I have a theory related to the cult spectrum

ILoveTTATT2

Translating jwfacts into Spanish has made me critically analyze pretty much everything Paul has written. I would say Paul is right 90%+ of the time. Some things are just things that are outdated, on other occasions, things are partially right and just need to be tweaked.

Anyhow... One of the articles is "where else would I go"?

Since I am an atheist, ideally, for me, the answer would be "become at least agnostic, if not atheist, and lead an evidence-based life". But not everyone is ready to make that jump.

I have no problems in recommending Christianity to people, at least in the anglo world, there are plenty of healthy churches that provide what most people really are looking for when they go to church: a social environment where they worship God together.

That's all right, but the problem is this:

Jehovah's Witnesses's beliefs are very non-mainstream Christianity:

No trinity
No celebrating Christmas (as in, not celebrating Christ's birth)
No immortality of the soul
No hell
Afterlife/resurrection options are: Heaven/paradise on Earth forever / die forever
Cross is a false symbol, Jesus died on a "tree".

For many newly awakened exJW's who want to still have a religion, going to a church that teaches:

The trinity
Celebrating Christmas
The soul is immortal...

Etc...

Would be anathema.

But then here is the problem:

EVERY SINGLE KNOWN CHRISTIAN RELIGION THAT TEACHES NON-MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANITY IS A CULT, NOT BY THE RELIGIOUS CULT DEFINITION, BUT BY STEVEN HASSAN'S DEFINITION!

Christadelphians? Cult.
JW's? Cult
Mormons? Cult
SDA's? If they are strict, Cult.
Bible Students? Cult
Iglesia Ni Cristo? Cult
Two-By-Two's? Cult
Christian Scientists? Cult
Worldwide Church of God? Cult

On the other hand:

Typical Catholic? Healthy church (In that it does NOT have the level of control over people's lives such as a BITE model cult)
Typical Anglican? Healthy
Typical (insert mayor Christianity branch): in general, healthy.
Worldwide Church of God, now Grace International: Healthy, but now is mainstream Christian.

So my theory is:

Cults become cults in the BITE model sense because they are different and "persecuted". Once they become mainstream, they let go of the cult characteristics and become a healthy church, but at the cost of losing their "non-mainstream" views.

Could you think of any christian denomination that teaches non-mainstream stuff and is NOT a cult in the BITE model sense?

scratchme1010

Cults become cults in the BITE model sense because they are different and "persecuted". Once they become mainstream, they let go of the cult characteristics and become a healthy church, but at the cost of losing their "non-mainstream" views.

I'm not 100% sure that it's that cut and dry. First, I haven't heard of any high demand, controlling group, such as cults, that has made changes to become a mainstream religion. In fact, one of the characteristics of a cult is precisely that they choose to diverge from mainstream religion, and their "out of the ordinary" teachings attract people, which becomes their signature.

As an example, I don't think that the word "disfellowship" is going away any time soon from the WT, just like the word "defoo" will be retired from another cult I know uses that word.

Cults don't "lose their mainstream views", their non-traditional views is one of their core characteristics. Some organizations evolve into cults, but the opposite hasn't happened (as far as I know).

Could you think of any christian denomination that teaches non-mainstream stuff and is NOT a cult in the BITE model sense?

My sister in law and her husband are involved in this Christian organization that has had some non-traditional events, one of them in a theater. It was explained to me second hand, but as I understand, they asked people to take their shoes off and leave them in the theater and return to their homes barefoot. Not sure what the point of that was.

Non-traditional practices do exist in mainstream religious organizations. As per the BITE model, the difference is not the B, I,T or E words, but their modifiers which is one word, control. Many things can be done in the spirit of providing healthy spirituality to people, for as long as there's no intention of controlling, as you state, I see no reason to see them as unnecessary.

And of course, please keep in mind that all the things in the BITE model occur to people once in the cult. People don't submit themselves to control voluntarily (I mean, under normal conditions). People always neglect to consider why many people actually join those groups, which have everything to do with what they feel, not with what they know. When they join they know nothing, but feel something.

Also, I'd like to ask, if I may:

Christadelphians? Cult.
JW's? Cult
Mormons? Cult
SDA's? If they are strict, Cult.
Bible Students? Cult
Iglesia Ni Cristo? Cult
Two-By-Two's? Cult
Christian Scientists? Cult
Worldwide Church of God? Cult

Where does that come from?

ILoveTTATT2

I haven't heard of any high demand, controlling group, such as cults, that has made changes to become a mainstream religion.

Check out the Worldwide Church of God... they were a BITE model cult, and now Grace International, from what I have read, isn't... but they went from non-mainstream to mainstream.

steve2

EVERY SINGLE KNOWN CHRISTIAN RELIGION THAT TEACHES NON-MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANITY IS A CULT, NOT BY THE RELIGIOUS CULT DEFINITION, BUT BY STEVEN HASSAN'S DEFINITION!

Hmmm. I think you've built a tenuous case based on a misapplication of Steve Hassan's work: I don't think he has EVER based his definition of what constitutes a religious cult on one criterion alone; instead he uses several criteria. It might pay to go back to the source and re-read what he bases the word cult on.

BTW, there is a word (or label, if you like) that could be used when comparing a minority religious group's different teaching/beliefs to the mainstream: Heterodox.

Simon

The only difference between "religion" and "cult" is how many members it has.

Catholicism is still basically a cult that celebrates human sacrifice.

Finkelstein

I think a clearer distinction of what constitutes a religoius organization as being a cult would be how much effort that religoius order distances and separates itself from the rest of secular society.

On that premise the JWs could identify itself as being an extreme religious order, but there are actually more out there that could identified as being even more extreme.

ILoveTTATT2

We of all people should have it down by now: a cult fits the BITE model to a high degree. What does this mean? It has a high to very high control over people's lives. They shun ex members, it's difficult to leave, they discipline the members harshly, they don't allow members to read negative information about the group, etc.

Compare these two situations:

A JW says to his JW family he doesn't want to be a JW anymore. He repeats the same to the judicial committee. He is disfellowshipped and shunned.

A run-of-the-mill regular Catholic says he doesn't want to go to church anymore to his family. His family is dissapointed temporarily. Nothing else happens.

There's a world of difference, therefore, between a regular Catholic and a regular JW. The Catholic Church, when measured solely over the de facto control it has over people's lives, is a very healthy church, and one could argue, the most "orthodox" of all.

But... I mentioned a regular Catholic. It is NOT so for a member of the Opus Dei. The Opus Dei is like Catholics on Steroids... super fanatic Catholics. Become a Numerary or Supernumerary and then leave the Opus Dei, and YOU WILL BE SHUNNED by the Opus Dei members. Therefore, Opus Dei, even though they are super orthodox, are a cult in the BITE model.

So back to my point:

There are four quadrants in the spectrum: Orthodox Healthy, Orthodox Cult, Heterodox Healthy, Heterodox Cult.

There are plenty of Orthodox Healthy denominations. I can't think of a Heterodox denomination that isn't a cult by BITE model standards.

Can you think of any? If so, which one, and why??

ILoveTTATT2

This is my thinking of how various groups fall in the 4 quadrants:

shepherdless

Seems a reasonable theory to me.

OneEyedJoe

I think differentiation is probably more a symptom than a cause. Cults are lead by an authoritarian regime that typically seeks to inflate their sense of importance and control their followers. How are they to show that they're god's divine channel if not by changing doctrine somewhat? Religions that aren't cults probably have more mainstream views just because they don't seek to control their followers so there's less incentive to going out and inventing new doctrine - they just follow whatever is the norm and don't place nearly as much importance on it.

It also seems that you're unnecessarily restricting yourself to cults based on christianity. There are cults that don't have any doctrine that relates to christianity (therapy cults, pyramid/investing scheme cults, etc) but it's not that fact that makes them a cult because there are other groups that have a similar format/goal but are healthy (healthy therapy groups, normal investing clubs, etc).

Furthermore when a cult becomes mainstream and begins to shed some of its control (the early catholic church and even early christianity seem to have been cults in their day) the doctrine necessarily has to be viewed a little less stringently because the only way to prevent differences of opinion on doctrine is to exert cult-like control on followers. As the control fades the doctrine becomes fuzzier and drifts to more mainstream teachings that most everyone can agree on and avoids ones that are more contentious.

I have a theory related to the cult spectrum

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