Religious Cults

While Waco remains notorious more for the federal agents’ siege of David Koresh’s compound and the deaths of the Branch Davidians, it was followed a few years later by a mass suicide carried out by one of the most notorious doomsday cults in American history. On paper, the extraordinarily unorthodox ideology spouted by Heaven's Gate ranks near the top of the list of most outlandish end-of-the-world prophecies, and it was built on a blend of Christian, Gnostic, supernatural, New Age, and extraterrestrial lore.

Tracy King was raised in a house of contradictions-her family was happy and creative, yet shadowed by debt, phobias, her father's alcoholism, and the illusory promises of a born-again Christian church. The uneasy balance of the King household was irrevocably upended on a rainy spring night in 1988, when her father was killed by teenagers just blocks from their public housing estate.

Sir David the Bard, or David, was an ex-temple worker for the Mormon church. Being an active member for 50 years, he married six times and bore 13 children while completing nearly two masters' degrees at BYU. This is a compilation of his rants, raves, funny stories, and crazy experiences being an ex-Mormon in a totally dominant Mormon society. His views may seem unbelievable, but they are actually true and really happened to him.

Cassie True escapes a controlling religious cult but forsakes her freedom and returns to help her friends break the chains and lies that bind them. Cult leaders view Cassie True’s unexplained overnight disappearance and the subsequent arrests of key members with suspicion. When she refuses to bow to intimidation, they do all they can to humiliate her, which means degrading “cleanse” sessions as well as public shame. Daily, she and others suffer increasingly callous treatment. Yet, court-ordered to participate in the cult’s rehab program, she knows she can’t leave again. Corban ...

After a five-year cultic misadventure in a secret "school," Friedman wrote her cautionary tale. Memoir led to research on narcissistic abuse and a recovery template for empaths. With humor and compassion, Friedman describes how the cult exploited her empathy. She interviews former members from other cults and includes research from leading experts. We learn that all cults and cons market false hope by leveraging human nature to profit from the vulnerable.

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

The extraordinary memoir of a childhood spent in the 'Children of God' cult. Rebel tells the story of Faith, a woman who grew up in the Children of God cult (known latterly as The Family). Now in her 40s with two teenage children of her own, Faith's first-person narrative alternates between her childhood adventures and traumas within the cult and her post-cult life following her escape at the age of 19.

In 1972, Perry Bulwer, a naive sixteen-year-old growing up in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, dropped out of high school to run away with the Children of God, one of a number of millennial Christian cults that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s. Bulwer takes the listener on an extraordinary trip through the world of biblical literalism, fundamentalist endtime fantasies, paranormal spirituality, evangelical extremism, ritual abuse, and liberally interpreted Biblical teachings that were used to justify licentious sexual doctrines, evangelical prostitution, and child sexual abuse.

Out of The Cocoon, which has earned 5 stars on Amazon, is a heart-wrenching, yet inspirational tale about the author's escape from a religious cult after enduring decades of dysfunction. Take the incredible journey with her as she survives stifling oppression as a child, physical and emotional abuse as a teenager, and the ultimate tragedy: the loss of her family once she becomes an adult. See how, like a butterfly, she changes the world within her, as her external world becomes increasingly unyielding.

The shocking news of polygamous cults has sparked a national dialogue on religious sects. Splintered from and repudiated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these secretive families exist in an insular world far removed from reality. Yet for Brian Mackert, life inside this world was all too real. As a son in a family of one father, four mothers, and thirty-one children, Brian experienced firsthand the devastating reality of the polygamous lifestyle: a reality that leaves thousands of children feeling hopeless and struggling to belong.

Osho speaks in response to a question about the right way to help children to grow without interfering in their natural potentiality.

Ohio housewife Sherry Shriner grew to prominence as a social media cult leader, flourishing in the era of conspiracy theories and the 9/11 Truther movement. She preached the virtues of mysterious orgone energy and Christian prayer as defensive shields against the forces of darkness, including Lucifer and his demons; reptilian shape-shifters masquerading as human elites; the New World Order; cell phone towers; even hostile UFOs that flamed out over her home, visible only as shooting stars.

The pandemic has receded and life in the United States has returned to normal—or that’s what the government insists. So what is causing residents in a remote religious compound in Idaho to drop dead in a grisly fashion? And why are prominent virologists meeting with untimely ends? Something—or someone—is killing the religious followers and scientists, and Newshound reporter Nik Byron is determined to find out what’s behind the deaths. Could Xion Labs’ top-secret vaccine program be connected? Nik suspects so, but he’s being stonewalled at every turn. As he inches closer to the ...

Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, and a haven after the loss of her father, Catherine Coldstream trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfolds her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, only to find that all is not as it seems behind the Order's closed doors. Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself.

Radhia’s personal story and comprehensive knowledge along with her authentic, and unfiltered humorous style presents a compelling portrayal of both the political and cultural dynamics of group-think and mind control. After 25 years of her adult life in a cult under the influence of a narcissistic sociopath, she sought to understand why she made the choices she made in her life, so she could better understand why others make their choices.

Tina's struggle continues in The Terrorist Maker. Surrounded by murderers her only chance to survive is to start using her gift. His gaze is stony, his eyelids at half-mast. And I can’t look at him at all, which is why I’m lying with my eyes closed. I’m afraid to see something frightening in these eyes. But I feel that I need to look. Otherwise, this ‘frightening thing’ inside him will suffocate me. I realize, that if I don’t do this, I’ll be left to die exactly like that man, about whom they later simply forgot. Therefore, however frightening and difficult it might be, I’m ...

These gruesome stories have peppered the pages of newspapers and history books over the centuries. Some are well-known. Some aren’t. They rest in that murky place between true crime and horror. All will make your blood run cold.

The goal of some cult leaders was wealth and power, while others were after comfort or sex. The darkest and most notorious cults and their leaders sought to spread their evil messages through violence and mass murder, through war and genocidal acts. From the Thuggee cult that inspired the term "thug" to the brown shirts of Germany who would become the most destructive cult of all time, the Nazis.

Born into the Church of Immortal Consciousness, Danny Rensch spent his childhood navigating the isolated confines of a cult. Despite psychological manipulation, physical abuse, and neglect, he persevered. An international chess master and world-class commentator, Rensch's remarkable journey led him to being the face of Chess.com, one of the largest online gaming platforms in the world. With unflinching honesty, Rensch recounts his life, starting from the moment he discovered chess in the summer of 1995, all the way up to being at the center of the most explosive cheating scandal in history.

Imagine a place where you are accepted and loved, where there is complete honesty and transparency, where you can be yourself and no longer have to strive to be someone else. Envision a safe haven where you could live in perfect peace and have everything you needed and wanted. That was the dream - the hope - that Trinity Foundation offered and that we naively believed. I Can’t Hear God Anymore is an inspiring and instructive example of how normal people caught in the skillful manipulations of an abusive cult can find their way back to spiritual and psychological health.