The definition of a cult, as defined by Meriam Webster, is “a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous” or “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious” (Websters). Both definitions pertain to the Westboro Baptist Church. Even though Baptist is in their name, they are not affilitated with any Baptist denomination. The two largest Baptist demoninations, The World Baptist Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention, have denounced the Westoboro Baptist Church (Rubics). So the WBC is not a part of a larger, more accepted religion. As to the second part of the definition, many people view the WBC as extreme. We saw society's view of the WBC in Theroux's documentary. The children did not have friends in school. Megan Phelps-Roper blatenly stated this in the film. Some kids at school specifically avoided them because of their radical beliefs. Megan tried to play it off that she did not want those kids as friends anyway because they are going to Hell, but I could see that their dislike of her and her family did affect her on some deeper level. At protests, people curse and throw trash at the WBC members. The documentary showed one of the younger boys being hit with a full cup. The adults in the church as endangering their children by having them stand on the side of the road and waving around offensive signs. Where ever the WBC protests, large counter protests emerge to show that people oppose the WBC's radical beliefs. Quite a few members of the church find the beliefs radical and that is why they leave.
The FBI defines a hate group as “an organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against...
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... the WBC preachs seems to be a contrdiction. There is also a petition to the government to question the WBC's legitamate standing as a church, but I have not seen whether or not the government has evaulated that petititon yet.
Yet with the death of founder Fred Phelps, I feel that the church will still go on. His daughter Shirley has been running it and running it effectively for years. I find it humerous that the WBC is having a private funeral and threatening to sue anyone who tries to protest Phelps' funeral. The church's spokesman, Paul Horner issued the statement, “Show the man some respect on his journey into Heaven” (Rubics). The best course of action for the public to take is to ignore them. The WBC protests for attention and if the public denys them of what they seek, eventually they will stop. But it is ironic that the WBC cannot take their own medicine.
became one of the "most violent white supremacist centers of the 1980s" (Phelps). Members lived
The main people targeted for hatred and violence are Jewish people, Hispanics, Asians, blacks and people who are Catholic Christians. The more well-known groups are the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazis, and the Skinheads. The reason why the Ku Klux Klan is separate from the Neo-Nazis and the Skinheads is because the Ku Klux Klan's hatred and violence is aimed more towards blacks rather than the Neo- Nazis and the Skinheads, whose hatred is aimed more towards the Jewish people. The Neo-Nazis, sometimes called White Aryan Resistance, is a group that follows under Adolph Hitler's philosophies, which targets Jewish people. Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, the Skinheads do not join because they believe in the cause.
The Deacons of Defense were a huge part of history that many people do not know about. The Deacons of Defense were a group of African Americans males that finally took a stand to the Ku Klux Klan. They started off as a church group that gathered every week to discuss the issues of the town they stay in. Everything changed when a couple of white activist from the north came to their town to spark a nonviolent movement. Although, around this time, civil rights movements were just starting to make a change, but the adults in this town were still in disbelief. The two activist captured the likes of the youth, and planned to march and protest for justice. Violent outbreaks began surfacing all over the city, even attacking the kids as well. That’s when things changed. The males of that church decided that they had had enough. They assembled with their own weapons everywhere the kids went to ensure that the kids were safe. They were prepared to die for their rights. Eventually they succeeded and the supreme court sent fourth provisions to ensure the safety of African Americans as well as the whites against their will.
The term hate crime first appeared in the late 1980’s as a way of understanding a racial incident in the Howard Beach section of New York City, in which a black man was killed while attempting to evade a violent mob of white teenagers, shouting racial epithets. Although widely used by the federal government of the United States, the media, and researchers in the field, the term is somewhat misleading because it suggests incorrectly that hatred is invariably a distinguishing characteristic of this type of crime. While it is true that many hate crimes involve intense animosity toward the victim, many others do not. Conversely, many crimes involving hatred between the offender and the victim are not ‘hate crimes’ in the sense intended here. For example an assault that arises out of a dispute between two white, male co-workers who compete for a promotion might involve intense hatred, even though it is not based on any racial or religious differences... ...
The church of Scientology has been the subject of controversy since its inception. Its methods and beliefs have attracted the attention of scholars from around the world. The church has been under government investigation and has endured a countless amount of lawsuits (Reitman 14). It is also a hot topic by the media with several endorsements by some of the most recognized Hollywood celebrities. However, the main topic of debate regarding the Church of Scientology is its status as a religion. Some members claim that the church has helped them overcome their struggles and that they are happier people, while others condemn it as a dangerous cult (Sweeney). The church of Scientology is a religious group whose purpose is to retain their members with the promise of spiritual enlightenment. Its controversial history, beliefs, and practices reveal the church’s commitment to keep its members.
A hate crime is an act of aggression against an individual's actual or perceived race, ethnicity, religions, disability, sexual orientation, or gender. Examples include assault and battery, vandalism, or threats which involve bias indicators - pieces of evidence like bigoted name-calling or graffiti.
Many years ago the KKK was labeled a Hate group for obvious reasons. Lately a new group, Black Lives Matter have emerged in our society creating the same threat and domestic terrorism as the KKK. -Michael Hamilton of Denver,
Right now, there are many active hate groups in the United States such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, Skinheads, Christian identity, Black Separatists, etc. These hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which is one of America’s oldest and more feared, use violence and move above the law to promote their different causes. Another example is a group called Christian Identity, who describes a religion that is fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic; and other are the Black Separatist groups, who are organizations whose ideologies include tenets of racially based hatred. Because of the information gathered by the Intelligence Project from hate groups’ publications, citizen’s reports, law enforcement agencies, field sources and news reports, many people know about these hate groups. Many people know how these groups act and think and most of the American people agree that these hate groups are immoral and should not be allowed to exist neither in the United States nor on the rest of the world.
In conclusion, being a part of that cult has taught me a great deal. Now, I am able to understand people better and also much more aware of lies that society perpetrates. I believe that most any group will knowingly or unwittingly use cult techniques. Fr. Stanich has given me a great deal to think about. He was a classic narcissist and one of the vainest people I have ever known. But, I am now able to understand much more about persuasive rhetoric and the phony lies that are told to control people.
In my research on the People's Temple I looked at many different aspects of the group. I quickly learned that the group did not start out as a cult, ready to kill themselves at any moment, and that's not the way they ended either. The People's Temple started with Jim forming a church that reached out to the community in many ways. It gained
But research by the FBI, reveals that fewer than 5% of the offenders were members of organized hate groups. Otherwise law-abiding young people who see little wrong with their actions carry out most hate crimes. Alcohol and drugs sometimes help fuel these crimes, but the main determinant appears to be personal prejudice, a situation that colors people's judgment, blinding the aggressors to the immorality of what they are doing. Such prejudice is most likely rooted in an environment that disdains someone who is "different" or sees that difference as threatening.
According to dictionaries a cult is 1) a system of religious worship or ritual. 2) A religion or sect considered extremist of false. 3) Obsessive devotion to a person or principle. It is believed that every cult ties into some kind of religion, and religions all have a common basis of “a leap of faith”. Whether this so-called leap of faith is going to heaven or being reincarnated, or moving on to some other planet, depends on the beliefs of the cult itself.
The changing of American families has left many families broken and struggling. Pauline Irit Erera, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, wrote the article “What is a Family?”. Erera has written extensively about family diversity, focusing on step-families, foster families, lesbian families, and noncustodial fathers. Rebecca M. Blank, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, where she has directed the Joint Center for Poverty Research, wrote the article “Absent Fathers: Why Don't We Ever Talk About the Unmarried Men?”. She served on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Clinton administration. Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University wrote the article “The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce”. She is also the author of several other books on the changing profiles of American family life. These three texts each talk about the relationship between the parent and the child of a single-parent household. They each discuss divorce, money/income they receive, and the worries that come with raising a child in a single-parent household.
A hate crime is a crime, usually involving violence or intimidation committed against others based partially or entirely on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation or membership in another social group.
A hate crime is a crime motivated by several reasons that include religion, sexual orientation, race, nationality, gender, etc. It typically involves physical violence, intimidation, threats and other means against the individual that is being targeted. It is a crime against the person and it can have a devastating impact on the victim. Several argue that hate crimes should be punished more severely. However, it is not a crime to hate someone or something if it does not lead to some sort of criminal offense.