Will future generations shudder at the backwardness of cultures that permitted cults to flourish, and not comprehend how this could have happened?
Historians are trained to set events in their historical context and taught to refrain from seeing them though contemporary eyes. Russell was born in 1852 and seven years later Darwin published Origin of Species. Karl Marx was publishing his works at the same time. It was the end of the industrial revolution and as the world became more secularised and industrialised those who were afraid of change rushed headlong into the new religions and cults.
In the last 150 years or so we have seen the space race, the development of weapons of mass destruction, huge steps forward in technology and medicine and the world shrinking because of ICT and air travel.
Cults may be seen in the future as the backlash because of our getting ahead of ourselves in knowledge and causing pollution, nuclear waste, global warming, depletion of fossil fuels and destroying the ozone layer. When we are afraid we rush to primitive beliefs for safety.
Will we be remembered? We might be a line in the paragraph about the people who left and were shunned by the cults. What the history books won't say is that those people went off and made a life for themselves, with autonomy and ethical living outside of a structured religion. Perhaps a tutor will look up at her students and say, after growing up in a cult what brave souls they were!