ONLY THE MOST spectacularly, violently destructive religious cults become famous, of the innumerable which inseminate, and then usually only when promiscuous sex and pedophilia are involved, or some flaming mass suicidal end, as is often the case. Jim Jones and David Koresh are among the first to come to mind, good Christians both, with respective harems of teenaged girls to prove it. The pattern is familiar. Smart charismatic pathologically narcissistic young man feels undervalued by mainstream society, commences quest for cult followers, moving around the country recruiting through preaching loudly, emotionally sensational doctrines loosely based on Christian dogma, promising an extravagant reward, perhaps in some future incarnation for those who join, doom for those who do not. those who do tend to be excessively insecure, lost, seeking...something. The usual targets are young women. They become bait for men. Lauren Hough was born into one such cult which flourished, like so many others, in the nineteen seventies and eighties. Its leader, a charismatic young man named Berg, preached to her hippie parents, who joined. They left, as many do, when she was a teenager. Her collection of essays about her experiences is entitled "Leaving Isn't the Hardest Part", which traces her involvement with "The children of God", which later called itself "the family of God", and then, just "The Family". Terri Gross interviewed miss Hough on her National Public radio program "Fresh Air". The cult had all the insane trimmings, liturgically. God lives on the moon, on which is also heaven, in the form of a pyramid. Lauren's suspicious arose when her budding math skills told her that this particular heaven would fill up and overflow. The Children of God embraced the usual lunatic Christian based dogma, the brainwashing, mind control in the name of serving Jesus, and the sexual exploitation, the great leader, in robes and sandals, knows all, and controlled all, except his personal sexual appetites. The cult of God deteriorated into a sex, as religious cults often do, not surprising, considering that the Christian religion itself began to grow to monstrous proportions, lasing long enough to rewrite their own history to appear to serve the will of God, rather than base human desire. It is a wonder anyone ever survives this insanity, but surprisingly many do, and live to tell about their descent, through exploited vulnerability, into psychological, sociological hell. Those fortunate enough to escape understand that they were the tragic victims of ruthless exploitation of their personal vulnerability. All religions begin as upstart reviled cults populated by social outcasts. A tiny fraction of them, due to a complex perfect storm of societal and historical circumstance, endure long enough and become large enough to wreak their various unique forms of havoc upon the larger world. If for no other reason, we ought to consider ourselves fortunate that no more do than do, and that the vast majority of them, mercifully for all concerned, ignominiously die.
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