The 1978 Jonestown Massacre, where 913 of the Reverend Jim Jones' followers were forced to commit suicide, marked the high point in America's condemnation of cults. Spread across newspaper front pages and national magazines from coast to coast, the slaughter gave focus to an alarm that had grown throughout the decade. Were cults spreading like wildfire? Were Rasputin-like religious leaders luring the nation's youth into oblivion like modern-day Pied Pipers? The Jonestown coverage reinforced the common perception that, in cults, America harbored some alien menace. The perception could not be further from the truth. In a sense, America was founded by cults, and throughout the nation's history, cults and splinter groups from established religions have found in America a fertile cultural terrain. That modern-day Americans find cults alarming is yet another example of America's paradoxical culture.

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines a cult as "a religion regarded as unorthodox and spurious...