Recommended by Christy Walsh.
How would you feel if your next-door neighbor was in a cult? What if your son or daughter came home to inform you they had joined a “community of like-minded people”?
In 2004, the theologian Paul Olson interviewed 2,400 randomly selected Nebraskans about how comfortable they would feel if their neighbor joined a cult or a new Christian church. More than 80% of respondents said they’d feel uncomfortable about living next door to a cultist, compared with only 6.1% disapproving of a new Christian church. It’s easy to imagine how they’d take the news coming from their child.
Olson’s aim was to show what sociologists have argued for some time: The word “cult” is laden with negative connotations. It’s used to denigrate and slander belief systems or wheeled out whenever some strange, secretive group is brought to light.
The historian J. Gordon Melton has even argued that cults are defined by illegitimacy; what we call a cult is a cult only if we disapprove of it and believe it to be beyond “proper” religion. And he has a point.
Continue reading @ Big Think.
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