High-Demand Sects: Disclosure Legislation and the Free Exercise Clause
![handle is hein.journals/newlr15 and id is 158 raw text is: High-Demand Sects:
Disclosure Legislation and the Free
Exercise Clause
High-demand religious sects' have rapidly proliferated across the
United States in the past decade.2 Public concern has focused on alleged
fraudulent recruitment practices and thought control indoctrination
1. Jean Merrit, an authority engaged in therapy with ex-members of high-demand sects, uses
the term destructive cults in characterizing sects which exert adverse effects on the member. The
major components of cult indoctrination include isolation from society, physiological exhaustion,
a total, unquestioning obedience to a higher authority, a turning against society, and destruction
of ego functions (i.e., lowering of IQ and vocabulary use, inability to negotiate reality external to
the cult). Interview with Jean Merrit, Associate Professor of Social Work at Boston University, in
Boston (Feb. 14, 1979). Dean Kelly, Executive for Religious and Civil Liberty, National Council
of Churches, defines high-demand religious cults as organizations which require a total commit-
ment of time and energy in contrast to weekly attendance. D. KELLY, WHY CONSERVATIVE
CHURCHES ARE GROWING 47-49 (1977).
Dr. John Clarke, a psychiatrist and authority on such sects, characterizes high-demand sects
in the following passage:
[O]nes such as Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, the Scientologists, and the Divine
Light Mission, all of whom are utilizing the same basic techniques .... The beliefs of all
these cults are absolutist and nontolerant of other systems of beliefs. Their systems of
governance are totalitarian. A requirement of membership is to obey absolutely without
questioning .... It is clear that almost all of them emphasize money making in one form
or another, although a few seem to be very much involved in demeaning or self-
denigrating activities and rituals .... One of the most important of the common proper-
ties of such cults is the presence of a leader who, in one way or another, claims special
powers or may even allow himself to be thought of as the messiah.. . . It appears that the
techniques utilized by these cults are very similar overall although each one uses its own
peculiar style.
Hearings, Vermont Senate Committee for the Investigation of Alleged Deceptive, Fraudulent and
Criminal Practices of Various Organizations in the State 18, 19 (1976) (testimony of Dr. John
Clarke) [hereinafter cited as Vermont Hearings).
Dr. Swope, a clergyman and psychologist, describes high-demand sects in the following man-
ner:
It is a group which vests in its religious or political leader divine powers and while the
members undergo behavior modification resulting in self-abnegation ... the leader ob-
tains power and wealth out of all proportion to his followers. All of this occurs in com-
munes or centers where contact with the real world is minimized and cult reinforcement is
maximized. They have little opportunity to compare what they are undergoing with the
real world. And they have this constant reinforcement of the cult which has separated
them from reality.
Id. at 55-56.
The author uses the term high-demand sect in referring to those religious organizations
which require communal living, a highly restricted daily schedule, and employ specific techniques
designed to deceive the newcomer and destroy individual autonomy. See notes 95-107 and 132-47
and accompanying text infra. This article focuses on two major high-demand sects, the Unifica-
tion Church, commonly referred to as the moonies, and the Children of God (COG), as being
representative of such sects in general.
2. It is estimated that between 300,000 and 750,000 youths are members of high-demand](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/newlr15&div=20&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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High-Demand Sects: Disclosure Legislation and the Free Exercise Clause
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