Religious Cults

After a five-year cultic misadventure in a secret "school," Friedman wrote her cautionary tale. Memoir led to research on narcissistic abuse and a recovery template for empaths. With humor and compassion, Friedman describes how the cult exploited her empathy. She interviews former members from other cults and includes research from leading experts. We learn that all cults and cons market false hope by leveraging human nature to profit from the vulnerable.

An Everyday Cult follows the arc of Buglion's journey through young motherhood into a group that welcomed her but also captured her mind, her heart, and her money. She shows us how a mind and psyche can be compromised by a controlling leader, using techniques that fly under the radar of human awareness—and she implores listeners to wake up to these ever-present abuses of power. Gerette vividly describes a personal journey that became increasingly treacherous, culminating in tragedy. In the telling of her story, she exposes the impact of cultic manipulation on daily life.

The shocking news of polygamous cults has sparked a national dialogue on religious sects. Splintered from and repudiated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these secretive families exist in an insular world far removed from reality. Yet for Brian Mackert, life inside this world was all too real. As a son in a family of one father, four mothers, and thirty-one children, Brian experienced firsthand the devastating reality of the polygamous lifestyle: a reality that leaves thousands of children feeling hopeless and struggling to belong.

This self-help book for cult leaders is ideal for anyone with a sense of humor! Dark and provocative humor… In a satirical twist, it uses short stories about 40 different cults as case studies to teach the vital steps for starting your own cult. The lessons will ensure that your cult becomes a vibrant, flourishing network of submissive lemmings and extension of God’s will, interpretable by no one but you!

The goal of some cult leaders was wealth and power, while others were after comfort or sex. The darkest and most notorious cults and their leaders sought to spread their evil messages through violence and mass murder, through war and genocidal acts. From the Thuggee cult that inspired the term "thug" to the brown shirts of Germany who would become the most destructive cult of all time, the Nazis.

One woman’s search for affirmation and significance trapped her and caused her to lose everything of value in her life. Deceived by Scientology, mysticism, and years in a toxic and restrictive cult, she lost her marriage, relationships, home, her publishing company, and her reputation. In this candid and heartfelt memoir, Athena’s Dean Holtz tells how her eyes were opened and how God restored all that had been lost, and gave her the desires of her heart, including a loving, godly husband.

You joined your church because of its intensity for God. Like no other place, it’s helped you discover the meaning of obedience. If there’s one problem, it’s the confusion that sometimes comes from your own carnal thinking. But God has given you leaders who can lovingly correct a doubting, independent spirit and help you choose God’s best for your life. How can you go wrong with a church like that? Easily, because it fits the profile of many abusive churches.

Do you ever wonder what decisions will shape your destiny? For Lindsay, one of those decisions was made at the young age of 13, when she converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—known to the world as "the Mormon church". Over the course of a decade, Lindsay would take a journey into one of the most secretive and powerful religious organizations in the world, a journey that would cause her to lose her true self as she submitted to the doctrine of the Mormon church. Little did she know that two people would come into her life and take her on a new journey.

次は、どこだ?なぜ人は眉を顰められながらも、カルトにひかれるのか? 2022年7月8日に起こった安倍晋三元首相の狙撃殺害事件以来、改めて旧統一教会(現・世界平和統一家庭連合)をはじめとする…

After seven years of faithfully following her spiritual teacher, Renee Linnell finally realized she was in a cult and had been severely brainwashed. But how did that happen to someone like her? She had graduated magna cum laude with a double degree. She had started five different companies and had an MBA from NYU. The Burn Zone is an exploration of how we give up our power - how what started out as a need to heal from the loss of her parents and to understand the big questions in life could leave a young woman fighting for her sanity and her sense of self.

In the 1980s, Erika Bornman’s family join, and ultimately move to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission based in KwaZulu-Natal, which is touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks beneath ‘the place where people are helped’. Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments, and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged.

An incidental and shocking discovery of a cave with tiny unmarked graves shatters the peace of Exton, a small town in upstate N.Y. More horrifying is the forensic analysis that reveals that these young children died needlessly as the result of neglect and abuse at the hands of a religious fundamentalist cult that disavows medical care. Evangelicals and their political action groups come to the defense of the cult and the parents of the dead children setting the stage for the final courtroom clash to come.

This idea of vindicating his life, rife with strife, moves him. He's endured just about every wrong a human can, to the point of losing his mind. He will no longer hide. He will set aside his fears and fight and make things right. He must right them all and then write about them all to help others do the same.

Imagine a place where you are accepted and loved, where there is complete honesty and transparency, where you can be yourself and no longer have to strive to be someone else. Envision a safe haven where you could live in perfect peace and have everything you needed and wanted. That was the dream - the hope - that Trinity Foundation offered and that we naively believed. I Can’t Hear God Anymore is an inspiring and instructive example of how normal people caught in the skillful manipulations of an abusive cult can find their way back to spiritual and psychological health.

Investigators and Central Florida residents were horrified when 16-year-old vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell was arrested and charged with bludgeoning a cult member's parents. When they realized the slain couple's 15-year-old daughter was missing, they feared she was a victim, too. Detectives and journalists swarming over three states soon uncovered a web of blood-drinking occult rituals, illicit sex, wildly dysfunctional families, and spiritual warfare.

Evil in Our Midst provides a chilling glimpse of 50 dark angels, each of which represents a culture’s greatest fears. Every section opens with a story that shares the legend of a demon, and then offers fascinating information on the culture that, in many cases, perpetuates this belief. For those who believe in these creatures, this audiobook gives reason to fear the unknown. For those who do not believe in demons, it provides terrifying listen for a stormy night.

It’s 1970, and Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of requirements and restrictions—including a prohibition against doctors and hospitals—the underpinning tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God was that its members were divinely chosen and all others would soon perish in rivers of flames.

Brian has always been a devoted father who cherished his children, encouraging them to live a life of freedom. Nothing had prepared either his scientologist daughter or himself for the devastating shock when the Church of Scientology prohibited her from ever speaking or seeing him again - something that has become common in this cult.

For decades, Asaram Bapu presided over a politically influential empire built on blind faith. Along with his son and heir, Narayan Sai, he has now become an example of everything that is wrong with self-styled godmen and the cults they spawn. God of Sin pieces together Asaram's journey to spiritual godhood, his fall from grace, and the long and arduous road to bring him to justice.

These gruesome stories have peppered the pages of newspapers and history books over the centuries. Some are well-known. Some aren’t. They rest in that murky place between true crime and horror. All will make your blood run cold.