What is a Cult?

[Praxeas]

Originally Posted by Socialite

#1 I understand there is a pejorative context today in the word, which can't all be blamed on mean, pesky evangelicals and fundamentalists. Or even those who have made "cult" an equivalent to "unorthodox." I think Jim Jones, David Koresh, Heavens Gate and the FLDS have done a good enough job at branding themselves.

We might all agree they are mind cults, or cults where in a good deal of mind control by a charismatic leader was used. Even then I don't need the word cult in order to describe such groups or warn people. If I said "they are a cult", what pops up into someone's mind when the word cult has no one specific meaning anymore or so many? If I said "well these pentecostals are a cult" those that don't know what was meant might think they are in a mind controlled group

#2 The post is a look inward. Instead of settling for a general name-calling, based on the definitions gives above, do we see this among us?

This is my point though. Who comes up with this stuff? Why is following a charismatic leader a bad thing? The term cult and it's so called definitions (there is no official source anymore) is so incredibly subjective. If we wanted to we can decide any one that believes in the Trinity is in a cult.

#3 No one has posited that Jesus and his followers were referred to in scripture (you said "translation") as a cult. In looking back, it could fit the description (and that's what was posted). Cults can be generally defined as people completely submissive to a man or woman, usually religious in nature. Jesus fit the bill. He breaks the bill with the ways today's traditional "cult-like" groups preserve themselves: fear, control and manipulation. We find none of that with Jesus.

Ok. Well you just said "some called". I had no idea you meant "outside the bible" or "today"

But looking back, it only fits one persons addition to the word cult. Where did you get this list? I have seen a dozen lists out there on the web and they don't all agree. My point is, well what I have been saying, the word cult has become so convoluted as to what it means.

People keep adding to the word, what a cult is. It's completely subject to the whims of whoever is making their list of things that defines a cult.

Using the dictionary, here is the first def
a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

Etymologically cultus from latin means "worship" without any bad connocation

1617, "worship," also "a particular form of worship," from Fr. culte, from L. cultus "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," pp. of colere "to till" (see colony). Rare after 17c.; revived mid-19c. with reference to ancient or primitive rituals. Meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829.

Where did you get this list from?

Here are the rest of the definitions from that same resource

an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.


3.the object of such devotion.



4.a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.



5.Sociology . a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.



6.a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.



7.the members of such a religion or sect.



8.any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.