More than 100 bodies have been discovered in the Shakahola Forest in east Kenya since April 21. Eight others were found alive but later died, and another 300+ have been reported missing.
It's believed that the bodies belong to cult members who starved themselves to death under the direction of their leader.
And even more shocking: the majority of the corpses belong to children.
Paul MacKenzie Nthenge, leader of the Good News international Church, has been in police custody since April 14 for his role in the terrible tragedy—one of the worst cult-related incidents in recent history.
Followers of Nthenge's "Church" reportedly believed starvation was their ticket to Heaven. The pastor of a nearby church, Ezekiel Odero, is also being investigated for various crimes, including murder, aiding suicide, abduction, and child cruelty.
Kenya's president has vowed to crack down on pastors like Nthenge, "who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology."
But the problem of cults will undoubtedly continue to persist not only in Kenya but throughout the world. On the one hand, this is no surprise—man is created by God and thus has a natural longing for spirituality. On the other hand, man is easily deceived and taken in by charlatans, and unfortunately, the Shakahola Forest Massacre is nothing new.
Undoubtedly, the psychology behind cult leaders and why people choose to follow them is quite complex and there can be no cookie cutter answer, but experts who study cults suggest that the need for human comfort and the desire to soothe fears and anxieties probably play a major role. And most likely, the lure of belonging to an elite or secretive group, often depicted as the last bastion of truth on earth, plays on the human ego.
"[Cults] provide meaning, purpose, and belonging," says Josh Hart, a psychology professor from Union College who studies cults and related issues.
"They offer a clear, confident vision [and] assert the superiority of the group," he notes.
And the leaders themselves often present themselves as infallible, or even as divine. Many cult leaders throughout the world have claimed to be Jesus Christ, and they have personal charisma to go along with it.
Cult leaders themselves are also quite shrewd psychologically. They know how to read and manipulate their followers, how to convince them of their claims, often with disastrous outcomes, as with the recent case in Kenya.
There are groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons that are typically considered cults by mainstream Christians and others, but these groups are also long-established and widespread. In recent decades, there have been a number of sensational groups more obviously falling under the banner of cults.
Charles Manson
One of the most infamous cult leaders is surely Charles Manson, who told his roughly 100 hippie followers that he was Jesus. His teachings were a combination of science fiction, the occult, and fringe psychology, and included plenty of sex and drugs, like so many other cults.
Manson is best known for the nine murders his "Family" committed in 1969, including the very pregnant movie star Sharon Tate. Manson hoped to pin the murders on black people in order to initiate an apocalyptic race war that would convince white people of just how dangerous black people are, in Manson's view.
Manson and his followers were to wait out the race war in a secret city under Death Valley, then they would reemerge and rule over those who remained.
Manson and the four murderers were sentenced to death in 1971. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison, where he remained until his death in 2017.
The Jonestown Massacre
Undoubtedly, the most famous suicide cult was Jim Jones' People's Temple of the Disciples of Christ, which ended dramatically on November 18, 1978, when more than 900 people, including more than 300 minors, committed suicide at a commune in Guyana.
Jones founded his "religion," mixing Christianity and communism, in Indianapolis in 1954. In 1965, he relocated the Temple to San Francisco where he became heavily involved in politics and charitable activities. He forged many political connections, and the group grew to include thousands of members (it claims to have had 20,000 at its height).
In 1974, Jones founded a socialist commune, unofficially dubbed Jonestown, in the South American country of Guyana and convinced several hundreds of his followers to live there with him, free from the oppression of the US government. US Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in 1978 to investigate reports of human rights abuses, and Jonestown members killed Ryan and four others as they were boarding their plane to return home.
Jones then ordered a mass murder-suicide at the commune. 909 members died, including 304 children, most of whom perished by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Audio tape from the incident has Jones saying: "Don't be afraid to die," "Death is just stepping over into another plane," and "We didn't commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."
Jones himself was among those who committed suicide.
Other cults
Numerous other examples of abusive and deadly cults could be cited. There was Heaven's Gate, whose members committed mass suicide in 1997, under the influence of Marshall Applewhite, believing that through suicide they would board a UFO following the Hale-Bopp Comet and ride it all the way to Heaven. There is Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, founded by Shoka Asahara, who declared himself to be Christ in 1992, and whose followers attacked the Tokyo subway with the nerve agent sarin on March 20, 1995, killing 13, with thousands more suffering. For a non-religious cult, see the article, "The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence," about a man fresh out of prison who moved into his daughter's college dormitory and began to take control of the students' lives, including sexual abuse.
Satanism
To some degree, it is understandable how people could be taken in by someone who claims to be Christ, who claims to offer salvation. Even more disturbing and hard to fathom are those who brazenly adorn themselves with the name of Satan.
Satanism has been in the news again recently, as the Satanic Temple held its 10th-anniversary SatanCon in Boston in late April. The weekend-long event featured a "Satanic ball", a "Satanic marketplace," and a host of lectures on various topics, such as "Sins of the Flesh: Satanism and Self-Pleasure" and "Reclaiming the Trans Body: A/theistic strategies for Self-Determination and Empowerment."
However, the Satanic Temple, formed only in 2013, is more like Satanism Lite. The word "satan" means "the adversary," and so some call themselves Satanists simply to indicate that they oppose Christianity and traditional cultural mores, not that they literally worship the devil. "Most don't believe in Satan, not a literal Satan. It's not some 1980s horror film," SatanCon attendee Richard-Lael Lillard told WBZ-TV.
The official Satanic Temple website takes great pains to distance itself from Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, which is more akin to what people think of when they think of Satanism.
On the one hand, the Satanic Temple, which claims its mission is "to encourage benevolence and empathy … oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits" while donning Satan and Baphomet masks, seems like a bunch of angsty teenagers who just want to shock and get attention. But on the other hand, SatanCon was opened with the shredding of a Bible while the audience cried, "Hail Satan!" and the Temple explicitly fights against the Church and taps into Satanic imagery while advocating for sins like abortion—and what is all this if not demonically inspired?
Then there is the aforementioned Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey in San Francisco on April 30, 1966. LaVey, the author of the infamous Satanic Bible, remained the High Priest until his death in 1997. Members of the Church of Satan supposedly do not believe in a literal Satan either, but at the same time, they seem more willing to dive into the darkness that comes with playing with fire.
Whereas the Satanic Temple tries to paint itself as some kind of humanitarian organization, the Church of Satan's Nine Satanic Statements—a kind of creed originally appearing in The Satanic Bible—includes such gems as: "Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!" "Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!" "Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!" and, "Satan represents all the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!"
Clearly, the Nine Satanic Statements are a demonic inverse of Christ's Gospel teachings, reminiscent of early-20th century English occultist Aleister Crowley's credo, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," as an inverse of the Lord's Prayer's, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
And in LaVey's Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, we find: "When in another's lair, show him respect or else do not go there," "Acknoweldge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires," and, "When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him."
There are also palatable rules, such as: "Do not harm little children," and, "When in another's lair, show him respect or else do not go there." This gives an important insight into how cults and false religions operate in general. Most people cannot bring themselves to side with absolute falsehood, with complete evil—there has to be at least a tinge of the truth mixed in to lure people, who are all endowed with a conscience.
There are also theistic Satanists who believe that Satan literally exists and is worthy of worship, that he is the bestower of knowledge, as opposed to the God of the Bible Who told Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The American serial killer Richard Ramirez identified as a theistic Satanist and left inverted pentagrams at the scene of all his murders, for example. However, it is hard to say to what extent the Satanism of popular culture, with ritual sacrifices, sexual abuse, child pornography, and other disturbing activities really exists. To be sure, such people and such groups do exist. Although, as we have said, man is endowed with a conscience, that conscience can be seared, and man is capable of unspeakable evil, especially when flirting with evil spirits, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
And cult leaders of all stripes are surely men with seared consciences—how else could a person allow himself to abuse and terrorize others, whether psychologically, physically, or sexually, and often to the point of murder and suicide?
The spiritual realm is full of light, but it is also full of darkness, with demons and the men in their employ waiting for their next victim.
