3 Things I learned about cults while creating a Christian cult for my novel Jonah of Olympic

There’s a Christian cult in my second novel in the Mercedes Masterson Detective Stories series, Jonah of Olympic. The idea for this novel originated around 2011 or so when I asked myself how a conversation would go between Mercedes and a cult leader. And I played around with that dialogue between the two characters. It was fascinating and I ended up coming up with a few notes for a story that would include a cult and somewhere there would be this meeting of the two characters. I even came up with the title at the time.

I didn’t start drafting Jonah of Olympic until January 2021. The months leading into January, I decided to spend a significant amount of time researching cults. As someone who was raised in Christian funamentalism, it’s not hard to imagine what that might look like, but I wanted the cult in my book to be a wholly original church though it may have elements that we all recognize. And so, I decided to read up as much as I could about several infamous cults and I decided on Jim Jone’s Peoples Temple, Heaven’s Gate, and one other the name of which escapes me. I read up a lot on Peoples Temple and the one I can’t recall, and with Heaven’s Gate I opted to watch an HBO documentary mini-series as a passive way of absorbing the informaiton right before I began writing. Here are a few things that stuck with me and informed a lot of the choices I made concerning the cult in my book.

Jim Jones was preaching communism.

Jones wanted to convert people to communism, but he knew America hated communism and wouldn’t accept that teaching. What he realized is that America will accept anything you sell them, so long as you wrap it up in a story about Jesus. And so, as he began, he was focused on teaching Christianity with little nods to communism brought out through Jesus’ teachings. Over time, he slowly slid the teachings and doctrines further and further from Jesus and closer to communism. In the end, it had less to do with Jesus and more to do with Jones’ version of communism.

Without getting into spoilers, Jonah of Olmypic has a tagline in French (like the other stories in the series). The tagline reads “arrête les conneries,” which when translated to English is “cut the shit.” Culturally speaking, this is a French equivalant phrasing of saying “cut the bullshit.” During that dialogue between Mercedes and the cult leader, that one I started playing with so many years ago, he begins it by saying, “Now, I can tell you are a person who doesn’t appreciate bullshit. So, I would like to cut the bullshit for a moment, and just talk. Honest and open, no bullshit.” I refer to this scene as the bullshit monologue and it’s where we really learn about the cult leader and get a glimpse of his way of thinking. I’d be lying if I said Jones’ grift didn’t inform how I crafted this character.

Jim Jones, a charismatic cult leader, had helpers.

If you ask someone, or the internet, what a cult is at some point during that response you’ll likely be told that a cult is lead by a charismatic leader at the top. And while, that is sometimes true, it’s much more nuanced than that. And I think having that as part of the defintion makes it difficult for people to recognize when they are inside a cult, because if they don’t have a clear cult leader or if there’s a facade that makes it seem like their cult leader isn’t all controlling, people may wrongfully think they are not in a cult when they are.

Jones didn’t do all the work alone. Sure, he was a charismatic leader heading up a cult of his own invention and he was the head of that snake. But much like dictators, he also had an inner circle of lieutenants who helped carry out his mission who were aware of what they were doing. They were part of the system. He wasn’t the only one manipulating and controlling his members, he had helpers.

In Jonah of Olmypic, my cult leader does not work alone. He is a charismatic leader at the top of the heap, but he has an inner circle of men called apostles who are his helpers and who are in the know. Like most oppressive systems, when a cult grows it needs more than that one person at the top to help control its congregation. And so, a cult leader will look for helpers, his lieutenants, to help keep the system running.

Heaven’s Gate had two cult leaders, one was a woman.

Now, I wasn’t around when Jones did his thing, but I was a kid in the 1990s when the news broke that a cult, Heaven’s Gate, had died by mass suicide. If you had told me there were two cult leaders who created and ran Heaven’s Gate from the beginning before I watched the documentary, I would have been like, “Nah, it was the one funny looking bald dude.” But I would have been wrong. Heaven’s Gate came out of a chance meeting between him and a woman working in a psych ward. He was a music professosr and suffered a mental breakdown, and while in a psych ward the woman helping him get better bonded with him. After he got out, they went off into the woods for days and when they reemerged they had created a cult (not uncommon during the hippy days). She abandoned her husband and daughter, and the two of them went off to create Heaven’s Gate. They ran that cult together for years, and she eventually passed away from cancer in the 80s.

This was fascinating to me on a number of levels. The first is that this was a cult I had been taught was run by a single charismatic leader, but in fact it was formed and lead by two. Sure, he was the only one left in the end, but that was not by choice. This is another example of how recognition of a cult by its singular cult leader isn’t a good descriptor. It was also equally fascinating to me because one of those leaders was a woman. We don’t typically see women rising to power as dictators or cult leaders, so it’s interesting that this was the case here.

In Jonah of Olympic, the cult leader does not work alone, he has his helpers, but he also has one apostle that he keeps very close. This is not to say they are equals, not like Heaven’s Gate, but it does show that it is possible to be a cult even when the cult leader has helpers and confidants.

Conclusion.

If I had to summarize these findings, and give some advice on the way out the door of this post, it would be judge not a cult on how it dresses — how it looks or describes itself — but rather judge a cult on its behavior. A cult doesn’t need a singular charismatic leader at the top that controls all things, he can have helpers, and even equals, or at least give the appearance of such. Instead, a cult is most defined by how it treats its members. Does it control them in mind, deed, thought, and in what information they can consume? Those are characteristics to look for as opposed to some mythical cult leader creature.

Or as Jesus himself put it, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matthew 7:16-18). A cult is a corrupt thing that bears evil fruit and there are plenty of helpers willing to make that happen.