Top 10 religious Cults in History

10. Scientology

Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics. Hubbard characterized Scientology as a religion, and in 1953 incorporated the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey. Scientology teaches that people are immortal spiritual beings who have forgotten their true nature. Its method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counseling known as auditing, in which practitioners aim to consciously re-experience painful or traumatic events in their past in order to free themselves of their limiting effects.
Study materials and auditing courses are made available to members in return for specified donations. Scientology is legally recognized as a tax-exempt religion in the United States and some other countries, and the Church of Scientology emphasizes this as proof that it is a bona fide religion. In other countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Scientology does not have comparable religious status. -Wikipedia.org

9. Hare Krishna
The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the Maha Mantra ("Great Mantra"), is a sixteen-word Vaishnava mantra which first appeared in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad, and which from the 15th century rose to importance in the Bhakti movement following the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
According to Gaudiya Vaishnava theology, one's original consciousness and goal of life is pure love of God (Krishna). Since the 1960s, the mantra has been made well known outside of India by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and his International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as "the Hare Krishnas"). -Wikipedia.org

8. The Unification Church
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea, as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC). In 1994, Moon changed the official name of the church to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. Members are found throughout the world, with the largest number living in South Korea and Japan. Church membership is estimated to be several hundred thousand to a few million.
The church and its members own, operate, and subsidize organizations and projects involved in political, cultural, commercial, media, educational, and other activities. The church, its members and supporters as well as other related organizations are sometimes referred to as the "Unification Movement". In the English speaking world church members are sometimes referred to as "Moonies" (which is sometimes considered offensive); church members prefer to be called "Unificationists". -Wikipedia.org

7. Children of God
the religious concept that all human beings are regarded by God as his children, and that they should regard Him as the Father (cf. Gospel of John) -Wikipedia.org

6. The Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK, misspoken as the Klu Klux Klan and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration. The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is widely considered to be a hate group.
The first Klan flourished in the South in the 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Their iconic white costumes consisted of robes, masks, and conical hat. The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the fantastic costumes and code words of the first Klan; while introducing cross burnings. The third KKK emerged after World War II. All incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism, though historians debate how widely the tactic was supported by the membership of the second KKK. -Wikipedia.org



5. The Manson Family
Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s.:163-4, 313 He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was convicted of the murders through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.
Manson is associated with "Helter Skelter", a term he took from the song "Helter Skelter", written and recorded by the The Beatles. Manson misconstrued the lyrics to be about an apocalyptic race war he believed the murders were intended to precipitate. From the beginning of his notoriety, this connection with rock music linked him with a pop culture in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre. The term was later used by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi as the title of a book he wrote about the Manson murders.
-Wikipedia.org

4. Heaven’s Gate
Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religion based in San Diego, California, founded and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1928–1985). On March 26, 1997, in a period that Comet Hale-Bopp was at its brightest, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had committed suicide. -Wikipedia.org

3. The Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple also known as Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS) in French, and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition or simply as The Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the modern myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar (see Origins of the Solar Temple below). OTS was started by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in 1984 in Geneva as l'Ordre International Chevaleresque de Tradition Solaire (OICTS) and renamed Ordre du Temple Solaire.
Some historians allege that the Solar Temple originates with French author Jacques Breyer who established a Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple in 1952. In 1968, a schismatic order was renamed the Renewed Order of the Solar Temple (ROTS) under the leadership of French right-wing political activist Julien Origas. Some reports have claimed that Origas was a Nazi SS member during World War II. -Wikipedia.org

2. Branch Davidians
The Branch Davidians (also known as "The Branch") are a Protestant sect that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists ("Davidians"), a so-called reform movement that began within the Seventh-day Adventist Church ("Adventists") around 1930. The majority of those who accepted the reform message have been disfellowshipped (excommunicated) due to the Adventist church rejecting it.
From its inception in 1930, the reform movement inherited Adventism's apocalypticism, in that they believed themselves to be living in a time when Bible prophecies of a final divine judgment were coming to pass as a prelude to Christ's second coming. The name "Branch Davidian" is most widely known for the Waco Siege of 1993 on their property (known as the Mount Carmel Center) near Waco, Texas, by the ATF, FBI, and Texas National Guard, which resulted in the deaths of their leader, David Koresh as well as 82 other Branch Davidians and 4 ATF agents. -Wikipedia.org

1. The People’s Temple
Peoples Temple was a quasireligious organization founded in 1955 by Jim Jones that, by the mid-1970s, included over a dozen locations in California including its headquarters in San Francisco. It is best known for the events of November 18, 1978 in Guyana, in which 918 people died at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project (informally, and now commonly, called "Jonestown"), a nearby airstrip at Port Kaituma, and Georgetown.
The tragedy at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster, prior to the events of September 11, 2001. At the airstrip, Temple members murdered, among others, Congressman Leo Ryan, the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in United States history. -Wikipedia.org

Popular Posts