Thoughts for 2012 for Former Members
“It Hurts”
By Jan Groenveld
IT HURTS to discover you were deceived – that what you thought was the “one true religion,” the “path to total freedom,” or “truth” was in reality a cult.
IT HURTS when you learn that people you trusted implicitly – whom you were taught not to question – were “pulling the wool over your eyes” albeit unwittingly.
Wall Street Journal
June 20, 2011
By STEPHANIE SIMON
Ex-Followers Pursue Assets of Preacher’s Murky Empire
Longtime evangelist Tony Alamo owes millions of dollars in court-ordered restitution for abusing some of his former followers, triggering a nationwide hunt for assets still controlled by the Arkansas pastor.
Wall Street Journal
February 25, 2011
By MITCH HOROWITZ
When Does a Religion Become a Cult?
America has long been a safe harbor for experimental faiths. But the unorthodox can descend into something darker.
America has probably supplied the world with more new religions than any other nation. Since the first half of the 19th century, the country’s atmosphere of religious experimentation has produced dozens of movements, from Mormonism to a wide range of nature-based practices grouped under the name Wicca.
ABC News
November 10, 2010
By JENNIFER DOBNER Associated Press
Elizabeth Smart tells court about day of rescue
Testifying for nearly six hours in a steady voice, Elizabeth Smart told a rapt audience that she was so terrified of her abductor that on the day police found her, she told them she was someone else.
Smart took the stand at her alleged kidnapper’s trial for a second day Tuesday, telling jurors in U.S. District Court she was also too scared to speak up when a detective tried to question her in a public library months before she was finally freed.
Texarkana Gazette
November 8, 2010
By: Jim Williamson
Staff photo by Jim Williamson
The Current
April 26, 2010
Posted by Andrew Seal
Tony Alamo no man of God
Tony Alamo is leaving leaflets on my car.
Choosing a Church After a Painful Experience
by
Lawrence A. Pile
Twenty years ago I left what had been a warm, exciting Christian fellowship, but which had become an authoritarian, restrictive organization. I reached this difficult decision after months of wrenching deliberation and several talks with the group’s leaders about my concerns at the direction the fellowship was taking. I had joined the movement 5½ years earlier in another city, had served as one of four leaders of a church-planting team that brought the movement to Columbus, Ohio, and had led Bible studies and held other positions of responsibility in the church. I literally had expected to remain with the movement the rest of my life. To see it degenerate was, to say the least, a disillusioning experience.
I found myself saying good-bye to men and women I had considered my brothers and sisters. I felt like a part of my soul was being cut out of me. What was I going to do now? I had developed no contingency plans to fall back on in such an unforeseen situation.
Washington Post
August 9, 2009
By Jayanti Tamm
They Freed Their Minds. But Some Wound Up Trapped.
At my local bookstore on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, 1960s nostalgia is in high gear. A display table is stacked high with pricey coffee table books, each with its own variation on psychedelic rainbow lettering, each claiming to reveal the untold story of the “peace and music” festival. I understand the lucrative business of selling those hazy memories — the Woodstock museum, Cherry Garcia ice cream, even the new movie “Taking Woodstock.” I just can’t buy into it.
There has been much confusion about cults and how to ‘pickem’.
Some have difficulty identifying a cult because it is not so
easy to identify one that is not even religious. For this
reason, over the years, different definitions of what actually
is a cult have developed to make it easier when you know
little about their beliefs.
The different definitions:
SECULAR DEFINITION
December 2006
Hal Mansfield, M.A.
Director, Rocky Mountain Resource Center on Violent, Destructive, and Hate Groups
“In this article, I want to explore the nature of critical thinking in the role of recovery for ex-members of destructive groups. Former members face many difficult changes in the recovery process including anger, intimacy, and how to just get along in life, to mention just a few. I want to focus on critical thinking for the purpose of clarifying the role it plays in recovery and try to clear up misunderstandings of what we mean by critical thinking.
To start, let’s look at what critical thinking is. There are many popular ideas about it. I have heard everything from defining critical thinking as a measuring stick to reality, and to a more base definition as a crap detector. Both of those have some validity, but I prefer to use the definition from the Dictionary of Psychology by Arthur Reber. The dictionary defines critical thinking as a cognitive strategy consisting largely of continual checking and testing of possible solutions to guide ones work. Another way to look at it is to test existing ideas and solutions for flaws and errors. Looking at this definition, destructive groups block critical thinking.
