Cult Life and the Functionalist Theory

      I recently watched I Escaped A Cult, a 45-minute long film documentary about the experiences two groups of people had in different oppressive religious cults. The FLDS, a Mormon breakaway cult based in Salt Lake City, Utah, was known for the continued practice of polygamy. Another featured cult originally known as "The Free Love Ministries" is a Sacramento based Christian sect. Later changing their name to "Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps," this cult utilizes a militant ranking system and considers themselves "God's Army."  The inner workings of a cult can show how the functionalist theory is important in a stable society by demonstrating how a lack of societal norms cause an unstable environment.

      Several concepts of the functionalist theory can be found in this documentary including: media; social order; crime and deviance; family; and education. In the cult they weren't allowed access to media such as television or radio, preventing them from identifying their lack of social norms.  In the cult they had a military-like ranking system going down from general, this social ordering prevents free thought and kept the cultist under control.  This prevents any social change for the better.   In the cults they were told they must always put God and religious beliefs before family and children and that they had to beat their children or even lock them in dark room by themselves for days at a time as a form of discipline. This prevented normal socialization of children and caused cultists to have no emotional security.  The only education they were allowed to receive was religious or about the cultist compounds themselves and how to act in them.  Emile Durkheim promotes the fact that education transmits society's values. The lack of education received by the cultist further constricted their world.  Anything deemed a crime by the cult or any sort of social deviance at all was punished swiftly and severely with things like banishment or beatings.

      The functionalist theory helped me better understand the documentary I Escaped A Cult by breaking it down and giving me a different viewpoint on the subject. I felt disgusted at the behavior displayed by both the cult leaders and the cultists themselves. The cults in this documentary prove that societal norms are imperative to a stable society.

Sources:

I Escaped A Cult (I watched it on Netflix) htps://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/concepts_functionalism.htm

http://sociology.about.com/od/Sociological-Theory/a/Functionalist-Theory.htm