A cult is a group that deviates from a parent or host religion; that is, cults grow out of and deviate from a previously established religion. That is how Alan W. Gomes defines a cult in Unmasking the Cults. According to Gomes, A cult of Christianity is a group of people, which claiming to be Christian, embraces a particular doctrinal system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible. (7) Gomes rejects common sociological definitions and considers a group to be a cult solely on the basis of its ideological dissent from its mother religion. Other writers who seek to define and characterize cults often list various social and psychological criteria as opposed to differing religious doctrine. So this has raised some questions in my mind. What is a cult? How should it be defined? How does it differ from religion? Is a cult harmful and dangerous, and if so, is it more so than religion?
What is a Cult?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word cult is derived from the French word culte and the Latin word cultus, which means worship. In its earliest historical usage, the word cultus denoted a system or community of religious worship or ritual. There was no distinction made between religions and cults, and there was no negative connotation associated with the word cult. As is true with many words in our modern vernacular, this word has evolved new meanings.
According to some Christians, like Gomes, the word cult applies to groups who have branched off doctrinally from their own Christian religion. Does this doctrinal branching give just reason for labeling one group a cult and another a religion? I dont believe so. Throughout history religions have been evolving. Much like with biological evolution, a tree-like structure emerges as new religious species branch off from the old. Sometimes the old religions die out. Sometimes the old religions continue to evolve along side the new ones. But even the oldest religions had their start somewhere.
Was Christianity, during its inception, not seen as a small group of religious deviants by many of the Jews? Were early Christians not seen as religious fanatics and mocked for their outlandish beliefs by Jews and pagans? According to Gomes, many cults are fixated with eschatology (eschatology is the study of the end times, or last things) (Unmasking the Cults 39). Interestingly, in Celsus on the True Doctrine A Discourse Against the Christians, Joseph Hoffman states: "Christianity began as an apocalyptic movement of a specifically nondoctrinal sort. The earliest believers in Jesus were believers in a message of eschatological judgment Like other Jews of his generation, Jesus of Nazareth seems to have believed that history was moving toward catastrophe, toward a Day of the Lord when men would be called upon to answer for their sins." (6)
Christianity, like many new religions today, seems to have been an amalgamation of religious belief borrowed from preexisting Jewish and pagan religions. It failed to accept and embrace the traditional parent religions and rejected them along with the society of the times. Early Christians believed that the world was on the brink of catastrophe and that a divine, messianic savior was needed. Apocalyptic thinking and zealous proselytizing were characteristic of the new group. Their level of fanaticism grew to the point that they believed they must be willing to martyr themselves for their faith, and quite a few early Christians, including their nomadic, messianic leader, purportedly died for their cultus.
Like Christianity, Islam had humble beginnings as well. According to Howard Bloom in The Lucifer Principle A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, Mohammed began having visions after a mid-life crisis and then began claiming that he was Gods spokesperson on earth. His fellow Meccans believed that he had gone mad. They mocked him and even tried to kill him. In order to survive, he had to flee his own community and take up residence in another. Very few people believed his outlandish visions at first, but from his nonsensical claims grew another major world religion. (172, 173) How are new religions of the past few centuries any more unusual, extreme, or deviant than the founders of the worlds major religions?
Psychologists and sociologists define cults differently than Gomes. According to Andrew J. Pavlos in The Cult Experience, a cult can be recognized by these criteria:
1. Cults have living leaders and the cults religious doctrine is based on the leaders revelations and ideology.
2. A cults religious leader has absolute authority over his members.
3. Cults promise converts that through hard work and loyalty they can save humanity from sin and eventual destruction.
4. Cults require that members do demeaning work for the cause.
5. Cults promise everlasting salvation for faithful followers.
6. Converts must remove themselves from greater society - jobs, schools, families, and friends and devote full-time effort to the cult and its leader.
7. Cults indoctrinate members through elaborate and extreme personality, attitude, belief, and behavioral change techniques.
8. Cults discourage critical thinking and suppress alternative views of social reality.
9. Cults create strong feelings of dependency on the group and demand absolute obedience to cult norms or standards for behavior.
10. Cults practice religious rituals or meditative techniques that are psychologically unwholesome to their members. (4)
These criteria raise some points of criticism. Many of these could be applied to the worlds major religions. Most religions have living leaders and their doctrines are based upon their revelations and ideology. Additionally, dont most proselytizing religions teach their converts that through hard work and loyalty they can save mankind from sin and eventual destruction? In The True Believer Thoughts On the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer states in connection with all religious mass movements: "The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure. What a task confronts the American clergy laments an American divine preaching the good news of a Savior to people who for the most part have no real sense of sin. An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off ones individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation." (54)
Pavlos states that cult leaders have absolute authority over their members, but if this extreme depiction was true, no member could ever make a decision of his/her own without authorization from the leader. While it may be true that many religious and political leaders exert a high level of authority over their members, that level of authority is variant, and not absolute. Moreover, how many groups require members to remove themselves from greater society? Some groups may require a more separatist mentality from their members and seek to isolate them, either physically or mentally, from society more than others, but this is a characteristic of most religions to one degree or another. As J. Gordon Melton states in Why Cults Succeed where the Church Fails: "If you shift slightly from the issue of elitism to the related issue of exclusivism, a similar pattern emerges. You can place orthodox groups, sect groups, or cult groups on a gigantic exclusiveness-inclusiveness scale. Its a characteristic of all religious groups to fit on a spectrum from the separatist we-are-it churches to the kinds that seem to say, Everybody can come, no standards necessary. You have the same spectrum in cults." (10) Melton goes on to state that every major group has got a little bit of cosmic history in its world. Evangelical Christians really think theyre the center of creation. (10) I agree with Meltons view on this. While exclusivism may be strong in some new religious groups, its not in others. And while it may not be strong in some traditional religions, it is in others. Similarly, Pavloss claim that cults indoctrinate members through elaborate and extreme personality, attitude, belief, and behavioral change techniques is problematic for the same reason. Dont many people who convert to Christianity claim to have turned their life around after finding Jesus? Arent the same type of techniques often used on members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other self-help groups in order to help them make extreme changes in their personalities, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior? Isnt this generally seen as a good thing?
How about Pavloss claim that cults discourage critical thinking and suppress alternative views of social reality? This seems to be a characteristic of many religions and other groups, political or social, that practice a group-think mentality. As Eric Hoffer put it: "Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, to be free from freedom.... The same Russians who cringe and crawl before Stalins secret police displayed unsurpassed courage when facing singly or in a group the invading Nazis. The reason for this contrasting behavior is not that Stalins police are more ruthless than Hitlers armies, but that when facing Stalins police the Russian feels a mere individual while, when facing the Germans, he saw himself a member of a mighty race, possessed of a glorious past and even more glorious future." (The True Believer 31, 65) Thus, the tendency to suppress critical thinking and alternative views of reality is found in most mass movements, which can include any organized religion.
Another criticism I have of Pavloss criteria is his assertion that cults are unique in demanding absolute obedience to cult norms or standards of behavior. What is absolute obedience? Some groups may have strict rules and may enforce those rules more strongly than other groups, but all religious groups demand a certain amount of obedience to its norms and standards. Again, to quote Eric Hoffer: "All mass movements rank obedience with the highest virtues and put it on a level with faith: union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in the one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and the Roman Pontiff as to God Himself. Obedience is not only the first law of God, but also the first tenet of a revolutionary party and of fervent nationalism. Not to reason why is considered by all mass movements the mark of a strong and generous spirit." (The True Believer 117)
As far as religious rituals that are psychologically unwholesome go, this again could be applied to many religious groups. Rituals promote the group mentality. Meaning can be found in certain rituals only by members of that group, and they add to the cohesiveness of the group. By losing oneself in the group, an individual feels less responsible for his/her actions. Decisions are made for the group by the leaders and the members simply follow those decisions. Rituals are performed without thought and are done to keep the group united in thought and practice.
I have yet to read any criteria from theologians, sociologists, or psychologists that clearly distinguish a cult from a religion. Religious, political, and social groups of all sorts have fanatical believers. Some religious groups may generally be more fanatical than others, having more structure, unity, authoritarian leaders, and control over behavior. However, this is not unique to new religions or only a few groups. This is seen in many religious groups, and has been seen throughout history. Jews in the Old Testament were to be killed or cut off from the group if they did not adhere to the rules of the religion. Likewise, Christians in the NT were to abandon their families and follow Jesus, cutting off those who claimed to be Christian but did not follow the rules of Christianity. Christians throughout history and still today have been killed, imprisoned, silenced through various fear tactics, excommunicated, shunned, ostracized, and guilt tripped for not obeying the rules of their religion.
While the word cult did not have a negative connotation historically, it obviously does today. When people hear that someone they know has joined a cult they become concerned about the person, fearing for their well-being. Is it fair, then, to apply such a derogatory and prejudicial term to a religion simply because that religion is a new group who has separated doctrinally from its parent group? Is it fair to apply such a term to a group just because they tend to be stricter or more fanatical than other groups?
Alan Gomes thinks so. He states: "The word cult carries negative social connotations in many peoples minds Those who oppose the world cult say that it is used for the purpose of name calling Because of the unsavory associations connected with the word cult, some sociologists advocate abandoning the word in favor of more relativistic, value-neutral language On the other hand, I believe the word cult should be retained and used according to the preferred definition given in this book. The word cult has an established history of usage, long before the secular media or social sciences got hold of it. Note that historically cult has been a religious term, not a sociological or psychological one." (Unmasking the Cults 14, 15)
If Gomes is truly committed to preserving the historical meaning of the word cult, and wishes to apply it to any religious group that fits its definition despite the negative meaning the word has in our current society, surely he wont see a problem with non-orthodox Christians and non-Christians, especially Jews and pagans, applying the same term to his religion. If were going to retain only the historical definition of the word and if were going to be consistent, his religion is as much a cult as any of the new religions that he seeks to unmask in his book. Christianity itself was merely a branching on the tree of religious history, and the new religions of today are further branches. Doubtless many of the new religions of today will die out as many old ones have throughout history, but likely some of them will survive, and todays new religions will become tomorrows orthodox religions, who will then criticize the new religions of deviating from the old.
Many new religious and social groups develop in opposition to established, traditional religions and social institutions. Naturally, because they do not conform to the religious and social norms they are viewed negatively by those who do. By labeling them a cult, we are indeed prejudicing people against them, raising fear in their minds for no other reason than that they are different from us. This, of course, doesnt mean that there are not legitimate concerns about the beliefs, practices, and methods of some new religious groups. However, there is a tendency to generalize negatively about those who do not think like the masses and to assume that their differences make them dangerous.
Dr. Melton states: I have been very uncomfortable with the whole term cult and only use it with great reluctance Thus before I critique a group I need to find out what it really believes, what its side of the story on a point of controversy is To me the term cult is obsolete... (Why Cults Succeed 2, 3, 5). Religion itself is comprised of many different beliefs and experiences. So vast is the religious experience, there is no single working definition for it. The Academic American Encyclopedia states, Religion is a complex phenomenon, defying definition or summary. Almost as many theories of religion exist as there are authors on the subject. (137)
Conclusion
If we cant even precisely define what we mean by religion, why not look to understand as many different religious points of view and religious experiences as possible instead of narrowly considering one type of religion socially acceptable because of its traditional heritage while labeling new groups with derogatory, prejudicial terms? There have been and continue to be many different types of religions in the world. Within those religions there are many different types of people who join them. Some religions may generally be more liberal than others, but there may even be some members of the more liberal religions who practice their religion fanatically. There are other religions that are more fanatical in their beliefs, practices, and behaviors, but does that make them any less a religion than any other religious group? In my opinion: no. I agree with Dr. Melton when he states that the term cult should be obsolete. For the sake of promoting religious tolerance, just as with racial, national, and cultural tolerance, I think that no benefit comes from the use of this term. Religious groups, new and old, should be understood and described for what they are. If they seem to pose a legitimate threat to those who join, that can be stated without labeling them prejudicially.
Works Cited
American Heritage Dictionary. Boston, MA: Houghton/Mifflin, 1982.
Bloom, Howard. The Lucifer Principle A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995Gomes, Alan. Unmasking the Cults. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995.
Enroth, Ronald and J. Gordon Melton. Why Cults Succeed Where the Church Fails. Elgin, IL: Brethren, 1985.
Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.
Hoffmann, Joseph. Celcus On the True Doctrine A Discourse Against the Christians. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1987.
Pavlos, Andrew. The Cult Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Religion. Academic American Encyclopedia. 1996 ed.
Nad
What is a Cult?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word cult is derived from the French word culte and the Latin word cultus, which means worship. In its earliest historical usage, the word cultus denoted a system or community of religious worship or ritual. There was no distinction made between religions and cults, and there was no negative connotation associated with the word cult. As is true with many words in our modern vernacular, this word has evolved new meanings.
According to some Christians, like Gomes, the word cult applies to groups who have branched off doctrinally from their own Christian religion. Does this doctrinal branching give just reason for labeling one group a cult and another a religion? I dont believe so. Throughout history religions have been evolving. Much like with biological evolution, a tree-like structure emerges as new religious species branch off from the old. Sometimes the old religions die out. Sometimes the old religions continue to evolve along side the new ones. But even the oldest religions had their start somewhere.
Was Christianity, during its inception, not seen as a small group of religious deviants by many of the Jews? Were early Christians not seen as religious fanatics and mocked for their outlandish beliefs by Jews and pagans? According to Gomes, many cults are fixated with eschatology (eschatology is the study of the end times, or last things) (Unmasking the Cults 39). Interestingly, in Celsus on the True Doctrine A Discourse Against the Christians, Joseph Hoffman states: "Christianity began as an apocalyptic movement of a specifically nondoctrinal sort. The earliest believers in Jesus were believers in a message of eschatological judgment Like other Jews of his generation, Jesus of Nazareth seems to have believed that history was moving toward catastrophe, toward a Day of the Lord when men would be called upon to answer for their sins." (6)
Christianity, like many new religions today, seems to have been an amalgamation of religious belief borrowed from preexisting Jewish and pagan religions. It failed to accept and embrace the traditional parent religions and rejected them along with the society of the times. Early Christians believed that the world was on the brink of catastrophe and that a divine, messianic savior was needed. Apocalyptic thinking and zealous proselytizing were characteristic of the new group. Their level of fanaticism grew to the point that they believed they must be willing to martyr themselves for their faith, and quite a few early Christians, including their nomadic, messianic leader, purportedly died for their cultus.
Like Christianity, Islam had humble beginnings as well. According to Howard Bloom in The Lucifer Principle A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, Mohammed began having visions after a mid-life crisis and then began claiming that he was Gods spokesperson on earth. His fellow Meccans believed that he had gone mad. They mocked him and even tried to kill him. In order to survive, he had to flee his own community and take up residence in another. Very few people believed his outlandish visions at first, but from his nonsensical claims grew another major world religion. (172, 173) How are new religions of the past few centuries any more unusual, extreme, or deviant than the founders of the worlds major religions?
Psychologists and sociologists define cults differently than Gomes. According to Andrew J. Pavlos in The Cult Experience, a cult can be recognized by these criteria:
1. Cults have living leaders and the cults religious doctrine is based on the leaders revelations and ideology.
2. A cults religious leader has absolute authority over his members.
3. Cults promise converts that through hard work and loyalty they can save humanity from sin and eventual destruction.
4. Cults require that members do demeaning work for the cause.
5. Cults promise everlasting salvation for faithful followers.
6. Converts must remove themselves from greater society - jobs, schools, families, and friends and devote full-time effort to the cult and its leader.
7. Cults indoctrinate members through elaborate and extreme personality, attitude, belief, and behavioral change techniques.
8. Cults discourage critical thinking and suppress alternative views of social reality.
9. Cults create strong feelings of dependency on the group and demand absolute obedience to cult norms or standards for behavior.
10. Cults practice religious rituals or meditative techniques that are psychologically unwholesome to their members. (4)
These criteria raise some points of criticism. Many of these could be applied to the worlds major religions. Most religions have living leaders and their doctrines are based upon their revelations and ideology. Additionally, dont most proselytizing religions teach their converts that through hard work and loyalty they can save mankind from sin and eventual destruction? In The True Believer Thoughts On the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer states in connection with all religious mass movements: "The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure. What a task confronts the American clergy laments an American divine preaching the good news of a Savior to people who for the most part have no real sense of sin. An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off ones individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation." (54)
Pavlos states that cult leaders have absolute authority over their members, but if this extreme depiction was true, no member could ever make a decision of his/her own without authorization from the leader. While it may be true that many religious and political leaders exert a high level of authority over their members, that level of authority is variant, and not absolute. Moreover, how many groups require members to remove themselves from greater society? Some groups may require a more separatist mentality from their members and seek to isolate them, either physically or mentally, from society more than others, but this is a characteristic of most religions to one degree or another. As J. Gordon Melton states in Why Cults Succeed where the Church Fails: "If you shift slightly from the issue of elitism to the related issue of exclusivism, a similar pattern emerges. You can place orthodox groups, sect groups, or cult groups on a gigantic exclusiveness-inclusiveness scale. Its a characteristic of all religious groups to fit on a spectrum from the separatist we-are-it churches to the kinds that seem to say, Everybody can come, no standards necessary. You have the same spectrum in cults." (10) Melton goes on to state that every major group has got a little bit of cosmic history in its world. Evangelical Christians really think theyre the center of creation. (10) I agree with Meltons view on this. While exclusivism may be strong in some new religious groups, its not in others. And while it may not be strong in some traditional religions, it is in others. Similarly, Pavloss claim that cults indoctrinate members through elaborate and extreme personality, attitude, belief, and behavioral change techniques is problematic for the same reason. Dont many people who convert to Christianity claim to have turned their life around after finding Jesus? Arent the same type of techniques often used on members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other self-help groups in order to help them make extreme changes in their personalities, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior? Isnt this generally seen as a good thing?
How about Pavloss claim that cults discourage critical thinking and suppress alternative views of social reality? This seems to be a characteristic of many religions and other groups, political or social, that practice a group-think mentality. As Eric Hoffer put it: "Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, to be free from freedom.... The same Russians who cringe and crawl before Stalins secret police displayed unsurpassed courage when facing singly or in a group the invading Nazis. The reason for this contrasting behavior is not that Stalins police are more ruthless than Hitlers armies, but that when facing Stalins police the Russian feels a mere individual while, when facing the Germans, he saw himself a member of a mighty race, possessed of a glorious past and even more glorious future." (The True Believer 31, 65) Thus, the tendency to suppress critical thinking and alternative views of reality is found in most mass movements, which can include any organized religion.
Another criticism I have of Pavloss criteria is his assertion that cults are unique in demanding absolute obedience to cult norms or standards of behavior. What is absolute obedience? Some groups may have strict rules and may enforce those rules more strongly than other groups, but all religious groups demand a certain amount of obedience to its norms and standards. Again, to quote Eric Hoffer: "All mass movements rank obedience with the highest virtues and put it on a level with faith: union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in the one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and the Roman Pontiff as to God Himself. Obedience is not only the first law of God, but also the first tenet of a revolutionary party and of fervent nationalism. Not to reason why is considered by all mass movements the mark of a strong and generous spirit." (The True Believer 117)
As far as religious rituals that are psychologically unwholesome go, this again could be applied to many religious groups. Rituals promote the group mentality. Meaning can be found in certain rituals only by members of that group, and they add to the cohesiveness of the group. By losing oneself in the group, an individual feels less responsible for his/her actions. Decisions are made for the group by the leaders and the members simply follow those decisions. Rituals are performed without thought and are done to keep the group united in thought and practice.
I have yet to read any criteria from theologians, sociologists, or psychologists that clearly distinguish a cult from a religion. Religious, political, and social groups of all sorts have fanatical believers. Some religious groups may generally be more fanatical than others, having more structure, unity, authoritarian leaders, and control over behavior. However, this is not unique to new religions or only a few groups. This is seen in many religious groups, and has been seen throughout history. Jews in the Old Testament were to be killed or cut off from the group if they did not adhere to the rules of the religion. Likewise, Christians in the NT were to abandon their families and follow Jesus, cutting off those who claimed to be Christian but did not follow the rules of Christianity. Christians throughout history and still today have been killed, imprisoned, silenced through various fear tactics, excommunicated, shunned, ostracized, and guilt tripped for not obeying the rules of their religion.
While the word cult did not have a negative connotation historically, it obviously does today. When people hear that someone they know has joined a cult they become concerned about the person, fearing for their well-being. Is it fair, then, to apply such a derogatory and prejudicial term to a religion simply because that religion is a new group who has separated doctrinally from its parent group? Is it fair to apply such a term to a group just because they tend to be stricter or more fanatical than other groups?
Alan Gomes thinks so. He states: "The word cult carries negative social connotations in many peoples minds Those who oppose the world cult say that it is used for the purpose of name calling Because of the unsavory associations connected with the word cult, some sociologists advocate abandoning the word in favor of more relativistic, value-neutral language On the other hand, I believe the word cult should be retained and used according to the preferred definition given in this book. The word cult has an established history of usage, long before the secular media or social sciences got hold of it. Note that historically cult has been a religious term, not a sociological or psychological one." (Unmasking the Cults 14, 15)
If Gomes is truly committed to preserving the historical meaning of the word cult, and wishes to apply it to any religious group that fits its definition despite the negative meaning the word has in our current society, surely he wont see a problem with non-orthodox Christians and non-Christians, especially Jews and pagans, applying the same term to his religion. If were going to retain only the historical definition of the word and if were going to be consistent, his religion is as much a cult as any of the new religions that he seeks to unmask in his book. Christianity itself was merely a branching on the tree of religious history, and the new religions of today are further branches. Doubtless many of the new religions of today will die out as many old ones have throughout history, but likely some of them will survive, and todays new religions will become tomorrows orthodox religions, who will then criticize the new religions of deviating from the old.
Many new religious and social groups develop in opposition to established, traditional religions and social institutions. Naturally, because they do not conform to the religious and social norms they are viewed negatively by those who do. By labeling them a cult, we are indeed prejudicing people against them, raising fear in their minds for no other reason than that they are different from us. This, of course, doesnt mean that there are not legitimate concerns about the beliefs, practices, and methods of some new religious groups. However, there is a tendency to generalize negatively about those who do not think like the masses and to assume that their differences make them dangerous.
Dr. Melton states: I have been very uncomfortable with the whole term cult and only use it with great reluctance Thus before I critique a group I need to find out what it really believes, what its side of the story on a point of controversy is To me the term cult is obsolete... (Why Cults Succeed 2, 3, 5). Religion itself is comprised of many different beliefs and experiences. So vast is the religious experience, there is no single working definition for it. The Academic American Encyclopedia states, Religion is a complex phenomenon, defying definition or summary. Almost as many theories of religion exist as there are authors on the subject. (137)
Conclusion
If we cant even precisely define what we mean by religion, why not look to understand as many different religious points of view and religious experiences as possible instead of narrowly considering one type of religion socially acceptable because of its traditional heritage while labeling new groups with derogatory, prejudicial terms? There have been and continue to be many different types of religions in the world. Within those religions there are many different types of people who join them. Some religions may generally be more liberal than others, but there may even be some members of the more liberal religions who practice their religion fanatically. There are other religions that are more fanatical in their beliefs, practices, and behaviors, but does that make them any less a religion than any other religious group? In my opinion: no. I agree with Dr. Melton when he states that the term cult should be obsolete. For the sake of promoting religious tolerance, just as with racial, national, and cultural tolerance, I think that no benefit comes from the use of this term. Religious groups, new and old, should be understood and described for what they are. If they seem to pose a legitimate threat to those who join, that can be stated without labeling them prejudicially.
Works Cited
American Heritage Dictionary. Boston, MA: Houghton/Mifflin, 1982.
Bloom, Howard. The Lucifer Principle A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995Gomes, Alan. Unmasking the Cults. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995.
Enroth, Ronald and J. Gordon Melton. Why Cults Succeed Where the Church Fails. Elgin, IL: Brethren, 1985.
Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.
Hoffmann, Joseph. Celcus On the True Doctrine A Discourse Against the Christians. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1987.
Pavlos, Andrew. The Cult Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Religion. Academic American Encyclopedia. 1996 ed.
Nad
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
-George Bernard Shaw
-George Bernard Shaw
