c. 2008 Religion News Service

HACKETTSTOWN, N.J. _ Waiting on the desks of about 20 freshmen enrolled in a new class at Centenary College were paper cups filled with fruit punch.

Already, a test.

Would they “drink the Kool-Aid?”

The challenge, posed by professor Barbara Lewthwaite, was part of a new course offered this year, “Cults: Love them or leave them.”

Freshmen criminal justice and sociology majors were asked to research “cults” of their choosing, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Rev. Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple, Charles Manson, the Mafia _ even Catholicism.

It’s an unconventional topic for an annual course required for first-year students, said Cheryl Veronda, who heads the program at Centenary, which was founded in 1867 by the United Methodist Church.

“It’s a hook, certainly,” she said, “but it’s a theme that serves as a springboard for everything else we want to get done in the class.”

That includes orienting students to college life and study habits, and introducing them to an advising professor and upper-class mentors.

Other freshman offerings include “But is it Art?” for fine arts majors, “Mass Violence, Atrocity and Genocide” for history and psychology majors, and “Major Decisions,” for the still-undecided.

Students studying cults were invited to test the independence of their own thinking, and examine the shades of gray in adult life, said Lewthwaite, who chose the topic to pique student interest.

“Classically, an 18-year-old thinks in absolutes,” she said. To counter that, she raised questions like, “Do you think that a cult is always bad?”

Not necessarily, Lewthwaite said. A cult is usually defined by characteristics like a charismatic leader, dedication to certain ideas, brain-washing, forbidding members to leave, the use of symbols and violence.

“I think the word `cult’ is kind of emotionally charged,” she said. “I think it has a negative connotation. It does because of things like Jonestown … but historically, there have been examples of a few that were forces for good in some ways.”

Fanaticism, she said, is what drives a cult to evil, and makes it all-consuming.

The Kool-Aid was part of a lesson on Jonestown. Thirty years ago, Jones led about 900 Americans to their deaths in a mass murder-suicide pact that took place in a South American jungle. Shortly before his followers drank cups of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, Jones’ gunmen killed a visiting U.S. congressman and four others at a nearby airstrip.

What ended in a massacre had begun as an interracial Indianapolis congregation in the 1950s, developing into a leftist social movement with programs for the poor. Eventually, Jones summoned his followers to a camp in Guyana, promising paradise.

Not all cults have tragic histories, said student Colleen Akronas, who researched Father Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement. She considers the group, formed during the Great Depression, to be an early cult with a beneficial mission: racial integration.

“It wasn’t negative brain-washing, it was positive,” Akronas said.

Student Tom Pierce said he chose to study Catholicism because he wanted to tackle a group that didn’t fit the mainstream idea of a cult. Like many cults, he argued in a class presentation, Catholics have one principal leader _ the pope _ and employ fund-raising.

“The whole idea of heaven and an afterlife, it could be said to be deception,” he said.

But Samantha Aquino, a classmate who is Catholic, disagreed.

While she said some might suggest the pope exhibits a “false sense of identity, because he thinks he’s closer to God than everyone else,” unlike a cult, “Catholicism is really out to help people.”

“I wouldn’t say there would be such a thing as a good cult,” Aquino added.

Students who were initially certain they would never “drink the Kool-Aid” said they now better understand how cult followers are drawn in.

“It just shows you how easily people can be manipulated,” Aquino said. “You always have to be on your toes.”

(Julie O’Connor writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

DSB/CSW END O’CONNOR

A photo of Centenary’s cult class is available via https://religionnews.com.