What type of people join the City Harvest CULT?
Nobody is dumb enough to join a cult.
So on the surface, CHC cannot be distinguished from any other
Christian church or social club.
In CHC, new members are actively recruited. You will have the
odd person strolling into one of the services, but typically the
way this works in CHC: a family member, a school colleague or
a friendly neighbour will tell you about their great experiences
and invite you to join a CHC service or event. If CHC members
usually remember exactly who, and show eternal gratitude to the
person which “brought them to CHC”.
Since the early days, similar to any commercial organization,
the focus of Kong Hee has been on growth. This includes both growth
of number of members as well as money in the bank. Of course,
both are interrelated: more members means more money. The early CHC
followers spent huge amounts of time recruiting. This practice is
still on-going. Financial targets and results, as measures of
success, are projected during the service. A rewards scheme is in
place for each cell group. Each cell group leader, hence each
member is expected to bring in new recruits. True enough, the only
success CHC has to show is growth. On the individual level, early
personal expectations of the members have been forgotten or
replaced by more controllable expectations such as fake healings or
manipulated testimonials. The new expectation is united in
“we are the biggest church in Singapore” and we need to
grow.
Contrary to common belief, you will find very few “religious
nutcases”. This would be detrimental for the organisation. Kong Hee
will seek to recruit responsible citizens who can effectively serve
him. This is the main reason why CHC can manage to survive and
functioned efficiently despite a high turnover rate, public
disapproval and angry parents.
The majority of members in CHC are young people and students
around the age of 14-20. Yet, CHC members come from all walks of
life. Some are doctors, lawyers, professors, and high profile
celebrities. Even people like Madonna, Tom Cruise, John Travolta,
George Harrison,…got involved in cults. Every Singaporean will
remember Jack Neo and his multiple affairs. CHC went as far as
sending a pastor to support Jack Neo and his wife during the press
conference. One tends to forget one of Jack’s victims, who was also
a CHC member. She was instructed by Kong Hee to keep her mouth
shut. Only recently she is waking up, realizing that she has been
deceived.
So why do people join?
First mistake many of us will make is, and in itself is part of
the danger of the scheme is: “This cannot happen to me.”
Multiple studies with regards to cult recruitment indicate that
the majority of people ending-up joining a CHC-like cult were
recruited during a particularly stressful period. This could be the
stress associated with adolescence, leaving home for the first
time, a bad breakup, losing a job or the death of a loved one.
People undergoing significant stress can be more susceptible
when a person or group claims to have the answer to all of their
problems. We are all vulnerable at some point in our lives, and
will be susceptible to listening to people like Kong Hee who claim
to have all the answers. Not surprisingly, the bulk of CHC members
is between the age of 14-20 years as this group is more vulnerable
to heightened stress. It does raise the question what happened to
the older generation. The “backslider rate is one of the well-kept
secrets in CHC.
Potential members are not told the true nature or intentions of
CHC. And most existing members no longer have the rational to
question targets such as “Arise and Build”. During the first
visit to CHC, visitors are asked to stand up while being welcomed
by people with big smiles on their faces. The same people you would
choose to ignore when walking on Orchard road. In technical
psychology-terminology, this is referred to as “love-bombing”, a
technique applied by most known cults around the world.
Kong Hee portrays it as: We are Christians, look how generous
God is for us, we do a lot of work for the poor, etc… . If Kong Hee
would tell people the truth from day 1 being: My intention is to
use your money to buy businesses, to buy shopping malls, to buy
multiple condo’s, to buy expensive clothes and watches, to buy the
largest video-screen in Singapore and a top level video/audio
system… and we will spend 7 cents on the dollar to charity, … some
people might not have been so inclined to join.
By the time they “discover” the deceit, CHC members are no
longer capable to discern it as being deceptive. They lost all
reason and accept it as perfectly normal.
How did this process take place? What made perfectly sensible
and responsible Singaporeans lose all sense of reality?
It is not something magical. CHC uses well known and published
psychological techniques to get its members to stay, commit
themselves and take part in what may be psychologically harmful
activities. The sum of these techniques constitutes what some
people call "mind control." It's also known as "thought reform,"
"brainwashing" and "coercive persuasion," and it involves the
systematic breakdown of a person's sense of self.
The mere fact that CHC is resorting to these deceptive message,
which I will prove they are using, would set off alarm bells in any
rational thinking person.
More on this topic in my next post.
