Cults

The late twentieth century witnessed a dramatic "rise in the number of obscure cults and the increasingly fevered pitch of their rantings."

Three cults that grew in popularity throughout the 1970s through 1990s, having a particular impact on American culture, include The Unification Church, The Church of Satan, and Heaven's Gate. These three cults had nothing to do with one another and in fact their central belief systems can on some specific points be considered contradictory with one another too. However, their ideologies seem trivial superficialities that obscure the elements they share in common. These three cults demonstrate remarkably similar structures and modes of recruitment. Their historical context shows that both sociological and psychological factors impacting their growth and development were similar, too. Cults like the Unification Church, the Church of Satan, and Heaven's Gate tend to be populated by "people who shared little more than a willingness, or...
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