My husband was involved, and its something you need to research and warn people about. They will come off extremely FOR GOD, but once you get in…..youll see the truth.

A cult does not require any set number of leaders, only the inerrant belief that they are the ONLY TRUE RELIGION. Nothing else matters once that ego kicks in and messes with their heads. Once that engages, it usually takes a life-changing event or change of circumstances to get them to reconsider their beliefs.

The definition of a destructive religious cult is like alcoholism-if booze controls you instead of the other way around you are an alcoholic.
Religion can be benign then there are hard core fundy groups that want to rule and control you like hard core alcoholism.
The Watchtower society Jehovah’s Witnesses as an example is not benevolent and won’t let you leave their organization in peace.
If they try to ruin your reputation and break up your family for trying to get out then they are a cult!
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”tell the truth don’t be afraid–Danny Haszard

Because these groups crash and burn or get blacklisted, they regroup and change names. The NYC church used to be called The Empire City International Christian Church. The ICC, and the ICOC which the ICC split from, have been banned from many college campuses nationwide, but they sometimes reappear as secular groups (e.g., posing as an student engineering society) and continue to lure college students into the fold.

@Michael R. This post was intended to be humorous, not a serious investigation of cults on campus. If you would like to bring light to this issue, please email us, and we could discuss doing an investigative article on cult activity at NYU.

When I attended NYU, I knew several people who were briefly sucked into cults. Cults know that college students, particularly freshman, often make easy targets because they may not have found their place in this new city and haven’t connected with people yet. So they typically begin by just seemingly innocently befriending people who seem lonely without making any overt references to an ideology. Before long, the group is showering that person with affection, treating them like the coolest person around. This is called “love bombing,” and it’s seductive to anyone with even the slightest bit of insecurities (i.e. everyone). It’s usually only later that the cult ideology is introduced gradually, and by the time the “recruit” starts noticing anything weird, if they’re as certain as the author of this piece that they are simply too smart to fall for a cult, cognitive dissonance sets in resulting in them rationalizing that they wouldn’t have spent all this effort with these people if they were a cult. So excuse me if I’m unimpressed with the author’s impressive 20-person survey.

There are valuable cult-prevention resources on the web such as:

The Rick A. Ross Foundation
http://www.rickross.com

Also, this is a great lecture about cults from a former cult member –

“Cults and Coercion: How Ordinary People are Turned into Extraordinary Fanatics” -Paul Grosswald (8/15/2009)
http://nycskeptics.org/events/paul-grosswald.html

Also, here’s a valuable resource:
http://www.dangeroustalk.net/a-team/Cults