Help with writing a religious 'cult'

[Mari]

EDIT: I have been informed that I just fail at english and what I'm actually looking at is not a cult, but(probably) a sect. Don't get offended by the OP, it was just a translation error <3 I'll keep it as it is though, for honestys sake? LOOK AT THIS MISTAKE, IT SHALL BE UNEDITED FOREVER.

---

Okay so, I don't really know what word to use, but I'm writing a religious 'cult' that's very conservative. It can be based on an already existing faction of christianity, preferably protestant. But the thing is, I was raised atheist (I mean, I did attend theology class and went through confirmation since my mom wanted me to be able to get married in a church if I wanted to) so I have no clue or experience what it's like to attend church everyday or say grace etc etc. And well, I've tried to research this online, but I feel like all material online would label every branch of christianity conservative, when different factions have pretty wide differences when it comes down to culture and stuff like LGBTQ acceptance. Like how Lutherian protestants are more 'modern'. So basically, do you have any experiences with people who are very devout? Does the dominant religion in your area affect the community at all? What type of preachings have you heard? Anything like that would be very helpful!

[Ambat]

Well I think the thing you should keep in mind with literal cults is that they tend to deviate from the main branch of their religion by very extreme measures. Instead of looking at Christianity specifically, maybe consider looking more at cults and cult behaviors? Jonestown, one of the most widely known cults, was a Christian-rooted cult for example, but again strayed in very different directions from any true main branch of the religion.

Cults are generally formed around the psychological phenomenon that people will generally agree to believe and do very crazy things if you ease them into it very slowly. Look into cases like the McDonald's Strip Call case and the Stanford Prison Experiment---even normally sane and good people can be eased into very disgusting and scary behavior and beliefs simply by starting them off slowly.

In the context of a cult, this would usually mean appealing to something a person needs--maybe its needing to feel like they belong somewhere, or maybe they're afraid of death and want a promise without a doubt that there will be something waiting for them in the afterlife. A cult will begin a new member by promising them an immediate way to fill these need. They will slowly but surely be thrown into the brunt of it so fluidly that they don't even realize that they're being demanded of behavior thats crazier and crazier. Add this in with some Stockholm syndrome, reducing a person's community to literally only other cult members, and raise some children with no other perspective than the cult and bam--you've got persistent followers.

Scientology from an outside perspective from people who are informed of what its' nature is always sounds like a crazy and absurd belief system--but do you think they start the new members off right away with the craziest information? Of course not. You get eased in until you start becoming invested and have to do more and more to "belong."

I don't know the needs of your story, but if the focus is more on the "cult" and rather the context of the actual religion, I'd do more research into cult behavior and why people get sucked into them. You can always make up your own religious intentions that works with the benefit of your own story--generally its a promise of a happy afterlife. I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helped nontheless!

[nolongerusetheforum]

Interesting topic.
Well, here is my opinion : Basically a cult is made by humans who believe they are doing a good things to the world and everyone around them. Just on their own twisted ways. So you could made up one simple rule and then branch it :
Example : that the end of the world was inevitable and would take place on [] so we should gather people as much as we can before that day and kill everyone before that so we can all go to heaven

Silly example so the post didn't looks like written by mad man :

Or : The world is actually build upon a giant turtle and to make sure the turtle didn't move and make earthquake that kill everyone, you have to make a eating festival contest every year lol

Or : everyone is born naked so wearing clothes is unnecessary so everyone should be naked all the time lol

And then make it into that cult religion. So yeah, your cult can be a LOL religious cult or a really scary religious one.

Just decided what's your cult is about.

Hope it helps somehow ._.

[Mari]

I should've mentioned that I'm not writing a cult in the sense of jonestown or heaven's gate or any of the ones that quite literally went up in flames (which I love reading about....) but rather a faction of protestant christians that is extremely conservative, but not vehemently EEEVIIIL. I want to write it to be balanced, more like tight-knit community with old-fashioned views on certain things, but I also want it to be believable & sympathetic. My grandmother was sucked into one of these devout factions, but I tend to avoid the subject because I don't want to make her feel bad in her final years : I. I'm not a native speaker so I don't really know the proper terms, using the word cult was my b. In my native tongue the word for cult & different branches of religions is the same, so I just assumed it'd be the same in other languages as well.

[UzukiCheverie]

Okay, first and foremost, you need to understand the difference between a religion and a cult. I know it's common for most "modern" atheists to hate on religion and claim it as a cult, but there's a big difference. Religions that are practiced nowadays, including Christianity (even with its different belief sects like Protestants, Baptists, etc.) have been around for centuries and have common beliefs and "rules" without it being pressuring. Cults are pretty much do-or-die, and have some specific goal unlike religion (whereas religion is about finding spiritual enlightenment, cults can be about hating on specific shit in the modern world and attacking it, whether it's commercialism or vegans, whatever they want to band together and hate on really, and they take it to such an extreme sometimes that some groups in the past have even crossed into straight up terrorism). Some religious folk will have you BELIEVE it's do-or-die, but you can't let the few extremists represent the religion poorly and make it appear to be a cult.

Atheism isn't about hating on religion or assuming it's a cult. Even Satanists don't do that - they just consider its existence outdated and pointless (source: am satanist). So it's a little redundant and ignorant to call it writing about a religious cult and then comparing it to protestants and the like. They're not the same. Once you figure that out, then you can really start writing about cults.

[shazzbaa]

So it's a little redundant and ignorant to call it writing about a religious cult and then comparing it to protestants and the like. They're not the same. Once you figure that out, then you can really start writing about cults.

OP clarified, this was a translation misunderstanding! They're not talking about actual cults.

(For anyone else interested in cults, since I'd already typed it up before the new replies, this springhole page has a LOT of general information about how Cults tend to operate in real life, which might be a good starting point!
and I don't have time to go through and pick out the good ones at the moment, but Cracked has done a lot of interviews with folks who survived and escaped real life cults).

BUT since "cult" wasn't actually what you were going for and you just want really conservative religious folks, I'm a Christian myself -- but "what's it like to be in a Christian community" is a lil bit of a broad question!
Most of us don't attend church every day -- for churches I've attended, it's a Sunday morning thing, maybe Sunday evening and Wednesday evening too if you want to put a lot into attendance -- and sermons are usually a pastor taking some section of the Bible, making sure everyone understands the context and what it means, and then going over how that might apply to life now.

I'll also mention, the word "devout" just means you're really dedicated to your faith and beliefs. You can be "devout" and not be SUPER CONSERVATIVE. Like, for example, if you don't believe that marriage equality is wrong, then supporting gay marriage wouldn't make you less devout, it would just mean you had different religious beliefs.

[Ambat]

I wanna chime in and say that I agree with this post specifically from the PoV of an atheist myself. You (the OP) seem to have clarified it was a language mixup which is totally fair but it's important to realize that the word "cult" in English is a pretty severe/serious word that refers to the very extreme cases like Jonestown and Heaven's Gate like you mentioned. Calling any/all religions "cults" in English is extremely disrespectful because there's a very firm difference between a religious belief system and a cult system, and again, I am an atheist myself so I'm speaking on this purely objectively.

That being said, if you're being inspired by the religion your grandmother is practicing, wouldn't she be the best source of information for you?

[UzukiCheverie]

Haha yeah, I had my post halfway typed up and then got distracted and just came back and finished typing it without realizing it had been addressed lol

Also, everything @shazzbaa said is true: even with the same beliefs, lots of Christians vary when it comes to their specific views. I've met Christians who go home after church every Sunday and play Call of Duty, and I've met Christians who don't cut their hair and don't allow their children to wear anything other than lace dresses and dress clothes on a daily basis (a handful of those kids ended up becoming pieces of shit later on as teens but that's not for this discussion lol...)

I think it's important to note that looking at the political side of religion is important too, when writing this sort of thing. The conservative Christians you're asking about are often just that at the heart of it, Christianity aside - conservatives, who take it to the extreme. But a lot of conservatism is also built off religion so they really go hand in hand. It's hard to say which came first

[nolongerusetheforum]

I see...

So, you want to hear about real life experience with devoted Protestant so you know how to write about community of conservative Protestant right? Well then :
My uncle is one. He is nice, a kind guy with big stature that love to talk about the past every time he meet me 'do you know that in the past your mother meet your father through...' yup like that.
But he is unique in sense he won't touch any game cards. You know, poker, old maid etc. He will always say 'playing card is evil' and well, that's all of his weird points. He is completely normal guy. He didn't always come to church either too.
My friend's mom is also unique. She won't let my friends have any dolls [my friends is a she] because she says 'dolls might have a spirit on it' and I might need clarification on it but from what I heard it's sort of religious belief for her? So yeah, dolls might not Protestant things.
But otherwise, she is really nice. She always smile when saw me, treat me like her own daughter, she is basically a really nice lady. It's just the dolls things that weird-ed me out, maybe because I have my fav doll that I have since I was little though.

So yeah, basically most Protestant that I have meet is a really nice person. Only one or two have unique view on stuff that I thought is normal lol.

[Heck]

I grew up in a very religious town. It wasn't a cult, but there was a kind of cult mentality (smalltown yay), and I like learning about cults as my hobby, so I'll tell you my experiences.

Cults are very different from just regular small religious nooks, but there are some things they vaguely share. The fear of God was something hammered into us kids, especially troublemakers. Some families who didn't meet standards (families who didn't go to Church, or invite certain people over for dinner, or had dysfunction or were interracial) were completely outcast by everyone around them, and in some cases were "persuaded" to leave. Kids in tiny towns, unless the Church is militant, are more likely to grow up to be "rebellious" losers. All the neighborhood kids wanted to be world-famous rappers, or start their own failure gangs and try to be TUFF HARDCORE. Most of them did some type of skating or rollerblading (while the girls spent time being sluts), and later meth became a huge problem. I actually looked up the place on a few dating sites and found some kids I used to know. Mostly bad white rappers and Anonymoushackertyper wannabes.

If you were any type of race, especially hispanic, you got picked on. If kids didn't like you, they would do some shit and then blame you for it, and of course they were always believed. Weirdly racism was never "talked about" openly (and many people said they were "against racism") but it was totally practiced. All the black kids sat at the same table and didn't talk a whole lot. During Obama's first run there were "Obama is a cracker" and "Nigger lover" signs absolutely everywhere (Which at that point was a label for my family cos guess who we voted for lol). My sister had actually never even seen a black person until she was 6. Our only Asian family left within the first 6 months they were here. I can't imagine what it looked like during the trump election and tbh I think we would have been targeted for something worse.

When it comes to religious beliefs, everyone fears God. Except the kids. We just did what we were told and whatever. Kids believed in God, but became rebellious teens (and now loser adults). I actually didn't go to church much when I lived there, but before then I was a little Catholic girl who ate sum a that bread and kneeled on them pews. I was too young to understand there were different religions, but everyone in this town was Baptists I believe. A lot of kids struggled between their own sense of right and what their parents told them, but nobody practiced what they preached. I don't actually know a whole lot about the community there since we were ostracized, but from what I can tell, generally the less control the church has over a community, the more diverse and rebellious that community will be, especially younger generations. The more militant a church is, the more like a cult the community will be, and the way to do that is to make a bunch of dumb rules and put the fear of God in everyone. Leaders of the Church have to have a personality and presence much like that of a cult leader in how they convince people, and once they have the whole town on their side they can become whoever they feel to be. This is also the reason why there's so much sexual assault in the church. If you look up how cult leaders gain followers, this follows the same path. Though it's more normalized and subtle, it's just as dangerous.

Anyway woah I wrote way too much lol sorry guys :U
If you need any info feel free to PM me though!

[jurinova]

I think the word you might be looking for could be sect? I'm not a native English speaker but I think sects are more like what you're looking for rather than cults. Sects tend to be religious groups separated from the main view, though the word can be used quite widely. However it doesn't have the negative image cults have.

I don't have any info to share on the topic but I hoped this might help to clear any linguistic confusion.

[Mari]

@shazzbaa
oh no, I didn't mean that devout and conservative are synonymous. I just mean that the branch my grandma turned to is devout, she goes everyday as do most of the other old people in that particular branch, so I kind of want to write something akin to that, that's why I used devout. I do realize that you can be liberal & devout christian, and I have nothing against religion (I am just super suspect about these branches that are rooted in communities with old poor people, I don't want my grandma to get scammed into some seed faith after all). But in my story setting the character in this protestant branch faction whatever would be very devout, so that's why I was asking about that. And the differences between communities is precisely what I'm interested in! Just my own limited secondhand experiences have been very varied! But I want to hear the good and the bad, if there's been trouble or how the religious community has helped people etc. Also I'm adamant on protestant because it's the dominant religion in the area of the setting, I have nothing against orthodox or catholic etc.

@Ambat
Yes and no. She is a recovering alcoholic, and has had a history of turning to different branches of religion or gambling or moving around the country etc as a crutch (she was even in mormon faith for more than ten years!) But the branch she is now, SEEMS to be just an average Evangelic-Lutherian protestant church. I don't want to go hound her with questions and have to tell her I'm not part of a church anymore etc, since I'm afraid it'd upset her too much. She's also been ill for a longer time, so I kind of just want to let her pass in peace, thinking me & my brothers are all in god's graces.

@UzukiCheverie
Yup, sorry about the misunderstanding. (the word for cult in my language is "lahko". That literally applies to both jonestown and for example mormons. It's just a sort of extension word in my language )
Yeah, the political aspect is something to think about (especially with the extremes), but I'll have to think about how and if I'll write anything about politics into that storyline. It's kind of, the country I'm from (and by extension the comic is set in) has such a different system compared to the US or mid-europe it could get very bothersome to try to explain it all, or I'd have to keep it super vague. It's certainly something to ponder about though!

@IAMNOBODY
They sound like nice people! I have never heard of that doll thing however. Could be something she just believes in not in relation to her religious believes? My childhood friend's father was very supersticious, so when we were goofing around with a makeshift ouija board (like a sheet of paper with ballpoint pen letters on it and a glass for the eye) he got super angry and burned it. He was somewhat religious, but that had nothing to do with his faith, he had a horrible experience in his childhood with one so that's why he was jumpy about it (I didn't believe in ouija boards even as a kid --- It was just something to pass the time. We just called forth dumb shit like ooo the frost queen from narnia lmao). Interesting tidbit - The ouija board is called "spiritism" in my country.

@Heck

Your experience is very interesting, and also very sad in many ways. I was actually very interested to hear about if and how people were outcast in such communities, and why, since that ties in with the storyline I'm thinking of. The thing about black kids you said actually is somewhat similar to how it was in the town I grew up in (it's not religious per say, but my country didn't have a history of slavery since we kind of were the slaves until our indipendence, so we only got immigrating POC in like, the seventies) and I don't think I saw a POC before I was seven years old, and even then there were only a handful in my elementary school and only one both middle & high school. They weren't picked on though, they were always very popular and picked on me since my older brother had told everyone that his fat younger sister would be coming this year to school so I already had a handful of names when I started school;

But i'd be very interested to hear more, so I'll be sure to pm you. Hope it wasn't too hard for you to talk about, and thanks for sharing ^^

@jurinova
I feel like you might be right, but wikipedia also lists Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God as a sect rather than a cult, and to me that's a cult though? Gah, Linguistics!

[jurinova]

Oh man, you're a fellow Finn! I feel your linguistic pain! But yeah, I'd say sect is lahko, though we use it in a bit of a different way than other countries do. I don't think it's a perfect translation but it's a close one. Also I think lahko sometimes can have a bit of a negative implication in our country, so there's that too. Damn our difficult and confusing language, hehe.

[Mari]

@jurinova

I KNEW IT olitko joskus kupolista koska nimimerkki on turhan tuttu ;D

[noctuidae]

As a catholic, the practices may differ, but my grandmother is very devout and genuinely, passionately believes she owes much of her success in life to God. She has a small altar dedicated to santo niño in the hall and changes the figure's clothes every year. when my father and his sisters were children, they would be made to kneel there for half an hour when they got in trouble. The church I went to as a child also had lots of elderly parishioners.
An old woman would sit at the pews an hour before mass and recite the rosary each week. That church was conservative and preached against premarital sex, gay marriage, that kind of "sanctity of marriage" nonsense (to contrast, the other church I went to just never brought it up).
My mother's friend has crosses and statues of Jesus and Mary all around her home and says grace before each meal; she was my sponsor for confirmation and gave me a crucifix as a gift.
My parents are not so strict nor conservative, but still very much catholic and pray each night. My father hangs a rosary in his car and touches it before he drives.
Aside from the youth group i was in for a few years, I can't say much in the way of community since my family is pretty reserved. The youth group was mostly friendly though, and I have a memory of one of the boys admitting to me quietly that he cried at his first confession, from the guilt.
i have a lot of problems with the church and feel uncomfortable around overly religious people, many of them just using religion as an excuse to support the prejudices, but the people I know truly do believe in a higher power and wish to stay in the good graces of spiritual forces they have no control over.

[jurinova]

Haa, kyllähän mie siellä olin joskus! Mietinkin, että siun piirustustyyli näytti jotenkin tutulta, mutta en saanut päähäni mistä. Kylläpä internet on pieni paikka. : D

[indagold]

Me and my family had to deal with jehovah's witnesses for a while because my mom being the lonely and easily persuaded person she is agreed to joining their cult. Jehovah's witnesses are not a normal sect, they're fucked in the head. Racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-science, anti-everything puritan twats. They called my mom a whore, they are against blood transfusions and organ transplants so their religion will let you die and they never fucking stop coming to your house with a cheery smile hiding their venomous nature.I am not generalizing, their pamphlets that all of them use are all the same, they follow all the same strict doctrines and are judgmental to the core. Only recently did my mom realize they were shitholes because they came to the house grinning and telling her "I know you're a jew so I got you a pamphlet just for you! It's called the jews killed jesus!". She threw the paper at their faces and slammed the door on them.

Apparently a few people drew a gun on them when they came around. I don't blame them. You can google them to see how messed up they are.

[kyupol]

Any place that doesn't allow even mild criticism of the leader/s and/or ideology of the group is a cult.

All cults operate in group think. If you have one shred of critical thinking in your brain you won't last very long.

Not all cults are religious in nature. There are secular cults as well.

Like the cult of political correctness well entrenched in academia... don't you dare say things like:
- anything about Jesus. The closer you are to His Word, the more you be hated
- anything pro gun
- anything pro free speech
- anything pro life
- anything pro capitalist
- anything that criticizes feminism and LGBT
- anything that criticizes Islam
- anything that criticizes reverse racism and sexism
- anything that points out hypocrisy within the left even though you're a left leaning libertarian yourself...
- pretty much any conservative or libertarian opinion is off limits in such places. No different from any other religious cult or fascist dictatorship... Lol if your ideas are truth, then opposing views shouldn't be feared. Since the truth prevails right?

[NickRowler]

Growing up, my family was non-denominational protestant. Why? Because on my mother side, they were very very anti-Catholic. Something about the Catholics and Protestants fighting in Ireland...my grandma is still a little bitter. I guess if you never grew up Christian, you might not be 100% aware that not all Christians like other Christians. Some groups are very devoted to their sect that any Christian outside of that sect is seen as bad. However, later on, my father went Orthadox and my brother went Catholic. However, I am not religious. I live in an area which is very religiously diverse, so there is not a dominate sect in my area.

When it comes to the most conservative Christian groups, I would say...
-Conservative Catholic
-Conservative Orthodox
-Westboro Baptist Church (they hate everyone, apparently they picketed a local church)
-Evangelicals (Some are pretty extreme, this is what the Chick Tracts are based on)
-Mennonite and Amish (they are more culturally conservative, living mostly as farmers with no electricity, however they are not as spiteful as other groups)
-Quiverfull (this is what the Duggars are, they are anti-public school, and see women only as baby machines)
-Mormans (it depends on the group. Some are just conservative and some are really really conservative and live out in the middle of the desert)

[LordVincent]

These sound like the religious version of the atheists I was exposed to as a teen (not within my family, mind you, my family is very openminded and varied in terms of spiritual beliefs). Basically in their minds, religious people are sheep who are spreading poison in society, religion is the root of everything evil, religion KILLS people and needs to be ELIMINATED (these are almost precise quotes of things they have said btw)... They compared the christian god to santa claus and fairies, and they said believers are just mentally ill childish assholes. Back when I was a christian they were very quick to talk about how dumb it was whenever they got even the nearest chance, and before you ask; no it wasn't because I brought the topic up and tried to push my beliefs onto them. It was the exact opposite.

They are also transphobic and rather judgemental. For example they could either straight up ignore my identity and keep flirting with me the way they would with a woman, or finding trans people in the media or online and say things about them like "Look at this ugly trans woman, I don't get the point of going on hormones and getting surgeries if you don't make a convincing woman anyway! It's better to just keep being an acceptable man than to be an ugly unconvincing woman!".
Also, intergender isn't a thing to them. They compare it to identifying as a fairy. These people really must hate fairies because if they see anything they don't like, they bring up fairies (o_o)'' Either that or they point at it and call it mental illness. They think trans people are mentally ill too btw.