this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

But what about the rich?!

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

I disagree. Religions seek to better each other and form an inclusive community. Cults seek to isolate and separate vulnerable people from their community.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (18 children)

Christianity can't really be a cult because it isn't centralized at all. There are definitely christian denominations with some cult like qualities, like the mormons and jehovah's witnesses, but christianity as a whole is definitely not a cult.

To be clear I'm definitely not saying christianity is good, it has as many problems as any other religion, it just isn't really a cult, if we apply the word cult so broadly it loses it's usefulness. If we say christianity as a whole is a cult, then we need a new word to refer to the actual individual groups within christianity that we would usually call cults. It doesn't really make sense to say that mormons and jehovah's witnesses are a single cult, so what would we call them? There's an important distinction to be made between a single group with strict control over its members and a general set of beliefs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Cult Is just the English version of the French word culte which means the public practice of worship, devotion, adoration, veneration or exaltation. A lieu de culte is any place of worship like a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a Babylonian temple. Le culte protestant is Protestantism, le culte du soleil means "sun worshipers," le culte de la performance means the veneration of productivity and competition, and a culte de la personnalité is the adoration of and obedience to a person - whether spiritual, political or entertainer.

This use of the word cult still makes the most sense in English, because we could say all of those French phrases in English and anyone would understand what they meant.

Therefore, by extension, all religions or sects that include devotion to a deity, person or idea are cults including Christianity as a whole and each of its denominations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Regardless of the etymology, that's clearly not how it's used in modern English. The person in the original post definitely didn't mean "It's giving theistic religion, friends"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It checks off all the boxes for being a cult. It being centralized isn't one of the requirements

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

where did you get that definition of a cult?

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