Cultishness...

[_RayAgostini]

Thinking about this, whether an organization is a cult or not seems to largely depend on an individuals mental strength and fortitude in handling the aspects of that organization in relation to their own life and mental well being.

What I mean by that is it seems to me that an organization, such as the Church, can indeed be a cult to some members but not to others. Depending on their resilience and ability to self manage.

I've never thought of the Church as a cult, notwithstanding some message board rhetoric I may have occasionally expressed here in anger at apologists.

To this very day, I'm still paying for my association with Mormonism, and I'll never own a home or have a decent bank account because of it. I could have gone so many different and more profitable ways, but becoming a Mormon was my choice, and I can live with that. I scrape for a dollar these days, and subsist on what I can, full well knowing it could have been all so different! I could have been financially well off and settled today, but what valuable life-lessons would I have learned? And would I trade experience for money? As someone once said, "it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all".

[_Kishkumen]

This is a fascinating thread. I have a very ambivalent relationship with the word 'cult,' probably because I am fascinated with groups normally labeled as such, and I think that the charismatic and authoritarian aspects of Mormonism, not to mention its secrecy, have prompted people to label it a cult. Mormonism has a fascinating history, which I think most people, including academics, have failed to appreciate properly. I have long contended that, putting the polemics aside, there has to be a historical reason why Mormonism continues to be in so much tension with the rest of America--why it has such a mythical stature as the "other."

I also feel like the aggressive rhetoric of LDS apologists does little to help the LDS case in this regard. Any community that sends its members to the TIME Lightbox blog to have a meltdown over pictures of a family of grumpy rubes in Utah seems to me to be stoking others' sense of its bizarreness, rather than ameliorating the situation.

There is an intense culture of the apostate in Mormonism. But it is not simply one of the apostate's making. This is where I think these quotes miss something in the case of Mormonism. When you find online apologists savaging questioning members, basically accusing them of being vicious, deceptive apostates, then it seems to me that a certain element within the faith demands the existence of the apostate as a kind of justification for the existence of true faith. It is an unhealthy construct wherein the apologist stands as the ideal and the apostate is fabricated as this person's opposite (cui bono?).

In reality, those who question are healthy. The real ideal of faith is probably not the person who is going out to battle the antis. Both the vociferous apologist and the rabid critic are instead the more brittle souls who require the battle in order to feel validated.

[_zeezrom]

Darn. I came in late. Well, the church asks you to die for it but the difference is that they are just saying that for traditional reasons.

[_Stormy Waters]

Secret ceremonies are cultish. Especially when they had you miming slitting your own throat and disemboweling yourself.

[_Kishkumen]

Secret ceremonies are cultish. Especially when they had you miming slitting your own throat and disemboweling yourself.

This charge bothers me, because, much like complaints about Adam-God, polygamy, etc., it essentially slams the Mormonism today by taking aim at the Mormonism of yesterday. That seems to me to be rather unfair.

Sure, the temple ritual is still to be held secret by initiated Mormons, but it no longer includes the ritual actions to which you refer, and any enterprising person with minimal technological savvy can find the ritual online in a few seconds.

[_Buffalo]

NRM is just a PC term for "cult".

I disagree. A "cult" is a bad and dangerous thing from which people need to be saved, and people who use the term generally think it can be defined according to a shortlist of necessary and sufficient features (which neglects contemporary academic approaches to categorization to begin with). A New Religious Movement is just a new religious movement. Many of the religions labelled "cult" are described as NRMs, but not all NRMs would qualify as "cults," even by the more broad definitions anti- and counter-cultists can concoct.

What would be the best term for this NRM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

[_maklelan]

Secret ceremonies are cultish. Especially when they had you miming slitting your own throat and disemboweling yourself.

That's an Old Testament borrowing, but I recall saying "cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" when I was swearing to secrecy as a child. Secret ceremonies are common to a lot of different non-religious organizations, too. One of the big problems with prominent anti-cultists' definitions from the 80s and 90s was that they almost always included groups like the Marines. The anti-cultists had to fumble for a way to avoid calling the Marines a cult.

[_maklelan]

What would be the best term for this NRM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

An NRM and a terrorist organization. Why is the rhetorical sting of the word "cult" so important to you?

[_Stormy Waters]

Secret ceremonies are cultish. Especially when they had you miming slitting your own throat and disemboweling yourself.

This charge bothers me, because, much like complaints about Adam-God, polygamy, etc., it essentially slams the Mormonism today by taking aim at the Mormonism of yesterday. That seems to me to be rather unfair.

Just as a persons past actions speaks to the kind of person they are I believe that an organizations past actions can tell us something about an organazition. Especially when those actions haven't been repudiated or apologies made.

Sure, the temple ritual is still to be held secret by initiated Mormons, but it no longer includes the ritual actions to which you refer, and any enterprising person with minimal technological savvy can find the ritual online in a few seconds.

It being easily findable online is done in spite of what they want.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Back in 1990 when I pantomimed slashing my own throat and disemboweling myself I went from Happy Sunshine Mormon to WTF Mormon. I couldn't believe what was being done, and what was expected of me. It was insane.

It was only a matter of time before I left the Church after that...

- VRDRC