Editor's Note: We get asked from time to time about our use of the word 'cult.' I understand people's unease and discomfort but there seems no honest alternative. Here is an article, originally published in 2015, that explains how we arrive at the term. I hope you find it helpful.
CULT!
It
seems such a pejorative word and certainly in ministry it is not
intended as a compliment. But is it an insult? Is its use an example
of disagreeing while being disagreeable? To listen to many there is
no excuse for using it, especially when what people see as sensible
alternatives are available such as sect, or the more acceptable “new
(or alternative) religious movement.” So is “cult” used out of
nothing more than spite? Or is there a legitimate
application in
ministry terms?
History
“Cult”
comes from the Latin, cultus,
from colore,
to cultivate or to worship. Colore
is
the same root for the Latin cultura,
from
which we get culture. One of many ways of defining culture is, “the
behaviours and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic,
or age group.” Culture
may be said to denote the system of values within a group, how a
society defines itself, identifies what is important to its members
and how they view the world. It teaches and evaluates the group’s
history, evolution and values and is essential to the understanding
of that society
The
U.S. educator and author Jacques Barzun said:
“A
culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in
which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus
perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural
element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other
strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string,
nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at
least.” (Jacques
Barzun (b. 1907), U.S. educator, author. “The Bugbear of
Relativism,” The Culture We Deserve, Wesleyan University
Press-1989)
The
word cult as we understand it originally meant a system of ritual
practice. It first appeared in the 17the century and meant homage
paid to a divinity. It was revived in the 19th century to describe
ancient or primitive rituals but gained its present usage in the
1930’s as a sociological classification to describe a deviant
religious group. It is by this definition that we describe groups as
cults.
Sociologists
distinguished between three types of religious behaviour: church,
sect and mystic. If “church” is the mainstream body of believers
a “sect” is a break-way from that body, where we get the idea of
sectarianism, it is division. Mysticism goes even further, putting
forward the idea of enlightenment, or mystical attainment regardless
of faith.
Later,
church was split into ecclesia and denomination and sect became sect
and cult. Cult then came to mean a deviant religious group “deriving
their inspiration from outside the predominant culture or
denomination.”
Are We Correctly Identifying Cults?
Sociologists
say that sects are products of religious schism and maintain a
continuity with traditional beliefs and practices while cults arise
spontaneously around novel beliefs and practices. It is, then, a
legitimate sociological category we are using when we use the term
cult and when we define a cult as a deviant religious group. Many of
the groups we scrutinise place themselves in the category of cult.
By
their own admission, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, do
not stand in the tradition of Christian culture and practice but
claim to be a distinct entity, a restoration of the original
church/truth lost in apostasy. 2.2 billion Christians today would not
agree that there was an apostasy and insist that their faith is the
faith of the earliest believers, maintaining a continuity with
traditional beliefs and practices.
Christianity
is “church” in the sociological definition, the mainstream body
of believers. Cults historically pride themselves in not belonging to
that body. This is not a particularly controversial point, although
it is key. If a group is not part of the body of believers contending
for the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude:6) it cannot
then be a Christian denomination.
There
are sects within Christianity but the cults insist they are not among
them. Cults typically claim to be the “only true church/believers
on the earth today” so they don’t fit the definition of mystic.
That leaves cult, a religious group that is deviating from the
mainstream body of believers, deriving their inspiration from outside
the predominant culture or denomination. Any other definition,
palatable as it may sound, would be misleading. It would also be as
unacceptable to most groups as is cult.
You
can find a good article on the issue of cults here.
Read
about The
Seven signs That You are in a Cult
Read
about The
Psychology of the Cult Experience
Comments
Sadly there exists cultic behaviour in mainstream churches so although technically the meaning is as stated current usage of the word cult includes the the meaning of "organisation where controlling or manipulative behaviour is prevalent".
This to my mind is by far the greater danger of the cults. A little bit of errant theology was never a great danger to a person (we've all got some of it lurking in our understanding of things) but the use of theological difference (either good or inherantly bad) to deprive people of the freedom which Christ came to bring is a real and present danger.