Margaret's adult daughter had joined a religious cult, and she was now talking to an exit counselor, a professional who specialized in "interventions" for persons supposedly trapped under mind control in cultic movements.

The exit counselor explained that Margaret's daughter was a victim of mind control and described its four components: (1) behavior control, (2) thought control, (3) emotional control, and (4) information control. He said these techniques had combined to rob her daughter of the ability to make responsible and rational choices. The counselor informed her that neither the family nor the daughter was to blame for this cult involvement: at the right time, mind control could bring anyone into a cult.

The exit counselor said he would seek to break through her daughter's bondage to the cult leader and restore her to mental, emotional, and physical freedom. He assured her his work was not the same as the deprogrammers of the 1980s who forcibly kidnapped cult members and held them against their will. If the intervention was successful, Margaret's daughter would return to the mental stability she possessed before joining. Away from the pressures of the cult, she would be free to make an informed religious choice, unlike the controlled "choices" presented to her while in the group.

Finally, the terms of the agreement were discussed. Margaret assured the exit counselor that her daughter had voluntarily agreed to come home for the weekend specifically to discuss her devotion to the Center. The daughter understood that her mother and father would have a knowledgeable friend with them to speak with her, though she did not realize that the "friend" would be the exit counselor. For the fairly typical sum of three thousand dollars plus expenses,¹ the exit counselor and his assistant would devote the next four days to the intervention. Of course, there were no guarantees: some ex-cultists needed additional inpatient counseling at a special "recovery" center,² and one study put deprogramming failure rates at above 35 percent.³

Margaret left her meeting with the exit counselor feelingconfident and optimistic. With a trained professional, a backup support of sociological and psychological literature, and her own determination to rescue her daughter, Margaret actually looked forward to the coming weekend.

Countless times across America scenes like this are played out for real as desperate parents of adult cult converts seek to understand how their children could change so drastically and pledge their lives to bizarre, exclusivistic religious movements. For many people, especially secular cult observers, the theory of mind control is used to explain this phenomenon. The cult mind control model is so commonly raised in explanation that many people assume its validity without question. In this article, we look behind the assumptions of the mind control model and uncover the startling reality that cult mind control is, at best, a distorted misnomer for cult conversion and robs individuals of personal moral responsibility.⁴ While mind-control-model advocates rightly point out that cults often practice deception, emotional manipulation, and other unsavory recruitment tactics, we believe a critical, well-reasoned examination of the evidence disproves the cult mind control model and instead affirms the importance of informed, biblically based religious commitment.

ASSUMPTIONS OF MIND CONTROL

The theory of cult mind control is part of a contemporary adversarial approach to many cults, new religious movements, and nontraditional churches. In this approach sociological and psychological terminology has been substituted for Christian terminology. Cult involvement is no longer described as religious conversion but as mind control induction. Cult membership is not characterized as misplaced religious zeal but as programming. And the cultist who leaves his group is no longer described as redeemed but as returned to a neutral religious position. And rather than evangelism of cult members, we now have "intervention counseling." Biblical apologetics have been replaced by cognitive dissonance techniques. A parent's plea has changed from How can my adult child be saved? to How can my adult child revert to his/her precult personality? Biblical analysis and evangelism of the cults has become overshadowed by allegedly "value neutral" social science descriptions and therapy-oriented counseling. The principal assumptions of the cult mind control model can be summarized under eight categories:

(1) Cults' ability to control the mind supersedes that of the best military "brainwashers." ⁵
(2) Cult recruits become unable to think or make decisions for themselves.
(3) Cult recruits assume "cult" personalities and subsume their core personalities.
(4) Cultists cannot decide to leave their cults.
(5) A successful intervention must break the mind control, find the core personality, and return the individual to his/her precult status.
(6) Psychology and sociology are used to explain cult recruitment, membership, and disaffection.
(7) Religious conversion and commitment may be termed mind control if it meets certain psychological and sociological criteria, regardless of its doctrinal or theological standards.
(8) The psychological and sociological standards which define mind control are not absolute but fall in a relative, subjective continuum from "acceptable" social and/or religious affiliation to "unacceptable."

According to most cult-mind-control-model advocates, no one is immune to the right mind control tactics used at the right time. Anyone is susceptible. For example, Steven Hassan, recognized as a premier source for the cult mind control model, writes in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control, "Anyone, regardless of family background, can be recruited into a cult. The major variable is not the person's family but the cult recruiter's level of skill."⁶ Dr. Paul Martin, evangelical director of a rehabilitation center for former cultists, writes, "But the truth of the matter is, virtually anyone can get involved in a cult under the right circumstances. . . . Regardless of one's spiritual or psychological health, whether one is weak or strong, cultic involvement can happen to anyone."⁷

The cult mind control model is based on a fundamental conviction that the cultist becomes unable to make responsible and rational choices or decisions (particularly the choice to leave the group) and that psychological techniques are the most effective way to free them to make decisions once more. This foundation is nonnegotiable to the mind control model and is at the root of what we consider so flawed about the mind control concept.

We find this foundational conviction assumed in a 1977 article describing recovery from cult mind control by evangelical sociologist Dr. Ronald Enroth, who quotes Dr. Margaret Singer, an outspoken advocate of the cult mind control model:

In a situation removed from the reinforcing pressures of the cult, the ex-members are encouraged to think for themselves so that they are "once again in charge of their own volition and their own decision-making."⁸

Members [of the Unification Church] . . . become totally dependent upon the group for financial and emotional support, and lose the ability to act independently of it.⁹

[T]he process whereby he or she was drawn into the cult was a subtle but powerful force over which he or she had little or no control and therefore they need not feel either guilt or shame because of their experience.¹⁰

Recruitment that employs deception should, however, be distinguished from "brainwashing" or "mind control." If people are the victims of mind control, they are rendered incapable of themselves making the decision as to whether or not to join a movement--the decision is made for them. If, on the other hand, it is just deception that is being practised, converts will be perfectly capable of making a decision--although they might make a different decision were they basing their choice on more accurate information.¹¹

OBJECTION: THE BRAINWASHING CONNECTION

Representatives of the mind control model contradict themselves by both distancing mind control from classic brainwashing yet also seeing continuity between cult mind control and the classic brainwashing attempts in the 1950s by North Koreans and Chinese among American prisoners of war and by American CIA researchers. When critics of the mind control model point out the abysmal failures of classic brainwashing (discussed later in this article), advocates like Michael Langone say they have "misrepresented the [supporters of the mind control model] position by portraying them as advocates of a robotization theory of cult conversion based on The Manchurian Candidate."¹³ However, there is also a consensus among mind-control-model advocates that classic brainwashing is the precursor to contemporary cult mind control. Psychologist Singer underscores this connection in her preface to this same Langone book, Recovery from Cults:

[M]y interest [in cult psychology and mind control] began during the Korean War era when I worked at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and studied thought-reform, influence, and intense indoctrination programs. Since then I have continued the study of group influence. In the 1960s I began to heed the appearance of cults and heard the descriptions of hundreds of parents who noticed certain changes in the personality, demeanor, and attitudes of their young-adult offspring who had become involved in cults. . . . The cults created programs of social and psychological influence that were effective for their goals. And I noticed especially that what had been added to the basic thought-reform programs seen in the world in the 1950s was the new cultic groups' use of pop psychology techniques for further manipulating guilt, fear, and defenses.¹⁴

Mind control is not brainwashing. . . . Brainwashing is typically coercive. The person knows at the outset that he is in the hands of an enemy. It begins with a clear demarcation of the respective roles--who is prisoner and who is jailer--and the prisoner experiences an absolute minimum of choice. Abusive mistreatment, even torture, is usually involved. . . . Mind control, also called "thought reform," is more subtle and sophisticated. Its perpetrators are regarded as friends or peers, so the person is much less defensive. He unwittingly participates by cooperating with his controllers and giving them private information that he does not know will be used against him. The new belief system is internalized into a new identity structure. Mind control involves little or no overt physical abuse. . .The individual is deceived and manipulated--not directly threatened--into making the prescribed choices. On the whole, he responds positively to what is done to him.¹⁶

Finally, the brainwashing notion implied that somehow these diverse and unconnected movements had simultaneously discovered and implemented highly intrusive behavioral modification techniques. Such serendipity and coordination was implausible given the diverse backgrounds of the groups at issue. Furthermore, the inability of highly trained professionals responsible for implementing a variety of modalities for effecting individual change, ranging from therapy to incarceration, belie claims that such rapid transformation can routinely be accomplished by neophytes against an individual's will.²¹

We believe the data presented here shows that people join, stay in, and leave cults of their own responsibility, even if their decisions may have been influenced or affected by deceit, pressure, emotional appeal, or other means. We do not believe the evidence supports the mind control model. In this article we express not only our own concerns but those of other countercult workers (Christian and non-Christian) who firmly believe that the mind control model misdiagnoses the problem, misprescribes the solution, and (for Christians) is contrary to a biblical cult evangelism model.

Those holding to the mind control model have made the generalization that most cults have internal social pressures and religious practices which, if not identical in nature, are similar in effect, and that average cult members are similarly affected by these teachings, techniques, and practices. We reject this generalization, though we will grant--and in fact have stated publicly--that many cults have made deceptive claims, used faulty logic, misrepresented their beliefs, burdened their followers with unscriptural feelings of guilt, and sought to bring people into financial or moral compromise to unethical demands. Yet it does not necessarily or automatically follow that these pressures, practices, or demands remove an individual's personal responsibility for his or her actions.

The cult mind control model assumes that a combination of pressure and deception necessarily disables personal responsibility. Hassan recognizes that the cult mind control model (which he has adopted) is incompatible with the traditional philosophical and Christian view of man as a responsible moral agent:

First of all, accepting that unethical mind control can affect anybody challenges the age-old philosophical notion (the one on which our current laws are based) that man is a rational being, responsible for, and in control of, his every action. Such a world view does not allow for any concept of mind control.²²

Hassan provides no means of knowing, testing, or proving whether people who are under emotional pressure, personal stress, or actual deception are in fact not responsible for their actions or are not making free choices. Nor does Hassan suggest any way to clearly determine when techniques of influence or persuasion might become so great that the one being influenced is no longer responsible, no longer rational, or no longer has a personal will. Medical doctor J. Thomas Ungerleider and Ph.D. David K. Wellisch show the fallacious presuppositions used by the deprogrammers (now called exit counselors):

If the member never does renounce the cult then he or she is regarded by the deprogrammers as an unsuccessful attempt or failed deprogramming, not as one who now has free will and has still chosen to remain with the cult.²³

Recently certain of the model's proponents seem to blur the definition of mind control, perhaps because there is no corroborating evidence that mind control techniques produce qualitatively different results in religious conversion.

It appears that some Evangelicals especially have problems reconciling a classic cult mind control model with other religious considerations and with later developments in this area. For example, sociologist Ronald Enroth, an evangelical professor at Westmont College, is reluctant to be perceived as a mind-control-model advocate even though his support appeared clear in the late 1970s and continues at least tacitly today.

Enroth promoted the model in his 1977 book Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults and also in a 1977 Christian magazine article, "Cult/Countercult." In a recent letter to us, replying to our query about his thoughts on mind control, he declared, "You do NOT have my permission to represent my 1977 writing about thought reform and brainwashing as my current position on the topic. That doesn't mean that I necessarily disavow what I said then; it means that it is not academically/professionally current and I have not had time nor inclination to update, in writing, in this area."²⁷

Yet Dr. Enroth's most recent book (1992), Churches That Abuse, is peppered with language concerning victimization, lack of personal control, and autocratic decision-making control. Additionally, he endorses the work of other mind control advocates such as Hassan (1990) and Singer, and also is endorsed by them. Margaret Singer, for instance, highly recommended Dr. Enroth as one of eleven "Experts in Thought Reform" in an October 13, 1993, letter to the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Treasury:

If the department does decide to expand its consultant pool and/or initiate training pertinent to groups such as the Branch Davidians, I strongly recommend that it consult behavioral-science professionals familiar with thought reform programs. I have attached a list of persons to consider (Attachment E).

Dr. Enroth also serves on the editorial advisory board of the preeminent mind-control-model journal, Cultic Studies Journal, edited by the American Family Foundation's Michael Langone, and he provided a dust-jacket recommendation for the 1993 book, Recovery from Cults, edited by Langone.

In Recovery from Cults, Geri-Ann Galanti and coauthors Philip Zimbardo and Susan Andersen reflect the mercurial definition of mind control. Galanti says that mind control (which she equates with brainwashing) "refers to the use of manipulative techniques that are for the most part extremely effective in influencing the behavior of others."²⁸ These influence techniques work to change our beliefs and attitudes as well; we encounter these pressures constantly "in advertising, in schools, in military basic training, in the media."²⁹ They are a part of the socialization process, a part of life, Galanti maintains.

Yet when describing her own visit to a Moonie indoctrination center, where, contrary to expectations, she was allowed plenty of sleep and food, and observed horsing around among the Moonies (some even joking about brainwashing!), Galanti concludes: "What I found was completely contrary to my expectations and served to underscore both the power and the subtlety of mind control."³⁰ While she was there, she felt much of the experience to be a positive one. Later, Galanti decided that what she really experienced, despite all evidence to the contrary, was an even more seductive, subversive form of mind control than she'd previously imagined could exist. It nearly fooled even her. In short, the lack of evidence for mind control among the Moonies was really evidence for just how insidious their methods of mind control had become! Such argumentation points to the frustrating nature of the belief in mind control: so often evidence offered against the mind control model is misused to illustrate how true it must be.

Zimbardo and Andersen offer a mind control definition similar to Galanti's: a tool to "manipulate others' thoughts, feelings, and behavior within a given context over a period of time. . . ."³¹

Their chapter deals at length with common uses of manipulation so that definitions of mind control techniques multiply to include anything from flattery to social etiquette to hard-of-hearing salesmen. The move is apparently away from seeing mind control as a powerful set of techniques that rob individuals of personal freedom, and toward a new, broader definition which sees mind control as a synonym for means of persuasion. However, if mind control loses its distinctive power and unique techniques, then it ceases to have any relevance as a term descriptive of special cult indoctrination processes.

By almost interchanging the terms persuasion and manipulation, Zimbardo and Anderson gloss over ethical, connotative differences between these two terms. Second, and more important, the new trend to define mind control to include nearly all "manipulative techniques" implicitly contradicts a key element of the traditional model, namely, that mind control renders its subjects unable to think rationally or choose independently.

A definition of mind control that removes its involuntary component is intrinsically at odds with the prevailing teachings of Singer, Hassan, Martin, and others that cult victims are unable to think for themselves or make decisions. Instead, it is more in agreement with the case we have been arguing--that cult members are capable of independent thought and rational choice making, but because of factual and spiritual deception, faulty presuppositions, fallacious reasoning, and improper religious commitments, they make unwise choices and adopt false beliefs instead.

Contemporary mind-control-model advocates want to have the best of both worlds. They want to distinguish cult recruitment techniques from normal socialization activities to substantiate their claims about the insidious powers of the cults, even to the point of pressing for anticult legislation.³² But as soon as anyone asks for concrete evidence and qualitative definitions, mind control becomes just another term for the myriad forms of noncandid persuasion.³³

OBJECTION: THE BRAINWASHING EVIDENCE

In addition to philosophical and logical problems with the cult mind control model, it is contradicted by the evidence. Neither brainwashing, mind control's supposed precursor, nor mind control itself have any appreciable demonstrated effectiveness.³⁴ Singer and other mind-control-model proponents are not always candid about this fact:³⁵ The early brainwashing attempts were largely unsuccessful. Even though the Koreans and Chinese used extreme forms of physical and persuasive coercion, very few individuals subjected to their techniques changed their basic worldviews or commitments.³⁶ The CIA also experimented with brainwashing. Though not using Korean or Chinese techniques of torture, beatings, and group dynamics, the CIA did experiment with drugs (including LSD) and medical therapies such as electroshock in their research on mind control.³⁷ Their experiments failed to produce even one potential Manchurian Candidate, and the program was finally abandoned.³⁸

Some mind-control-model advocates bring up studies that they feel provide objective data in support of their theories. Such is not the case. These studies are generally flawed in several areas: (1) Frequently the respondents are not from a wide cross section of ex-members; a disproportionate amount are people who have been exit-counseled by mind-control-model advocates who have told them they were under mind control. (2) Frequently the sample group is so small its results cannot be fairly representative of cult membership in general. (3) It is almost impossible to gather data from the same individuals before cult affiliation, during cult affiliation, and after cult disaffection, so respondents are sometimes asked to answer as though they were not yet members or as though they were still members, etc. Each of these flaws introduces unpredictability and subjectivity that make such study results unreliable.³⁹

OBJECTION: LOW RECRUITMENT RATES

The evidence against the effectiveness of mind control techniques is even more overwhelming. Studies show that the vast majority of young people approached by new religious movements (NRMs) never join despite heavy recruitment tactics.⁴⁰ This low rate of recruitment provides ample evidence that whatever purported mind control techniques are used as cult recruiting tools, they do not work on most people.⁴¹ Even of those interested enough to attend a recruitment seminar or weekend, the majority do not join the group. Eileen Barker documents that out of one thousand people persuaded by the Moonies to attend one of their overnight programs in 1979, 90 percent had no further involvement. Only 8 percent joined for more than one week and less than 4 percent remained members in 1981, two years later:

With the passage of time, the number of continuing members who joined in 1979 has continued to fall. If the calculation were to start from those who, for one reason or another, had visited one of the movement's centres in 1979, at least 999 out of every 1,000 of those people had, by the mid-1980s, succeeeded in resisting the persuasive techniques of the Unification Church.⁴²

OBJECTION: HIGH ATTRITION RATES

Additionally, natural attrition (people leaving the group without specific intervention) was much higher than the self-claimed 65 percent deprogramming success figure!⁴⁶ It is far more likely a new convert would leave the cult within the first year of his membership than it is that he would become a long-term member.

This data, confirming low rates of conversion and high rates of disaffection, is deadly to the mind control model. The data reveals that the theory of cult mind control is not confirmed by the statistical evidence.⁴⁷ As Barker summarizes, "Far more people have left the very NRMs from which people are most commonly deprogramed than have stayed in them, and the overwhelming majority of these people have managed to leave without the need for any physical coercion."⁴⁸

OBJECTION: THE ANTIRELIGIOUS BIAS OF MIND CONTROL ASSUMPTIONS

Although most secular mind-control-model advocates deny that they are critical of any particular beliefs, but only of practices, Shupe and Bromley note, "It quickly became apparent that brainwashing served as a conclusionary value judgment rather than as an analytic concept."⁴⁹ A look at the historical evidence underscores the antireligious basis of the brainwashing/mind control model. As sociologists Anthony and Robbins note:

[I]n a sense the project of modern social science, particularly in its Enlightenment origins, has been to liberate man from the domination of retrogressive forces, particularly religion, which has often been seen as a source of involuntariness and a threat to personal autonomy, from which an individual would be liberated by "the science of freedom" (Gay, 1969). This view of religion had been present in the cruder early models of brainwashing such as Sargant (1957), who saw evangelical revivalism as a mode of brainwashing, and who commenced his studies after noting similarities between conversions to Methodism and Pavlovian experiments with dogs. . . (Robbins and Anthony, 1979).⁵⁰

Anyone who wishes to investigate the technique of brain-washing and eliciting confessions as practiced behind the Iron Curtain (and on this side of it, too, in certain police stations where the spirit of the law is flouted) would do well to start with a study of eighteenth-century American revivalism from the 1730s onward. The physiological mechanics seem the same, and the beliefs and behavior patterns implanted, especially among the puritans of New England, have not been surpassed for rigidity and intolerance even in Stalin's times in the U.S.S.R.⁵²

"What is the line between a cult and a legitimate religion?" Conway and Siegelman ask. "In America today that line cannot be categorically drawn. In the course of our investigation, however, it became clear to us that many Born Again Christians had been severed from their families, their pasts, and society as a whole as a result of a profound personal transformation. It is not in keeping with the purpose of this investigation to comment on the far-flung Evangelical movement in its entirety, but our research raised serious questions concerning the techniques used to bring about conversion in many Evangelical sects."⁵⁴

Conway, Siegelman, and many other anticult workers presuppose the harmfulness of any religious allegiance that includes exclusivity and total commitment. Looking back in history, such antireligious bias is not uncommon. There were those who thought Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi were mentally incompetent to make their religious commitments.⁵⁵ It has even been reflected in more recent comments such as the claim made in 1981 by the Yale University president that politically active Evangelicals were "peddlers of coercion."⁵⁶

In short, there is no objective, evidential way to define groups that are "good" (not using mind control) versus groups that are "bad" (using mind control). Without evidence, the accusation of mind control against any group or individual becomes a matter of personal bias. Once one points to particular doctrines, teachings, or practices as inherently bad, one has abandoned the supposedly religiously "neutral" position of the cult-mind-control-model advocates and must make religious judgments. Although this is not the focus of this article, we note here that as evangelical Christians we openly admit that we make religious judgments regarding the cults, and that those religious judgments are based on the Bible, not on our own subjective opinions or some consensus of social-science professionals.

OBJECTION: CREATING VICTIMS

Many people who join cults want to help the needy, forsake materialism, or develop personal independence from their families--not necessarily bad goals, although misguided by false cult teachings. The cult mind control model, however, attributes cult membership primarily to mind control and thereby denigrates or discounts such positive activities and goals, misaffiliated to cults as they are. The mind control model also fails to give proper weight to the role natural suggestibility plays in making people vulnerable to the cults. Highly suggestible people are especially susceptible to religious salesmanship as well as many other "sales pitches."⁵⁷ The cult mind control model instead focuses on victimization, claiming that a cult member joins as a result of mind control and not as the result of personal choice. Adopting a victimization perspective actually strips the cult member of his capacity for rational activity. The cult mind control model epitomizes a "victim" mentality. Hassan explains his approach to counseling a cult member:

First, I demonstrate to him that he is in a trap — a situation where he is psychologically disabled and can't get out. Second, I show him that he didn't originally choose to enter a trap. Third, I point out that other people in other groups are in similar traps. Fourth, I tell him that it is possible to get out of the trap.⁵⁸

Problems with the cult victimization idea can be illustrated by looking at other areas outside the new religious movements. We have the Bradshaw model of adults as having "inner children" who never grew up because of their "dysfunctional" families. We have the many twelve-step-spawned derivative groups where members seem to focus more on their powerlessness against their addictive "illness" than on another twelve-step maxim: personal responsibility. And we have the many "Adult Children" support groups where members uncover the source of all their problems--dysfunctional parents.

One of the most visible applications of the mind control model today is in the area of repressed memories of early childhood abuse (satanic ritual abuse, simple child abuse, alien or UFO abduction, past lives, etc.).⁵⁹ Amazingly, the mind control model is used to describe two contrasting portions of this problem. First, therapists and clients who believe they have uncovered previously repressed memories of early childhood abuse also believe that the original abusers practiced mind control on their victims. One of the most extreme examples of this is psychologist Corry Hammond, who postulates a sophisticated system of mind control he believes was developed from experimental Nazi systems.⁶⁰

Second, falsely accused parents and other family members often believe the mind control model, applied to the relationship between the therapist and the accusing client, explains how adult children could sincerely accuse their own fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles, and grandparents of performing unspeakable horrors on them as children, including human sacrifice, rape, incest, mutilation, forcing them to kill other children, etc. Many times these adult children have publicly denounced their parents and refused any contact with them for years. Surely to believe such outrageous fictions they must be under therapeutic mind control! Finally, once adult "survivors" come to the realization that their memories are false,⁶¹ they must deal with the reality that they have accused their loved ones of horrible atrocities. One alleged survivor, struggling to maintain belief in her alleged recovered memories, acknowledged this painful responsibility:

I wish I could say that I knew [my memories] were 100 percent true. But I can't. If they are all based on falsehoods, I deserve to be damned, and that is really tough. I've made some really important decisions that have affected a lot of people. I still get back to [the feeling that] the essence of the belief has to be true.⁶²

Those who leave by themselves may have concluded that they made a mistake and that they recognized that fact and, as a result, they did something about it: they left. Those who have been deprogrammed, on the other hand, are taught that it was not they who were responsible for joining; they were the victims of mind-control techniques--and these prevented them from leaving. Research has shown that, unlike those who have been deprogrammed (and thereby taught that they had been brainwashed), those who leave voluntarily are extremely unlikely to believe that they were ever the victims of mind control.⁶³

Additionally, true victims--such as small children; victims of rape, robbery, or murder; those who truly are unable to predict or prevent their victimization--have their predicament cheapened and obscured by those who are not truly defenseless victims.

This model has become standard for many evangelical Christians who have therapists attribute their current problems to dysfunctional relationships and trace their personal inadequacies to emotionally harmful childhoods (everyone's a dysfunctional "adult child" of alcoholism, or abuse, or isolationism, or authoritarianism). Everyone is a victim. One doesn't need to be saved from one's own sins as much as from the sins of others. Psychology and sociology have replaced Scripture for understanding human behavior and developing emotionally and spiritually healthy persons.⁶⁵ Yet nowhere in Scripture do we find support for the complaint first voiced by Eve that "the devil--or the cult leader--made me do it." One cannot remove human responsibility without also destroying human morality:

Some social scientists object to the idea that humans are free to choose. They claim that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological, and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Thus, B. F. Skinner holds that autonomous man is a myth. All of man's so-called "decisions" are actually determined by previous experience. Even some Christians believe that all of men's actions are determined by God. . . . Such a view of man must be met head-on. If free choice is a myth, so is moral obligation. C. S. Lewis notes that a deterministic view brings about the abolition of man. In an impassioned plea he argues that you cannot strip men of autonomy without denuding them of responsibility: "In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."⁶⁶

If the cult recruiter's skill at manipulation is considered so coercive that members are not responsible for their own beliefs, actions, or even the decision to join/stay in the cult, then many biblical affirmations about personal responsibility and decision making are jeopardized. To a secular mind-control-model advocate, this may seem a trivial objection. But several advocates are Christian Evangelicals and must come to terms with the theological inconsistencies introduced when the cult mind control model is adopted.

For example, in the Garden, Satan personally appeared to orchestrate the temptation of Eve--and who could be more persuasive? Our first parents succumbed to the temptation and were cast out of the Garden, and all of humanity thereafter have been penalized by this primal sin. If our first parents could be held morally responsible when confronted by the ultimate tempter, how is it that we seek to excuse ourselves or our offspring when confronted by human tempters of far less power, skill, and charisma?

Moreover, we observe that both Adam and Eve were penalized alike, even though the temptation was very different for each. Eve's temptation was mediated by the direct approach of Satan; Adam's temptation occurred via his wife, and we are not told that Satan appeared to Adam as he did to Eve. Yet regardless of whether Satan's presence was immediate or remote, firsthand or secondhand, both shared ethical culpability for their actions.

It is also instructive to note that the second sin of Adam and Eve was blame shifting, the attempt to elude personal responsibility. Eve blamed the serpent, and Adam blamed Eve. Though God loved them deeply, He did not accept this rationalization then, and He will not accept similar excuses made today for our own wrong beliefs and behavior.

CONCLUSION

This carefully focused evaluation has shown that the bogeyman of cult mind control is nothing but a ghost story, good for inducing an adrenaline high and maintaining a crusade, but irrelevant to reality.⁶⁷ The reality is that people who have very real spiritual, emotional, and social needs are looking for fulfillment and significance for their lives. Ill-equipped to test the false gospels of this world, they make poor decisions about their religious affiliations. Poor decisions, yes, but decisions for which they are personally responsible nonetheless.

As Christians who believe in an absolute standard of truth and religious reality, we cannot ignore the spiritual threat of the cults. We must promote critical thinking, responsible education, biblical apologetics, and Christian evangelism. We must recognize that those who join the cults, while morally responsible, are also spiritually ignorant. The power of the gospel (Romans 1:16) erases spiritual ignorance and provides the best opportunity possible for right moral and religious choices. "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36). 

Endnotes:

1 Steven Hassan, Combatting Cult Mind Control (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1990), 143.[return]

2 Ibid., 185.[return]

3 The preceding details are found throughout exit counseling literature and are representative of exit counseling expectations and agreements. Similar views and procedures are found, for example, in Alnor and Enroth, Andersen and Zimbardo, Conway and Siegelman, Ronald Enroth, Steven Hassan, Michael Langone, Langone and Martin, Paul Martin, Margaret Singer, and Jack Sparks. (See bibliography.)[return]

4 This article focuses only on cult mind control, and only mentions in passing its proposed remedy, "exit counseling." Likewise, we do not deal at length with what we believe is a scripturally legitimate response to cult conversion, biblical apologetics, and preaching the gospel. A later article will focus on those two and other alternative remedies to cult conversion.[return]

5 The increased effectiveness of cult mind control methods over earlier brainwashing attempts is usually attributed to two factors: (1) greater levels of sophistication, technology, and psychological knowledge; and (2) the addition of hypnosis techniques to the practice. Hassan, Wollersheim, and others consider hypnosis a crucial ingredient to successful mind control (Hassan, 56-57; Wollersheim, app. 1-3). However, hypnosis expert Dr. Nicholas P. Spanos and others have documented that success rates of hypnosis vary widely because of a number of different factors, and many attempts have extremely low success rates. Even in the ideal setting, including isolation of the subject, trust relationship between the subject and hypnotizer, target behavior already acceptable to the subject, and a subject who is clinically highly suggestible, most hypnosis researchers deny that a subject is under "mind control"; that is, unable to make independent decisions. The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes, "This experiment is typical of a number of controlled studies that call many earlier extravagant claims about hypnosis into serious question. It now seems quite unlikely that the hypnotized person can transcend his waking potential in physical strength, perceptiveness, learning ability, and productivity. Similarly, it seems most improbable that hypnotized people can be compelled to do what they would be most unwilling to do in the waking state. Altogether then, hypnosis should not be considered as a technique for achieving supernormal performance or control. Rather it is a collaborative enterprise in which the inner experience of the subject can be dramatically altered" (Macropaedia, vol. 9, p. 138).[return]

6 Hassan, 77.[return]

7 Paul R. Martin, Cult-Proofing Your Kids (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), 21, 179; italics in original. Though Martin uses a threefold definition of cultism which includes noncoercive groups he claims do not practice mind control, the surrounding context of these quotations shows that he was referring to groups which do practice mind control.[return]

8 Ronald Enroth, "Cult/Countercult," Eternity (November 1977): 20.[return]

9 Hassan, 6.[return]

10 Paul R. Martin, "Wellspring's Approach to Cult Rehab," Wellspring Messenger 4, no. 5 (November/December 1993): 1.[return]

11 Eileen Barker, New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1989), 17.[return]

12 Some mind-control-model advocates assume that anyone who disagrees with them must be sympathetic to the cults, and would misunderstand our criticism of the cult mind control theory as endorsement or support of the cults (see, for example, Langone, Recovery from Cults, 32-35). However, we strongly disagree with the cults not only for their often misleading, manipulative, exploitive, and high-pressure tactics, but also on theological, scriptural, and rational grounds. This article deals only with the inadequacies of the cult mind control model. It is beyond the scope of this article to present our own perspective on cult recruitment tactics and Christian countercult evangelism.[return]

13 Michael D. Langone, ed., Recovery from Cults (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1993), 32.[return]

14 Margaret Thaler Singer, "Preface," in Langone, Recovery from Cults, xvii.[return]

15 Hassan, 7.[return]

16 Ibid., 55-56.[return]

17 See note 5 above.[return]

18 Hassan, 56-57.[return]

19 Ibid., 34 and others.[return]

20 Our sentiments are expressed by others, as in Shupe and Bromley's "Witches, Moonies, and Accusations of Evil" in Robbins and Anthony, In Gods We Trust, 249. [return]

21 David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe, "Public Reaction Against New Religious Movements," in Cults and New Religious Movements: A Report of the American Psychiatric Association, ed. Marc Galanter (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1989), 325-26.[return]

22 Hassan, Mind Control 42-43; italics in original. See also Anthony and Robbins, 7, which states, "In the influential formulation of Delgado . . . the basic components of voluntariness, knowledge and capacity are said to be manipulated in such a manner that the convert never simultaneously possesses both properties."[return]

23 Thomas J. Ungerleider and David K. Wellisch, "Deprogramming (Involuntary Departure), Coercion, and Cults" in Cults and New Religious Movements, ed. Marc Galanter, 243. Shupe and Bromley also discuss this in "Witches," 253, saying, "Activists in the anticult movement do not regard shifts of affiliation to marginal religions as 'true' conversions. "The duo then recite the supposed mind control tactics of the cults. Anthony and Robbins add, "The latent assumption of those who support coercive deprogramming seems to be that no one would ever voluntarily surrender intellectual freedom and flexibility; hence those who submit to regimentation must have been coercively persuaded to do so" (Robbins and Anthony, In Gods We Trust, 267).[return]

24 The F.A.C.T., Inc., organization (Fight Against Coercive Tactics, Inc.) commits this unfalsifiability by attributing the same observable characteristics to victims of coercive persuasion as to those who freely choose: "Changing 'attitude' would also include the attitudes and 'appearances' of sincerity and the 'appearances' of enthusiastic commitment. As one can imagine, coercive persuasion applied to building 'sincerity' in a 'religious' context wreaks havoc with, and creates many paradoxes surrounding the normal First Amendment Constitutional guidelines for religion and religious beliefs, i.e. the validity of the threshold sincerity test" (Wollersheim, app. 1-2, footnote 2).[return]

25 If mind control were actually the only issue with exit counselors, we would expect them to denigrate indoctrination practices only, and never religious beliefs themselves. However, it is not always so easy to separate practices from beliefs, and it is not surprising that it is the beliefs of the groups that come under continual attack and which are used to buttress charges of mind control. After all, a concerned parent might say, only a crazy person would believe the stuff this group propagates. However, as Robbins and Anthony (In Gods We Trust, 266) explain, "Parents and deprogrammers claim to be responding not so much to the specific insupportable beliefs, but to a general 'brainwashed state of mind' manifested by young devotees. If this were so, it might be anticipated that deprogramming would not necessarily alter beliefs but would enable devotees to hold their beliefs in a more flexible manner; i.e., a rigid Moonie might become a thinking Moonie. But the assault on specific beliefs is relentless."[return]

26 "When questioned about their abrupt or radical changes by those who know them well, victims of coercive persuasion may aggressively insist their changes were 'for their own good' and were 'freely chosen by themselves.' These two 'beliefs' are standardly infused into the subject in a normal coercive persuasion program. This twist helps minimize legal liability by keeping the victim believing he is doing it to himself and 'voluntarily' changing" (Wollersheim, app. 1-5). If a cultist did make a free-will choice, would he also say, It was for my own good, or, I chose this freely for myself? The distinction cannot be made except by assuming cult mind control already.[return]

27 Dr. Ronald Enroth, letter to Robert and Gretchen Passantino, 22 March 1994.[return]

28 Geri-Ann Galanti, "Reflections on Brainwashing," in Langone, Recovery from Cults, 101.[return]

29 Ibid., 85.[return]

30 Ibid., 87.[return]

31 Susan M. Andersen and Philip G. Zimbardo, "Understanding Mind Control: Exotic and Mundane Mental Manipulations," in Langone, Recovery From Cults, 104.[return]

32 See, for example, Hassan, 187-190, and Langone, Recovery from Cults 42-43.[return]

33 This lack of concrete evidence appears to be at the root of the reason most court cases involving cult recruitment have not been decided in favor of the mind control model. In fact, whether the court involvement is a petition for a temporary adult conservatorship, a civil suit by an ex-member against his or her former cult, or a criminal case against parents who forcibly removed their adult child from a cult, most decisions have affirmed adults' abilities to make bad religious choices and have denied the validity of cult mind control, although judges and juries may sympathize with parents. The few judges and/or juries who accept the mind control model appear to be unfamiliar with a broad spectrum of views and evidence. (For a lengthy discussion of the legal history aspect of cult mind control, see Behavioral Sciences and the Law 10, no. 1 (1992). (Articles from Behavioral Sciences and the Law are referenced by contributor in the bibliography at the end of this article.)[return]

34 In fact, any supposed effectiveness of brainwashing tends to be conduct or collaboration coerced by physical torture, and similar effectiveness of mind control is much better explained as simple discoursive persuasion.[return]

35 Hassan, 38.[return]

36 For example, "Fewer than 15% of the prisoners in Korean detention camps collaborated with the enemy. When the war was over and prisoners were given their freedom, only a few chose to remain in Communist China. Of these, several later rejected the Communist way of life and returned home" (Collins, 148). Of the 4500 American POWs held in North Korea, only 22--less than 1/2 of 1%--elected to stay voluntarily in North Korea after the war (Duncan and Weston-Smith, 107-120). See also, Robbins and Anthony, In Gods We Trust, 113-16. Finally, Wollersheim recognizes that the relative ineffectiveness of classic brainwashing does not argue well for the effectiveness of mind control, and so argues that mind control is almost immeasurably more effective. However, Wollersheim's argument itself uses the continuum explanation, differentiating brainwashing from mind control by degree of skill, intensity, and continuous application rather than by any qualitative difference: "It is important to understand that beginning with first generation programs, scientific methodology was engaged to greater and greater degrees to behaviorally engineer more detailed, effective, and complete SYSTEMS of coercive environmental individual influence" (Wollersheim, app. 2-1,2).[return]

37 Stephen Budansky, Erica E. Goode, and Ted Gest, "The Cold War Experiments," U.S. News and World Report, 24 January 1994, 32-38.[return]

38 See, for example, Hassan, 189.[return]

39 For an example of one of these flawed studies, see Langone, Recovery from Cults, 39, where current members of the Boston Church of Christ are asked to take a personality trait test, once as they think they would have answered before they joined the church, a second time with their current attitudes, and a third time as they think they will in five years. For critiques of flawed studies, see Barker, 128. For examples of good studies, see Solomon, "Integrating the 'Moonie' Experience," 281.[return]

40 Remember that the mind-control-model advocates declare that anyone could be susceptible, that mind control is much more powerful than classic brainwashing, and that one who is subjected to mind control cannot make decisions independent of his or her controller.[return]

41 Langone attempts to deal with this discrepancy in Recovery from Cults, saying, "Imagine! The Moonies approach total strangers on the street, persuade some to come to a free lecture and get a free meal, and then within a matter of two to three weeks persuade 10% of those persons to radically alter their lives and become full-time missionaries and fund-raisers for the Unification Church!" (p. 33). He goes on to cite even lower conversion statistics from Billy Graham crusades, concluding, "Cult environments, although certainly not 'robot factories,' are compellingly powerful" (p. 34). However, Langone's argument fails to bolster the mind control model at all: First, he has nowhere proved that even the low 10% recruitment rate is due to mind control practices, and not to common deceit, persuasion, emotional appeal, etc.--much like any other "sales pitch." Second, he has neglected to account for differences in recruitment pool between a cult setting (where every attendee is a potential convert) and a Graham crusade (where many attendees are already Christians but have brought unconverted friends). The low conversion statistics from Barker and others remain strong evidence against the mind control model.[return]

42 Barker, 18.[return]

43 Hassan, 20.[return]

44 Ibid.[return]

45 Ibid., 24.[return]

46 This comparison is significant, even though the time frames are not exactly the same (generally 1-5 years for natural attrition and 6 months or so for exit counseling), and even though exit counseling is more frequently practiced on long-term members than new recruits.[return]

47 We are not saying that cults or new religious movements are harmless. False gospels promote themselves though deceit, persuasion, emotional lures, etc., all of which we should fight with the clear thinking and biblical argumentation God has given us. We will never win the war against the cults either by misjudging the nature of the enemy's attack or by using the wrong weapons in our counterattack.[return]

48 Barker, 104-105.[return]

49 Bromley and Shupe, "Public Reaction," 325-326.[return]

50 Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, "Law, Social Science, and the `Brainwashing' Exception to the First Amendment," Behavioral Sciences and the Law 10, no. 1 (1992): 23. [return]

51 Especially Conway and Siegelman, and Hassan.[return]

52 William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (London: Pan Books, 1957), 148.[return]

53 Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change (New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1979), 45.[return]

54 Ibid., 46.[return]

55 Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1989), 38.[return]

56 Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 58, citing James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 144.[return]

57 Coercion, persuasion, deception, and emotional appeal are unethical "sales tools" not only among the cults, but among unscrupulous promoters in other areas of commitment, such as psychics and fortune tellers, some multi-level marketing promoters, some real estate and/or vehicle sales promoters, and on some of the ubiquitous "infomercials" and 900 or 976 "entertainment" phone services. Such promotion tactics are not biblical, and individuals should exercise good critical thinking and biblical evaluation of any promotions, religious or not, especially if you know you are a highly suggestible individual. The point is, special susceptibility to persuasion is almost totally discounted by most mind control/exit counseling model advocates (see Anthony and Robbins, "Law, Social Science, and the 'Brainwashing' Exception," 16).[return]

58 Hassan, 121; italic in original.[return]

59 See previous Cornerstone articles on recovered memories and allegations of satanic ritual abuse (Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott, "Satan's Sideshow,: vol. 18, no. 90; Jon Trott, "About the Devil's Business," vol. 19, no. 93; Gretchen Passantino, "Stolen Innocence," vol. 19, no. 94; Jon Trott, "Satanic Panic," vol. 19, no. 94; Jon Trott, "The Grade Five Syndrome," vol. 20, no. 96; Jon Trott, "Interview with Sherrill Mulhern," vol. 20, no. 96; Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, "Selling Satan," vol. 21, no. 98) and our "The Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse in Popular Christian Literature" (See bibliography).[return]

60 Hammond regularly presents his model at training seminars for therapists, including one called "Satanic Cult Programming" at the seventh Ohio Regional Conference on Trauma, Dissociation, and MPD, 23 April 1992.[return]

61 Hundreds of "victims" now believe their "memories" were therapeutically induced and/or enhanced and now believe the people they accused are innocent. See especially the False Memory Syndrome Foundation's November 1993 newsletter.[return]

62 Ethan Watters, "Doors of Memory," Mother Jones (January/February 1993): 76.[return]

63 Barker, 109.[return]

64 Additionally, focus on a cult recruitment method such as mind control can divert attention from what might be more serious problems in the group.[return]

65 In light of this fascination with victimization, see the recent editorial by Haddon Robinson, "Call Us Irresponsible," in Christianity Today, 4 April 1994, 15.[return]

66 Em Griffin, The Mind Changers (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1976), 29-30.[return]

67 See note 47 above.[return]

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First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 22, Issue 102/103 (1994), p. 30-34, 37-40, 42. © 1994 by Cornerstone Communications, Inc.

Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.