Cult activity has been on the rise over the past few decades. With it there has been an increase in the fear surrounding it. From this fear, society has learned much about cults, how they get members and what to look out for as far as cult recruiters go. Society as a whole has also learned what can be done to deal with cult activity and the fear that surrounds it. Throughout the last couple of decades more and more stories of illegal cult activity or murders by satanic cults appear on the news nearly each night. This surge of reported cult activity has caused a spark in public interest. There has been a large increase in the fear that surrounds cults over the past couple of years. A cult is "a therapeutic or unconventional religious movement (McBride, 1985,22)," and the more.
Cults that fall beneath the public eye, the more serious the fear of cults become. .
Much of this fear has been sparked by major cult related incidents such as mass suicide by the People's Temple or the murder of Sharon Tate. These incidents, and incidents like them, grab the nation's attention and create widespread panic. But as the nation reads about these stories in the paper, the same questions seem to surface. Questions like "How does this happen?" or "What can we do to stop this from happening again?" are often asked.
The panic and fear of cult activity in our country seems to continue to grow with the more unbelievable stories that hit the news. The first big news event that was cult related occurred in 1969. The killing of actress Sharon Tate and four others. The cult that was responsible for this was Charles Manson and "The.
Family". This event played a major role in creating cult fear all over the world. The next largely publicized cult related incident that I will go into more detail about later in my paper, occurred in 1979 with the mass suicide in Jonestown.
The real question is who are the people that get involved in cults? Such as " The Family" and " The People's Temple".
