Westmont Professor to be Featured on A&E

Ron Enroth, Westmont sociology professor, has been interviewed for a television program which airs on A&E, Sunday, Dec. 2, at 5 p.m.

“Mind Control” profiles two of America’s most secretive doomsday Bible groups, Meade Ministries and The House of Yahweh, and exposes the methods used to indoctrinate and control its members with exclusive hidden camera footage taken inside a doomsday compound. A&E is on COX cable channel 56 in the local area.

Enroth is no stranger to some of the world’s most unusual religions. In fact, he’s appeared on numerous television and radio broadcasts, including “NBC Nightly News” and “Oprah” as an expert cult consultant.

Enroth penned “Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults” six months before the Jonestown massacre in 1978, the mass suicide that put the word “cult” on the map. He warned of other dangerous religions before the tragedies in Waco and with Heaven’s Gate. In 1982, he received the Leo J. Ryan Commemorative Award given annually to the individual who focuses public attention on the dangers of destructive cults.

His most recent book, “A Guide To New Religious Movements” goes beyond a theological debate and looks at the beliefs and appeal of new religions. Enroth limits his use of the word “cult,” instead choosing a less offensive term to have a more meaningful interaction and dialogue with believers of nontraditional religions.

Included in the book are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Baha’i, the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism and an interesting look at yoga and its roots in Hinduism. “A Guide to New Religious Movements” also looks into the spiritual power of neopaganism and the appeal of UFOs and New Age religion.