Am I involved in a Cult?

An unfortunate term, commonly used by folks whenever discussing and analyzing religion, has been the word, 'cult'. When folks don't like religious or spiritual groups, it is not uncommon to use the word 'cult', with no real knowledge of the difference cults and legitimate organized religions. The reasons behind this become clear when you comprehend the differences between the 2.

Christian Protestant fundamentalists define as a cult any group that does not strictly adhere to the Christian biblical concepts. Their original intention may likely have been to only belittle the additional wrong Christian denominations, but by their narrow guidelines, all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and so on (nearly two thirds of the planet's population) are, in their view, cults.

But, the problem goes even deeper than that. As you can guess, with so many disagreements on things like the number of sacraments there are, means the Protestant fundamentalists don't consider ANY of the Eastern Orthodox faiths, nor the Roman Catholics to be faithful to the bible either there are. That increases the 'cult membership' to roughly ninety three percent of humanity. To take it one point further, they also consider most other Christian Protestant groups to be out of compliance with biblical fidelity. So, for these folks, pretty much the only singular group of people on the planet who are NOT in a cult is them!

From the outside, the faithful followers of such strict doctrinal interpretations must clearly have lost their ability to have independent thought, so they MUST belong to a cult. The rest of the planet feels differently. They believe the doctrinally-strict finger-pointers are the actual cults. Taken together, that means everybody. Everyone in the world is belonging to a cult, according to somebody! The Baptists are pointing fingers at the Catholics who have been pointing fingers at the Protestants and everyone is pointing fingers at the Mormons.

Whenever you paint anything with such a broad brush, it's pointless; as Joey on Friends once said, The point is Moo -- because who cares what a cow thinks?

So, is there any way to redeem that word, so that it has some meaning of value? When the people making the definitions are invested in the outcome, the definition becomes slanted. They have an agenda. The thing we need is another person to offer us a neutral means to identify a cult someone with no personal interest in the decision. That person is the anthropologist of religion.

This individual (or group) studies religion looking from a scientific viewpoint. Sometimes they have got a particular religion to which they adhere, and other times not. This will make some members of the organized religions rather uncomfortable. If the anthropologist belongs to a religion any religion the other people scream "bias! bias!", which means that anything the anthropologist has to say has to be wrong because they have a personal bias.|If it happens that that individual belongs to a particular religion, everyone else shouts, Bias! Bias! -- then ignores anything said.

If, on the other hand, the anthropologist does not subscribe to any specific religion, they scream 'atheist! atheist!', and anything that the anthropologist has to say has to be biased on the fact that they're simply against all spiritual beliefs. Drama and accusation aside, how do these neutral parties define cults?

Essentially, most anthropologists use a five point system in determining whether or not a specific group religious or otherwise ought to be classified as being a cult. These five factors can be presented in the form of questions concerning the group.

These are:

1. Does the group have a charismatic, strong leader (or leaders)

2. Does it display a group mentality that denies individuality as well as personal, independent beliefs?

3. Is there a denial of intimacy by leaving out or alienating friends or relatives?

4. Do they pressure members to provide up money to the group, regardless of how it has an effect on that member?

Five. Does the group keep its members isolated from their surrounding community?

Even with this method, the problem is that it still isn't black and white. If all five questions are answered yes, then it easily qualifies as being a cult. If absolutely none of them of these questions are answered yes, then it's undoubtedly certain that the group is not a cult. If it were only The hard part is when, as is the situation with the majority of groups, the answer is 'yes' to some number of questions between those 2 extremes. you will seldom find any concrete answers, so the best we can do is actually a sort of sliding scale.

Let's examine some cases you may possibly already have heard about.

One Case Study of a Cult -- The People's Temple. This was the name of the church founded by the Reverend James Warren Jim Jones over nine hundred people who committed suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.

Consider these ˜5 questions:

(a). They followed Jones as their leader - strong and charismatic.

(b) they thought like a group and were not allowed to have any thoughts to call their own.

(c) they ended encouraged strongly to exclude their friends and relatives from every aspect of their lives and their church activities.

(d) they had been essentially forced to offer everything they had to the church, who took care of the necessities the church perceived them to have. And finally,

(e) When their separation from the surrounding community started to break down, they relocated to a remote area within the jungles of South America.

There may be no doubt that this group is a cult.

Next, let's take a look at the Joehovah's Witnesses. Founded in the late 1800s by Charles Taze Russell, these are the folks that you are likely to meet knocking on your door.

Again, consider the ˜five criteria:

(a) They have no powerful, charismatic leader (1 could argue that there had been, but although Russell certainly had been charismatic, he actually held little or no power over his followers);

(b) The basis of the Witnesses is Bible study, and even though they clearly have their version of the truth, they expect that independent thought and analysis -- not enforced 'group think' -- will draw you to the same conclusions they have found;

(c) Witnesses reach out to people they don't know and relatives to teach what they believe they've learned;

(d) While it is frequently true that Witnesses spend a great deal of their time and energy trying to convert others, there does not seem to be any financial pressure not more so than any other church encourages tithing.

(e) Rather than keeping separate, it's their persistent LACK of separation which keeps them potentially at odds with their neighbors.

Some may determine them to be kinda pushy, but they are definitely NOT a cult.

Bottom Line: Determining properly whether a group is actually a cult has nothing to do with their biblical interpretations, and needs to instead be made on sociological criteria unrelated to the spiritual ideals of the group. Whether cults are dangerous to others or not depends on the cult. Just because it's a cult, does not 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 one lesson (of 30) from the Master of Religious Philosophy course offered through the Universal Life Church Seminary. The Universal Life Church has many classes available and each one carries with it a degree at the end of the course.