who take turns indoctrinating and psychologically "hammering" the novice, distorting his or her very personality, in order to produce the group clone. Recruits are fed gruesomely graphic accounts of Christ's passion and death. Then they are told that their legitimate desires for food or rest are selfish in the face of Jesus' infinitely greater sufferings for their sins. The students are told that they are free to leave, or to delay rebaptize, but only after long hours of distorted teachings and vivid descriptions of heaven and hell have left them filled with fear that should they die now, they would be damned to the horrors of hell for all eternity. (When students do muster up the courage to leave, they are continually stalked and harassed, at all hours, with fearful threats of eternal damnation. Then, if they fail to return, they are abruptly and coldly shunned by their cult "friends.")
The goal is to "break" the recruits, to get them to make a "total commitment" to the group, ready to do whatever the cult demands in order to avoid going to hell. The students are kept off balance, skillfully manipulated by the misuse of behavior modification techniques--one moment praised and the next berated. Throughout the process they are made to feel that it is they who are freely choosing to stay. But the cult is taking control of their behavior, their thoughts, and their emotions. Mind control is undermining rational thinking and free will.
WHAT CULT RECRUITERS WON'T TELL YOU
Part of the allure of a cult are the simple solutions it offers to life's complex problems. Despite cult members' apparent strength and unshakable certitude about the truth of their beliefs, they are often needy and fearful people whose involvement in an authoritarian group satisfies strong dependency needs. A recruiter would never put it so bluntly, but, when you enter a cult, you check your brain at the door: "Hereafter we'll do your thinking for you. All you need to do is obey."
Once you are emotionally hooked into the ICC, you will have to turn complete control of your life over to a "discipler" boss. This includes getting permission from your discipler for all your decisions--dating, marriage, employment, school, money, family, friends, goals, use of time, etc. Blind obedience to your discipler is equated with obedience to God. All questioning, however honest, is treated harshly as "prideful rebellion" against God. Being a disciple means exactly "imitating" your discipler like a clone, even personal mannerisms. It also includes regularly confessing to your discipler not only all your sins, but all your negative thoughts, feelings and attitudes. These, in the cult's polarized world of black and white, are less than "perfect" and so can also send you to hell. Fear, guilt, and shame bind the disciple to the cult. Eventually, rather than have to confess to the discipler and be humiliated in front of the group, members learn to suppress and deny their own inner doubts about the group. The cult's control over its victims becomes internalized.
Everybody in the ICC is assigned a discipler. There's a great hierarchical pyramid of disciplers, going right up the Kip McKean, the ICC's founder and self-appointed "apostle," who has no discipler, who enjoys absolute control. It would be hard to imagine a more oppressive authoritarian rule.
Your discipler ties you ever more tightly into the cult and its demands. You will be cut off from contact with your family and all non-cult friends, except to proselytize them. Eventually you will be made to think that you should live with fellow ICC members. Now the cult leaders have you exactly where they want you, in a controlled environment with a minimum of outside influence. Here, even more than before, they can monitor and manipulate you, interpret reality for you, and you can work harder than ever for them. All in the name of God!
What does the ICC want out of you? Your new purpose in life is twofold: the cult demands that all disciples dedicate their whole lives to bringing in (1) new recruits and (2) money. Numbers are everything for the ICC. Bringing in more recruits doesn't mean trying, it means succeeding. Failure to "be fruitful" will be interpreted as proof that there is something wrong with your relationship with God. Your eternal salvation is once again on the line--you'd better redouble your efforts! Bringing hundreds of dollars into the ICC is also obligatory, as your discipler will painfully remind you, whether that means you have to use tuition money, take out a loan, or go hungry.
Cults try to keep their mind control agenda hidden. They like to masquerade as exciting, new, idealistic movements. They interpret any criticism of their unethical methods as "persecution." Rather than persecuted, cults need to be exposed for the shams that they are. They contribute nothing significant or lasting to make the world a better place. Their strong external structure may provide temporary solace for a few, but they derail the development of inner strengths. At their best, they leave behind victims so burnt by dishonest "faith" and "friendship" that they now doubt their own capacity to find God or genuine friends. At their worse, cults scar history with nightmarish holocausts--Jonestown, Waco, Switzerland, Tokyo....
Rev. Ronald Stanley, O.P.
Catholic Campus Ministry at Ramapo College
505 Ramapo Valley Road
Mahwah, NJ 07430-1680
telephone: (201) 684-7251
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE GO TO THIS HOMEPAGE:
http://www.reveal.org/
For additional articles relating to this topic see:
THE BIBLE ALONE?
FUNDAMENTALISM
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
SATANIC CULTS
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