So what are the trademarks of the many religious cults we have seen like David Moses's Children Of God or Sun Myung's Moonies? The trademarks range from stubborness and refusal to listen to the opinions of others that might disagree, shielding adherents from opposing views or moreover to completely turning off any voices of disagreement and dissent. I have religious right friends that do little else but listen to right wing radio talk show hosts and religious right radio and T.V. Some of them have no idea that the Bush administration made any serious mistakes or that the last Republican congress was one of the most corrupt in U.S. history.
Encouraged by religious right leaders, there is a kind of sub-culture growing all over this country fed and propagated by a kind of cult mentality where this one sided state of mind is projected onto it's followers; people and families all across this nation. With 95 percent of all radio talk shows on the political right wing side it is not hard for this growing group to maintain it's closed world mentality, but it is a very dangerous state of mind that develops from such one sided news and media. So many sources inform us of the failures of former President Bush, the debacle in Iraq and the failure of right wing economic ideology and yet the religious right refuse to hear it unabashedly tuning out points of views that differ from the politics they have set their mind on. Parents of children on the religious right forfeit their highest responsiblility by refusing to hear the whole truth resulting in the inability to cull between the truth and the lies when it comes to war and the lives of their children that are on the line in that war. They shut out differing points of view in almost the same kind of strange deadheaded way so many cults stubbornly shut out anything contradicting their view of the world. An intransigient stubborness that is a clear earmark of mind manipulated cults. The revealing yet disturbing thing about this is that this is not a characteristic of true spiritual strength otherwise a errant cult could not in fact have it but rather it is a characteristic of mental and emotional behavior that could apply to many. The point being that when the religious right maintains it's deadman's grip on such errant and failed policies it cannot be under a true spiritual strength to remain so firm in their view but instead are under the same kind of controlled mental and emotional behavioral phenomena as religious cults and no doubt vulnerable to the dark spiritual influence that plagues religious cults. This should be a point of prayer for all those grounded in the truth.
The religious right has been at the head of leading so many in this nation into tragic misguided endeavors such as treating Bush like he is the anointed of God, support for the immoral Iraq war and finally it's well documented almost holy sanctification of the "no government regulation on business" economic ideology that finally brought us into economic collapse and ruin.
There is a long period of fervent contemplation and self-examination that should be upon the religious right these days but with the constant rightwing mass mental "conditioning", the tuning out of political debate fully refusing to listen to the other side of an issue in print or on TV and the fully blanketing mantra from radio talk shows running through the minds of the religious right, any checking of one's self or internal examination of opinion is never given the chance and it is becoming clear that eventual deprogramming, or that is convincing them that their political views are not the same as the timeless unchanging truth of the word of God, will be an interesting endeavor perhaps even interesting enough that it will have to be left up to Jesus himself but the religious right will say they are ok with that, just ask them. It was however the establishment religious leaders, those with stature and position to protect that at first being eager to here Him, in believing He would back up their false ways, only went on to crucify Him. Look at the politics of the religious right, this is so much of what that is all about, protecting the status quo and protecting the wealthy. They twist and dilute the words of Jesus, the words He plainly spoke, in order to protect their status quo, money serving material supporting ways. Some things never change and some refuse to change even in the extreme, in the extreme like a religious cult.
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