Sects that teach and practice polygamy, marriage between more than two people, most often polygyny, a man who has several wives, have been known for a long time, although they are in the minority. It is estimated that there are about 50,000 members of polygamous sects in North America. [136] Polygamous sects are often viewed negatively by judicial authorities and society in general, and this view sometimes includes negative perceptions of related traditional denominations because of their perceived links to domestic violence and child abuse. [137] Report of the Interdepartmental Committee Established to Investigate New Groups in Israel. Reprint 6(1) Cultic Studies Journal 32B68 (1989). Media coverage generated by the actions of individuals involved in unorthodox religious sects or sects often comments on the limited extent to which local, state, and federal governments can regulate such organizations in the face of protecting the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. While the circumstances of the present case will determine whether the First Amendment`s free exercise of religion clause excludes liability for unlawful conduct, the courts have not established absolute protection with respect to harms resulting from the recruitment, indoctrination, or related activities of cults. In particular, the courts have concluded that tort liability is based on fraud or misrepresentation against religious organizations and sects. Pressman, S.
“Mixing lawyers and cults: Conspiracy theories haunt a lawyer representatives the Church of Scientology,” 12 California Lawyer 22 (June 1992). An example of a standard definition of government fraud is: a deliberate misrepresentation, deception, or concealment of an important fact in which the concealing party was required to disclose what was rude, oppressive or malicious and committed with the intent of the defendant, thereby depriving a person or entity of property or legal rights or otherwise causing harm. Ala. Code `6-11-2. Instead of isolated cases in remote locations with strangers, we have become increasingly accustomed to covering sects of many religious and non-religious types in our local newspapers and TV reports. Cults are where we live and involve people and places we know. In 1978, Bruce Campbell noted that cults are associated with belief in a divine element in the individual; It is either the soul, the self, or the true self. Sects are inherently transitory and vaguely organized.
There is a main theme in many more recent works that show the relationship between worship and mysticism. Campbell, who describes sects as non-traditional religious groups based on belief in a divine element in the individual, draws attention to two main types of these species – mystical and instrumental – that divide cults into occult or metaphysical assemblies. There is also a third, service-oriented type, as Campbell notes, according to which “the types of stable forms that develop in the development of religious organization will have a significant relationship with the content of the founder or founders` religious experience.” [32] On the contrary, it appears that some psychological, economic and social means of coercion may be as effective as physical or legal means, particularly when victims are particularly vulnerable. Hypnosis, blackmail, deception, deception and isolation are also illustrative methods – but it is not necessary here to examine the whole spectrum of non-physical machinations with which people force each other. In fact, this and other cases easily show that the typical techniques used today to keep individuals in slavery-like conditions are not limited to physical or legal means. I recently watched the documentary “Going Clear” and also the documentary “The Source Family”. Is it illegal to create a cult? I understand that if they do illegal things like the assaults and false detentions described in “Going Clear,” they are illegal, but if those things didn`t happen, Scientology itself would still be illegal. However, many wonder whether the existence of the sects themselves is illegal or not.
It certainly seems dangerous to allow these groups of individuals to gather under one person or the potentially dangerous ideologies of several people.