He Escaped a Pious Cult—Then Found College to Be a New One

Key points

Illiberal norms can arise wherever dissent is treated as moral deviance.

Us-versus-them thinking drives fear, guilt, and conformity.

Constant surveillance—divine or ideological—undermines autonomy.

When an ideology becomes coercive, it's like a cult. A cult-like culture is defined by method, not doctrine.

Author Ben Appel found that he didn’t need to live in a religious commune to experience cult dynamics. He only needed to go to college.

Appel grew up in the Lamb of God, a patriarchal Christian covenant community. As he recounts in his newly released memoir, Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic , members “pledge[d] fealty to a small group of self-appointed leaders,” men served as “coordinators,” women as “handmaids” (yes, that is what they were called), and w