Utopian Cults Essays - 1111 Words

For many years, cults have been a subject of great controversy. A cult is a group of people that are bound together by an appreciation of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. Usually these groups keep close because of religious reasons, but their beliefs are almost always considered strange by outsiders. Cults are similar to clans or congregations, but are usually referred to as sects. There are many different categories that a cult could be sorted into. Apocalyptic, Utopian, Spiritualistic, Satanic, and Witchcraft/Voodoo cults are just some of the more basic types. While an Apocalyptic cult would focus on the end of the world, a Utopian cult would center more on a perfect land, or in other words a heaven on Earth. Spiritualistic cults†¦show more content†¦A utopia is any visionary system of political or social perfection. In Moore’s novel an ideal place to live was described and since then many people on Earth have searched to find a utopia of their own. Utopian Cults created exclusive, self-supporting communities that were completely isolated from the sinful world. In all of these cults, success of the community was most important and individual wants came second. The leader of the clan would assign jobs to his/her followers and they had to work. Assignments were usually tasks such as farming, because the cult’s community was isolated from the rest of the world and needed to feed themselves. All recorded Utopian cults have failed within 20 years of effort proving that none of them were up to the enormous challenge of perfection. The most famous Utopian cult of all time was led by Jim Jones and it was called the People’s Temple. At the age of 22, Jim Jones opened his first church, the People’s Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jones taught his followers to treat all races equally which was not popular in the early fifties. To show their disapproval, many people would knock him off of his bike and some even threw dead cats into his church, but Jones kept preaching. Things turned around for Jones when the Civil Rights Movement began, his church expanding not only over Indianapolis but all over America. In 1961, Jim Jones and his family moved to Brazil where Jones served as a missionary for two years. HeShow MoreRelatedEssay Jonestown2179 Words   |  9 Pages Cults have existed throughout history since the beginning of time. A cult is defined in Webster’s dictionary as a â€Å"system of religious worship with a devoted attachment to a person, principle, etc.† Over the past thirty years numerous religious cults have caused â€Å" tens of thousands to abandon their families, friends, education’s, and careers to follow the teaching of a leader they will never meet†(Beck 78). 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These small religious groups can happen anywhere and have been the cause of much debate and interest. For humans have an innate need to know why things are the way they are. Cults for one have done some rather unmoral things that lead the people to ask, Why did they do it? The People s Temple, Aum Shinrikyo, and Ku Klux Klan are extraordinary examples of wicked cults that begged the question Why? Read MoreCity, Church, A nd The Empire1627 Words   |  7 Pagesgreatly contrasts those of medieval European cities. Also, large houses were not greatly valued in Utopian cities because â€Å"every ten years they even swap houses among themselves, drawing lots to decide where they will live.† (Utopia 95) Utopian cities valued community and structured the cities around the idea of promoting community in every way possible. Medieval cities are the opposite of Utopian cities. 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