Is City Harvest Church a harmful or destructive Cult?
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Before we can determine whether City Harvest Church (CHC) is a “DANGEROUS Cult” , let’s elaborate on the word “Cult.
Leaving aside the Webster dictionary, in common language, a “Cult” is a movement, very often but not limited to religion, that supports a doctrine that deviates from the conventional line of thinking.
This pretty much includes all the spin-offs of the mainstream religions. Because of the pejorative/negative tone, organisations defined as “cultic” are trying to separate themselves from the word “cult” by using terms like “New Religion Movement” or simply by adding the word “Church”to their name.
These groups alternate from conventional beliefs and can appear eccentric, however, just because a group is branded "cultic", there is no reason to call them "harmful" or "destructive".
A cult becomes “destructive” or “harmful” because of what it does; not because of what the group believes in. If the behaviour of the group is causing harm to its members or the general public at large, they are referred to as a “harmful cult”. It is important to realize that this harm is not always physical in nature. The Psychological harm is hidden, and very often unknowingly carried by the victims for the rest of their lives.
So in order to determine whether a group is a harmful cult, we need to investigate its behaviour. Nobody makes the rational decision to join a "cult". If harmful groups would advertise as "cults" the recruitment would not fly. Nobody will rationally submit him/herself to harmful behaviour. It is therefore very unlikely that members of a cult are able to determine for themselves whether their behaviour, or the behaviour of its leaders is harmful.
Prof. Dr. Margaret Singer, clinical psychologist and former Professor of Psychology at the Berkeley University in California, counselled thousands of people affected by controversial groups often called "cults.
According to Margaret Singer, harmful cults are defined by three factors:
1. The origin of the group and role of the leader.
A charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power. Many cult leaders are narcissistic personalities needing to stand in the spotlight all the time. Their direct environment is acutely aware of mood changes which can turn into verbal aggression anytime They openly fantasize about visions that will change the course of human history. Some claims that they are in direct contact with God.
2. The power structure, or relationship between the leader[s] and the followers.
Imagine an inverted T. The leader stands alone at the top and the followers are all at the bottom". There is little if any accountability. The power structure is used to exploit the members financially, emotionally and/or physically. Physically does not always mean violence; working free of charge many hours per month is also physical abuse.
3. The use of a coordinated program of persuasion.
Coercive persuasion is used to destabilize a person's sense of self. The target is to get the person to drastically reinterpret his/her life's history and radically change his/her worldview and accept a new version of reality and causality. It aims to develop in the victim a dependence on the organization, and thereby turn the person into a deployable agent.
In the next posts I will provide more details on the topics. I will explain that not "loonies" or "weak" people, but normal intelligent people, like you and me, can fall for the cult trap, and expose the deceptive psychological tactics used by Kong Hee to deceive genuine and honest Christians.
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Why does a "church" need to hold its services 3 floors underground?
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Hi Ditzy,
thank you for your reaction.
I assume you are referring to the Jurung West location. The 3 floors underground are most likely the result of Building regulations. CHC has only one target - grow in numbers. More members means more cash. For this reason, CHC doors are open to anybody.
Once inside, be on your toes as camera's will record your presence, and face recognition software will identify you as a potentially new cash cow. Coercive persuasions starts the minute you walk in. As a new member, you will be asked to stand up. The people surrounding you will welcome you heartly with big smiles on their faces, like they have been your family forever. The same people no longer realize that in normal life, most likely, they would not even notice you. Indoctrination starts right here. This tactic is called "love bombing" and is used by most cults.
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In my view in term of behaviour, if anyone imposed you that you MUST said only "Excuse Me" for greeting him/herself or anything like give way etc instead of other greeting like "Sorry", "Hello", "Hi" etc, this kind people regardless is just an hooligan which is more dangerous than an cult. I am sure your meet this kind of people cos I have seem this "kind" many times. Talking of being gracefully society.
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Basiclly its not the church that is dangerous
its the "Person"leading the church..........................
depend on whether he serving the God of Serving his Pocket...............
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M the name,
Thank you for your responses.Both of you are correct. Both of you show a healthy reaction towards a violation of basic human right.
The questions I am trying to answer in the next posts:
How come CHC members are not able to recognize that a certain behaviour is imposed on them by what you call "a hooligan"?
CHC members once used to be normal students, wives, husbands, and now they accept behaviour which normal people would find offensive? How come they are not able to see the deceit?
The leader of a church only becomes dangerous when he/she is capable of changing the behaviour of people.
Demands appearing irrational and abnormal to common people are fully accepted by CHC members as normal, and even praiseworthy. Why?
And how does Kong Hee manage to get people to say sorry?
And why would somebody like Kong Hee want to change others people's behaviour?
The drive and roots of Kong Hee's behaviour could be narcissism. Narcissism in lay terms means that a person is totally absorbed in self. He is the center of his own universe and people are things to be used. In CHC everything evolves around Kong Hee. People are drilled to say the opposite but reality is different. All it takes is to open the website and be flooded with his pictures, calendar, etc...
Narcissism usually starts with a significant wound in childhood. Kong Hee himself reported he was a fat child, being bullied by his classmates, and a lack of physical presence of his father. Still today, the relationship between Kong Hee and his parents is higly tensed and dysfunctional. The other narcissists of our time that share this childhood trauma with Kong Hee are Adolf Hitler who was bullied as a child. Jim Jones of Heaven's Gate cult who eventually killed 900 of his followers with poison, and many more...and all managed to gather a signifant number of followers.
Next post will answer: Does one have to be crazy to follow a narcissist, or can it be that also normal citizens get trapped?
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Also thank you Hwaimeng...missed your name on the top :)
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Let me explain in detail of what I mean by "restriction" greeting of excuse me.(Nothing against Kong Hee of course). When I was serving NS, the officer mention to us that the correct way to greet him is "excuse me", when we greet him or "accidentially" said other words like "sorry" or so in second or third times, he would rebuked "I already told you the correct way is excuse me, didn't make me repeated again" as if we committed some sin or offence. Anyway I feel that it is just his personality of people MUST give in to his opinon, still we just carry on our life cos he is nothing like a wind pass over us and the only person who is going to bear his "personality" is his wife of course.
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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.
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@ M in the name:
I see - thanks for elaborating...
Regrettably not only his wife has to bear his temper. (Although this could have played its part in putting 15.000 miles between herself and her hubby by moving her career to the US). At least two of his close co-workers have testified that KH is agitated very easy, and does not hold back on using non-Christian words. Occassionally, Kong Hee would loaunch objects through the office when things are not done exactly the way King Kong Hee wants. Luckily for the target, Kong Hee's charisma is much better then his aiming skills. Of course both employees are now backlsiders, so anything they say is by CHC definition "lies".
One of the characteristics of narcisstic people is that they tend to lose their temper quickly if things do not go their way. In such, I am not surprised that KH is good at "rebuking".
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why they never join buddhism or chinese temple? They don't have this type of garbage leh.
Are their parents christians?
Christianity is not the traditional religion of chinese civilisation. Religious extremism or fanaticism is not part of the tradition of chinese civilisation. It is an alien tradition.
There are two public holidays for christainity in Singapore, I find that odd.
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People join CHC because CHC excells in providing one of the basic human needs. As humans we are all wired for social contact. Especially young people are vulnerable. Kong Hee, per his own testimony, was bullied as a child by his schoolmates. He understands perfectly how to fill this void in young people.A temple does not give the same level of excitement as the CHC "rock-concerts" and the multitude of seemingly like-minded "friends".
In itself, there is nothing wrong with bringing people together, when the intention is to benefits the participants or society at large. It becomes harmful when the group is used to benefit to gain of an individual such as Kong Hee's wealth, nicely cloaked as "wealth of the church". In CHC, nobody benefits from the wealth, except Kong Hee and his direct entourage.
During your first visit to CHC, you will gain "instant friends. Referred to above as "Love-bombing". Strangers will huge you. People want to talk to you. Everybody is showing you a happy face. This can be a very overwhelming experience. Especially for the younger, immature members of society.
However, after a while, the "love" becomes conditional on your performance, and your adherence to CHC's program. If you do not measure up to the standards such as the tithing and offering, you are at risk of losing your "instant" friends, just as quickly as you gained them.
Kong Hee and his compadres slowly get control by switching the love on and off depending on your loyalty. If you talk to ex CHC members, you will find that they struggle very much with the fact that seemingly close friendships disappear only because they are no longer part of CHC. If you talk to current CHC members, the find it normal that ex members are "forgotten". They should have stayed" or "If they would have stayed with CHC, they would not suffer today"-mentality. Another "so called" proof of how wonderful CHC is.
This control of the social environment, is one of the most effective tools in the mind control toolbox, applied by CHC. More about this later
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Originally posted by James_Tan_1983:
People join CHC because CHC excells in providing one of the basic human needs. As humans we are all wired for social contact.
I think your analysis is correct. They are there to be part of a group, not necessarily for religion.
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Thank you :)
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Originally posted by ditzy:
Why does a "church" need to hold its services 3 floors underground?
Space contraints lar.
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The title reminds me of the case of Central Christian Church against The New Paper and a chinese paper. lol
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Originally posted by BadzMaro:
The title reminds me of the case of Central Christian Church against The New Paper and a chinese paper. lol
Got such thing meh?
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Originally posted by charlize:
Got such thing meh?
Got. Apparently the case was on defamation: libel . There was a Christian magazine by the name of Impact. Impact published an article about two religious groups, the Army of God (AOG) and the Central Christian Church (CCC). The title was aptly named “AOG & CCC – Are they Cults?”.
Soon after, The New Paper and a chinese paper(Wan Bao) re-published the article but with a different title : '2 Cults Exposed' . Obviously CCC was not happy about the publication and successfully sued, and the Court of Appeal while acknowledging Impact's publication as a comment, held that The New Paper and the other chinese paper; thier publications when taken in context, sounded exactly like assertions of facts to the reasonable reader.
Hence the title prompted my memory.. digging deep down into my cerebral cortex. lol
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subjective therefore no comments