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History and Religion
The Marks of a “Cult”

The Marks of a “Cult”

Last updated on: October 2, 2024 at 4:06 pm by Dan Peterson

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The Marks of a “Cult” 2024-10-02T16:06:28-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Patriarch Bartholomew, the 270th Archbishop of Constantinople and “primus inter pares” in the Eastern Orthodox Church (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Hindu monk, preaches in 2021. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

For a very limited time — up until 10 October 2024 — its creators are offering you the opportunity to view the 2021 Interpreter film Witnesses at no cost. If you go to the official website of Six Days in August and wait for just a few seconds, a button will appear that will enable you to learn how to avail yourself of this limited opening. Enjoy!

Pope Francis greets a Druze cleric named Kasem Bader. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

With Mark Goodman, the writer and director of Six Days in August, I recorded a brief interview last night with KSL’s Martin Tanner for his Religion Today program on that radio station. The interview will air on Sunday, but it will apparently also go up as a KSL-Radio podcast sometime on Friday.

Pilgrims at the Hajj leaving Arafat ifor Muzdalifah at sunset (Wikimedia Commons public domain image_

And I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t take this opportunity to remind you, yet again, that your final chance to catch Six Days in August before its official 10 October release into theaters will occur on Monday, 7 October 2024 — that’s this next Monday, the Monday immediately following General Conference — in Cinemark theaters located in Salt Lake City, American Fork, Draper, Farmington, Midvale/Sandy, Ogden, Orem, Provo, and West Jordan: Six Days in August – Early Access

A Haredi Jew rides his bicycle down King George Street in Jerusalem. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the assertion of an anti-Mormon — currently an atheist, if I’m not mistaken — that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is “one hundred percent” a “cult.” This caught my attention for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that I’ve actually published on the pejorative use of the word cult.

What makes the Church a “cult,” in this critic’s view? It is the fact, he says, that the Church tries to control so much of one’s life. He specifically mentions dating and sex and reproduction and relationships, food, underwear, personal appearance, finances, speech, and “mannerism.” But let’s look at some of those categories for a moment or two.

A 1938 WPA poster depicting an Amish family from the Lancaster County area (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is scarcely unique among religious movements in attempting to guide its adherents in practices of courtship and relationships and sexual behavior and reproduction. The Roman Catholic Church, with its celibate priests and nuns and its abbeys and monasteries and its rules regarding contraception and abortion, certainly has something to say on the subject. So do Old Order Amish and Orthodox Jews. Do Orthodox Jews favor marriage with goyim? Do they endorse extramarital and premarital sexual activity? Do the Amish typically intermarry with the “English” who live around them? What is the Amish dating scene like? How’s the nightlife in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania? And then there are all those Buddhist and other celibates, as well. Does Islam have any rules on marriage, I wonder?

I wonder whether there are any rules regulating the dress of these Benedictine nuns? Is it mere coincidence that they seem to be dressed alike? (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

The critic mentions the Church’s attitude toward “food” — wanting to be helpful, we should probably specify “drink,” since that’s the most obvious provision in the Word of Wisdom — as one of the factors that demonstrate it to be “one hundred percent” a “cult.” Perhaps he’s unaware of Judaism’s kosher rules and of Islam’s stipulations about what is and is not ḥalāl, stipulations that most obviously pertain to food but that also cover drink . . . and finance, clothing, and behavior. Has he enjoyed a ham sandwich with his local rabbi lately? Invited his neighborhood imam to a wine-tasting party? Treated his Muslim co-worker to a BLT sandwich? Enjoyed beef stroganoff with his devout Hindu friend? Savored food from Chick-fil-A with a pious Seventh-Day Adventist or an observant Jain?

Black is a really fashionable color among Iranian women these days — so much so, that one might almost imagine some sort of rule that prescribes it. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

One of the things that make the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “one hundred per cent” a “cult,” says our critic, is that it suggests rules regarding one’s appearance. Apparently, neither Catholicism nor Islam nor Judaism nor any other religious tradition does such a thing. Religious vestments are merely mythical beasts, as are monastic robes and yarmulkes and clerical collars and hijabs and veils and kufis. It’s purely coincidental that Muslim men making the hajj are almost all wearing two white unhemmed sheets. Thus, Latter-day Saints are unique in having religious rules about dress and about modesty. In fact, there is — and this, he thinks, is surely another marker of a “cult” — even a special Latter-day Saint kind of underwear. He is evidently unaware of the tallit and the tzitzit and, especially, of the tallit katan. He may not be aware of the scapular or the yagnopavitam or the kachera or the cilice.

Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth (and current) Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Our critic mentions the Church’s teachings and practices regarding “finances” as a clear sign that it’s absolutely a “cult.” It seems that other religious movements don’t require money and therefore don’t request donations. The practice of “tithing” is apparently unique to the Church, and such notions as passing collection plates and gathering “Peter’s Pence” and offering zakat are, once again, purely mythological. Moreover, no other religious movement has ever had anything to say about financial or economic practices. The Hebrew Bible is silent on the subject, as is Muslim shari‘a. The medieval Catholic Church had nothing whatever to say about usury, and there is absolutely no such thing as “Islamic banking.” And, of course, Amish policy on auto loans, imported sports cars, neon lighting, and widescreen television is famously extravagant.

From left to right, an unnamed Franciscan monk, Patriarch Bartholomew (the 270th Archbishop of Constantinople and “primus inter pares” in the Eastern Orthodox Church), and Pope Francis, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. None of them appears to be dressed in ordinary “business casual.”

Another of the areas where our critic sees the unmistakable signs of a “cult” is in efforts by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to influence its members’ “speech.” But I wonder whether there is anything in the doctrine or practice of the Church that really rivals the Rule of St. Benedict, according to which monks are to avoid excessive conversation, or the rules governing Trappist monasteries, where the admonition to eschew unnecessary communication is so strongly felt that the Trappists have been mistakenly thought to be under a “vow of silence.”

Ah, but that’s probably enough. I trust that I’ve made my point. All around the world, religions commonly seek to guide their adherents in matters of dating — to the extent that “dating,” as such, even exists in their culture — and sex and reproduction and relationships, in food, personal appearance (and, occasionally, even in “underwear”), finances, speech, and “mannerism.” The issues that our critic suggests are unique to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are (in general terms) simply not unique to it and his condemnation extends far beyond his chosen target. It covers religions that, collectively, represent the overwhelming majority of humankind. Of course, he may simply (and probably does) object to religion more generally. But, in that case, it’s perhaps somewhat disingenuous for him to single one religious movement out on such grounds and to brand it a “cult.” What he really intends, it seems likely, is to express his contempt for religion in its totality. So perhaps he should simply come right out and say it

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