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American sociologist Howard P. Becker further bisected Troeltsch's first two categories: church was split into ecclesia and denomination; and sect into sect and cult. [22] [2] Like Troeltsch's "mystical religion", Becker's cult refers to small religious groups that lack in organization and emphasize the private nature of personal beliefs. [23]
Historian Jan Plamper wrote that modern-day personality cults display five characteristics that set them apart from "their predecessors": The cults are secular and "anchored in popular sovereignty"; their objects are all males; they target the entire population, not only the well-to-do or just the ruling class; they use mass media; they exist ...
As cults grow, they bureaucratize and create many of the characteristics of denominations. Some scholars are hesitant to grant cults denominational status because many cults maintain their more esoteric characteristics. However, their closer semblance to denominations than to the cult type allows them
A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious, ethical, or spiritual group or community with practices of relatively modern [clarification needed] origins. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may exist on the fringes of a wider religion, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations.
James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. In what Jones termed "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.
The book was required reading in the Cornell University sociology course, "Communes, Cults, and Charisma", [9] as well as the University of Pennsylvania course, "Religious Violence and Cults". [10] Galanter's characteristics of charismatic groups from Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion are cited in the article on "Cults", in the Encyclopedia of ...
Cults range from the relatively benign to those that exercise extraordinary control over members' lives and use thought-reform processes to influence and control members. While the conduct of certain cults causes nonmembers to criticize them, the term cult is not in itself pejorative but simply descriptive.
The term "cult" first appeared in English in 1617, derived from the French culte, meaning "worship" which in turn originated from the Latin word cultus meaning "care, cultivation, worship". The meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829. Starting about 1920, "cult" acquired an additional six or more positive and negative definitions.