Kenyan authorities have reported that the death toll among followers of the Good News International Church, a Kenyan cult, has risen to 109.
Members of the cult believed that if they starved themselves, they would go to heaven.
Paul Mackenzie, the cult’s leader, was arrested on April 14, and 14 other cult members are in custody.
The incident is one of many recent deadly cult-related incidents.
Cults can be difficult to distinguish from other belief-based organizations, and cult members may be able to exercise some degree of volition.
Rational objections to flaws in cult doctrine or hypocrisies on the part of a cult leader, on the other hand, can have a powerful impact.
Some of the most infamous cults in history include the Peoples Temple, which led to the deaths of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana.
People’s Temple – Cyanide Mass Suicide
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was a 1954–1978 American new religious organization.
Reverend Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana, to spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality.
The Jonestown Massacre occurred on November 18, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, and was a mass murder-suicide. Members of the Peoples Temple cult, led by Jim Jones, committed suicide at his command.
The death toll surpassed 900, including 300 children aged 17 and under, making the incident one of the deadliest in American history.
Cult members were allegedly subjected to physical and emotional abuse, as well as forced labour, beatings, and drug use to control behaviour.
The incident occurred following a visit to the compound by Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate the cult. Jones decided to commit suicide after cult members attacked Ryan. Jones and over 900 cultists, including over 200 children, were discovered dead.
Jones made his congregation drink a cyanide-laced, grape-flavoured Flavor Aid concoction.
Some members refused to commit “revolutionary suicide,” and were injected with lethal doses of cyanide, as were infants, while others escaped through the jungle. This was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act.
The Aum Shinrikyo cult – sarin gas attack in Tokyo
Shoko Asahara founded the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo in the 1980s, proclaiming himself to be both Christ and the first “enlightened one” since Buddha.
In 1989, the group was granted official religious organization status in Japan after combining Hindu and Buddhist beliefs with elements of apocalyptic Christian prophecies.
Aum had tens of thousands of members worldwide at its peak. The group carried out a deadly nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 people and injuring thousands.
Later, Asahara and several of his followers were executed. Many countries consider Aum Shinrikyo to be a terrorist organization.
The Heaven’s Gate cult, which committed mass suicide in 1997
Heaven’s Gate was a religious organization founded in the United States in 1974 by Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite, also known as Ti and Do.
The group believed in UFOs and advocated extreme self-renunciation, even to the point of castration.
The group’s central belief was that by leaving their human bodies behind, followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings.
The group committed mass suicide in three waves on March 26, 1997, with 39 members taking poison.
The group believed they were ascending to a higher level of existence by leaving their human bodies behind. Authorities discovered the mass suicide at a mansion outside of San Diego.
The Branch Davidians which ended in a deadly standoff with the FBI.
The Branch Davidians were a religious sect that split off from the Seventh-Day Adventists in 193512.
Vernon Howell, who later changed his name to David Koresh, led the group, which believed in the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
The group made headlines in 1993 when the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) raided their Mount Carmel headquarters near Waco, Texas.
The raid triggered a shootout and a 51-day siege, culminating in a fire that killed 76 people, including Koresh and many of his followers3.
The incident has sparked much controversy and debate, with some survivors and others claiming that the FBI was to blame for the fire.
The Manson Family, which committed a series of murders in the late 1960s.
The Manson Family was a cult in California that was led by Charles Manson in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The group had about 100 members who led an unconventional lifestyle and frequently used drugs.
Manson allegedly taught his followers that he was a reincarnation of Jesus and that at the end of the world, they would all meet to judge humanity.
The Manson Family is notorious for carrying out several murders on Manson’s orders, including the 1969 murder of actress Sharon Tate and others.
The murders and subsequent trial drew widespread media attention and spawned numerous books, films, and other works of popular culture. Manson passed away in 2017 while serving a life sentence for murder.
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments
The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a religious movement founded in southwestern Uganda in 1989 by Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibweteere.
The group claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary and vowed to uphold the Ten Commandments and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The group’s emphasis on the Commandments was so strong that it resulted in the deaths of approximately 780 members in March 2000, which appeared to be a mass suicide at the time.
The central belief was that the world would end on January 1, 2000, and that in order to be right in God’s eyes, one must strictly follow the Ten Commandments.
Many members began to lose faith in the cult’s teachings after January 1, 2000 passed without an end to the world. As a result, the leaders predicted that the world would end in March and gathered more than 500 cult members inside a church.
The building caught fire shortly after the congregation began, killing everyone inside.
While police initially assumed the cult’s leaders were killed in the fire, they now believe two of its leaders, including Kibweteere, are still at large.
