One of the larger questions that's been running throughout this thread are whether Chad/Lori/AVOW/etc. are sincere in their beliefs or have been wholly motivated by sex/money. I have no way to judge this in this particular case, but I generally try to assume people claiming religious faith are sincere until proven otherwise.
If we run with the sincerity assumption for the time being, the question immediately arises as to how Chad and Lori and like-minded others have been able to reconcile their non-orthodox beliefs (speaking in an LDS context) with the more mainstream LDS community in which much of their lives are spent, a community that emphasizes following clearly identified and authorized leaders?
The point I want to emphasize here has already been made and discussed, and it's not different from those motivating other types of "cultish" actions elsewhere, but I want to emphasize why LDS members may be particularly susceptible to it. This is the idea of "chosenness."
In a sense, elements of chosenness run throughout all of Christianity, but from my perspective the sense of chosenness is heightened within Mormonism. Very early on in Mormonism, a sense of literal belonging to Israelite tribes developed, supported by narratives such as the idea that only those who had "believing blood" would accept the LDS gospel. Later a sense of "adoption" into one of the twelve tribes replaced the strong belief in literal blood lineage. But the idea of many early Mormons, and one that still exists to some degree within mainstream Mormonism, is that God has put you here in your particular time/place context (particularly as a believer in the church) for a reason.
Early on, this sense of chosenness (and the possible conceit that comes through belief that one's own fate is more important to God than any other random human being) was easy to maintain, with relatively few members of the church and a second coming of Jesus expected within one's lifetime. But nearly 200 years (after the beginning of the church) and 16+ million members later, with no Second Coming having occurred, this sense of chosenness becomes harder to sustain. So, in my opinion, I think some church members seek other outlets to maintain a sense of chosenness. Thus we see, as the EIN video portrayed, it's some of the members who are "most Mormon" who are most susceptible to the idea that there might be additional knowledge out there available only to a relatively select few, or who can imagine themselves as participating in the vanguard of something new, big, and important.
(MOO) ... to be continued ...
