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Cults are inherently ephemeral and loosely organized. [30] There is a major theme in many of the recent works that show the relationship between cults and mysticism. [30] Campbell highlights two major types of cults: one mystical and the other instrumental. This analysis can divide the cults into either occult or metaphysical assemblies.
The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, a painting by Gustave Doré (1899). Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic ...
Scholars William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark have argued for a further distinction between three kinds of cults: cult movements, client cults, and audience cults, all of which share a "compensator" or rewards for the things invested into the group. In their typology, a "cult movement" is an actual complete organization, differing from a ...
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.
In the process of decline, it has been thought that Roman religion embraced emperor worship, the 'oriental cults' and Christianity as symptoms of that decline. [9] Christianity emerged as a major religious movement in the Roman Empire, the barbarian kingdoms of the West, in neighboring kingdoms and some parts of the Persian and Sassanian ...
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Son of God, [7] [8] [9] [note 2] whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament.
Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica.. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, in particular, the Catholic Church and Protestantism. [5] [50] Western culture, throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, and much of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be described as cultural Christians.
Christianity began as a Jewish sect and remained so for centuries in some locations, diverging gradually from Judaism over doctrinal, social and historical differences. In spite of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire , the faith spread as a grassroots movement that by the third century was established both in and outside the empire.