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Texas group a religious sect or clear-cut cult?
Topic Started: Apr 10 2008, 12:00 AM (143 Views)
Mystical
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Is Texas group a religious sect or clear-cut cult?
Opinions differ on how to characterize alleged polygamists

updated 1:51 p.m. ET, Wed., April. 9, 2008
The allegedly polygamous group whose compound was raided this week in Texas is either a religious sect or a full-blown cult, depending on whom you ask.

The raided compound was founded by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who took over in 2002 as prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which broke off from the Mormon church in the 1930s over the issue of polygamy.

Authorities have reportedly taken into legal custody more than 400 children and 133 women deemed to have been harmed or in imminent danger of harm.



While the media and some sociologists call the group a religious sect, other experts see it as a clear-cut cult, defined by charismatic leadership and abuse. According to news accounts of the FLDS, pubescent girls were forced into "spiritual marriages" to older men. Inside the compound's walls, researchers say, a new reality was born, with members indoctrinated so fully they had no concept of reality outside the walls.

"In the case of the FLDS, we're talking about basically believing that women are there to be baby factories, and you have extreme patriarchal control of that group," said Janja Lalich, a sociologist at California State University, Chico.

Lalich told LiveScience she definitely thinks the Texas compound should be called a cult. "If you've got a group that's abusing hundreds and hundreds of women and children, let's call it what it is," she said.

Another scientist weighed in on the cult-or-not question. "From what I can understand of this movement in Texas and other places, is that it would probably fall under new religious movement or cult movement," said John Barnshaw of the University of Delaware, who studies collective behaviors such as social movements and cultish behaviors.




Some facts about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect whose Eldorado, Texas, compound was raided by authorities.







Why people join
Some people have no choice about whether to join a religious group or other ideological group. Many FLDS members were apparently born into the society and have no concept of mainstream beliefs.

"These people grew up in this world. They don't have a clue what regular society is about," said Lalich, who has written several books on cults. "They come to believe this kind of behavior is normal even though clearly people leave because they realize this isn't healthy. You don’t give up girls at age 14 to marry some 50-year-old relative in many cases. The women have absolutely no choice. They have absolutely no power in that group."

Some adults do sign up with cults voluntarily, but those with stronger social ties to mainstream society are less likely to do so, explained Boston University sociologist Nancy Ammerman.

"What we do know is that the more radical kinds of groups are unlikely to attract people who are well-positioned and well-integrated into the larger society," Ammerman said. "People who are middle-aged business owners living in suburbia with a mortgage are less likely to be attracted to joining such a group than for instance a 22-year-old fresh out of college, without a job, perhaps estranged from their family."



Exodus
April 8: Authorities remove more than 500 women and children from the Texas compound of a polygamist sect. NBC's Don Teague reports.
Today show


Cults vs. sects
The term "cult," is derived from the word culture and has not always carried today's negative connotation, said Phillips Stevens, Jr., an anthropologist who studies religions and cults at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

"The word cult, up until the 1970s, was a respectable term referring to the central focus of a religious faith," Stevens said. "You could speak of the Catholic cult, and in fact, people still do."

Beginning in the 1970s, around the time of the UFO-spawned Reälians and Charles Manson's "Family," cults were associated with "a repressive, exclusive group of people whose members are held emotionally, if not physically, against their wills, led by usually a megalomaniacal leader," Stevens said.

The media, scientists and outsiders following the recent news from Eldorado, Texas, spout various labels to describe Warren Jeffs' establishment.

"Most social scientists would probably describe (FLDS) as a fundamentalist religious movement or a new religious movement because of the degree of difference between it and any previous existing religious tradition," Ammerman said in a telephone interview.

"Social scientists have increasingly not used the term (cult) at all, because it does carry that pejorative value with it," Ammerman said. Instead, the emergence of "new religious movements" serves as an umbrella term for cult-like groups. That way, Ammerman and other sociologists can focus more on the dynamics in a group and beyond, such as the demands placed on members and how the rest of society responds to the group.

Meanwhile, many news organizations are referring to the FLDS group as a sect, meaning a break-off from a traditional religion (in this case, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

In contrast, Lalich said she uses the word cult, "and I think it's important that we use the term. I think by not using the word cult to identify these groups we let them hide behind the veil of religion."

For full story: http://www.msnbc.com/id/24032149
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Mystical
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:bat: :bat: The more I read about this the more angry I get. This is a sick set of people who are more or less raping these young girls. I don't think their religion has anything to do with it!!!!! :bat:







Affidavit: Girls had sex in polygamist temple
Court documents say 16-year-old already had four children


updated 10:36 p.m. ET, Wed., April. 9, 2008
ELDORADO, Texas - Young teenage girls at a polygamist compound in West Texas were required to have sex in a soaring white temple after they were married in sect-recognized unions, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.

The temple "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17," said an affidavit quoting a confidential informant who left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Agents found a bed in the temple with disturbed linens and what appeared to be a female hair, said the affidavit signed by Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long. The Rangers are the state's investigative law enforcement arm.



The temple also contained multiple locked safes, vaults and desk drawers that authorities sought access to as they searched for records showing alleged marriages of underage girls as young as 12 or 13 to older men and births among the teens. The affidavit unsealed Wednesday mentions a 16-year-old girl who has four children.

Texas law prohibits polygamy and the marriage of girls under 16.

Also Wednesday, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers completed a weeklong search of the 1,700-acre grounds, said spokeswoman Tela Mange.

Lawyers for the sect had wanted to cut off the wide-ranging search as it dragged on but agreed in court Wednesday to the appointment of a special master who will vet what is expected to be hundreds of boxes of records, computers and even family Bibles for records that should not become evidence for legal or religious reasons.

Gerry Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer flanked by nine other attorneys the church hired, said the search of the temple is analogous to a law enforcement search of the Vatican or other holy places. The church lawyers described in documents three men being dragged from the temple as law enforcement sought entry for the search.



Troopers also arrested two men over the week and charged them with interfering with the search.

Prosecutor Allison Palmer argued the search was to uncover any evidence of criminal activity, not to malign a religion.

The search of the compound in Eldorado, 40 miles south of San Angelo, began last Thursday after a 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter to report her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. The search warrant covered all documents related to marriages among sect members, including photos and entries possibly written in family Bibles.

Since then, the state has taken legal custody of 416 children, who are being housed at two sites in San Angelo, about 200 miles west of San Antonio. Another 139 women voluntarily left the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — known as the YFZ Ranch — and were being housed with the children.




Some facts about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect whose Eldorado, Texas, compound was raided by authorities.






Goldstein said a federal search warrant was issued as well as the state warrants.

Outside court, Goldstein declined to comment on the allegations against the church.

Court documents said a number of teen girls at the compound were pregnant, and all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse."

On Wednesday, state officials said the women and children were in good overall health but would not comment on pregnancies. About a dozen children appear to have chicken pox but were being separated at the evacuation sites, which include an old historic fort and a convention center here, said Child Protective Services spokesman Chris Van Deusen.

Authorities were trying to determine the identities and parentage of many of the children; some were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.

Officials still aren't sure where the 16-year-old girl is who made the initial call, and she is not named among the children in initial custody petitions by the state.

Texas has an outstanding arrest warrant for the man alleged to have been the girl's husband, Dale Barlow, 50. He's a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor in Mohave County, Ariz., last year.

An unknown number of men and women stayed at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units.

The Texas investigation is the state's first of FLDS members, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect leader Warren Jeffs. He is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.

http://www.msnbc.com/id/24014376
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