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With respect to contemporary religious movements, anticult oppositional organizations have been of two kinds, religious and secular. The focus here is on secular organizations, which have been the primary source of opposition to groups they regard as "cults." Anticult groups began with a movement opposing the Children of God (now The Family), and gradually evolved into national organizations, most notably the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) and the American Family Foundation (AFF). Ultimately, CAN was connected to an illicit deprogramming event and was forced into bankruptcy in an ensuing civil suit. Opponents of CAN purchased its name and files, and reopened the organization with a staff and perspective more favorable to the religious movements CAN had condemned.

The religious anticult organizations formed long before the 1970s cult controversy erupted. They typically challenged sectarian Christian and non-Christian churches, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, and Christian Scientists. With the advent of the cult controversy, these organizations simply added the contemporary cohort of new religions to their lists of target cults. Religious anticult organizations, drawing their membership largely from the ranks of conservative denominational groups, conceive of themselves as engaged in spiritual warfare. Cults are defined principally in theological terms as groups that propagate doctrinal heresy. Secular anticult organizations anticult movement began as family-based groups concerned with the conversions of relatives to new religious movements. The battle in which secular anticultists are engaged, therefore, is for adherents' hearts and minds rather than for their souls. Secular anticultists are more politically active than their religious counterparts, attempting to ally with mental health professionals and government agencies to gain access to sanctioning power.

In its initial form, secular anticult ideology depicted cults as rapidly growing, unprecedented in their organization, tactics, and destructiveness, capable of dramatically altering individual beliefs and behaviors, and of creating long-term emotional damage to anyone subjected to them. The linchpin concepts in ACM ideology are "brainwashing" (alternatively, mind control, coercive persuasion, thought reform) and "cults." There are numerous, diverse models for both cults and brainwashing. However, brainwashing typically refers to a deliberate, potent program of indoctrination and control that reduces individual autonomy, voluntarism, and self-directedness. Cult typically refers to groups in which there is a dominant, authoritarian leader who claims total personal allegiance and a totalistic control structure that encapsulates members. Early versions of anticult ideology focused on the destructiveness of cults to family ties; later versions emphasize damage to individual selfhood, which has created a role for therapeutic treatment. . .

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