Am a member of the church but haven't been active for a few years while sorting this all out.

I've noticed a lot of talk online about whether the LDS church is a "cult" based on modern definition(s).

My take is that if a religious group tells you not to read anything about it other than what is produced by that group, under threat of some penalty, even though mild,

that group is a cult.

Nothing else is needed in order to make that "definition" stick.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Thanks.

rbalboa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Tell me I'm wrong.
>
> Thanks.

You're not.
You're welcome.

It's the cult of Josef Smiff.
Of 'Disorganized Mormonism'.
Of paY, praY & obeY. FORCED.
Attendance. FORCED "beliefs".
FORCED "callings"/ FORCED labor!
Forced eternal HELLo-

If it walks - and TALKS - like a cult, it's a CULT.

100 billion in the bank and members clean toilets.

You pay your tithes rather than pay for you kid to go to college.

Leaders meet alone with your children and ask them if the parents are doing family prayer, etc.. (hey kid, your parents suck because they don't do family prayer - I say so because I am an authority).

One true church.......

Most correct book.....

Jesus is coming so be scared and pay up.......

It's a cult.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2020 05:26PM by delbertlstapley.

You are not wrong. When you are expected to get all of your "truth" from one sole source and one sole source only, the sole source is a cult. When you are expected to believe this one sole source over other credible information with no questions asked, you are dealing with a cult.

That is enough. That is all. The other definitions are nice, but just the above is enough. Trust me on this. No need to ask anyone else, haha.

Bingo, rbalboa, you've got it!

I would need to add, "secrets", like the secret temple rituals for dead people, the secret handshakes, the secret second anointings, and their secret financial records.

LOL, Done & Done!

Cults are led by charasmatic leaders that are worshiped like rock stars, and have a lot of strange rules.

Scientology with Ron Hubbard that sells alot of weird books, is one.
Then there is United House of Prayer for all People with SWEEEEEEEt Daddy Grace, that's another cult.

One of the most notorious cults is the one run by Louis Farrakhan (who is a black racist) called the Nation of Islam. This church is very troublesome (guns down people they don't like) and I'll go so far to say they are Un-American.

I'll go so far to say that YOU are Un-American.
Please inform us about the people Farrakhan has had murdered. Please include the police reports.

There are some people who have established themselves as authorities on cults. Unfortunately, opposing cults has also opened the door to people who have agendas that can be either political or personal.
People need ways to have strong beliefs and passions without being accused of being in a cult. There needs to be some way of reeling in the recent trend in people who use the term as an agenda weapon. Claiming people are in a cult simply because some particular person likes to spread his point of view and others like to agree with it isn't enough. There needs to be some significant amount of noticeable damage happening.

I see certain characteristics as being indispensable to cults. In other words, even if the belief system has many other characteristics of a cult, it just can't be a cult any more than a cake can be a cake if it has everything else but flour. Additionally, you need to have some kind of way of proving past anecdotal or biased methods that this is the case.

Most important factors to me:
The cult causes so much financial or time constraint on the victim that their life is seriously impacted. Someone doesn't like a Youtube podcaster, but the podcaster puts out 4 hours of video a week and implies he wants 1-2 hundred dollars a year from people making 50,000 a year income-hardly a cult. But an organization that goes on record saying you pay tithing before you even pay for your housing, food and medicine-sounds like a cult to me.

A cult should have some kind of two-way interaction whereby if the victim stops responding, the cult is able intimidate them. This is difficult, but not impossible in cases where the alleged cult doesn't even know the name of the so-called victim. My grampa kept sending money to a TV church to the extent of being broke even when the church had no way to contact him to coerce money. But usually you have to know your followers, have their addresses and phone numbers.

A cult typically enlists its members at a very early age whenever possible. A child in a cult environment is pressured to join if their parents are in the cult. If not, they are shunned. They may be forbid from exploring other options.

Still, I note that many of the things so-called cult specialists call cult characteristics actually apply to respected organizations. The Armed forces keeps you up all the time, makes sure you don't believe certain things (racism, anti-americanism or gang sympathizing), makes you work to death at times, has a rigid structure of leadership, dictates even the most trivial details of your life, etc. It should be possible to pursue an ideological passion without people calling you a cult victim.

Yes, it is a cult.

Leader worship is a hallmark of cults.

Being expected to stand up when they enter the room, then at the end to remain seated until the leader stands first…

Having pictures of them everywhere, like Big Brother, larger and placed more prominently than the person the cultist claims to worship (Jesus in this case)…

Going orgasmic over the leader's 95th birthday and falling over each other to get tickets…

Quoting them endlessly, or quoting them quoting each other endlessly, as if each banal utterance was the most profound statement ever spoken…

Buying their priestcraft-laden books to signal virtue…

Never criticizing them, even if the criticism is true…

It's a cult.

Even so, there are degrees of culty. Missions are cultier than general church activity, and the MTC experience is cultiest of all.

really, these are 'A Dime A Dozen'

The church you belong to is a religion. Other church’s besides your’s are cults.

What is a Theological Cult?
A cult is an egalitarian exclusionary organization which seeks to control its members in all aspects of their lives. The word is a deritive of the word culture which indicates a specific group. If you take the letters ure off the word culture what you have left is cult.
An additional definition is any group which has a pyramid type authoritarian leadership structure with all teaching and guidance coming from the person or persons at the top. The group will claim to be the only way to God; Nirvana; Paradise; Ultimate Reality; Full Potential, Way to Happiness etc, and will use thought reform or mind control techniques to gain control and keep their members.

This definition covers cults within all major world religions, along with those cults which have no OBVIOUS religious base such as commercial, educational and psychological cults. Others may de

I think that the belief system also needs a system to enforce what it tells you. Some kind of punishment if you don't comply. I think excommunication and disfellowship seem to fit that bill in religious cults. Simpy telling people what to think or do without any enforcement means might not be enough.

It occurs to me that cults are also rarely temporary things. I can go to school or college and get told what to think and punished for not agreeing by being given bad grades in addition to being told I'm wrong, but college ends.

I think just as important as telling people what a cult is, is also telling people what it isn't. Because as I've said elsewhere, organizations like the military for example have many of the most highly criticized characteristics that cults have. Many people find their purpose in life as in becoming highly devoted to a cause or philosophy and they think they ought to change the world to think like them. There is basically nothing wrong with trying to get people to think the way you do and believe what you do. Everybody does that when they talk. In particular, what are the actual outcomes of people who have been in a cult for a long time? Does the cult have a record of high amounts of people who leave and regret being in it? I do note that Mormonism has an extremely high turnover rate, and many who leave complain that they only joined because they didn't feel any other option would work for their situation-they either didn't know other options existed or they feared being shunned.