Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models

Abstract

This paper draws upon numerous ethnographies to outline three fundamental models of how novel religious ideas are generated and made social. The psychopathology model describes cult innovation as the result of individual psychopathology that finds successful social expression by providing apparent solutions to common intractable human problems. The entrepreneur model states that cultfounders consciously develop new systems of religious belief and practice to obtain the rewards thatfollowers may shower upon them. The subculture-evolution model explains that cults are the expression of novel social systems, composed of intimately interacting individuals who achieve radical cultural developments through a series of many small steps. The models are shown to be compatible because each uses two basic concepts: compensators and social exchange. Compensators are somewhat satisfying articles offaith, postulations that strongly desired rewards will be obtained in the distant future or in some other unverifiable context. Magical and religious cults exist through the social exchange of compensators. The models explain how novel packages of compensators are invented and assembled to form new cults. The origins of the great world faiths are shrouded by time, but cult formation remains available for close inspection. If we would understand how religions begin, it is the obscure and exotic world of cults that demands our attention. This paper attempts to synthesize the mass of ethnographic materials available on cult formation as the necessary preliminary for a comprehensive theory. While it represents an important step in our continuing work to formulate a general theory of religion, this paper is primarily designed to consolidate and to clarify what is already known about this subject. The published literature on cults is at present as chaotic as was the material on which cultural anthropology was founded a century ago: an unsystematic collection of traveler's tales, mostly journalistic, often innacurate, and nearly devoid of theory. For all the deficiencies of this mass of writing, three fundamental models of how novel religious ideas are generated and made social can be seen dimly. In this paper we develop and compare these models. The task of integrating them fully into a single, comprehensive theory must be delayed, but in this first exposition we will be able to show that each model is but a different combination of the same theoretical elements. The three models of cult formation, or religious innovation, are (a) the psychopathology model, (b) the entrepreneur model, and (c) the subculture-evolution model. While the first has been presented in some detail by other social scientists, the second and third have not previously been delineated as formal models. Cult formation is a two-step process of innovation. First, new religious ideas must be invented. Second, social acceptance of these ideas must be gained, at least to the extent that a small group of people comes to accept them. Therefore, our first need is to explain how and why individuals invent or discover new religious ideas. It is important to recognize, however, that many (perhaps most) persons who hit upon new religious ideas do not found new religions. So long as only one person holds a religious idea, no true religion exists. Therefore, we also need to understand the process by which religious inventors are able to make their views social-to convince other persons to share their convictions. We conceptualize successful cult innovation as a social process in which innovators both invent new religious ideas and transmit them to other persons in exchange for rewards.