How Do I Know If Something Is A Cult?

When individuals discuss or analyze religion, a single common, but unfortunate word people bring up is often,‘cult’. When folks do not like religious or spiritual groups, it’s not uncommon to use the word ‘cult’, without comprehension the difference cults and legitimate organized religions. The reasons for this are clear when you come to fully grasp the contrasts between the two. In the eyes of Christian Protestant fundamentalists, if you are not following the concepts of the Christian faith strictly, you are a cult. Their original intention might have been to only demean the other ‘wrong’ Christian denominations, but by their narrow guidelines, all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and so on (nearly two thirds of the world’s people) are, in their eyes, cults. But, the problem goes even deeper than that. As you can guess, with so many arguments over things like the number of sacraments there are, means the Protestant fundamentalists do not consider ANY of the Eastern Orthodox faiths, nor the Roman Catholics to be biblical faithful either there are. By those standards, 93% of humanity are part of cults. To take it one point further, they also consider most other Christian Protestant groups to be out of compliance with biblical fidelity. By their definition, the only ones who aren’t in cults are them! Whenever other groups take a look at these extraordinarily strict doctrinal interpretations, they usually feel that anyone following them has lost all individualized thought, and must therefore belong to a cult. The iron is that all of these ‘cult followers’ regard their biblically strict, narrow-minded accusers as being the true cults. Taken together, that’s everybody. Everyone on the planet is in a cult — according to somebody! The Southern Baptist thinks Roman Catholicism to be a cult; the Vatican considers Southern Baptists to be a cult; et cetera. When you paint anything with such a broad brush, it is pointless; as Joey on ‘Friends’ said, “The point is Moo -- because who cares what a cow thinks? Bearing that in mind, how can we give that word more meaning? When the individuals making the definitions are invested in the outcome, the definition becomes slanted. They've got an agenda. What we need is someone else to provide us a neutral means to identify a cult — a person without a personal interest What we need is a neutral rule book -- A referee, of sorts. 1 such person could be called a ‘religion anthropologist’. An anthropologist of religion is a person who studies the field of religion looking at it from a scientific standpoint. Sometimes they have got a particular religion to which they adhere, and other times they don’t. This makes some members in the organized religions rather uncomfortable. If the anthropologist belongs to a religion — any religion — the others scream “bias! bias!”, which means that everything the anthropologist has to say has got to be wrong because they've got a personal bias.|If it happens that that individual is a member of a particular religion, everyone else shouts, ‘Bias! Bias! -- and ignores anything said. If, having said that, the anthropologist doesn’t take part in any particular religion, the others scream “atheist! atheist!”, so anything that the anthropologist says has got to be biased on the fact that they are simply opposed to all spiritual beliefs. But, the fears and accusations of the faithful aside, what do the anthropologists have to say about cults? Usually, the majority of them define a cult using a specific ‘five point system’. These five points are usually presented in the form of questions about the group. These are: One. Does the group possess a charismatic, powerful leader (or leaders) Two. Does it display a group mentality which denies individuality as well as personal, independent beliefs? Three. Does the group pressure members to end/steer clear of friends and relatives who do not belong? Four. Do they apply financial pressure or abuse for the welfare of the group, disregarding the personal expense of the adherent? Five. Does the group keep its members isolated from their surrounding community? The problem with this method is that it is still not entirely black and white. If you get five resounding yes’s, then it’s absolutely a cult. Obviously, if each of the answers is no, then it is absolutely NOT a cult. If it were only The difficulty arises when, as is the situation with the majority of groups, the answer is “yes” to some number of questions between those 2 extremes. You can almost may end up viewing this as a ‘sliding scale’, where the more yes responses you find, the more likely it is that the group under review really should be classified as being a cult any concrete answers, so the best we can do is really a type of sliding scale. As an example of the way this works, let’s sort out a couple of real-life situations. One Case Study of a Cult -- The A Genuine CULT: Rev. Jim Jones with the People’s Temple. Well over nine hundred men and women drank that Kool-Aide at Jonestown, Guyana in the year 1978. Take into consideration those ‘five questions’|Ask yourself those aforementioned 5 questions: (a). They had Jones as their leader – strong as well as charming. (b) they thought as a group and weren’t allowed to have any ideas to call their own. (c) Friends and relatives had been kept at arm’s length, along with not part of the equation regarding any church activities; (d) The members more than tithed, they basically gave all everything they owned to the church, and were in turn cared for by the church (the group had been avowedly communist); (e) When their isolation from the surrounding community started to break down, they moved to a distant spot inside the jungles of South America. They easily meet all 5 of criteria. The People’s Temple was a cult. A 2nd Case Study – Jehovah’s Witnesses. Founded during the late 1800s by Charles Taze Russell, these are the people that you are likely to come across when they knock on your door. Again, take into consideration the ‘five questions’: (a) They don’t have a particular leader, charismastic or otherwise. (b) They firmly believe that as a result of independent bible study, anyone will eventually come to the same conclusions that they have. (c) As a group, they make it a point to include their friends and relatives and tell them all about their beliefs. (d) Although member Witnesses give generously of their time and efforts for the church, there is no evidence of any financial abuse of their members for the sole benefit of the group;and, (e) Rather than keeping separate, it is their persistent LACK of separation which keeps them potentially at odds with their neighbors. Some might find them a bit pushy, but they're definitely NOT a cult. The bottom line is that before labeling a group as being a cult, certain sociological criteria, unconnected to their specific beliefs, (however ‘weird’ they may perhaps appear) have to be met. Whether cults are dangerous or not depends on which cult. Just because it is a cult, doesn’t mean it’s automatically dangerous, but any one or any thing that discourages independent thought, is in the end harmful.

This is an section of 1 lesson (of thirty) from the Master of Religious Philosophy course offered through the Universal Life Church Seminary. We have many courses available and each one carries with it an earned degree.