Do you belong to a cult?

Borden, Jane.  Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America.  New York: Atria/One 

         Signal Publishers, 2025.  ISBN: 9781668007808  

 

Do you self identify as American? Do you hold to the so-called "American Dream" however you define it?  Mind you the "American Dream" is aspirational, not reality.  Do you hold that following particular rules will lead to wealth and prosperity?   Or do you believe that only the "chosen" will succeed and be blessed with wealth?  In Cults Like Us, Jane Borden takes these concepts and more in a deep dive into a variety of organizations and movements to try and make the case for all Americans being infected with cult-like thinking with specifics being provided..

 

Jane Borden opens the book with an alternative view of Columbus's reasons for discovering the New World then segueing into the Separatists/Pilgrim's voyage in 1620.  She conflates the Separatists and later Puritan settlers beliefs and practices into the Protestant work ethic that some claim infects the core American values.  She then uses various aspects of group psychology as placeholders to examine various cults.

 

The meat of the book is Jane Borden's dive into various cults and cult adjacent groups of various flavors.  There is the Church Universal and Triumphant, Christian Nationalism, the Oneida Community and related communes of the 1800s, the manifest destiny myth, the various "hidden rulers" conspiracy theorists (think Deep State these days), anti-intellectualism, rural/urban identity clashes, personal growth scams such as Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (M.S.I.A) and NXIVM which had roots with Phineas P. Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy are covered in several chapters..  Amway and other multilevel marketing organizations have their own chapter.  Then there is the chapter populated with us-vs-them cults such as the Nuwaubians, the Moonies, Scientology, and Heaven's Gate.  The final chapter looks at compensatory control groups through the lens of Love Has Won, the American monomyth, and the Internet.  

 

If you are looking for examples of how cults have shaped and are still shaping American culture, pick up Jane Borden's Cults Like US, but don't expect step-by-step solutions.  Those you need to figure out for yourself.