The entire fields of sociology, social psychology, and psychology use these terms in these ways.
They are clear and measurable and are not pejorative.
They are used to describe religious movements.
As mentioned, Christianity was once a Jewish cult/sect.
Do sociologists have a term for a group that uses the cover of religion to create a group closed against "outsiders", alienates members against "outsiders", and demands total loyalty of members to the group and its leaders?
Across the globe:
Religion: Your faith.
Cult/Sect: All the other faiths.
Unfortunately, the terms are only useful in an academic setting because the words are already defined in the public square with definitions which are far more derogatory.
Its like the term liberal. People who are liberal don’t want to use it because it means ‘tax and spend’ to the American public. Now while I tend to agree that they should be embarrassed to be liberals, it is now a toxic term and not just a definition of their beliefs and it is used by most people as a perjorative.
If you go to a mall and ask people to define the word ‘sect’ or ‘cult’, you will likely get 80+ percent responses which have negative or destructive meanings.
Up until the last decade, there was one prominent organization here in the US (and lots of other smaller ones) which exclusively attacked all religious groups in the country which weren’t more than 200 years old (and a couple which were). They used the word cult as the definition of religious groups which were dangerous, bizarre, unusual, evil or deserving of law enforcement intervention. And the media spent the last 30 years using the words sect and cult to attack every religious group which didn’t have lobbyists.
I’ve had a bunch of religious organizations as clients in the past who where on the ‘cult’ list who were targetted either for destruction or public alienation via the media. And the word ‘cult’ especially was basically like calling somebody ‘racist’. It was used as a way to immediately end the discussion about the credibility of any religious group just like Jesse Jackson uses ‘racist’ to end the discussion about whether some Republican is or isn’t right about his views on anything.
I realize that you are arguing that these words should be used in their original definitions and in the academic sense. But I’m arguing that the words are already defined by the public and its the religious equivalent to using the N word. If I call your religion a ‘cult’, your only response will be to try to explain how you aren’t in a cult. Its unfortunate but its a reality. And I’ve seen it happen not only to religions like the LDS, Scientology, Jehovahs Witnesses and Christian Scientists but also Opus Dei, Lubavitchers and Nazarenes.
And you are probably aware that there is a non-insignificant segment of the sociology community who consider religion essentially a mental illness (unless religion caused you to become more accepting of abortion, alternative lifestyles and larger welfare programs) and an even larger part of the psychological community treats religion like something which should be treated with psycho-active drugs. It seemed like the ‘good and evil’ and ‘right and wrong’ teachings of religion where the parts which piss them off the most.
But from a purely academic standard, I tend to think your definitions are about as spot on as anything I’ve ever seen.
I hope your book becomes widely known and used to accomplish that goal of educating the public about what has happened in religion in the last twenty years. Its good to have some people who are actually favorably disposed to religious people writing the textbooks instead of somebody writing it like a case study on aliens living amongst us.