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What is considered a religion sect or cult?

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• What is considered a religion sect or cult?

• What is considered a religion sect or cult?

  badlands > May 4th, 2017, 08:27 PM

  Are there really differences?

• What is considered a religion sect or cult?

  rkomar > May 5th, 2017, 12:25 AM

  These are just my impressions, but I would say the differences are organizational. A religion is a mainstream organization that lasts for several generations of members. A sect is a part of a religious body that isolates itself from the rest. A cult is a new religious organization.

• What is considered a religion sect or cult?

  august > May 5th, 2017, 09:57 AM

  Fortunately, we've developed a system over the last several thousand years where wide men and women gather and compile information on usage and definitions. From Merriam-Webster:
  
  religion:
  
  

  Quote: 1 b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
  (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
  
  2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
  
  4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

  
  sect:
  
  

  Quote:1a : a dissenting or schismatic religious body; especially : one regarded as extreme or heretical
  b : a religious denomination
  
  3a : a group adhering to a distinctive doctrine or to a leader

  
  cult:
  
  

  Quote:1: formal religious veneration : worship
  
  2: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents the cult of Apollo
  
  3: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (see spurious 2); also : its body of adherents the voodoo cult a satanic cult

• What is considered a religion sect or cult?

  Michael > May 6th, 2017, 09:42 PM

  I think a religion is just a well-defined system of worship and ritual, and it's not a religion because of how many people follow its teachings. A sect is, as I understand it, a splinter group from a larger religion. They are not quite their own religion but they bring their own peculiarities to the religious teachings.
  
  A cult is more about a single-minded pursuit of some specific doctrine in my opinion. A cult tends to ignore other aspects of religious teachings. Modern cults are led by people with strong personalities and they seem to use their cultic doctrines to bind their followers to them. Were all cults like that or just the modern ones? I don't know. We probably have changed the way the word is used over the past 40-60 years. I think some historians have compared Hitler's Nazi movement to cults. He didn't start Nazism but he moved in and took it over.

• RE: What is considered a religion sect or cult?

  Morthoron > December 26th, 2020, 08:28 PM

  A religion is a successful cult that has proselytized enough followers to wield significant power in a given society. For instance, Christianity is a good example of a Judean cult that eventually gained control of the Roman Empire via conversion of upper class Romans and finally the Emperor's family.
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