My older brother became a
born again Christian in about 1983, and used to go to luton to try and convert Jehovah's witnesses.

He ended up with a wife
( Neon Blue Ah ha ha haa! I feel positively capital!, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 7:52, Reply)

Cult o' Noodles
Anyways, this friend/co-worker friend who is a paranoid pot smoking truck driver. Started a cult in the third grade. Back then it was in the mid 1960's and as a child he was inundated with movies and t.v shows showing nazis. So he made up little brown paper sleeve rings and hats out of construction paper and called it the fourth reich. Some reason it caught on and he became the leader, but wouldn't let any of the bullies join. Pretty soon at recess all the little fourth reichers would not be playing kickball. Instead they would march and drill and try to capture the ex-bullies to execute them or perform expirements on them. Anyways, the F.B.I. got involved, came to his school and interviewed this future threat to the safety of American'ts and the teachers disbanded the little soldiers. The F.B.I sternly warned this young third grader that he now had a file and they would be watching him. Shit, even into the dude's 50's he was still paranoid as hell.
(Bern, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 7:04, Reply)

We Had Something Like A Cult
Ever heard of 4H?
(American Pig Dog, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 6:49, Reply)

Pioneer Girls
I was in Cub Scouts, so to be fair my parents decided to sign my sister up in a similar organisation, the Pioneer Girls.

When the leaders found out she hadn't been baptised, they panicked and told her that her family hates her and wants her to go to Hell. It doesn't help that one time when we dropped her off, they witnessed the end of a fight between me and my sister that left her crying. So what? I still loved her. When my parents found out they were brainwashing her, they promptly cancelled her membership.

It's because they tried to take her away from us that I often use the term "Jesus Vampire" to describe overly proselytic Christians.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 4:48, Reply)

The Christian cult
Christianity isn't normally considered a cult, but parts of it certainly are freaky. My best friend in junior high, Paul, became sick partway through the final year and never came back to school. The next year, he started in a Catholic school while I went to the public school next door. I know he dropped out very quickly. He later told me that if Jesus wanted him to finish school, then it would happen automatically. I guess Jesus willed him to stay at home being lazy.

One day, I was with another junior high friend, and we decided to give Paul a call. We met up, and I knew something was wrong when we were watching Beavis and Butthead and Paul went outside to play basketball alone. The rest of the day was a real drag because he couldn't do anything. Following this, he called both my friend and me and invited us to his church's youth group every week for a couple years, and we were too polite to ever turn him down or tell him to stop asking.

When we were first friends, he had a sweet basement bedroom in his parents' house filled with comic books and the latest Super Nintendo games. Whenever he got hungry, he'd shout "Daaaad!" and his dad would bring whatever he asked. But he told me now that he got rid of all his comics, because "Spider-man does work that only God should do." I wonder then what he thinks of the police. He also got rid of hundreds of dollars worth of Super Nintendo games; I only hope he sold them. I'll believe he stopped shouting at his dad that way when I see it for myself.

My mom saw them a few years later in the supermarket. She could tell their family was falling apart and they all looked dangerously unhealthy. When she casually asked how everything was, they smiled brightly and said "Great!"

I would've written more about him, but I decided to chop off the very tip of it so that it would look nicer.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 4:45, Reply)

Safe Trap Cult
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.
hallelujah!
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.
hallelujah!
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.
hallelujah!
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
I'm gonna sit at the welcome table
Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.
hallelujah!
(mikewicked, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 4:32, Reply)

Not so much cult as a........

I was a member of a cult when i was younger...... we would all form a semi circle around a flag, wearing grey socks n shorts and a green shirt and a tie. The crazy part was this was no ordinary tie.... ohhhh no there was no windsor knot in sight for we had the emblem of this magical cult to keep the tie on... behold the woggle..........

in this magic cult we would do tasks for our lord Baden Powell and in return we got gifts far greater than the entrance to heaven or peace on earth... oh yes we got BADGES,

turns out it wasn't so much a cult as a glorified peadophile ring..... who knew that "special scout football" (playing naked whilst the chiefs watched under blankets was not so innocent......
(cheekylitllewilly, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 4:21, Reply)

I
have a Morman smile at me in recgonition everytime he sees me.

The reason being he once said "would you like to join the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints?" so i said "no, i'm already in a church".
"oh really, what church is that?"
"the church of K.M.A".
"oh right, what does K.M.A. stand for?".

"Kiss My Arse" and I legged it.
( mr_wicksy is.... old., Fri 27 Jan 2006, 3:46, Reply)

I'm a fully paid-up member of this cult
that's full of otherwise normal people who spend their time discussing and advocating all classes of mad stuff. They use this secret code to communicate with each other; either that or they express themselves through the medium of anal sex. Woe betide any sensless acolyte who doesn't know the 'handshake'... They have their own weird little sub-cults within the main organisation; the most remarkable of these is solely dedicated to spying on the doings of unknowing foreign students!

They're funny old buggers, but deep down they're a good lot; they have a website, here.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 3:27, Reply)

Does
Star Wars count as a cult?
(DarthDonsbal, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 3:01, Reply)

Dear me
My heavy duty Catholic friends are convinced that Jews for Jesus is a real Jewish organisation, even though it's a baptist group founded by a Protestant. I think that was one of my better judgement calls and decided it wasn't something worth getting into a screaming fight about.

Otherwise, they're lovely people. Just slightly out of tune.
(DeadCats, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 2:54, Reply)

When I was in year 8 I started my own cult. It had 2 members.
My friend Jon and I started a cult, just for ourselves. Nothing serious. Just a laugh.

It was called the "Inkadinkadoo"

During registration time at tutor classes, our mission would be to obtain the highest stools to sit on (we were based in an art class) and sit around the table and pick on the kids near us whilst sat on the high chairs of inkadinkadoo.

We would then proceed to pick on people sat near us:

"Do we have any minutes for the commitee meeting of inkadinkadoo?"

"Yes. Jake has shit hair, and Joe's mum is a filthy whore"

"And that concludes our meeting of inkadinkadoo. The inkadinkadoos have spoken"

Also, when you went through the corridors, you could only walk through "push" doors. If you came accross a "pull" door, you would have to wait until somebody else walked through it, then try to squeeze through without touching the door or the door frame.

Oh yeah, and when Mrs Cliff's *thunder* name was spoken of, you had to make a thunder noise in order to indicate that she was in fact a 143 year old witch who was cast into this life to surpress the followers of inkadinkado. She was known as an inkadinkadon't.

Ooooh and on the 13th of any month, we would be able to say her name without apocolyptic consequences unless it was a Friday 13th, when her wrath would be felt thirteen times as much.

So I beg you, join me in the inkadinkadoo ways and we shall forever banish the inkadinkadon'ts!
(wonderbrawl was pronounced dead on, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 2:49, Reply)

Shortly after school finished
Myself and a couple of mates were staggering around the city one morning after an all-night binge.

As we were walking down the street a (rather attractive) lady came out of a building and put up a sandwich board saying that they were giving free readings. We asked her what they were and she explained that they were to find out if your soul was strong enough to join the church. We thought it would be good for a laugh and staggered in.

I lost one of my best friends that morning to the church of scientology. 8 years on and we haven't heard from him, short of a one-paragraph farewell note to his family.

Don't even go in there for a laugh, kids.
( gronkpan https://twitter.com/VomitingLarry, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 2:39, Reply)

Bear's Sex Cult
In college, there was this old fat townie named Bear who was hanging around the freshmen dorm. Several of the young ladies started thinking "oh, he's such a cool guy!" Not much later, word started getting around that Bear was leader of a local sex cult.

"Doesn't surprise me," I said, "that's probably the only way that fat old redneck can get any!"

The look on the girl's face sitting across from me told me that she'd been initiated and was highly offended that I'd said that.

Sex cult my butt. He was just some lonely local crazy. His MO was to prey upon the college students with low self-esteem. He went away when a few of the burlier guys "had a talk with him."
( setimret likes his metaphors mixed, not stirred, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 2:16, Reply)

Re: Jehovah's Fucking Witnesses
quote: I didn't realise you had to be religious to know that oppression and exploitation are wrong and that suffering was bad.

You don't, you have to be religious to realise that they're *good*.



edit: or an Ayn Randroid, or a fan of the late Lenin, but they're both examples of people who argue from fixed positions based on set texts anyways.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 2:14, Reply)

Jim and Tammy
When I was a wee thing, my parents were (actually still are) into the great evangelical movement, aka Jerry Fallwell, Earl Roberts, Pat Roberton, etc. But in the day, the stars of the kinder crowd of evalgelicals, were Jim and Tammy Baker with their own jesus-loving children's programming. They visited our church when I was four. At the end of the service I ran from my parents and into the arms of Jim Baker. Took my parents several minutes to get through the congregational crowd to retrieve me. Thirty years later, I'm still recovering from the emotional scars.
(Boxer_Babee, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 1:44, Reply)

Never
actually joined up but I used to be on the outlying fringes of Psychic TV's fan club-cum-Crowleyite cult, Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth. While I was at uni, Dispatches on Channel 4 did an 'exposé' of TOPY, using an old Derek Jarman movie as evidence and wheeling on a seriously mentally ill woman to claim that they'd performed ritual abortions on her. The following week, I gave a mate a lift to her job as a barmaid in one of the pubs near the university, and one of the doormen stopped her on the way in and warned her she shouldn't be having anything to do with me because I was in some sort of satanic murder cult... Didn't go there much after that.
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Fri 27 Jan 2006, 1:17, Reply)

I meet with them several times a day.
We have our own set of words to describe everyday things. We have specific rules which must be followed. Even the name of the cult is written in a cryptic code. Others that do not understand the rules are ridiculed. There is an unofficial heirarchy based on when the member joined. Each week, there are specific tasks that are requested by the leader (the members blindly obey). It costs nothing to join - but your soul. Just try to leave though...
( Art101 You all have an unhealthy and morbid fascination, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 0:33, Reply)

Jehovah's Fucking Witnesses
If you are one, please walk under a bus at the next opportunity. Or stop waking me up on Saturday mornings you cunts...

Witnesses wake you up earlyish* on a Saturday morning. Chances are you are:

a: shagging your partner

b: wanking because you don't have a partner or he/she is at work.

c: trying to fucking sleep because you are on nights.

I have been interrupted in bed by witnesses on saturday mornings for all three of the above reasons, so I really hate them. As well as that front door sign that says "No Hawkers, Tinkers or Campbells" I want one on my doorbell that says: Oi! Are you taking the piss? I'm working nights!




*before 2pm
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Fri 27 Jan 2006, 0:28, Reply)

Just had a really wierd conversation.
I thought I was having a normal conversation with rational human beings, just a few hours ago. We were talking about the asian subcontinent and I foolishly offered my opinion that the area would potentially be ripe for a communist/socialist revolution over the next 50 years as it industrialises (I didn't mean this would be a good thing, just that it would resemble several other societies that have since undergone revolutions).

Apparently I "didn't understand how these people thought" and that "they were happy with their role in life". Yeah, right. That sounds familiar. Know your place...

My vague suggestion that maybe they didn't have much choice was considered uncultured and offensive as I "didn't understand dharma (sp?)".

When I mentioned parallels with early medival european tied labour and later eastern european serfdom (and the revolts and revolutions that broke out in these 'content' societies I was told I couldn't possibly understand the mindset of an asian peasant as I was an athiest (despite not stating any religious belief of my own). I didn't realise you had to be religious to know that oppression and exploitation are wrong and that suffering was bad.

Silly me for thinking that years of self education and attempts to understand the world I live in could be any replacement for the cultish bosom of religious fanaticism. Suck on the tit of ill-educated self delusion. You'll feel so much better. You twats.

Apologies for straying a wee bit off topic but I have just had a shite evening being patronised by irrational fuckwits. I suspect this qotw will rapidly descend into a "Religion is shite" vs "Die heathen upstarts!" sort of thread.

At least I hope so.

Oh, you said Cults. I misread it.
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Thu 26 Jan 2006, 23:59, Reply)

Hillsong and AOG
I used to go to one of those (for the posters on this thread who live in Sheffield, it is known as The Hope of Sheffield and is basically a 1 minute walk from Hyde Park Tramstop). And then I grew up, and discovered freedom of thought. Plus, being a pagan is much more fun and the fashion sense is so much better! Plus calling on Nemetona, Cernunnos, Epona and so forth is so much more interesting...
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 26 Jan 2006, 23:57, Reply)

my sisters a..
christian.

does that count?



and before you ask, no. no you cant.
(5lab, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 23:27, Reply)

bloody drugs
I remember when I was a kid (well, 16 or so) and my circle of friends had just moved on from the usual dope and 'soft' trips, on to the horrible, horrible microdots. I'd taken a couple with a couple of friends, whilst another two friends took some the same night, only not with us.

So those two come round to mine the next day, everyone was feeling a bit shit, not really having enjoyed the dots at all (too much, too soon and all that). Of course, the weed came out and a couple of us started tripping again, as it wasn't quite out of our system yet.

This is pretty usual, but Tim thought I'd spiked him 'cos he ate my spaghetti (I wasn't in the mood). Went totally off it, properly paranoid and legged it.

He joined a Buddhist commune down in Durham shortly after, and nobody has heard from him since.

That was, like, 11 years ago...

Sorry, Tim :(
(onedotzero, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 22:24, Reply)

While in uni me and some mates started the Hairy Girls Club
Could that be classified as a cult?

None of us were particularly hirsute, but someone came up with the fantastic idea, (in the midst of a cloud of pot smoke), that we should all stop shaving and the one that lasted the longest would win a pint from everyone.

So we all proceeded to grow our underarm, leg and bikini lines.

I didn't win. Not because it grossed me out, but because I was so disgusted at the lack of hair. I felt that if I go to all that trouble of shaving it off - there should at least be a decent underarm Don King waiting to grow through. Sadly, just a blond puff. Pure embarassment.
(Peelmytangerines, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 21:41, Reply)

foot in gob
I got a job as a youth worker for the council somehow. As experience I listed the voluntary church based youth work I'd done, so everyone knew I was saved, brother.

At the pub after my first team meeting, someone asked me how my faith would affect my youth work. I explained that it is a part of me, so it obviously would affect the way I saw things, but that I wouldn't push it down people throats like Jehovahs Witnesses.

Then the quiet bloke in the corner looked up and said "ah, that'll be me then".

Nice first impression...

Oh, and jimkopelli - I nearly ended up an Assemblies of God pastor, but I then I realised how scary I was getting. So I'm sorry for my fellow penty's behaviour. We're not all like that, honest!
(teasus likes tea, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 21:23, Reply)

mor(m)ons
I had some Mormons come round once. I tried to convert them too, and the leader ended up crying and saying "I just don't know anymore". Unfortunately, due to my total immaturity at the time, I just chalked it up on my heavenly score board rather than actually took the time to try and help her out of the nasty cult.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 21:16, Reply)

Bloody midwest...
I live in the hometown of a paticular strain of Baptists... the Assemblies of God branch. They make churches as big as malls. They're just a bit cultish... a guy I worked with was a member. He eventually got fired for heavy proselytizing (instead of actually, you know, working) and apologizing to the manager for her being jewish. As in, "I'm sorry that you're jewish."


Anyway... while he was there, I attempted to reason with him, (oops) producing this little bit of dialogue.

me - "So, what religion was Jesus, then?"
him - "Assemblies of God, of course!"
me - "Were they around back then?"
him - "Um..."
me - "What about maybe Jewish?"
him - "Nah, not possible."

Apologies for length and lack of lube.
(jimkopelli, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 21:14, Reply)

Oh yeah, on a slightly lighter note
I once had a J.W. come up to me in the street and ask me if I believed there would ever be peace on this earth again.

Being a bible-basher, I gave her a full on taste of her own medicine, and started preaching to her.

She starting walking backwards slowly, then turned and legged it as far as her little religious legs would carry her.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 26 Jan 2006, 21:11, Reply)