Titles

Geoffrey Hebdon was born and brought up in Lancashire, England, in the heart and region of the cotton industry. After leaving college, having studied textile engineering, he embarked on the vocation of education, including lecturing, teaching and evangelical work. He and his wife Pauline lived and served in various parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

After starting a family in the 1970s, Geoffrey and his wife decided to relocate to Southern Africa and for almost 30 years were based in Cape Town. While working in Cape Town, Geoffrey, a dedicated educationalist, along with a business partner, decided to open a private, non-profit Academy with campuses in Bellville, the northern suburbs of Cape Town and also in Central Cape Town, with plans to open a third campus in the African township of Khayelitsha in the Western Cape, to offer career training courses, including, business management, computers, travel and tourism, journalism, plus health and beauty. This private academy later expanded its scope to the more disadvantaged students of Southern and Eastern Africa, with the help of the Department of Education plus generous private subsidies and sponsorships.

In 2000, Geoffrey and his wife Pauline relocated their family to the United States of America and lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, for eight years before moving to the Los Angeles area of California, where his family is currently based. Even though semi-retired, Geoffrey is still involved with research, reporting and writing.

Links

Geoffrey Hebdon on Facebook
Connect to the website of the MTC Foundation

Check out Geoffrey's previous Glass House book The Delamere Saga

Sample

from The Introduction

What is a cult? In modern English, the term cult has come to usually refer to a social group defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal. This sense of the term is controversial and it has divergent definitions in both popular culture and academia and it also has been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study. Beginning in the 1930s, cults became the object of sociological study in the context of the study of religious behavior. From the 1940s the Christian counter-cult movement has opposed some sects and new religious movements, and it labeled them as cults for their un-Christian unorthodox beliefs. The secular anti-cult movement began in the 1970s and it opposed certain groups, often charging them with mind control and partly motivated in reaction to acts of violence committed by some of their members. Some of the claims and actions of the anti-cult movement have been disputed by scholars and by the news media, leading to further public controversy.

On his website, Carm.org, Matt Slick offers this comment.

There are many non-Christian religions and cults in America: Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Unity, The Way International, Unitarianism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. They all claim special revelation and privilege and those that use the Bible invariably interpret it in disharmony with standard biblical understanding.  And groups especially like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses object to being labeled a “cult” because it often gets an emotional reaction as well as is a label they want to avoid. Another common denominator among the Cults is their methods for twisting scripture. Some of the errors they commit in interpreting Scripture are: 1) taking Scripture out of context; 2) reading into the Scriptures information that is not there; 3) picking and choosing only the Scriptures that suit their needs; 4) ignoring other explanations; 5) combining scriptures that don’t have anything to do with each other; 6) quoting a verse without giving its location; 7) incorrect definitions of key words; and 8) mistranslations. These are only a few of the many ways cults misuse Scripture.

The Christian Apologetics Research Ministry (CARM) also written by Matt Slick includes the following observations. For a group to be a cult in the social sense, many of the following characteristics would have to be present. For a group to be a cult in the doctrinal sense, essentials (in this case of the Christian faith) would have to be violated. Some of the characteristics are listed below by kind permission of CARM.

Submission: Complete, almost unquestioned trust in the leadership. Leaders are often seen as prophets, apostles, or special individuals with unusual connections to God. This helps a person give themselves over psychologically to trusting someone else for their spiritual welfare. Increased submission to the leadership is rewarded with additional responsibilities and/or roles, and/or praises, increasing the importance of the person within the group.

Exclusivity: Their group is the only true religious system, or one of the few true remnants of God's people.

Persecution complex: Us against them mentality. Therefore, when someone (inside or outside of the group) corrects the group in doctrine and/or behavior, it is interpreted as persecution, which then is interpreted as validation.

Control: Control of members' actions and thinking through repeated indoctrination and/or threats of loss of salvation, or a place to live, or receiving curses from God, etc.

Isolation: Minimizing contact of church members with those outside the group. This facilitates a further control over the thinking and practices of the members by the leadership.

Love Bombing: Showing great attention and love to a person in the group by others in the group, to help transfer emotional dependence to the group.

Special Knowledge: Instructions and/or knowledge are sometimes said to be received by a leader(s) from God. This leader then informs the members. The Special Knowledge can be received through visions, dreams, or new interpretations of sacred scriptures such as the Bible. Indoctrination: The teachings of the group are repeatedly drilled into the members, but the indoctrination usually occurs around Special Knowledge.

Salvation: Salvation from the judgment of God is maintained through association and/or submission with the group, its authority, and/or its Special Knowledge.

Group Think: The group's coherence is maintained by the observance to policies handed down from those in authority. There is an internal enforcement of policies by members who reward proper behavior, and those who perform properly are rewarded with further inclusion and acceptance by the group.

Cognitive Dissonance: Avoidance of critical thinking and/or maintaining logically impossible beliefs and/or beliefs that are inconsistent with other beliefs held by the group. Avoidance of and/or denial of any facts that might contradict the group’s belief system.

Shunning: Those who do not keep in step with group policies are shunned and/or expelled.

Gender Roles: Control of gender roles and its definitions. Severe control of gender roles sometimes leads to sexual exploitation.

Appearance Standards: Often a common appearance is required and maintained. For instance, women might wear prairie dresses, and/or their hair in buns, and/or no makeup, and/or the men might all wear white short-sleeved shirts, and/or without beards, or all wear beards.