The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constantly claims that it is the Lord’s “true” church due to its claims of the miraculous restoration through Joseph Smith. However, multiple people from outside of the church constantly refer to the church as a cult. Before a conclusion can be reached either way, we must first define some of the characteristics associated with cults or cult-like groups and analyze each one on a point-by-point basis.
In 1996 the International Cultic Studies Association (ISCA) released a checklist of characteristics exhibited by cults and cult-like groups. The association introduces like so:
Deception lies at the core of mind-manipulating and high-demand ("cultic") groups and programs. Many members and supporters of these groups/movements are not fully aware of the extent to which they have been abused and exploited. This checklist of characteristics helps to define such groups. Comparing the descriptions on this checklist to aspects of the group with which you or a family member or loved one is involved may help determine if this involvement is cause for concern. If you check any of these items as characteristic of the group, and particularly if you check most of them, you might want to consider reexamining the group and its relationship to you. Keep in mind that this checklist is meant to stimulate thought. It is not a scientific method of "diagnosing" a group.
More information and the full document can be found at http://www.dreichel.com/Checklist_of_Cult_Characte.htm but for the sake of this essay I will only be focusing on the checklist of characteristics.
Because the church is no longer organized or run in the fashion as it was during the time of Joseph Smith, I will only look at the modern, corporate Mormon Church and, using my experience as a lifelong member and the church’s own words, explain how it receives a check for each point.
The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
The President of the Church- or senior apostle- is sustained as a prophet, seer and revelator by the membership, even though he only obtains the position by outliving the rest of them. However, the church looks up to their living prophet for absolutely everything.
The membership believes:
- The prophet will never lead them astray.
- Even if the prophet tells them to do something that’s wrong, they’ll still be blessed for their obedience.
- Everything the prophet says over the pulpit in a General Conference is automatically scripture.
- The words of the prophet can trump canonized scripture, even if it is contradictory.
- When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done.
- Disagreeing with what the prophet says is tantamount to “apostasy.”
Even children are conditioned to “Follow the prophet,” from a young age. This is instilled into their minds by catchy tunes and songs in order to basically brainwash them into accepting the idea that the prophet is infallible.
Check.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
Ever since 1960, one of the church’s slogans has been “Every member a missionary,” and the membership is repeatedly told to seek out potential converts and refer them to the full-time missionaries. However, especially in Utah, this causes church members to develop the attitude of “convert first, befriend later.” If a “non-member” expresses disinterest in the church, the member-missionary will then have nothing to do with that person.
The church also likes to brag about its growth rate, claiming to be the fastest growing religion since its founding to having 14 million members in 2010. However, these claims are false as, since 1830, the Seventh Day Adventist church has been the fastest-growing church in America while Islam has been the fastest-growing in the rest of the world. The Mormon Church also fudges its membership numbers by keeping those who leave and those who die as part of their current numbers until those people’s 110th birthday.
Check.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
The church uses its Law of Tithing as a commandment and a means of holding a person’s salvation for ransom; meaning one needs to be a full tithe payer in order to enter into the church’s temples and receive the “higher” ordinances for exaltation. Even then the tithing income isn’t enough, the church will solicit donations from the members in order to fund its various pet projects or to recover money lost due to poor financial decisions.
Prior to 1990, each of the local church bishops was placed in charge of all of the tithing and donation money given to his ward unit. However, after 1990 the church headquarters established a new policy in which the bishop would send all of the received money to headquarters and a portion would be returned to that bishop as a part of his “ward budget.” The amount returned is always significantly less than what was sent. The church leaders do not reveal what is done with the rest of the money even though the church’s own scriptures require an annual financial declaration to the members.
Check.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
As mentioned above, anyone who even mentions disagreeing with the prophet can be labeled as an “apostate.” This action of labeling those who “disagree with the brethren” is in of course a greater scope than just the prophet and the reactive defense mechanism against those who dare to offer a different perspective. Members are taught to believe an all-or-nothing approach regarding the Book of Mormon, the prophet Joseph Smith, and modern-day leaders; meaning if one is true they must all be true. And when members are confronted with something outside of that belief system, such as historical facts, they are taught to just “bear testimony” rather than actually address the issue.
While most people are labeled for their disagreements, the church has indeed punished those who have dared to take a different stance. Two great examples are the September Six, who wanted the leaders to stop flaunting their authority, and D. Michael Quinn, who unveiled historical accounts of previous church leaders that contradict the official, “faith promoting” church history. There are also accounts of people having their property seized or lives taken for not doing what they were told by church leaders.
For example, the 1979 theft of Garn Baum’s cherry orchard by the church after he refused to sell them his property and, more importantly, his cherry pitting technology was so well documented that CBS 60 Minutes televised their findings. Garn’s case exposed the abuse of the financial power of the church in Utah against those who stand up to them. Please see: CBS 60 Minutes: The LDS Theft of Garn Baum's Cherry Orchard. Retaliation occurred after this program was aired with the political firing of CBS employee Richard Clark and the early demise of Garn Baum.
It is also virtually impossible for someone to leave the church without some sort of repercussions from the members. While the church claims, “A person will leave the church but not leave it alone,” that is also because the church does not leave that person alone. Members will cast judgment upon and claim that all fault lies with that person while also continually trying to bring him or her “back into the fold” of church activity without actually addressing the issue of why the person left in the first place. This church endorsed judgment against truth seekers often causes a division among families. Talking to “apostates” can result in excommunication. The teaching of the “eternal family” doctrine is also used to keep the members blindly obedient without questioning authority so as to dissuade any disruption of families. “High-profile apostates” are targeted by the church to silence them through obvious means such as excommunication as well as not-so obvious means of revenge. This revenge has been seen with financial ramifications: such as loss of church employment, phone tag to employers with temple recommends threatened or through less obvious “accidents” as documented by police reports and authenticated tampering of automobiles, computers, and phones as testified by several labeled apostates
One example would be Dick Perry, owner of KTALK radio in Utah, who had his temple recommend threatened if he allowed Steve Davis to be on radio due to Steve’s role in exposing the reasons (double books) behind the failed merger of Zion’s Bank with First Security after a SEC investigation in 2000.
Check.
Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
There is almost nothing more boring than a Sunday service at a Mormon chapel due to the fact that they are business meetings that pretend to be worship services. In Moroni 6 of the Book of Mormon, Moroni describes how the meetings of the ancient church were directed by the spirit and rather impulsive, but energetic and spiritual. Nowadays, the church follows the pattern of a three-hour block that repeats itself each and every week.
Alongside that, a Mormon’s weekly life is dictated by the church as well: Monday nights are “family” nights, Wednesdays are reserved for youth activities, Sundays must be “kept holy,” and the process of home/visiting teaching must be done once a month. Mothers are told to stay at home and raise children while the father is to be the lone breadwinner for the family. Children are expected to suppress their natural energies and be raised as good little Mormons, always obeying Mom and Dad and not hurting the family image that the church loves to promote.
Finally, while Sunday is supposedly reserved as a day of rest, it can often be filled with more meetings and contain a more hectic schedule for local ward leaders than any day of the grueling work week. Members are told not to complain about such a thing because their calling “came from God” and they need to “magnify it” in order to receive promised blessings associated with their service. Add that notion to the “follow the prophet” mantra and they will not question being told how to live during nearly every waking moment of their lives, especially on Sunday.
Check.
The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, topics of discussion, and so forth).
The day-to-day points mentioned above also apply to this item, but there are even more points that fall in line to this one. The church leadership believes it has the right and power to dictate such things as the following:
- The number of earrings a woman should wear.
- The type of clothing the members should wear.
- When a young man or woman can start dating and with how many people.
- How members should avoid “loud laughter”
- How members are told to avoid “evil speaking of the Lord’s Anointed” to stop any discussion and/or questioning of authority. This is in violation to freedom of speech.
- What actions for married couples are permissible behind closed bedroom doors.
- What forms of media and entertainment to engage in or avoid.
- What types of people to befriend.
These directives apply to aspects of life that should have nothing to do with the church’s scope of influence. The church’s belief that its Word of Wisdom is a to-do or to-don’t list of commandments also exemplifies this point wonderfully.
Check.
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
Like the Jews at the time of Jesus Christ, the Mormons believe and are prideful in their belief that they are the Lord’s covenant people and that nothing will change that notion regardless of their own actions. Members are taught that the church will never fall away and that they have the potential to become gods and goddesses. And of course the Mormons also believe that anyone who doesn’t become a Mormon will automatically go to hell and have no chance at receiving Celestial glory.
Also once again, the members are taught to never question their leaders and to always “follow the prophet.” They rely on him to tell them what to do in all things in order for them to be saved rather than learn such things for themselves. The members may not realize this, but they do look up to the prophet as a god who may never be questioned and who will save them rather than exercise their own free agency to feast upon the words of Christ (as directed in the Book of Mormon) and come to their own conclusions to gain experience and work out their own salvation.
Check.
The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
People outside of the church don’t like Mormons for this exact reason. Mormons believe they are the covenant people and their pride in that belief leads many of them to have a holier-than-thou attitude that people outside of the church notice immediately. However, when someone brings this point to light, the Mormons will automatically claim they’re being persecuted and once again not actually address the issue of concern.
This is also another great influence on children in Mormon families as plenty of Mormon parents will not allow their kids to play with non-Mormon kids in the neighborhood. This once again isolates the kids and fosters a feeling of negative isolation in the minds of the kids on both sides as they grow up. The cruelty of cliques is alive and well within the church.
Check.
The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
The church and its leaders are never at fault for any poor decisions or actions, period. There may be times when a local leader is arrested and charged with a criminal offense, but the higher-ups are practically immune from accountability for mistakes or deliberate wrongful actions done to the members or anyone else. Even when Glenn L. Pace exposed a series of abusive satanic rituals taking place among “prominent” church members, nothing happened. Pace’s authenticated disclosed inter-office memo involved the satanic ritual abuse (SRA) of hundreds of children and adults by church leaders (Bishops, Stake Presidents, General Authorities, and even Tabernacle Choir members) as testified independently by more than sixty children and adults with hundreds of other unheard victims within a four state radius of Utah. That memo can be read here: http://www.mormonstruth.org/LDSoccult.html.
The book entitled Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods by April Daniels & Carol Scott provides insight of the factual existence of SRA with an “apostle’s daughter and son-in-law” as leaders of one of the neighborhood sex rings which involved the trauma-based abuse of children (pp 107-108).
If the prophet is to be charged with a crime and arrested, the members will automatically side with the prophet as they have been taught that the world hates him for “telling the world what they need to hear, not what they want to hear,” and that they will do anything to remove him from his position or take his life. Facts will not matter until the people wake up.
Check.
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
When a member becomes “temple worthy” and receives the ordinance of the endowment within the temple, he or she swears an oath to consecrate all of their time, talents, energies and all that they own to the church and not to God. This gives the church all that it needs in order to claim legal ownership of a member’s property or assets that it desires. As I mentioned above, the church has seized property and even killed people to get what it wants, and this is the reason why.
Because the church believes that it will never fall away, it also believes that it is immune from divine retribution and will be able to get away with whatever it deems necessary in order to fulfill its agenda. This holds true with the church being a part of mind control/brainwashing programs, creating false miracles through the hologram Blue Beam project, and obtaining wealth and assets through corruption, theft, and even murder.
More and more witnesses are coming forth and speaking the truth fulfilling the “no more secrets” prophesied in the Book of Mormon (2 Ne 30:17). Cathy O’Brien wrote the book, “Trance Formation of America” which discloses the use of torture (as justified by infamous LDS Judge Jay Bybee who tried to legalize torture) for CIA mind control purposes. The use of torture in the MKUltra mind control CIA program was exposed by Senator Frank Church in 1979 Congressional Hearings (http://www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol).
On pages 118 and 119 of Trance Formation of America, we read how US Senator Byrd, acknowledged member of the KKK, justified the use of torture and mind control as a “means of thrusting mankind into accelerated evolution” and “the only way we can fail, is to fail to think of an excuse.” He also “justified manipulating mankind’s religion to bring about the prophesied biblical world peace through the only means available—total mind control in the New World Order. After all, he proclaimed, even the Pope and Mormon Prophet know this is the only way to peace and they cooperate fully with The Project” (Emphasis added).
Today, we have the “Danite Warriors” and “secret combinations” within the church. We have evidence of the LDS church leaders shaking the hands of government leaders using LDS Temple Masonic secret handshakes (newspaper photos), bought off corrupt judges and lawyers (Ray Harding, Jr., etc.), and congressmen admitting to doing the will of LDS church leaders rather than the citizens (Utah Compact controversy). Any of these examples of the “end justifies the means” atrocities can easily be researched by those who desire truth over “faith-promoting” lies.
Check.
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
Once again, the church is never at fault. If something goes wrong or something bad happens in a member’s life, the blame and the fault is always laid full bore on the member. The members are told that they are not being faithful enough, not magnifying their calling enough, or just not being good enough at what they’re trying to do. This instills the feeling of devoting more time and surrendering more control to the church in order to “improve”. The underlying droned message to be “perfect even as God was perfect” instills guilt and depression. This mistranslated teaching conflicts with the spiritual teachings of Christ to be pure in heart as a child.
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Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
Many people who become Mormons will say that they did so at the cost of being disowned by their family, but they are not taught to recognize the opposite end of the spectrum. If someone in a Mormon family leaves the church or otherwise “falls away,” the family is encouraged not to have anything to do with that “apostate” person until he “repents” and returns to church, thus putting the church above family—which is massively ironic given how much the church claims to be in support of keeping the family unit intact in modern society while its own actions can do far more to drive families apart.
Young men are encouraged- or rather practically required- to devote two years of their lives to serve a mission while postponing other aspirations while women are encouraged to get married and raise children at a young age, even if they have to forego their education or career goals. And of course, when someone expresses interest in joining the church, he must endure a “worthiness interview” before being baptized to see if he’s sufficiently given up on habits and interests that the church disapproves of.
Check.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
As I mentioned above, a leader’s Sunday can consist of meetings, meetings and more meetings followed by home/visiting teaching rather than using Sunday as a day of rest. But that isn’t all as church leadership meetings can be called and set at any time and day of the week, pulling that person away from the family for even greater periods of time.
Despite claims to the contrary of the church being an all-volunteer organization, people are expected to accept callings and fulfill assignments given to them regardless of conflicts or circumstances beyond that person’s control. Thus a person can easily spend more time in a day or week devoted to the church rather than meeting their personal or family needs.
Check.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
Members are taught to invite non-members only to church functions (in an attempt to convert them), marry within the church, only settle for a temple marriage and even only marry those within similar financial situations as oneself. Given that several points from other items on the list also apply to this one, nothing more needs to be said.
Check.
Conclusion
For years the church has claimed that it is not a cult. However, I have already shown that its actions overtake that claim and prove the contrary. The church has clearly given us every piece of evidence to prove that, just by using the ICSA’s checklist, it can easily be defined as a cult and that people’s accusations are accurate. Finally, there is also one piece of information that most people aren’t aware of: Because Harold B. Lee dissolved the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1973, the church as a legal entity does not exist. Thus, even in a legal sense, the church exists and operates as a foundationless cult. The accusations stand correct and the church members must repent of these prideful actions in order to further the prophesied cleansing found in the Doctrine and Covenants.
As I’ve explained in a previous essay, one does not need to join the Mormon Church in order to become a member of the Lord’s church as defined in D&C 10:67. At this point the members need to understand the difference between the corporate Mormon Church and the Lord’s church as defined in the scriptures. When more and more members begin to awaken to their situation and recognize the cult-like exhibitions of the corporate church, they will take one more step closer to the prophesied cleansing of the church and the second restoration. Once again, more information on these prophesied events and the fulfilling of numerous other biblical prophesies can be found at http://www.mormonstruth.org, http://www.stopzion.com, http://www.bridgingtruth.com, http://www.originalbookofmormonrestored.com and Steven C. Davis, the man whose profound near death experience is detailed in those sites, can be reached at citiesofcommerce@yahoo.com for questions. Unlike leaders in the corporate church, he is not unreachable and admits to being a normal human like the rest of us.
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