Last Updated on July 30, 2024 by Karl Thompson
Lighthouse Global is a current example of a New Religious Movement which seems to defy easy categorisation.
In the 1980s Roy Wallis suggested there were THREE types of New Religious Movement:
- World Rejecting Movements
- World Accommodating Movements
- World Affirming New Religious Movements.
Lighthouse Global has aspects of BOTH World Affirming and World Rejecting Movements. We can thus use this case study as a criticism of Wallis’ categories.
Lighthouse Global is also an interesting case study of the risks of getting involved with an NRM. It was the focus on a recent, year long, BBC investigation: A Very British Cult. Evidence in the documentary shows that people who join pay a fortune and get little back in return other than being subjected to coercive control by the founder.
What is Lighthouse Global?
According to the BBC investigation the key features of Lighthouse Global are as follows…..
Lighthouse Global was founded by one individual named Paul Waugh. He claims his mission is to empower people to realise their God given potential, God Willing.
The way this is achieved is through mentoring. If you get involved in Lighthouse Global at the first level (once you’ve burned through their free content) then you get set up with a mentor who discusses your life goals and helps you to identify barriers to achieving these goals. It’s basically life coaching.
Once you’ve finished the first level of courses then you get invited up to the next level with more senior mentors and access to Paul’s Zoom seminars. These can consist of several hours every day of listening to Paul Waugh speak.
Previously these weren’t religious, but recently Paul has apparently realised God is important and so the mentoring content is now heavily religious, involving bible study.
The BBC documentary has evidence from dozens of people who have been involved with Lighthouse and come out the other side. Some of the findings include…
Many people have paid tens of thousands of pounds for mentoring fees and all they got in return was having to listen to hours and hours of Paul Waugh ranting on Zoom calls. They received no or little help with reaching their own goals.
Paul Waugh is obsessed with convincing people their families are toxic and they need to cut them out of their lives (it’s Lighthouse or your family).
(Obviously most people’s families aren’t toxic, this is just Paul’s attempt to control people more).
Paul Waugh claims to have been a successful entrepreneur in South Africa, but there is no evidence of this at all. His only successful business is Lighthouse and he’s made more than a million from it.
The senior mentors in Lighthouse live in cramped housing conditions and do nothing but work for Lighthouse trying to get more people to pay thousands of pounds to join at the ‘higher levels’.
Lighthouse has recently been rebranded following the BBC documentary. It now claims that the BBC is lying and positions itself as taking on the biassed mainstream media.
However because of the dozens of people featuring in the documentary warning us about this organisation I personally would steer well clear of it!
Lighthouse – world affirming or world rejecting…?
Honestly it’s hard to pin this one down.
The organisation presents itself as a world affirming movement. It seems to offer services which clients pay for, initially it’s low commitment. It is also about maximising human potential.
However, if you go up the tiers it becomes more world rejecting. It turns out that Paul Waugh is quite critical of people in mainstream society and most personal development programmes, so this is rejecting mainstream values. He’s also the individual, charismatic leader, and he demands a lot of time and money commitment from those more involved.
So perhaps it’s a bit of both…?
Either way, by all means study this, but don’t get involved with it!
Relevance to A-level sociology
This is mainly relevant to the beliefs in society module. It is a great example of how you can’t easily categorise NRMS.