How Churches Recruit and How They Make Them Stay

Recruiting, Retaining and Re-Training Into Religion

The Questions that I asked was this:

I am wondering if anyone could clear this up. I am talking about people who joined Jim Jones and Waco Texas cults and other such groups. What is their hold? Is it mass hypnotism or what? Any ideas? Y

It was brought to my mind when I wrote a hub about another question on The Bible and What Jesus said in the Bible. What I got was a few people responded in a very negative way and then I found that these same people could not or would not read the scriptures that I had put in it. The immediately got all upset with me and how I told the story of Jesus. The things that got me was that I never told the story of Jesus in my article at all.

I had written something about cults before and they pretty much fit those characteristics. So I posed the question about such things as Cults and how the church gets and keeps them.

Here is one of the answers that I received from someone who has been in a cult before and managed to get out.

She is a member of Hubpages and her Profile Page is Say Yes To Life

"People who join religious cults do so because they’re convinced their religion is Absolute Truth. All a hoodwinking guru has to do is convince them they have the Real Scoop on their Holy Scriptures, and provide a few convincing examples. I knew someone who personally met David Koresh; he was one of those super rigid thinkers who kept criticizing the SDA church, saying they were apostate. Once he got a bunch of followers into his “utopian” compound, they were too brainwashed to realize the perversions he was into. When the authorities broke into the compound, they saw it as Worldly Persecution. Cult members are typically told they have privileged information, and that the rest of the world is going to hell. They are also taught to expect persecution from the world, which is why it’s not a good idea to confront a cult member bluntly, since that will automatically put them on the defensive, and they may even drop you.

As for Jim Jones, he recruited members by love-bombing the down-and-out, which is another common tactic for recruiting cult members. He lured them into his version of utopia, which was Jonestown, on a whole other continent. Once they were isolated helpless, and unable to escape, he could do whatever he wanted. He reinforced that through sleep deprivation, random torture, and other means.

I’m still studying this, but I believe the best way to avoid getting hoodwinked into a religious cult is to maintain an open mind and study other cultures. It is also good to understand psychology and how life works, so you’re less intimidated by people who claim to have access to a Higher Deity."

Church As A Business

DO NOT THINK THAT THOSE WHO GO THROUGH RELIGIOUS EDUCATION TO BECOME CLERGY ARE NOT TAUGHT THIS FOR THEY ARE. They do take or are taught everything about Psychology.
They are also taught first thing about financial things as keeping and bringing in money.
Church is a business and has been run like this for a very long time.

Psychology Of Special People

There are people who are feeling low about themselves and just need a sense of belonging. The people can range in age of teens to adult. They all have a problem with self-esteem. They blame themselves for everything bed, or what they perceive as bad, in their lives and those around them on themselves. They feel like they cannot go on and are at the end of their rope. They cannot see what they have add to their situation and soon learn that everything is everyone elses problems and faults. The have not learned to see in the mirror or they have and they do not like what they see and then the blame game begins. No not me, they say.

Another dashingscorpio also commented on my question and had this to say:

"The idea of simply "checking out" of the mainstream (rat race) might seem very appealing who is tired and fed up with the way their life is going. Having a "leader" who offers you food, water, and shelter in exchange for working the land and following their rules seems fair enough. Like minded people are attracted to like minded people and those they admire for living/believing and "evolving" to heights he or she aspires to.

A leader who is good looking, intelligent, charming and he pays attention to those who society ignores; becomes "godlike" in the eyes of the recruit who is looking for someone to guide or lead them."

Someone that I have met before told me his story of how he got into a church. He told me that things were not going right in his life and he was getting drunk all the time and treating women badly. He thought that the things in his life were out of control. Walking down the street one day, he just happened to go into a church, he told me. It was also the best thing that he ever did was start going to church. Well this person was nice when I first met him and then his demeanor and actions and reactions changed, almost overnight. I knew he had gotten into something worse than he ever had done before. I was truly scared for him. I still am a bit, but I am finding that the more I try to help him and talk about religion, he gets really agitated and mean.

There is another person on the internet that exhibits the same things. She has called me names and has attacked me and then turns around and states that I was the first to attack. For some reason she cannot see anything such as biblical scriptures and really is mean too though she does not see it. I will get to why she cannot and may not ever see those un-christ-like behaviors and sadly my friend cannot either.

Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Source: Wikicommons

Expanded Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Human Needs, Self Actualization, Humanistic Psychology

Characteristics of self-actualizers

1. They perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty;

2. Accept themselves and others for what they are;

3. Spontaneous in thought and action;

4. Problem-centered (not self-centered);

5. Unusual sense of humor;

6. Able to look at life objectively;

7. Highly creative;

8. Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional;

9. Concerned for the welfare of humanity;

10. Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience;

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow was a psychologist who brought about the five important needs every person needs in their life. He developed this in 1943. In the 1960's and 1970's more was added to incorporate the business perspectives..

The list of need from the bottom, which is the very basic of human needs to the top which it to top most need of human beings.

·        The first and most basic needs are such things a food, water, sleep, warmth and sex and shelter.

·        security, protection from the environment, order and law

·        love, a sense of belonging, friendship, family, relationship with others

·        self-esteem, achievement, responsibility, respect, appreciated, value

·        cognitive things such as knowledge, reasoning, think, intelligence

·        aesthetic such as beauty and balance

·        Self Actualization which simply means things about and dealing with your self such as self fulfillment, self confidence, independent, personal and spiritual growth,

·        transcendence which means teaching and helping others achieve their self actualizations.

People in the first three hierarchy of needs are easily taken by the church. The church likes to keep them there.

When you reach the self-esteem stage, the church will allow you some space in this as they give you ways to boost your self-esteem and worthiness, but it is limited. Start asking question that they deem wrong and you may be punished in some way.

Those who have been brought in by the church and are told to believe everything they are told often lose ground at this time and either they will break free or stay because they have been threatened with Hell and Damnation or the will cause that on others.

Some parishioners will become quite a bit negative, calling names and that sort of thing because they truly believe that others are going to hell and will burn in a lake of fire.

Those of us who break free go on to the next steps in the hierarchy. We begin to see the places and stances the church puts on people. We no longer need to be told what to believe but to gain knowledge of all that is out here and to realize our self for what we are, not what others have to make of us. We then gain an awareness of the world around us and how we equate with it.

"Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that human motivation is based on people seeking fulfillment and change through personal growth. Self-actualized people are those who were fulfilled and doing all they were capable of.

The growth of self-actualization (Maslow, 1962) refers to the need for personal growth and discovery that is present throughout a person’s life. For Maslow, a person is always 'becoming' and never remains static in these terms. In self-actualization a person comes to find a meaning to life that is important to them."

Pavlov's Dog Conditionng

Conditioning of Dog's and also used on People.

Source: Simple Pshycology

The difference between classical and operant conditioning

Why I Call Them Barking Dogs

Ivan Pavlov was a scientist who wanted to study why and how and when dogs salivated when they were given certain things like food. During his experiments he also found another things that was useful in many ways including socialization and interactions with people in society.

He found that the dogs ended up associating food with the lab assistant and not a treat or a bell or any other apparatus used. That began his learning about CONDITIONING. That was the beginning and is now used for many things. Dog trainers learned to use this in their dog training by allowing the owner or the person whom the dog would be with most of the time to participate in the trainings. The dog would associate with that person.

Religious educated people such as the clergy, priests, rabbi's, ministers who attend schooling for their careers also learn these things. It is how they lure you into their church alongside with the above Maslows Hierarchy. They go hand in hand.

"Pavlov developed some rather unfriendly technical terms to describe this process. The unconditioned stimulus (or UCS) is the object or event that originally produces the reflexive / natural response.

The response to this is called the unconditioned response (or UCR). The neutral stimulus (NS) is a new stimulus that does not produce a response.

Once the neutral stimulus has become associated with the unconditioned stimulus, it becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditioned response (CR) is the response to the conditioned stimulus."

So when the clergy tell these people on the low end of Maslow's Hierachy of Needs that no one else is right but them, they are being conditioned. When someone points out the truth or another view they refuse to believe it as fact. That is where the "BARKING DOG" comes from. Most times they will not believe. They will shout and scream at the person. They will not even read the facts, but will attack them and then say that they did not do this.

They may not realize or eer realize, they are doing this because they have been conditioned. Strangely it does not have to take a lot of time to do this especially if the leader or clergy know how this is done and knows how to use it for the business of getting people in and retaining them in their church.....or cult. Cults use this alot too.