George Feigley was born in 1940 and established the Neo American Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1971. He taught that sexuality was a direct expression of divinity and that sexual activity was the highest human act. Law enforcement later concluded that these teachings were used to justify and enable the sexual abuse of children. Feigley… Continue reading

Munib Farhat headed a small cult in northern Israel for several years starting around 2005. For about a decade, Farhat built a community that eventually incorporated six families, comprising 11 parents and 25 children, from in and around the town of Majd al-Krum. He referred to himself using the Muslim title “Khalifa,” or caliph, although… Continue reading

The Ethical movement, also known as Ethical Culture or Ethical Humanism, was founded by Felix Adler, the son of a New York Reform Jewish rabbi, in 1876. Adler was initially expected to enter the rabbinate. During his studies at the University of Heidelberg, Adler was influenced by neo-Kantian philosophy, including the idea that the existence… Continue reading

Eligio Bishop was born in Harlem in 1982 and grew up in conditions he later described as unstable. According to his own accounts, he spent time in foster care where he reported experiencing abuse. As a teenager, he developed a juvenile record and was placed in detention facilities and a psychiatric ward. After a brief… Continue reading

Equinox was founded in New York City in 1991 as a local fitness center for urban professionals. The company expanded in the following years, and in 1999 Harvey Spevak assumed leadership as CEO. Under his direction, the brand positioned itself apart from traditional gyms, emphasizing exclusivity and promoting the idea of “the club” rather than… Continue reading

Dowism is a contemporary religious movement that combines elements of Taoism with concepts drawn from modern finance and market theory. Taking its name from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dowism’s central idea is that economic development functions as both a metaphor for spiritual growth and a measurable expression of human creativity. The historical reference point… Continue reading

Bryan Johnson was born in 1977, in Provo, Utah, and was raised in a Mormon household. He served a two-year mission in Ecuador before beginning a career in entrepreneurship. In 2007, he founded Braintree, a payment processing company that expanded rapidly under his leadership. In 2012, Braintree acquired Venmo, and in 2013, the combined company… Continue reading

Discordianism emerged from the U.S. counterculture of the 1960s as a parody religion, but later academic study has suggested that it functions as a “virtual religion” or a genuine spiritual movement for some adherents. It is centered on Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord and has been described as a religion, a new… Continue reading

Anthony Levandowski was born in Belgium in 1980 and moved to California in the mid-1990s. As a teenager, he developed websites for local businesses and engaged in small-scale commerce. In 1998, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study industrial engineering and operations research. During his freshman year, he founded an IT services… Continue reading

The DayLife Army was a high-control group that emerged in the early 2010s and used social media platforms to recruit young artists and musicians. Its development offers an example of how online subcultures, including the “Weird Facebook” scene, were used to build tightly controlled social organizations. The group was founded by Eben “Wiz-EL” Carlson and… Continue reading

The case of Camdan Jerrard Davis first gained public attention in late 2023, when it began circulating widely within online investigative communities. The narrative was introduced primarily through a series of videos published by YouTuber MamaMax. In these videos, MamaMax alleged that Davis was the leader of an organized cult that targeted children and young… Continue reading

The Cult of the Unknown Tongues was a local religious movement in eastern Kentucky that drew national attention in 1933 after the ritual killing of its founder’s mother. John Mills, born in 1899, was one of 14 children and left school after eighth grade. He worked as a farmer and later as a gas line… Continue reading

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity first introduced by American author H. P. Lovecraft in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” published in1928. The character is classified as a Great Old One and is central to the Lovecraftian cosmic horror tradition known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft described Cthulhu as a massive, green entity… Continue reading

The origins of CrossFit date to 1996, when former gymnast Greg Glassman began developing a high-intensity fitness approach that combined elements of gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, and calisthenics. Glassman had created his first signature workout at age 16. In 2000, he formally incorporated CrossFit, Inc. with Lauren Jenai. In 2001, the pair opened a physical gym… Continue reading

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a survivalist organization active during the 1970s and early 1980s. Its origins date to 1971, when James Ellison founded a Baptist congregation called the Zarephath-Horeb Community Church in Pontiac, Missouri. In 1976, Ellison purchased a 224-acre property along Bull Shoals Lake in Marion… Continue reading

The Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of the Living God Pillar & Ground of Truth, Inc. is a Black Hebrew religious organization founded in Harlem in 1919. The congregation teaches that people of Ethiopian descent are among the lost tribes of Israel and identifies King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba as ancestral figures. It… Continue reading

Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, also known as Nathan Chasing Horse, is a Sicangu Lakota actor and a subject of legal proceedings concerning multiple sexual offenses. He is also alleged to be the leader of a small sect called The Circle. Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and is… Continue reading

The Church of the SubGenius originated in the late 1970s as a parody religion critiquing belief systems including Christianity, New Age spirituality, and commercialism. The organization officially formed as the SubGenius Foundation and was co-founded by Ivan Stang (Douglas St. Clair Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox). Stang serves as a leader and publicist and… Continue reading

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), also known as Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of “pasta” and “Rastafarianism”) is a satirical faith commenting on religion and public policy. Its adherents describe it as “a real, legitimate religion, as much as any other.” The movement began in the United States in 2005 as a public response… Continue reading

Bernhardt “Ben” Klassen founded the Church of the Creator in 1973, later changing its name to the World Church of the Creator following litigation by another unrelated sect with the same name. It is also known as part of the Creativity Alliance, a grouping of atheistic white supremacist sects that promotes white separatism, anti-Christianity, antisemitism,… Continue reading

The Church of Sacrifice was a short-lived death cult that may not have actually existed. Clementine Barnabet, an African American woman who became lined to a series of unsolved axe murders in Louisiana and southeastern Texas, claimed in a confession to have been acting on the orders of such a sect, but its existence and… Continue reading

The Church of Euthanasia was launched in Boston in 1992 by Chris Korda, an artist and musician. Though Korda insisted that the church was a serious new religion, most aspects of its publicity and activities had overtones of performance art and it is unclear how sincere Korda was in this assertion. Korda was born in… Continue reading

The idea of a “Church of AI” has emerged as a cultural development in which people attribute religious or spiritual meaning to advanced artificial intelligence models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. The phenomenon reflects how these systems’ conversational fluency and emotional responsiveness can shape users’ beliefs, sometimes reinforcing existing psychological or spiritual… Continue reading

John C. Kim, known to followers as “Grandmaster ‘Iron’ Kim,” founded the martial arts organization Chung Moo Quan after emigrating from South Korea to the United States in the early 1970s. He opened his first school in Westmont, Illinois, in 1973. Over time, the organization expanded under several names, including Chung Moo Doe and Oom… Continue reading

Eleven members of the Chundawat family of the Burari neighborhood of Delhi died in a group suicide on July 1, 2018. The incident was later formally ruled by police to be motivated by a shared psychotic disorder (folie à deux), but the investigation uncovered a complex, cultlike belief system rooted in a spiritual delusion that… Continue reading