Cults and Charisma: The Eccentricities of 19th Century American Religion

Cults or sects are groups that have developed so much of their own theology and their own character away from the received truth of Christianity, usually away from not just evangelical Christianity, but away from catholic Christianity that is rejecting the doctrine of God or the doctrine of Christ that had been received in the church from the ancient church period. [00:00:49]

I think part of the reason is simply that America has been so free in terms of religion. Since there has not been legal restriction on the practice of religion, unless a cult gets involved in something really wild like the use of peyote or some mind-altering drug or something illegal in that sense, the forces of the law have not come down on that religion. [00:01:42]

The first kind of cult we have are what we could call “restorationist cults.” These are cults that tend to teach that true Christianity has been lost some time in the past and now is finally being properly restored. Mormons are a good example of that. Joseph Smith taught that the revelation given to him was a revelation showing how true Christianity had died out early in the history of the church and only now with the restoration of the prophetic office was true Christianity and the true practice of Christianity being restored. [00:03:30]

In the 19th century probably the most famous healing cult was Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy and her famous book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” But Christian Science was not only a healing cult, but it also represented the third kind of cults that we could talk about, and that is cults that focused on spirituality, a different kind of spirituality, a different kind of way of practicing religion, a different way of understanding the presence and the power of God amongst His people. [00:05:02]

Mormonism and Christian Science are interesting kinds of polar opposites when it comes to cults, because Mormonism is a cult almost entirely focused on the physical, the importance of marriage, of marriage sealed for eternity, the importance of the temple and fulfilling your obligations in the temple, the notion that you will become a god of your own world if you are a man and reign over that world populated by your own children in the time to come. [00:05:57]

Mary Baker Eddy, in a rather remarkable way, combined a new approach to spirituality in a way that would lead, she insisted, to healing. What Mary Baker Eddy really said is, there is no physical reality. Physical reality is entirely an illusion. It is a result of evil forces controlling your mind, and what you need to do is to liberate your mind from the illusion of the physical. [00:05:44]

I think often one factor is really powerful, charismatic leaders. It has to be the Joseph Smith as the first prophet and then Brigham Young as the next prophet who were powerful, charismatic —charismatic with a small c, not Pentecostal— but just very effective communicators, dominant personalities driven by their own vision in such a powerful way that other people are drawn in. [00:11:03]

And of course, people are gullible. P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” I mean, people want to believe certain things and it’s much easier somebody said to get people to believe what they want to believe than to get them to believe what they don’t want to believe. And of course ultimately, we believe this is a demonic strategy to lead people away from the truth. [00:11:39]

The fourth kind of cult that we have in the history of the American churches is what we could call an “eschatology cult,” a cult that is so focused on the second coming of Christ that everything is controlled by that expectation. In a sense, we could say that the Seventh-day Adventist movement in its early years had a tendency to be cultic in that regard. [00:13:29]

William Miller was a farmer in the early part of the 19th century in America, and he was a careful student of the Bible, and he concluded that he knew the date of Christ’s return. Now today that seems like a kind of strange and eccentric point of view. Actually in the 17th and 18th century, there were a number of people who thought that they could calculate the date of Christ’s return. [00:14:00]

Some people abandoned Christianity altogether because of this disappointment, but others, the most prominent of whom was Ellen G. White, said Miller was not really wrong, he simply was wrong in the event that would take place in October of 1844. It was not that Christ would return visibly in glory in October 1844, but that Christ would rise from his throne to enter the heavenly temple to begin the investigative judgment to determine who would finally enter the eternal kingdom. [00:15:21]

It is also true, I think, people sometimes have a desire to be the only ones who really know the truth. “It is just us who are really right,” now that is true only of Calvinists, right? But Calvinism has never had that extreme exclusivity. Other people may not be as right as we are, but other people are going to heaven. But these cults almost always say, “We’re the only people going to heaven. We’re the only people who really follow the law. We’re the only people who really understand.” [00:21:18]