‘Extremism knows no nationality. The UK is not immune to the allure of cults’

It took me five years to report and write The Oracle’s Daughter, my new book about an American cult called the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps. I myself am American. And whenever I tell British friends and acquaintances about the book, they often lower their voices and ask, in a bewildered whisper, Why are there so many cults in America?

It’s a fair question.

There are a lot of American cults, and always have been. From the likes of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple all the way back to the founding of the country, when a wave of extremist groups emerged from the chaos of the American War of Independence.

Thanks, in part, to the broad religious freedoms afforded by the US Constitution, the United States has proved uniquely hospitable to isolationist, fringe religious groups.

The geographic vastness of the country plays a role, too. As does the relative thinness of the social safety net. Cults provide food, clothes, and jobs to people otherwise unable to access them.

But I always push back whenever people suggest cults are only an American problem. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not in countries across the world. And not in the United Kingdom, where cults operate in ways that are often startlingly similar to those in America.

Take the Jesus Army, recently profiled in an expansive BBC podcast series. The group began in the 1970s in the shadow of the counterculture. It went on to ensnare thousands of people in tightly controlled, sometimes abusive religious communities in Northamptonshire, the Midlands, and elsewhere.

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Families were separated, and members were denied access to the outside world. Members cut off contact with non-converted friends and family, and gave up all personal possessions. Everything was shared.

There’s nothing wrong with separating oneself from the dominant culture. Doing so can even be healthy. And yet the allegations raised against the Jesus Army that ultimately emerged were horrifying. The Jesus Army wasn’t just an offbeat community with its own take on the world. Former members alleged that it was a harbor for abuse, some of it directed at children. (In 2019, a BBC investigation helped lead to the demise of the group.)

The Jesus Army was startlingly similar to the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, the group at the center of my book, The Oracle’s Daughter: A Woman’s Escape from her Mother’s Cult. The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps was founded by a pair of ex-hippies who called themselves the “generals” of “God’s Army,” as they often referred to their group.

Like the Jesus Army, the cult in my book was dogged by allegations of abuse against children – among many other allegations – until everything came crashing down in 2017, when the authorities raided the remote New Mexico compound where the group was based. The accents and outfits were different. But the broader themes – of extremism, of abuse – were shockingly similar.

UK legislators and anti-cult activists have tried to reckon with cults for decades. Notorious cult-like groups including the Children of God, the Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, and many others have had a notable presence in Britain. An organisation originally called FAIR, or “Family Action Information and Rescue,” began in 1975 to combat the proliferation of cults and cult-like groups.

Over in France, in 2001 a bill was passed to address cults and other similar extremist groups. The Guardian wrote, “France has become the first country in the world to introduce specific legislation aimed at controlling the activities of cults.”

Inspired by France and other European countries considering similar measures, in 2002 the UK Parliament tabled a motion addressing “the large number of cult organisations operating in the United Kingdom.” The motion “deprecates the continuing failure of successive British governments over many years to take any action to protect our citizens from the activities of such cults.”

Little subsequent action appears to have been taken in the years that followed. And yet even the drafters of the motion would’ve likely acknowledged how difficult it can be to distinguish between a cult and a religion, and thus difficult to take actions against cults. (Some scholars don’t even use the word “cult,” finding it too vague and pejorative.)

I’m the first to admit that millions of Americans are currently in the grip of extremism, in no small part thanks to the messianic manipulations of President Donald J. Trump. But extremism knows no nationality. And the United Kingdom is no more immune to the allure of cults than any other country.

All of us need community, security, and purpose. Groups that promise a spiritual and material home will always have an appeal, no matter where they are based, or how strange their beliefs and behaviors. Human nature is the same across time and borders.  

The Oracle’s Daughter by Harrison Hill is out now. Published by The Bridge Street Press, Little, Brown Book Group.

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