When Faith Becomes a Death Cult
In the natural world, there are species that, once introduced to an ecosystem, take hold so completely that they strangle diversity, consume resources, and leave devastation in their wake. Ideologies can function in the same way. Some belief systems nourish, offering reciprocity and care. Others consume, demanding total obedience, even at the cost of life itself. My own experience with Jehovahs’s Witnesses taught me just how deep those roots can go. And, how much they mirror the patterns of control we see in our world today.
I was saddened when I read this article. It reminded me so much of the cult I grew up in and belonged to as a young adult, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The JW cult had us believing that the death of ourselves or our children was okay because we would be assured of resurrection to a better life without struggle. That abstaining from blood transfusions, organ transplants, and even vaccinations at one time was biblical. We were threatened with disfellowshipping which, in reality, meant being removed from God’s promises, cut off from family and community, and cast into a terrifying isolation that felt worse than death itself.
When I was in the hospital and had a C-section, I lost so much blood that recovery was long and arduous because I had signed a “no blood” waiver. I remember the fear: Of dying. Of leaving my children behind. Of living and being responsible for their eternal deaths. Of making the wrong decision, of losing my place in the only world I knew. That fear had been instilled in me since childhood, reinforced through endless repetition: better to die faithful than to live in sin. And so I suffered, because suffering was framed as holy. A sacrifice.
I’ve come a long way since those days, but the terror I lived through as a JW lives on inside me. It likely always will. It informs my academics now, my anthropology. Because what I see, again and again, is that good people are susceptible to cults. Traumatized people are susceptible to cults. Ignorant people are susceptible to cults. And cults are not just religious! They are political, ideological, sometimes woven so tightly into culture we can’t see them for what they are.
This is why the dismantling of the Department of Education is so chilling to me. It mirrors the JW and other Christian cult teachings that higher education is evil. Why? Because educated people see through what’s happening. Education allows critical thinking, historical context, and the ability to recognize manipulation. Fundamentalist groups, whether religious or political, can’t afford for their followers to think that deeply. They rely on fear of the outside world, control over information, surveillance and punishment, and the promise of life in paradise.
I look at this article and I see a six year old girl who didn’t have to die. A girl who was sacrificed, not to God, but to an ideology so rigid it made her parents believe that her death was preferable to her survival. It’s the same mechanism I was trapped in.
I don’t write this from a place of superiority, far from it. I write it from a place of compassion as someone who understands how deep indoctrination and cult mind control goes. How easy it is to become enmeshed in the promises of a better life. It isn’t stupidity. It isn’t malice. It’s a system of control so powerful and so deep that it overrides a parent’s most basic instinct: to protect their child at all costs.
And I refuse to pretend this isn’t political, because it is. The same authoritarian structures that made me sign that “no blood” waiver are at play today, stripping people of their autonomy, their knowledge, their choices.
I study these things now. And I will not stop.
The Hope Conclusion
Just as invasive species can be removed and balance restored to the land, so too can the grip of the strong hand of ideological control be pried from our necks. How? Through knowledge, through community, through refusing to let fear dictate our lives. The more we understand the patterns of power, whether in religion, politics, or culture, the better we become at resisting them. Im not singling out one cult or one group. Im looking at the way power functions everywhere, and the ways we can begin to loosen its hold. Because we can.
