“What is cult? Explain the growth of cults in the contemporary world.” (2021)
In everyday speech “cult” is a label of suspicion. In sociology it is a technical term. Howard P. Becker (1932) split Ernst Troeltsch‘s church–sect scheme and used “cult” for Troeltsch’s mystical type: a small, loosely organised, individualistic religious grouping. Its growth tests the claim that modernity means religious decline.
What a cult is
- Novelty of belief: for Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, a cult is new or imported in its society, whereas a sect is a schism within a familiar tradition. Scientology in the USA and ISKCON in Europe are cults; neo-Pentecostal churches are sects.
- Tolerance: Roy Wallis (The Road to Total Freedom, 1976) defined cults as deviant but pluralistically legitimate. Unlike sects, they do not claim a monopoly of truth, so members may keep other faiths.
- Weak boundaries: fluid doctrine, “customers” rather than members, high turnover. Steve Bruce calls the cult a loosely knit group without a sharply defined belief system.
- Charisma: authority usually rests on a founder, which makes cults fragile at succession.
- Degrees of organisation: Stark and Bainbridge distinguish audience cults (astrology), client cults (therapeutic services) and cult movements (full communities such as the Unification Church).
Growth of cults in the contemporary world
1. Detraditionalisation and the “cultic milieu”
- Colin Campbell (1972) described a cultic milieu: an underground of occult, healing and mystical ideas from which cults constantly form and dissolve. Secularisation weakens churches but not the search for meaning, so this milieu expands.
- Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead‘s Kendal study (The Spiritual Revolution, 2005) found holistic spirituality growing while church attendance fell.
2. Individualism and consumer culture
- Bruce argues that a society of choosers prefers low-commitment cults. Yoga, mindfulness and self-help movements sell spiritual techniques as services, the world-affirming type in Wallis’s terms.
3. Globalisation: East–West traffic
- Transcendental Meditation and ISKCON (founded in New York in 1966) went West. Indian gurus such as Isha Foundation and Art of Living now run global networks.
4. Digital religion
- Heidi Campbell shows that online platforms create audience cults with no physical congregation. Livestreamed “miracle” sessions give preachers instant national reach.
5. Crisis and deprivation
- Pandemics, unemployment and urban loneliness raise demand for healing, prophecy and community, the “thaumaturgical” response of Bryan Wilson.
The darker side and the state
- Global: the People’s Temple mass deaths at Jonestown (1978) and Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin attack on the Tokyo subway (1995) turned “cult” into a byword for danger.
- India: Rampal‘s Satlok Ashram standoff at Barwala (November 2014) left five followers dead, and he received life sentences in 2018 (suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in September 2025, pending appeal). Asaram was convicted of rape in 2018.
- Regulation: Maharashtra’s Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Act (2013) and Karnataka’s law of 2017 target exploitative practices.
A sociological caution
The “brainwashing” model is weak. Eileen Barker (The Making of a Moonie, 1984) found that fewer than 1 in 200 visitors to a Unification Church centre remained two years later. The “cult” label often reflects a moral panic against minority faiths.
Conclusion
Cults are growing not because modern people are credulous but because religion has become individualised, globalised and marketed. Cults are the organisational form best suited to that environment. The sociological task is to separate their meaning-making role from their occasional abuse of charismatic power, without adopting the anti-cult label uncritically.