"They're nothing but a cult." We have all heard it and probably said it at some time about some group. The basic meaning of the word is not as bad as we think. It simply means a particular religious group as distinguished from other religious groups. Biblical scholars sometimes use the word "cultus" of the religious system of ancient Israel as distinguished from its pagan neighbors. The second meaning of the word is more sinister: a religious movement built around devotion to an individual and that individual's teachings.
In being careful what I say about people and what I accuse them of I'm especially careful about the word "cult". It carries a very sinister meaning in our culture at this moment of history. I have come to distinguish between two uses of the word. A movement can either be a sociological cult or a theological cult and some movements combine both features. By sociological I mean control over the lives of the members whether the group claims to be Christian or not. These groups place much more emphasis on control and conformity that on theological ideas. This is the most sinister meaning of the word cult and is the reason why I am careful to denote what I mean if I do use the word.
A cult in the theological sense claims to be truly Christian but redefines the essential concepts of what Jude in his short epistle called "the Faith once for all entrusted to the saints". (v. 3) The Apostle Paul defined a theological cult in II Corinthians 11:4 as some person or group that presents a "different Jesus, a different Spirit and a different Gospel" from what he and the other apostles presented. A theological cult may have good morals, not try to control its members and be outwardly very respectable. Mormonism comes to mind in this regard.
When Mitt Romney was running for President his campaign asked a prominent Christian organization to remove Mormonism from its list of cults. This would be justified if the group explained that they did not view Mormonism as a sociological cult but that its doctrines of God, Christ and other essentials were not the doctrines of historic Christianity. The word we use for this is heterodox as distinguished from orthodox which means "correct" or "true".
There is a form of the word 'cult' that you may not find in the dictionary but that I use regularly. That is the adjective cultish. This word can be used of a number of movements and groups in Christianity that are not at all cults in either of the two meanings I have given. If you hear a group saying in so many words, even if they do not use these exact words, "we are right and just about everyone else is wrong", then we can truthfully describe them, not as a cult, but cultish. This is one of the works of the flesh/sinful nature that Paul describes in Galatians 5:19-21. The last word in vs. 20 is factions (NIV). Paul used the word aireseis from which we derive the word heresy. But the word Paul used had the meaning of a sect, a party, a faction and a dissension. It neatly summed up the attitude that we alone are right and everyone else is either wrong or not quite as right as we are!
I have witnessed this attitude in several individuals and groups through the years. I am sure I even slipped into it at times in my younger days. This is what I mean by cultish. It is a poisonous attitude and will halt the gracious working of the Spirit of God in any church or denomination. Historically it is seen in movements that start out by declaring that all or nearly all of Christianity has "got it wrong" and "we are going to start over and get it right". This was how Mormonism started and at the same time it was the attitude in the movement that called (and still calls) itself The Restoration Movement. Both of these movements began by repudiating all the historic creeds of Christianity. One leader in the second movement even went over to the Mormons.
In its initial form this attitude does not claim that other groups are really not Christian at all. They instead feel that all other Christian groups have one or more significant errors and that they have corrected the errors. I have seen the attitude of cultishness in some leaders in smaller denominations who place a huge emphasis on secondary matters. Their favorite pronoun is "our", as in "our doctrinal distinctives".
In the last decade I have grown increasingly concerned about this attitude, sometimes in friends of mine, that promotes putting believers back under significant portions of the Law given through Moses. This includes Sabbath observance, the feasts, the dietary regulations, etc. But, significantly, this movement explains away the warning of Paul that once you start down this road you are "obligated to obey the whole Law." (Gal. 5:3) If you the reader have been caught up in this movement you should be deeply troubled by both the cultishness (not cult) of this movement and the absolutely atrocious handling of Scripture that explains away the most explicit teachings of the New Testament. I am confident you will receive this in the right spirit. "Now that faith has come we are no longer under the supervision of the Law." (Gal. 3:25)
I want to be clear that I am not speaking here of authentic Messianic Jews. They have a perfect liberty in Jesus the Messiah to adopt outward Jewish features as a way of witnessing to their fellow Jews. Nor am I speaking against non-Jewish believers who may adopt some of these outward characteristics to win their Jewish friends to Jesus the Messiah. I am speaking about those who, for example, deny the explicit New Testament teaching that the early believers met on the first day of the week because Jesus' resurrection had filled that day with new meaning. I am speaking about their misuse of quotations by Roman Catholic leaders who falsely boasted that the Church of Rome changed the day of worship. I am speaking about their refusal to recognize that the only one of the Ten Commandments that is not repeated in the New Testament epistles as binding on believers today is the Sabbath commandment.
I am speaking of those who say we are obligated to do those things that the Apostles in Acts 15 clearly stated we are not obligated to do. "Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?" (Acts 15:10)
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