FAQ

Here are some of our answers to questions we frequently get asked.

What is Cultwatch?

Cultwatch is incorporated as a Charitable Trust made up of Christians from many different types of churches, such as Baptist, Presbyterian, various independent and other churches.

We are a para-church group which means no one church “owns” or runs us. Instead we have a board of well known Christians who oversee us.

What do you do?

We have two major purposes:

First, we warn people about the cults so they are forewarned when the cult recruiters come after them. This is the fence at the top of the cliff.

Second, we help get people out of cults, and we help their friends and family. This is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

It takes five minutes to pre-warn someone about a cult, but can take weeks, months or years to get them out once they have joined – if you can ever get them out at all.

How are you funded?

The primary way we are funded is by nice people giving us nice donations. We also run seminars and sell our tapes.

If you would like to support Cultwatch then please send your donations to the postal address on our Contact page.

What is a cult?

We define a cult in two ways.

Firstly, if they use mind control as part of their day to day practice then we define them as a cult. If we find mind control in use in their practices then we will examine the independent stories of ex-members. If those independent stories have the threads of mind control running through them then we certainly have a cult on our hands.

Secondly, when working with Christians we use the classical Christian definition of a cult. That is if a group claiming to be Christian teaches significantly different things from what the Bible teaches then we would label them a cult. For example the Mormons claim to be Christian yet teach that Jesus and Satan are brothers and that God came from a small planet near the Star base Kolob. Even a person who does not know much about Christianity would know that these beliefs are not Christian beliefs. Hinduism on the other hand is not a cult, but a world religion. Why? Because it teaches things very different from the Bible but does not claim to be Christian.

While the classical Christian definition of a cult will normally be only of interest to Christians, we find that the Mind Control definition is one almost all people agree with.

You’re Christians, so aren’t you biased?

Yes. But the reality is that everyone – yourself, us, and even the person who claims to be unbiased – is biased.

You see we all have our own beliefs about reality, and we color what we see by those beliefs. Since it is impossible to be unbiased the best we can do is try our very hardest to recognize our bias and try to not let it affect our judgment.

All that we ask of anyone is to carefully read or listen to our information and come to the point where they understand what we are putting forward. Once they understand our position then we ask them to consider it carefully and come to some conclusions. That really is all we can ask of people.

What is it like dealing with cults?

Sad when you see the damage they do to people
Disconcerting when the various threats come, as they do
Funny sometimes. For example we get some of the weirdest letters, like the one, which demonstrated how the spiritual realm works with hand drawn pictures of levers, pulleys and bizarre machinery
Rewarding when someone is set free from mind control and is able to start their recovery
Enjoyable as we meet bunches of interesting people from all over the world.

Do you kidnap people?

No.

Instead, we “exit counsel” people to help them  out of cults.

Exit counselling is when a cult member agrees to talk with us and we spend time with that person explaining the other side of the story, the side the cult would not like them to hear.