As some of you may know I do have an axe to grind here.
There is a "faith" called Christian Science (not Scientology). The Church of Christian Science is owner operator of the "Christian Science Monitor" (a newspaper respected by many) and it has churchs and "reading rooms" around the country.
That "faith" should be outlawed and any politician who acknowledges his/her membership in that cult will receive all of the opposition I can muster...no matter their party affiliation.
Why? While Christian Science used to use heavy pressure to persuade its members not to seek medical treatment, and have a strong centralized authority with a penchant for demanding strict obedience, that hasn’t been the case for a long time (and at the time the anti-medical belief was first promulgated, medical science was so primitive that it wasn’t nearly as irrational a belief as it would be now).
I’ve never heard of Christian Science imposing any particular pressure on members to remain in active membership, and that’s the chief hallmark of a cult. I really don’t think it qualifies as a cult at all, unless you define any religion that teaches that it’s beliefs are more correct than any other religion as a “cult” — but then you’d be talking about most organized religions on the face of the earth.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that certain local Christian Science groups can’t develop a cultish approach, and it sounds as if you may have had experience with one of those. But I don’t think there’s any evidence to support condemning the entire organization as a cult. They have virtually no organized proselytizing, and as mentioned before no systematic attempts to retain members. As a result their numbers have dwindled tremendously. The Christian Science church in my area recently sold its large and valuable church building and property for lack of active membership, and just retained its tiny storefront reading room nearby.