The Quandary of the Cults

Main-line U.S. churches are unsure how to confront them

Why has main-line religion been so ineffectual in confronting the bizarre cults that were proliferating in the U.S. long before tragedy struck at Jonestown? The Evangelical Protestants and the Fundamentalists have been waging ideological hand-to-hand combat with them, as have Jewish groups (which are fending off Christian evangelists at the same time). But Roman Catholicism and the more liberal Protestant denominations have settled for polite discourse, though they, too, mistrust the cults.

Other than words, of course, the churches have no weapons under the American system of free conscience and do not want them. In Catholic countries, political coercion of belief had largely died out long before the Second Vatican Council adopted its Declaration on Religious Freedom. That has led, in turn, to a more relaxed, benign stance toward rivals, even the most macabre of them. Says the Rev. Stephen Duffy, chairman of the theology and religion department of New Orleans' Loyola University: "The Catholic Church has learned a certain tolerance, a wisdom in biding your time and hoping people will regain their senses." The same is true of many Protestant churches. Jonestown also intensifies these groups' embarrassment over the failure of traditional religions to spread their message.

Commitment to the principle of rights for rival faiths is the major reason for reticence, but in addition some fear that to speak out against any "church," even one clearly unworthy of the name, would be to risk controls on all churches. That concern is not entirely without foundation. Vigilantes have engaged in kidnaping and "deprogramming" U.S. members of oddball religious groups for years. A number of newspapers are demanding that Congress hold hearings on cults. Of course, even the worst actions ascribed to, say, the Moonies, the Scientologists or the Hare Krishnas do not remotely resemble the insanities of Jonesism.

The Rev. Glenn Igleheart, the "interfaith witness" director of the nation's largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention, warns against "overreaction" by parents of cult members or by the government. He urges fellow Christians to support "free religious expression" at the same time that they carefully scrutinize new faiths and "speak out against deviant beliefs and abuses against persons." Every new group should be examined carefully, he advises, and measured by such beliefs and practices as "the unquestioned lordship of Jesus Christ, the unimpeded right of each believer to communicate with God and use of the Bible as the norm against which all doctrines and practices should be verified."

If cults pose a problem for main-line churches in general, the Rev. Jim Jones posed a particularly difficult one for Indianapolis' Kenneth L. Teegarden, president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a respectable denomination of 1.3 million members. Until his death Jones, for all his aberrations, was a clergyman in good standing in that church. What is more, he took care to join the Guyana Council of Churches.

Under the Disciples' tradition of local autonomy, says Teegarden, "it is not possible nor has it been desirable to conduct investigations of the activities or ministries of local congregations. We have stood firmly for a variety of styles and approaches to Christian mission." He adds that because of the "tenuous relations" between headquarters and local churches, he had only a "bare knowledge" of Jones' operation. That is remarkable, given the fact that Jones' Peoples Temple branches were two of the five largest congregations in the church and for a decade he had stirred more press controversy than any other clergyman in the denomination. An investigation by the Christian Church in California went nowhere. Officials are now trying to decide whether to alter cherished laissez-faire traditions and establish a procedure for throwing out unfit ministers or congregations.

But no amount of procedural change is likely to resolve the basic problem. According to the Rev. J. Gordon Melton, a Methodist who heads the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Evanston, Ill., cults are a natural outgrowth of the religious climate in urban areas. "In a city no one cares what his neighbor does for religion," says he. "You can always sell a few people on every weird idea that comes along." By his reckoning, 10% of America's urban population is touched in one way or another by the new cults. As Melton sees it, that figure may well keep growing right up to the year 2000. "A lot of people will be coming along expecting the end of the world, just the way they did at the end of the first millennium," he warns. "You haven't seen anything yet."

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