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This is written about the subject of cults. There seems to have been a rise in the interest that the media is showing toward cults lately. We are concerned that much of this interest is not very well balanced.
Our concern is that Australia in general is starting to earn a reputation as a
very intolerant country. Pauline Hanson is just the tip of the iceberg.
Australia's
position with regard to environmental issues, human rights, and even such
things as campaigns against land mines seems to be callous indifference to
anyone apart from ourselves.
We would ask that our whole attitude toward cults be questioned, or at least that someone taking that approach be given a chance to respond to those who campaign most heavily against cults.
Most definitions of cults would have included the early Christians, who were small, new, exclusive extremists who forsook everything they owned and lived together in large communes. Even their rituals, e.g. (eating the "body" and drinking the blood of their Founder) were calculated to shock the general public at the time.
We would like to challenge any cult expert to a debate on just how "dangerous" cults really are. Personally, we think that the paranoia and hate that cult busters generate does more harm than all the Wacos and Jonestowns have ever done. And very few groups labelled as cults would be guilty of the unethical techniques used by most cult "experts" in their war on anyone who dares to be different. It really is time to "bust the cultbusters"!
To give you a fuller picture of ourselves. We are the group that is presently distributing hundreds of thousands of comic books around Sydney as well as other Australian cities. We have constructed a clinic, library, orphanage, and playground in Madras, India. We have gained media coverage in connection with our offer to work for people for free, because of demonstrations in which we burned money, because of arrests and imprisonment for a month in Rockhampton, Qld during a vigil in sackcloth and ashes, because of extensive graffiti campaigns, etc. We are presently fighting a legal battle with the Royal Easter Show, which had us arrested for distributing free pamphlets outside the show while dressed in nappies.
We have personally shared in depth with cult "experts", whose definition of a cult convinced us that we are a cult. Our worst sin, according to the cult experts, is that we are convinced that genuine faith is the exception rather than the rule throughout the entire organised church in Australia. The so called cult experts represent the status quo, and as such, they must defend the religious establishment for the very same things that they condemn fringe groups like ourselves. If they cannot find any substance to support their claims that various groups are "dangerous" they just talk about the "potential for evil" that they all have. Such reports are not just potentially evil; they are evil. Can something be done to confront this issue before Australians start thinking that fringe groups have no rights at all?
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