The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame

[lpetrich]

Neopagan Isaac Bonewits had composed The Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame -- judging cultishness by behavior and not by beliefs.

He recommended scoring each criterion from 1 to 10 and then counting up the scores.

1. Internal control by leaders over members
2. External influence or control desired or obtained
3. Wisdom/knowledge claimed by leaders
4. Wisdom/knowledge credited to leaders by members
5. Dogma: rigidity of reality concepts
6. Recruiting of new members
7. Front groups
8. Wealth desired or obtained
9. Sexual manipulation by leaders of members
10. Sexual favoritism
11. Censorship, keeping members from outside opinions
12. Isolation, like from family and friends
13. Dropout control
14. Violence: how much approval
15. Paranoia: fear of real or imagined enemies
16. Grimness: disapproval of jokes about the group, its doctrines, and its leaders
17. Surrender of will
18. Hypocrisy: support of actions which the group professes to be opposed to

Here is another one: cult checklist by Michael Langone, Madeline Tobias, and Janja Lalich.

Here is a collection of several: Cult checklist - Abuse Wiki - Wikia

-

How do organizations that you are familiar with fare on this scale? Which ones are very cultish? Which ones not very cultish?

IB avoided talking about beliefs, meaning that Ayn Rand's following can easily qualify as cultish in it despite Ayn Rand's atheism and pretensions to rationalism.

 

[Angry Floof]

Scientology gets a high score on all of those. The sexual abuse items might be lower as L. Ron has been accused of misconduct, but sexual abuse, as far as I know, is minimal among scientologists compared to other groups that might get high scores on that list. It does happen, but most of the stories I've heard involve scientologists setting up camps for kids and things like that, or in cases where a parishioner is held captive by the cult like Lisa McPherson. I'm sure it happens at regular orgs, but those people are run so hard with long hours, punishments, stress, no days off and little or no pay that they just don't have a free moment to sexually abuse anyone even if they wanted to.

There are numerous Christian sects and churches that meet all that criteria as well. Currently, I would score mainstream Christianity with high scores on all of those things.

The difference I see between scientology and Christianity in the US in regard to meeting those criteria is that scientology is closed and homogenous, with members at all levels and orgs participating in those control techniques as sanctioned and ordered by one person, David Miscavige. There are some offshoots, such as Eckankar or whatever it's called, but the belief system called scientology is fairly well controlled and owned by the Church of Scientology and all its sub groups and front groups.

Christianity, on the other hand, is wild, and no organization or group is in control of how it splits off or mutates. It's old, so there's no one who knew the founder(s) and texts are ancient artifacts, not modern sci fi books and materials copyrighted by one organization. The Bible is public domain and its religions and political movements run deep and wide in Western culture, so it's too late for Christianity as a whole to become homogeneous, distinct from wider society, and controlled by a small group like scientology is. Only offshoots can do that.