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Any worship done outside of your parish is a cult.
Yeah, that basically says it all. Seriously, If you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps "the" religion; if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect; but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult. When someone labels another religion as a "cult," it usually says more about them than the group.
The word "cult" is a loaded term, used to describe unpopular minority religions.
When an organization is described as a "cult" as opposed to a religion, it says more about the speaker than it does about the organization.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
Yeah, that basically says it all. Seriously, If you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps "the" religion; if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect; but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult. When someone labels another religion as a "cult," it usually says more about them than the group.
Thaere are several cults of Christianity and Mormonism is one of them.
What is a cult of Christianity? Alan w Gomes defines it in his book titled “Unmasking the Cults”
In addition to the above, Mormonism also matches the following cult identifirers.
- They reject the Triunity/Trinity of the Godhead
- They do not believe in the finished work of Christ
- They have extra-biblical revelation
- They believe that they alone are saved or will be saved
- They believe that their founder is the messenger of God
Sorry, but your author is dead wrong, as are all who claim they worship in the "true" Christian manner, and no other worshipers within other sects of Christianity are "true Christians".
This is called the "No True Scotsman Fallacy".
A belief in, and active worship of, Jesus Christ denotes a Christian.
There are over a thousand Christian sects in North America alone. They ALL say, naturally, that their's is the only correct way. It doesn't matter what their other beliefs may be, it doesn't matter how they act. As long as they meet the above qualifier, they are, indeed, Christians.
This is an honest question. I don't want a list of cluts, but I am interested in what kinds of activities, beleifs, and emotions (?) constitutes a cult. In other words, what are the MINIMUM characteristics needed to have a cult?
So, for example, if a cult wears orange clothes and begs in airports, the fact that they wear orange is not a minimum characteristic of a cult. However, the fact that they all dress identically, and out of conformance with the rest of the culture could be.
Please be thoughful in helping me with this quandry, and do not be afraid to punctuate your thoughts with examples.
Thank you.
A cult, IMHO, can be explained as any theopolitical process in which only one figure, the person/people at the head of that religion, gains monetary and political power over, and through, their followers through a process of absolute, unquestioning, mandatory devotion.
This includes, but is not limited to, breaking ties with family and/or main stream society, signing one's possessions, including significant portions or ALL of one's life savings, over to the "church", and placing absolute authority over all believers within the hands of one individual, including authorizing who marries who.
This is an honest question. I don't want a list of cluts, but I am interested in what kinds of activities, beleifs, and emotions (?) constitutes a cult. In other words, what are the MINIMUM characteristics needed to have a cult?
This is elaborated more fully in the article www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usny&c=basics&id=2877, but an attenuated list is this:
1 Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s)
2 External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained
3 Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s)
4 Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members
5 Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught
6 Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members
7 Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden.
8 Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations
9 Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s)
10 Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s)
11 Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions
12 Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members
13 Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts.
14 Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group
15 Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies
16 Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s).
17 Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions
18 Hypocrisy: willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain.
In addition to the above, Mormonism also matches the following cult identifirers.
1. - They reject the Triunity/Trinity of the Godhead
2. - They do not believe in the finished work of Christ
3. - They have extra-biblical revelation
4. - They believe that they alone are saved or will be saved
5. - They believe that their founder is the messenger of God
The above points do not qualify any group as a "cult", they are just differences in denominational beliefs.
But just to clarify what Mormons actually believe regardless of what ignorant critics sometimes say we believe, here are a few comments as I see it, writing as always for myself, but from the perspective of 40 years of active mainstream membership in the LDS Church:
1. We believe that there are three members of the Godhead: God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. Those three, with God the Father at the head, have a common mission: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of all of God's children.
But we do not bow down to the dictates of the scholars who attended the 4th and 5th century Nicene councils. We reject the unbiblical notion those scholars created that somehow all three members of the Godhead are crammed mysteriously and incomprehensibly into one body or person.
Numerous huge threads on numerous discussion boards demonstrate that even though many church leaders and pastors demand that their members believe in what the Nicene scholars invented, there is a huge amount of grassroots controversy among sincere Christians about that confusing three in one doctrine.
2. Whatever that means. We do believe that the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled his mission on earth perfectly and that because of the Atonement that he worked out, every human being ever born or will be born on this planet will eventually enjoy immortality, i.e. be resurrected. We believe too that because of the Atonement, Jesus Christ gained the right to apply sufficient mercy to balance the scales of justice for imperfect beings and make possible for us eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ and to live a life of progression (if we so choose) in a beautiful heaven forever.
Latter-day Saints proclaim that the risen resurrected Jesus Christ lives today, and directs through living prophets and apostles his restored church on earth in our time.
3. Yes, Mormons do not limit themselves to the books scholars chose apparently from among many they could have chosen to include in what we call today the bible. We do not believe, as some church leaders and pastors teach their flocks, that God has abandoned His children on earth and that the bible is all He's ever going to give them. We believe that God continues to speak to individuals, and to living apostles and prophets. We also believe that a group of people were led by a prophet from Jerusalem to the Americas about 600 B.C. and that over the next one thousand years their descendents kept a record of God's dealings with them. That record is available today, it's called "The Book of Mormon: ANOTHER testament of Jesus Christ." (My emphasis.)
4. Actually Mormons are among the few Christian denominations that teach that all righteous people will go to heaven. We do believe though that certain earthly ordinances such as baptism must be carried out and freely accepted. God is just and merciful towards all of His children. In this the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, God has commissioned certain people to carry on that vital work of salvation in temples by proxy for deceased others. Each deceased person can then choose to accept or reject that ordinance. Mormons believe that during the coming Millennium such temples will "dot the earth."
5. Millions of faithful Mormons testify that Joseph Smith is God's chosen and authorized Prophet of the Restoration. Through him, by the appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ (two separate and distinct beings though they look alike) and numerous other heavenly beings including Moses, Elijah, Peter, James and John and many others, the pure doctrines taught by the first apostles were restored and the church was built once again as it was anciently, on a foundation of ongoing revelation and living apostles and prophets.
Does the above make Mormons a "cult" by today's scary definition of such?
This is an honest question. I don't want a list of cluts, but I am interested in what kinds of activities, beleifs, and emotions (?) constitutes a cult. In other words, what are the MINIMUM characteristics needed to have a cult?
So, for example, if a cult wears orange clothes and begs in airports, the fact that they wear orange is not a minimum characteristic of a cult. However, the fact that they all dress identically, and out of conformance with the rest of the culture could be.
Please be thoughful in helping me with this quandry, and do not be afraid to punctuate your thoughts with examples.
Wikipedia defines a cult as:
“A group that share a common religious practice. The word originally referred to any such religious community, but though the twentieth century it came to be applied particularly about newly created small religious groups. Eventually the word acquired negative connotations and became equated to novel religious groupings often felt to have outlandish beliefs by the larger society and often thought to "brainwash" their members to unquestioning loyalty to the cult leadership. The negative connotations were particularly embraced by Anti Cult Movements, movements seeking to inform the public about the perceived dangerous of the new religions they defined as cults, to counsel relatives to members of the movements, and at times to force cult members to give up their new religion by use of force.”
It sure sounds like all religions to me.
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