My Cult Experience, Episode 1: People Don't Join Cults, Cults Recruit People By Lying

People Don't Set Out and Join Cults, Cults Recruit People With Lies

I was 23 years old in fall 1993, penniless, jobless, and living with my parents.

Out of the blue, my sister who I will call Amanda called and asked for me. She and I had not talked in years.

The first thing she said was a lie: that she was just calling to talk because she loved me. The truth was that she was recruiting for the International Churches of Christ (ICOC). She and my brother who I will call John, as well as their spouses, were active members of the Buffalo Church of Christ (BCC), which was a branch of the ICOC.

Amanda called a few more times to follow up, chatting long enough to make me feel loved, and then abruptly switching to 'Cult Amanda' mode, as I call it, in which she talked only about God, religion, and the ICOC, for the sole purpose of recruitment.

Amanda had gotten programmed by the ICOC for a decade or two; she was what they called a 'sold out soldier of God'. The problem was that as a nominal Catholic who really knew that God was a myth, I was supposed to be working for Satan, according to ICOC doctrine.

I was Amanda's cherished brother and friend.

Cult Amanda, on the other hand, had me in her sights as a target, for me to 'die to myself' and get reborn into the ICOC.

The ICOC is a nondenominational Christian church on the surface, but it is a church that believes that it has a monopoly on salvation, and that if one is not baptized into that church, then that person is hellbound until he becomes so. This is one of the many traits of a dangerous, coercive cult. The ICOC has a lot more dangerous traits, and I will attempt to discuss more of them in future posts.

Thank you for allowing me to share this poignant first episode in My Cult Experience series, I hope to be able to continue with many more.