How powerful ancient Chinese cults threatened the regimes of the day, and even hastened the end of dynasties

Published February 27, 2023 By admin with Comments 1

A tapestry of the Taiping Rebellion, a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. Photo: Getty Images.

A tapestry of the Taiping Rebellion, a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. Photo: Getty Images.

I recently watched a deeply unsettling docuseries, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (2023).

The series documented a group of students at New York’s Sarah Lawrence College, and the sisters of one of them, falling under the spell of a classmate’s father in the 2010s, and being psychologically and sexually abused by him for close to a decade.

Recorded video and audio footage of abuse showed Lawrence Ray manipulating his obviously intelligent victims – one of them was a medical doctor who had recently graduated from Harvard and Columbia – to the point that they lost all sense of reality, cut off all ties with their family and friends, and became totally and helplessly dependent on him.

A cult includes some or all of the following characteristics: authoritarian control, extremist beliefs, isolation from society, and the veneration of a person or persons.

Today, the definition of cults has broadened to include groups that are non-religious in nature, such as the one depicted in Stolen Youth, but in the past they typically referred to groups that professed some kind of non-mainstream religious beliefs.

There must have been countless religious cults in China given its long history and its territorial and population size, but almost the only ones that got any mention in historical records were those that became sufficiently powerful to threaten the regime of the day.

A tapestry of the Taiping Rebellion, a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. Photo: Getty Images
A tapestry of the Taiping Rebellion, a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. Photo: Getty Images
I recently watched a deeply unsettling docuseries, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (2023).
The series documented a group of students at New York’s Sarah Lawrence College, and the sisters of one of them, falling under the spell of a classmate’s father in the 2010s, and being psychologically and sexually abused by him for close to a decade.
Recorded video and audio footage of abuse showed Lawrence Ray manipulating his obviously intelligent victims – one of them was a medical doctor who had recently graduated from Harvard and Columbia – to the point that they lost all sense of reality, cut off all ties with their family and friends, and became totally and helplessly dependent on him.

A cult includes some or all of the following characteristics: authoritarian control, extremist beliefs, isolation from society, and the veneration of a person or persons.
Larry Ray with one of his victims in a still from “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence”. Photo: Hulu

Larry Ray with one of his victims in a still from “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence”.

Today, the definition of cults has broadened to include groups that are non-religious in nature, such as the one depicted in Stolen Youth, but in the past they typically referred to groups that professed some kind of non-mainstream religious beliefs.

There must have been countless religious cults in China given its long history and its territorial and population size, but almost the only ones that got any mention in historical records were those that became sufficiently powerful to threaten the regime of the day.

One of the earliest religious cults to grow into a political and military force was the Taiping Dao, or Way of the Great Peace.

Its leaders were Zhang Jue and his two brothers, who were venerated as sorcerers and healers by their followers, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands all over China.

Zhang Jue launched his armed rebellion against the Eastern Han dynasty in AD184. Known in history as the Yellow Turban Rebellion after the headgear of the rebel troops, the revolt was eventually put down after a few years, but the Eastern Han was so severely weakened that warlords tore it apart and the dynasty fell in 220.

Content retrieved from: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3211448/how-powerful-ancient-chinese-cults-threatened-regimes-day-and-even-hastened-end-dynasties?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3211448.