By book definition, a cult is a spontaneously originated religious group focused on personal experience, in the sense that it is not a schism of a larger group but a completely new religious movement.
In common parlance, though, we use "New Religious Movement" for tiny, experience-oriented spontaneously arising religious groups that have a positive influence on their members, and "cult" for a group of people being led to make bad choices. In this sense, the group may be religious, political, or financial.
The gap between the two makes getting a single definition for serious discussion difficult.
So here's mine:
To qualify as a "cult" in a pejorative sense, 3 elements must be present:
- Recruitment - the group must actively encourage people to become involved
- Retention - the group must actively encourage people to remain involved
- Bad End - the group must as a natural result of its internal and/or external activities have a tendency to cause harm. This doesn't include bad luck or one or two members acting in bad faith, but the actual group dynamics causing the harm. It also applies to all harm: physical, mental, social, spiritual, sexual, and financial.
By this definition, all three criteria must be met. An abusive relationship may have cult-like retention factors, but it isn't a cult until it crosses the line into recruiting others. A con-artist may recruit people to bad end, but he's not running a cult until he starts grooming them for repeat business. And a group that recruits and retains people to good end is just a normally functioning group.
This is not a perfect definition, but it is a functional one, and it does do a decent job of generating room to discuss cult dynamics objectively and without regard to size or history. This can be important for discussing cult dynamics, because most cults aren't aware that they are one, and the dynamics that can create a cult can actually occur unwittingly, like in the next pattern we discuss, which I term the Maelstrom.
Have you checked out Issac Bonewits' "the Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame"?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
Sounds funny, but it actually works very well in determining if something is a cult or not.
Hi Ralmathon. We are actually very familiar with the ABCDEF and have used it on a number of occasions, both in a personal and professional context. It is something that we refer to on a frequent basis, and I probably should write a post pointing to it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think what J.T. was working towards here was a more concise definition. The ABCDEF is excellent at evaluating the dangers of a group and whether or not one is involved in a dangerous group, but it is rather long.
In any case, thanks for the tip. I promise a post on the ABCDEF very soon. Glad to have you.