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Cults and new religious movements have been used as a theme or subject in literature and popular culture, while notable representatives of such groups and their followers have produced on their own a large body of literary works.

Contents 1 Ancient 2 Early 20th century 3 Mid and late 20th century 4 21st century 5 Literary works by founders of new trends or movements 6 Important non-fiction writers among founders of movements 7 "Tract" literature 8 Television and other media 9 See also 10 References

One of the earliest descriptions of a cult leader who allegedly manipulated and exploited his followers was in "Alexander the False Prophet," a satire by Lucian of Samosata, a second century AD writer. The target of Lucian's work was Alexander of Abonoteichus, an oracle who, according to Lucian, built a following in parts of the Roman Empire and swindled many people and engaged, through his followers, in various forms of thuggery.^[1]

Mark Twain wrote a highly critical book (1907) about Christian Science.^[2] Willa Cather, an investigative journalism before turning to literature, co-authored a detailed muckraking book (1909) on the same church.^[3] These and other works failed, however, to stop Christian Science from gaining a large measure of respectability in later years.^[4][5][6]

Zane Grey, in his Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), a Western novel that would have a major influence on Hollywood, lambasts the Mormons and has his gunslinger hero rescue a wealthy young woman in the early 1870s from the clutches of elderly polygamists via exceedingly bloody gunfights. The novel contains a portrayal of the psychological conflicts of the young woman, raised a Mormon but gradually coming to the realization that she wants a supposedly freer life. The Mormon misdeeds depicted in the story take place on the southern frontier of Utah and there is no suggestion that Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City are involved. The harassment of the young woman reflects a popular literary theme in Victoria's England rather than Brigham Young's Utah — the orphaned young heiress besieged by unscrupulous suitors who often profess the Anglican or Catholic faith.

Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse (1929) revolves around a California circle. A.E.W. Mason, in The Prisoner in the Opal (1928), one of his popular Inspector Hanaud mysteries, describes the unmasking of a Satanist cult.

Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote two novels that deal with cult-like groups. A leading figure in his early "Future History" series (see If This Goes On--, a short novel published in Revolt in 2100 (1953)), is Nehemiah Scudder, a religious "prophet" who becomes dictator of the United States. By his own admission in an afterword, Heinlein poured into this book his distrust of all forms of religious fundamentalism, the Ku Klux Klan, the Communist Party and other movements that he regarded as authoritarian. Heinlein also stated in the afterward that he worked out the plot of other books about Scudder, but had decided not to write them in part because he found Scudder so unpleasant.^[7] (A Scudder-like dictatorship complete with sexual slavery for women would later become the theme of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985).) In Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), two cults are featured: the Dionysian church of the Fosterites, and the the protagonist Valentine Michael Smith's own Church of All Worlds. The motives and methods of religious leaders are discussed in some detail.

Cults are also featured in science fantasy and horror novels. In That Hideous Strength (1945), C.S. Lewis describes the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, or "NICE", a quasi-governmental front concealing a kind of doomsday cult that worships a disembodied head kept alive by scientific means. This head, who/which is plotting to turn the Earth into a dead world like the Moon, has been interpreted as a symbol of secularism and materialism. Lewis' novel is notable for its elaboration of his 1944 address "The Inner Ring." The latter work criticizes the lust to "belong" to a powerful clique--a common human failing that Lewis believed was the basis for people being seduced into power-hungry and spiritually twisted movements.^[8][9][10]

In William Campbell Gault's Sweet Wild Wench (Fawcett, 1956), L.A. private eye Joe Puma investigates the Children of Proton, a fictional cult that has attracted the support of the daughter of a wealthy businessman.^[11]

In Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon (1994), the heroine battles against a Goddess-worshipping cult led by a radical feminist with supernatural powers and a taste for human sacrifice.

Gore Vidal's Messiah (1955) depicts the rise of a cult leader, while Vidal's Kalki (1978), a science-fiction novel, recounts how a small but scientifically adept cult kills off the entire human race via germ warfare.

Since the advent of the anti-cult movement in the 1970s, numerous thrillers have been written in which the hero, often a private detective, rescues a young person from a cult and/or uncovers nefarious murders plotted by a cult. For examples lurid and nuanced, see the references to The DaVinci Code and Lost Angel in the next section below.

Popular French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 science-fiction novel, The Possibility of an Island, describes a cloning group that resembles the Raëlians.^[12]

Dan Brown's controversial runaway best-seller, The DaVinci Code (2003), portrays a hero and heroine in flight from an assassin who belong to the Catholic organization Opus Dei. Opus Dei has disputed the accuracy of the portrayal as has much of the media. For example, the villain in The Da Vinci Code is a monk, but there are no monks in the real Opus Dei.^[13][14]

Paul Malmont's The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (2006) portrays a young L. Ron Hubbard as one of three 1930s pulp fiction writers who fight the forces of evil in a novel that nostalgically mimics the pulps. Although Malmont portrays the young Hubbard and future Scientology founder as having a tendency to pad his resume (a charge that has been made by biographers of the real Hubbard), Malmont's Hubbard is in most respects a sympathetic character as well as being a hero of the action.

Mike Doogan's detective thriller Lost Angel (2006) takes place at a fictional Christian commune in Alaska called Rejoiced. At first, the reader is led to believe that the group is a cult, but gradually it emerges that many members are reasonable people who routinely (if quietly) disobey the commune's founder and nominal leader (an elderly man with psychopathic tendencies), regard him as an embarrassment, and are horrified when his crimes are revealed.

Aleister Crowley, was a poet and novelist who wrote an autobiography that became a widely praised bestseller after his death. Nicholas Roerich, the founder of Agni Yoga, was a travel writer and poet as well as being a important painter who expressed his spiritual beliefs through his depiction of the stark mountains of Central Asia.

L. Ron Hubbard was an important figure in the golden age of science fiction and also wrote Fear (1940), a ground-breaking psychological thriller that influenced later writers such as Stephen King.

G.I. Gurdjieff, the guru who taught methods of "double consciousness" in Paris, authored Meetings with Remarkable Men, a minor classic of Russian literature, and Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, a curious melange of philosophy, humor and science-fiction that some regard as a masterpiece.

Ayn Rand, founder of Objectivism, was the author of two major best sellers, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).]].^{[15][16][17][18]}

Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, was a highly regarded poet (Kenneth Rexroth even compared with to Heinrich Heine); his best known poem is "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" (1925) [23].

Fred Newman, founder of social therapy, is a prolific playwright^[19] whose best-known work is Sally and Tom (The American Way) (1995), a musical (with Annie Roboff) about the slave-master romance of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.^[20]

Helena Blavatsky, the Russian adventuress who founded Theosophy, wrote The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, and had an immense cultural and intellectual influence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, indirectly helping to stimulate the Indian nationalist movement, the interfaith ecumenical movement, parapsychology, the genre of the occult thriller, and what today is called the New Age movement.

Rudolf Steiner (d. 1925), founder of Anthroposophy, was an important writer in a variety of fields (his collected works total 350 volumes) and an influence on such figures as novelist Herman Hesse and philosopher Owen Barfield. Through his writings and lectures, Steiner stimulated the development of the cooperative movement, alternative medicine, organic farming, the Waldorf schools, and "eurythmy" in modern dance.

Psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, who in his later years founded a psychotherapy cult around the idea of orgone energy, is widely regarded as a major inspirer of the sexual revolution, a forerunner of the interdisciplinary field of psychohistory, and an influential theorist and clinician of early psychoanalysis.^[21].^[22][23]

Several authors have been prolific tract writers and although their writings have not influenced contemporary culture to the degree of a Reich or Blavatsky they have stimulated many to join their churches or movements and have expressed ideas that have been adopted and adapted by writers and spiritual "entrepreneurs" outside of their own circles. Examples include JZ Knight, founder of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, whose popular Ramtha books have done much to spread the practice of spirit channelling among New Agers; and Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant who, with her late husband Mark Prophet, wrote over 75 books on the "Ascended Masters" and similar topics. Other examples include the late Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God, whose books on Biblical prophecy and British Israelism were widely read for over a half century; and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche — the author of over 500 books, articles and published speeches which have had a significant if often subterranean influence on various movements of the left and right as well as on the media in some countries.

In a Simpsons episode titled "The Joy of Sect", the said family are drawn into a sect known as the Movementarians, who have claimed the tangible possessions of many of Springfield's residents after brainwashing them with false promises. An unimpressed Marge tries desperately to deprogram her family with the help of Willie (who offers to "kidnap him (Homer) for fifty, deprogram him for a hundred, and kill him for five hundred") and Reverend Lovejoy, a Christian priest. They end up kidnapping him, knocking him unconscious, and finally "deprogramming" him with beer.

The South Park episodes The Return of Chef and Super Best Friends dealt with cults. In "The Return of Chef", Chef joined the "Super Adventure Club", and in "Super Best Friends", the foursome joined the "Blaintologists", who revere David Blaine as a messianic figure. The episode Trapped in the Closet (South Park) was a parody of Scientology.

The Society of Light is a fictional religious group in the anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! GX which appeared in episodes 53-104.

Lyndon LaRouche has been spoofed several times on The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and in the comic strip Bloom County. An episode of the science-fiction series Sliders depicts a parallel universe in which LaRouche is President of the United States.

In Vanished, a 2006 thriller series on Fox TV, a drug rehabilitation cult conducts kidnappings and murders in furtherance of nebulous political and occult goals. The series bombed and was taken off the air before it completed its run.

In an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear's 1976-77 soap opera parody, one of Mary Hartman's neighbors joins the Hare Krishnas and his family decides to have him deprogrammed.

A "Growing Up Gotti" episode in 2005 featured a Social Therapist (follower of Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani)^{[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]} intervening in the family problems of Victoria Gotti and her teenage sons.^[32]

• List of Scientology references in popular culture

Cults v • d • e
Definitions
Client cult · Cult apologist · Cults and governments ·Cult of personality · Cult suicide · Cult-watching group · Destructive cult · Political cult
Lists
Authors opposing cults · In literature and popular culture · Government reports · Groups referred to as cults Politicians opposing cults · Researchers
Organizations
CAN · CESNUR · FACTnet · FREECOG · ICSA · MIVILUDES · Reachout Trust · Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center
Opposition
Anti-Cult Movement · Christian countercult movement · Opposition to cults and new religious movements
Theories / Methodologies
APA Task Force (DIMPAC) · Brainwashing · Cult checklist · Deprogramming · Exit counseling · Mind control · Post-cult trauma
Related
Apostasy · Atrocity story · Bigotry · Charismatic authority · Freedom of Expression · Freedom of religion · Groupthink · Int'l Religious Freedom Act 1998 · Large Group Awareness Training · Minority religion · Occult · Project Megiddo · Religious intolerance · Religious persecution · True-believer syndrome · Witch hunt · Religious freedom by country · Universal Declaration of Human Rights