Posted on 12/12/2007 9:57:40 AM PST by xzins
Some Key Definitions (multiple definitions to be added here)
CHURCH: a conventional religious organization SECT: a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices.
CULT: a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices.
Stark and Bainbridge, 1987: 124 1
In 1993 David Bromley and I edited a two-volume work entitled The Handbook of Cults and Sects in America. In our introductory essay to that volume we wrote as follows:
"We have chosen to use the concepts "cults" and "sects" in the title of this volume for two reasons. First, the concepts do have more or less precise meanings as employed by social scientists. Second, it has become abundantly clear that after nearly two decades, the concept new religious movements has virtually no recognition either in the mass media or the general public. By calling attention to the concepts as they are used by social scientists, we hope to begin the long process of educating the mass media and public regarding the non-pejorative meaning of these words."
The following are non-pejorative sociological terms to describe religious movements:
SECT: a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices.
CULT: a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices.
Sorry, left out the first term. Here’s the whole list.
CHURCH: a conventional religious organization
SECT: a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices.
CULT: a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices.
SO I guess the difference will be in how someone defines “traditional” and “novel”, and hat those entail.
They are descriptions of the ebb and flow of religions.
A “church” would be the parent body that is established.
A “cult” would be a breakaway group with “novel” ideas about the subjects generally accepted within the originating mother body.
A “sect” would be a “cult” that has survived over time, and has tended back in the direction of the “traditional” interpretations of the mother body AND has developed some “traditions” of its own.
That leaves out situations where traditionalists in a church break away from the original church to retain or return to an older set of values. For example, would parishes breaking away from the Episcopal church because of the church’s gallop to moonbattiness be considered a “cult”?
Reminds me of a discussion I read once about the difference between a dialect and an language.
Someone said once that a language is a dialect with an army and navy.
Maybe a church is a cult with a pension fund for its leadership (or something like that).
They don’t have novel beliefs and practices. If anything, THEY are the ones with the traditional beliefs and practices.
In the case of the ECUSA, one could argue that a clandestine “cultic” group infiltrated the administrative level of the denomination.
That was the position of a judge regarding a traditional group in the bahamas seeking to break away from such a non-traditional group that had taken over their hierarchy.
So what is a snake handling southern baptist?
Exactly. Survival over time is a key issue in a cult becoming a sect.
That is not the sociological definition.
Southern baptists don’t practice snake handling, so such a group within the S. Baptist denomination would be a cult.
They would be kicked out.
One should then choose a comet that is many decades away it would seem. Heaven's Gate ping.
I like this definition of the difference between a religion and a cult:
1) one cannot leave a cult without repurcussions
2) a cult employs classic brainwashing techniques like threats, lack of sleep, cutting off communications with outside world
2) religions have been around longer and have thus achieved “acceptance”
But it looks like a great book—I’ll look for it!
At what point does a “cult” become a “church” such as scientology or moonies.
Time, growth, and settling.
In reference to itself, the Latter Day Saints, for example, are now a church. (Really a religion of their own.)
In reference to the body from which they broke away, they are a sect. The same can be said of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the 7th Day Adventists (although they are slowly drifting back into traditional Christianity)
The Christians were considered a sect of Judaism for some time.
And then there is Peoples Temple, which pretended to be a Christian sect, and after Jonestown was called a cult, but was actually nothing more or less than a bunch of America-hating communists. . .
Fascinating story, the Peoples Temple story. I think many people my age (I’m Generation X) don’t know much about it. I can’t believe Jim Jones was on the San Francisco Housing Commission! Actually, come to think of it, I can believe it.
A religion is a cult that stands the test of time?
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