When talking about "cults" you have to first define the term in a way that makes sense. There are a number of ways in which people use the word, some pejorative and some neutral. "You're in a damned cult!" is obviously pejorative. "They were in the cult of Mithras" is obviously neutral.
The way in which many people use "cult" is like what Pork Chop said: "A religion I don't like." However, thinking that this is necessarily a bad thing ignores the fact that most people have a pretty good reason for disliking certain religions, and ignores the fact that most people don't think of most religions as cults.
I think that the best working definition of "cult" is given by Steven Hassan and others like him. Hassan's two books Combatting Cult Mind Control (1988) and Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000) give very precise descriptions of what a cult is all about. Jehovah's Witnesses and a number of other well known religions fit the descriptions very well.
The definition involves the degree of control exercised by religious leaders, the degree to which the group attributes divine qualities to the leaders, the degree of isolation from others and exclusiveness to which a member must bend, the degree to which internal criticism is tolerated, the degree to which the group subscribes to whacky ideas, and so forth. Most people have no trouble pegging Moonies and Hare Krishnas as cults, according to these definitions. When people get educated about the JWs, they usually agree that JWs also fit Hassan's definition of a cult.
AlanF
