So which church is a cult?

as long as they all have the roast I dont suppose it matters that much.
 
How do you know everyone on earth is only human? Doesnt the bible make reference that you may be etertaining angels and not know it? Just because you have not personally seen something do you really discount all of the witness accounts documented as to miracles and such?

Please, don't get all semantical on me. I'm a human, your a human, angels are not of this world. Yeah, I do discount them. My concern is that the documentation happened, when the documentation happened, and the concepts that are conveyed in the documentation exist, not whether the phenomenon conveyed in the documentation exist. In other words I don't really care whether Jesus existed or not, rather that the New Testament does, and that it mentions certain concepts like "reward or punishment in the next world contingent upon one's true or false deeds" for example, and that these concepts can be traced back to an earlier source.
 
Sigh... there are no Gods, nor is there a God. There is only the concept.

there might be "gods" beyond conception, unwise imo to state categorically that there aren't, because you can't know for sure. the facts of their existence or whether they exist lie beyond desire and the conclusive mind imo. to find out any truth surely one must drop conclusions. of course this depends also on how one defines a god, i would say a being who is beyond ego but then that is also a conclusion

Depends how you define cult... all organized religion is a cult because all religion utilizes group-think to control and delude people.

The only non-cults are those which say "don't believe, experiment and confirm".

i go along with this. for me anything that demands faith or acceptance without question.

also where there is the worship of a person(ality); when a person becomes more important than their words.
 
i would also add that everyone is a cult within themself, a church if you will, with themself as head priest, which imposes a certain moral code on themself and others, that is shaped by their desires, longings, cultural heritage or in opposition to it. so people might think they don't follow a person or external organised religion but they probably follow themself and their own personalised religion. and all cults are destructive. the reasons for cults exist where-ever there is ego, the archetypal koresh within the holographic human consciousness. the liberal is the fundamentalist.
 
there might be "gods" beyond conception, unwise imo to state categorically that there aren't, because you can't know for sure. the facts of their existence or whether they exist lie beyond desire and the conclusive mind imo. to find out any truth surely one must drop conclusions. of course this depends also on how one defines a god, i would say a being who is beyond ego but then that is also a conclusion

Exactly it depends on how you define Gods, and the only definition I'm concerned about is the first one that is most often recognized, and I would wager that though that concept may exist that the phenomenon conveyed in that concept can not be proven to exist.
 
The entire church-denomination-sect-cult verbiage began with the work of Weber, Troeltsch and Niebuhr (as set forth in H. R. Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism; New York: Holt, 1929). At that time (and up into the 1960s after the work of Yinger, Martin and Gustafson, see W. H. Swatos, Jr., "Church-Sect and Cult," Sociological Analysis 42(1981):17-26) the typology seemed very straightforward.

A church was a broad, historical based groups one is born into (like Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism or Anglicanism). Denominations were more recent groups split off from a church (like Baptists or Old Believers). Sects are still more recent and split off from denominations or other sects (like Branch Davidians in a 1955 schism from the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, who split from the Seventh Day Adventists in 1930, who split from the Millerists by 1865) or Hutterites, Amish, Evangelical Quakers, or Iglesia ni Christo.

The word sect itself was not (again at the time) pejorative, having come from the Latin secta (a feminine form of a variant past participle of the verb sequi, to follow). The English term goes back to the XIVth century aqnd by the time of Weber and all meant a determined way, mode, or manner of thought or belief. Usually with the difference that while was born into a church or denomination, one usually converted to a sect. It did not mean to sever or cut away from the mainstream (for instance Evangelical Quakers are much closer to mainstream religions than Gurneyite or Beanite Quakers).

(The term "cult" first appeared in English in 1617, derived from the French culte, meaning "worship" or "a particular form of worship" which in turn originated from the Latin word cultus meaning "care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated," as in the past participle of colere "to till the soil". In French, for example, sections in newspapers giving the schedule of worship at Catholic churches are headed Culte Catholique; the section giving the schedule of Protestant churches is headed culte réformé. The meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829.
Good history. One should be able to see that cult was not pejorative either to Weber et al.

It had become pejorative in North America (LDS was a “cult” early on). And the word came into wider use after the sixth or seventh burning (Christian religious revival) in the early 1900s as Vivekananda and Yogananda and Theosophy spread (all were “cults” to the new mainstream). From wiki a cult is

“By sociological typology, cults are, like sects, new religious groups. But, unlike sects, they can form without breaking off from another religious group, though this is by no means always the case. The characteristic that most distinguishes cults from sects is that they are not advocating a return to pure religion but rather the embracement of something new or something that has been completely lost or forgotten (e.g., lost scriptures or new prophecy). Cults are also much more likely to be led by charismatic leaders than are other religious groups and the charismatic leaders tend to be the individuals who bring forth the new or lost component that is the focal element of the cult.”

So by the 1960s (see Martin’s work) it had come to have that distinct United States echo throughout the world, the evolved term in the link to charismatic leaders, which follows the “devotion” use of 1829 ( see Rawson, Hugh, Wicked Words, Crown Publishers, 1989).

So the typology goes as follows: a religion or church is some long established group (like Judaism or Sanathana Dharma), a denomination is some smaller and more recent subdivision (like Protestantism or Reform Judaism), a sect is an even more recent (and usually much smaller group) like the Branch Davidians or Hutterites, and a cult is a sect with a charismatic leader or religious item (the Branch Davidians began as a sect, became a cult and are probably a cult still for those who continue to follow Koresh).

All of that being said… perhaps all religions begin as a cult.
 
I guess it is time to refer to Webster again:
Definition of CULT

1
: formal religious veneration : worship
2
: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3
: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4
: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <health cults>
5
a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad
b : the object of such devotion
c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion
Yup, it is all of us that have religious beliefs....

We are all cults. (there are just some that like to think of all the thousands of denominations and sects of the hundreds of beliefs...they are the only one that has it right....and they will write volumes that no one will read to prove it)
 
Not all religious organizations are cults. Cults are based on a leader with a toxic personality, brainwashing, manipulation, propaganda, no-questions loyalty, no questioning of doctrine, and vicious attacks on members who want to leave. I do not think your organization or my organization are guilty of any of these things.

Webster's definition is totally off-base.
 
Nah....the definition is changing societally...... we are using the word to condemn others beliefs. by definition we have the cult of the Jews, the cult of the Christians, the cult of the Hindus.....

Oxford agrees

cult

1A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object

1.1A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister

1.2A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing:
a cult of personality surrounding the leaders

1.3 [USUALLY AS MODIFIER] A person or thing that is popular or fashionable, especially among a particular section of society:

Origin

early 17th century (originally denoting homage paid to a divinity): from French culte or Latin cultus 'worship', from cult- 'inhabited, cultivated, worshiped', from the verb colere.
 
Oh the definition in my head is similar to yours...

Not the top def's of the dictionairies

and not our friend...everyone but me...
 
Oh the definition in my head is similar to yours...

Not the top def's of the dictionairies

and not our friend...everyone but me...

Everyone but nothead. God is one. YHWH Elohim is His name.

God's Son is Yehoshua. The nectar of his name is revealed.

This is Judaism defined in the New Covenant.
 
That is Christianity I believe...

As I understand it....Judaism doesn't believe in G!d having a son.... Judaism's messiah doesn't have to come back..it is a one trip solution.

Some Jews do become Christians....and some Christians become Jews... all quite interesting.
 
That is Christianity I believe...

As I understand it....Judaism doesn't believe in G!d having a son.... Judaism's messiah doesn't have to come back..it is a one trip solution.

Some Jews do become Christians....and some Christians become Jews... all quite interesting.

No literal "son." He compares his own sonship to the "sons of the most high" in Jn 10/Psalm 82.

This is a specific designation, of an especially annointed SON (singular).

But not a literal son, with like genes and OUSIA and such.

Why, why because that would make two Gods, or gods. Two elohim, yes but not of like kind.
 
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