That’s Me in the Corner

If, like me, you’re obsessed with cults, you know that documentaries about cults usually include a voiceover explaining that the era in question was a very turbulent and uncertain time and that that’s why people sought stability in faith. The phrase “no atheists in foxholes” covers somewhat similar ground: i.e., in times of great fear and high mortality rates, people often turn to God and faith-based answers of some form or another. “Some scholars theorize that levels of religiosity and cultic affiliation tend to rise in proportion to the perceived uncertainty of an environment,” Zoë Heller writes in a 2021 New Yorker essay. “The less control we feel we have over our circumstances, the more likely we are to entrust our fates to a higher power.” Heller doesn’t fully buy into this argument, and I don’t either: after all, what times aren’t turbulent and uncertain? Recency bias is a hell of a drug, but I think it’s fair to say that the last decade of mass shootings and pandemics has been a bit stressful: as such, we ought to expect to see a subsequent rise in cults, reli…