Christian countercult movement
The Christian countercult movement, or the Christian anti-cult movement, is a social movement among certain Protestant evangelical, fundamentalist, Christian ministries, and individual activists who oppose religious sects that they consider cults.
Overview
Christian countercult activism mainly stems from evangelicalism or fundamentalism. The countercult movement asserts that particular Christian sects are erroneous because their beliefs are not in accordance with the teachings of the Bible as understood by the countercult group. It also states that a religious sect can be considered a cult if its beliefs involve a denial of any of what the countercult group consideres essential Christian teachings.Within evangelical Protestantism, countercult ministries often evaluate groups whose teachings are considered to diverge from orthodox Christian doctrine, including organizations that self‑identify as Christian as well as certain non‑Christian traditions; commonly discussed targets in countercult literature include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, the Unification Church, and, in some treatments, Seventh-day Adventism, alongside critiques of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age movements.
Countercult literature usually expresses specific doctrinal or theological concerns, often with a missionary or apologetic purpose. It presents a rebuttal by emphasizing the teachings of the Bible as understood by the countercult group against the beliefs of what they consider non-fundamental Christian sects. Christian countercult activist writers also emphasize the need for Christians to evangelize to followers of cults. Some Christians also share concerns similar to those of the secular anti-cult movement.
The movement publishes its views through a variety of media, including books, magazines, and newsletters, radio broadcasting, audio and video cassette production, direct-mail appeals, proactive evangelistic encounters, professional and avocational websites, as well as lecture series, training workshops and counter-cult conferences.
History
Precursors and pioneers
Christians have applied theological criteria to assess the teachings of perceived non‑orthodox movements throughout church history. The Apostles themselves were involved in challenging the doctrines and claims of various teachers. The Apostle Paul’s Galatians confronts teachers urging Gentile believers to adopt circumcision and/or other aspects of the Mosaic Law, a dispute also reflected in the Jerusalem Council narrative. Many interpreters read the First Epistle of John as responding to early docetic or proto‑Gnostic teachings that denied Jesus’ coming in the flesh, reflected in the letter’s tests of christological confession and appeals to eyewitness testimony.”The early Church in the post-apostolic period was much more involved in "defending its frontiers against alternative soteriologies—either by defining its own position with greater and greater exactness, or by attacking other religions, and particularly the Hellenistic mysteries." Much of the early Christian literature is devoted to the exposure and refutation of perceived unorthodox theology, mystery religions and Gnostic groups. Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus of Rome were some of the early Christian apologists who engaged in critical analyses of unorthodox theology, Greco-Roman pagan religions, and Gnostic groups.
In the Protestant tradition, some of the earliest writings opposing perceived unorthodox groups can be traced back to John Wesley, Alexander Campbell, and Princeton Theological Seminary theologians like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield. The first known usage of the term cult by a Protestant apologist to denote a group as heretical or unorthodox is in Anti-Christian Cults by A. H. Barrington, published in 1898.
Quite a few of the pioneering apologists were Baptist pastors, like I. M. Haldeman, or Plymouth Brethren, such as William C. Irvine and Sydney Watson. Watson wrote a series of didactic novels like Escaped from the Snare: Christian Science, Bewitched by Spiritualism, and The Gilded Lie , as warnings of the dangers posed by what he considered cultic groups. Watson's use of fiction to counter these perceived cults has been repeated by later novelists like Frank E. Peretti.
Early twentieth-century Protestant apologists generally applied the words heresy and sects to groups like the Christadelphians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritualists, and Theosophists. This was reflected in several chapters contributed to the multi-volume work released in 1915 The Fundamentals, where apologists criticized the teachings of Charles Taze Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, the Mormons and Spiritualists.
Mid-twentieth-century apologists
Since the 1940s, the approach of Protestant Christians was to apply the meaning of cult such that it included those religious groups who use other scriptures beside the Bible or have teachings and practices deviating from Protestant Christian teachings and practices. Some examples of sources that documented this approach are:- The Missionary Faces Isms, by John C. Mattes, pub. 1937.
- Heresies Ancient and Modern, by J. Oswald Sanders, pub. 1948.
- Heresies Exposed, by W. C. Irvine, pub. 1917, 1921, 1985.
- Confusion of Tongues, by C. W. Ferguson, pub. 1928.
- Isms New and Old, by Julius Bodensieck.
- Some Latter-Day Religions, by G. H. Combs.
Walter Ralston Martin
Historically, one of the most important protagonists of the movement was Walter Martin, whose numerous books include the 1955 The Rise of the Cults: An Introductory Guide to the Non-Christian Cults and the 1965 The Kingdom of the Cults: An Analysis of Major Cult Systems in the Present Christian Era, which continues to be influential. He became well known in conservative Christian circles through a radio program, "The Bible Answer Man", currently hosted by Hank Hanegraaff.In The Rise of the Cults, Martin gave the following definition of a cult:
By cultism we mean the adherence to doctrines which are pointedly contradictory to orthodox Christianity and which yet claim the distinction of either tracing their origin to orthodox sources or of being in essential harmony with those sources. Cultism, in short, is any major deviation from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.
As Martin's definition suggests, the countercult ministries concentrate on non-traditional groups that claim to be Christian, so chief targets have been, Jehovah's Witnesses, Armstrongism, Christian Science, and the Unification Church, but also smaller groups like the Swedenborgian Church. He defines Christian cults as groups that follow the personal interpretation of an individual, rather than the understanding of the Bible accepted by Nicene Christianity, providing the examples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Unity Church. Martin examines a large number of new religious movements; included are major groups such as Christian Science, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, Armstrongism, Theosophy, the Baháʼí Faith, Unitarian Universalism, Scientology, as well as minor groups including various New Age and groups based on Eastern religions. The beliefs of other world religions such as Islam and Buddhism are also discussed. He covers each group's history and teachings, and contrasts them with those of mainstream Christianity.
Various other Christian leaders—among them John Ankerberg and Norman Geisler—have emphasized themes similar to Martin's. Perhaps more importantly, numerous other well-known Christian leaders and pastors have accepted Martin's definition of a cult as well as his understanding of the groups to which he gave that label. Dave Breese summed up this kind of definition in these words:
A cult is a religious perversion. It is a belief and practice in the world of religion which calls for devotion to a religious view or leader centered in false doctrine. It is an organized heresy. A cult may take many forms but it is basically a religious movement which distorts or warps orthodox faith to the point where truth becomes perverted into a lie. A cult is impossible to define except against the absolute standard of the teaching of Holy Scripture.
Discernment blogging
Kenne "Ken" Silva is said by other discernment bloggers to have pioneered online discernment ministry. Ken was a Baptist pastor who ran the discernment blog "Apprising". Silva wrote many blog articles about the Emerging Church, the Word of Faith Movement, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Gay Christian Movement, and many other groups. He started his blog in 2005 and wrote there until his death in 2014.Silva's work paved the way for other internet discernment ministries such as 'Pirate Christian Radio', a group of blogs and podcasts founded by Lutheran pastor Chris Rosebrough in 2008, and 'Pulpit & Pen', a discernment blog founded by Baptist pastor and polemicist J. D. Hall.
Other technical terminology
Since the 1980s, the term new religions or new religious movements has slowly entered into Evangelical usage alongside the word cult. Some book titles use both terms.The acceptance of these alternatives to the word cult in evangelicalism reflects, in part, the wider usage of such language in the sociology of religion.