The Increasingly Cultic Developmental Path of Pseudo-Xtian Sin, Shame & Guilt

The following began as a reply to a Redditor's post about the International Church of Christ... and evolved into something I'd been wanting to cobble together anyway, so here we go:

Is it any surprise that the ICOC began in Puritan Boston?

The vast majority of Americans were raised to think of the Puritans as a Christian sect that had been persecuted in post-Elizabethan, largely Anglican, 17th century England... period. With no explanation as to why. The fact, however, is that the ultra-Calvinist Puritans were so obsessed with sin, shame and guilt that they were acting out in psychological rebound effects like, well, public polygamy, secretive sex addiction and rampant child sexual abuse... not unlike the early Mormons whom the Puritan traditions had influenced in New England and northeastern New York state.

Morality, of course, has a useful place in social organization, but "too much of a good thing may not be." And excessive moral perfectionism was so often seen in the minds of the neurotic, borderline and psychotic patients Charcot, Freud, Breuer, Adler and Janet (say "Jan-NAY") ran into 125 years ago that it became one of the dominant themes of psychoanalytic theory by the 1950s.

The Puritan (and even earlier, 14th century, Alighierian) traditions (see Dante's Inferno) also influenced an 18th century circuit preacher named John Wesley, whose story is disturbing, fascinating and illuminating at the same time. (So-called "Free" Methodism is still that way.)

SHAME and GUILT, after all, are the two most powerful means of controlling children. And once installed and embedded in the minds of children, they are handles that can be used by those in authority to lead the mental children wherever the authorities wish, including into lives of slavish and unquestioning productivity, consumption and good little soldiering to build and protect the wealth of their handlers. (So it has been since Moses was raised in a pharoah's house. Sin, shame and guilt are the essential and funda-mental themes of the first five books of the Judeo-Xtian Old Testament.)

I am not saying that sin, shame and guilt are "totally bad" and should be erased from our minds altogether. All three have vital functions in the mix that is the "glue" of civilized society. But, move up the side of the cultic pyramid as far as I was able to on three separate occasions to really see, hear and sense how cultic dominance-&-submission schemes work, and it is patently obvious that the excessive use of sin, shame and guilt is the principal "lever" the priests and gurus use to manipulate those below them for the sake of the church's -- and their own -- personal enrichment.

Thus, the ICOC is just one of many, mostly evangelical and/or fundamentalist corruptions of what was once a message of love and forgiveness by the agents of wealth and power to drive the peasants into easily manipulatable anxiety, fear, terror and even Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity. And the use of sin as a means of terrorizing those already pre-conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, and normalized to pseudo-Xtian doctrines and dogma is right out of The Book of Coercive Persuasion in Cults.

For those who want to dig deeper:

The Manipulation of Fear by the Pseudo-Christian Cults

Do I Need Exit Counseling and/or Deprogramming?

Attacks on Self & Impact of Thought Reform Techniques

Doctrine and Certitude

The Effects of Double Binding upon Cult Members & Treatment Thereof

After Effects of Being Groomed into Learned Helplessness

The Method

Personal Responsibility: Too Much of a Good Thing may Not be

Religion as the Principle Force for Civilization... at a Price in not-moses's lengthy discussion with the OP on that Reddit thread

Religious Trade-Offs in not-moses's reply to the OP on that Reddit thread

Religious Trauma Syndrome

William Sargant's Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing

A Pathway OUT of RTS

References & Resources

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Moore, M.: "Dante's Infernal Crimes Forgiven," in The Daily Telegraph; June 17, 2008. 

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