Claude Mills Staff ReporterSAY THE word cult and you run the risk of provoking a range of base emotions and conjuring images of converts dancing in the nude around roaring campfires, ritualistic sex, orgies, acts of Satanism and mass suicides.
So given that perception, why do people still get sucked into the freakish vortex of cult activities or find fringe groups attractive?
Fringe groups have always been able to attract members. Experts say there are millions of people in the world who feel alienated or ostracised from society because of their looks, personalities or beliefs.
Psychologist Jillian Stephens says even people with successful jobs and lives that look great on the surface are sometimes haunted by unresolved emotional issues from their adolescence and find they cannot fit in with the outside world.
Says psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Doorbar: "It is very hard to break the influence of cult leaders because of the hold they have on their converts. They often have sex with the members of their flock, sometimes there are even orgies.
"Of all the persons I have treated who have been involved, only one (that she knows of) has been able to escape the clutches of a cult."
Father Richard Albert of the Stella Maris Foundation warns about the dangers of being wooed by fringe groups.
"We have to be careful of fringe groups or individuals going off to start their own type of religious expression, and those who base what they speak about in inflammatory language, often misquoting the book of Revelations."
Reverend Ernle Gordon, rector of St. Mary the Virgin, points the finger at some groups, saying they are cults.
"The Jehovah Witnesses, the Kingston Church of Christ, and the Mormons are cults.
"They're not within the Apostolic Christian tradition," he says. "They always have a book that supersedes the Bible, their eschatology (end of world beliefs) do not conform to Christian doctrine; and they don't believe in the Trinity or resurrection of the body. I know people who've left these religions and have come to me and I've had to send them to seek psychiatric evaluation."
Efforts to get a response from the 'Service Desk' of the Watch Tower Society or from the Kingston Church of Christ proved futile.
But the Mormons respond: "We're not a cult. Jesus Christ is the central theme of the Mormon church, we worship Him just like any other religion," says president Norman Angus of the Jamaican branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
"The Book of Mormons is open to anyone who wants to read it. It tells of Christ on the American continent and the ancient history of the American Indians. It's a testament that goes hand in hand with the Bible to tell of the divinity of Jesus Christ."
There are 4,000 registered Mormons in Jamaica.
