Word of the Week: Cult

Words matter, especially inside high-control churches, which most people call cults. 

One of the most powerful tools corrupt and manipulative church leaders use isn't a doctrine or a policy, but language. They take ordinary words everyone recognizes and quietly redefine them, either by narrowing them or expanding them, to load them with new meaning that serves the leadership's control over the group.

So, I'm starting a Word of the Week series, which I'll publish here, on YouTube, and on Facebook, not only to dispel the loaded and twisted definitions of abusive churches, but also to help raise awareness of manipulative, corrupt, and abusive behaviors and practices that have become all too common in Christian churches and ministries today. 

This week I'm going to take a word that gets weaponized inside high-control and cultic church environments and give you the real definition, along with how it gets twisted, why it gets twisted, and what that twist is designed to do to you.

This week's Word of the Week: CULT

What "Cult" Actually Means 

The word "cult" has legitimate uses across several contexts: academic, entertainment, sociological, and theological. In sociology and cult psychology, a cult is generally characterized, not by its doctrine alone, but by its structure and behavior.

More specifically, cults are typically identified by authoritarian leadership, thought control, information control, us-versus-them isolationism, and the systematic suppression of dissent and personal agency. Contrary to popular belief, while doctrine can play a huge role that leads to these behaviors in a church or ministry, it’s the fruit itself that matters: how members are treated, controlled, retained, and punished for leaving.

How High-control Churches (i.e., Cults) Redefine It

In many authoritarian and high-control Christian churches, the word "cult" is weaponized as a label for any church, ministry, or theology that deviates from the pastor's or church leadership’s narrow system of doctrine or practice. What most Christians would label as a different denomination under the umbrella of Christianity, a high-control church leader will call a cult, merely for having a different view on eschatology, baptism, or soteriology. 

Read a different translation of the Bible? Cult. Read theologians they don’t approve? You're following a cult leader. Have questions about certain doctrines you don’t understand? You’re dabbling in dangerous, cultic waters. 

In the cultic church, the definition of “cult” gets redefined to mean one thing: us versus everyone who isn't us.

But if you know anything about cult psychology, you know that this “us vs. them” mentality is actually a red flag of destructive, high-control cults!

Why This Redefinition is a Red Flag 

The irony of turning another church or ministry’s minor doctrinal differences into a cult is that calling everything outside the group’s own distinct doctrinal views a cult is one of the most well-documented characteristics of actual cultic groups. Cult experts and researchers like Robert Lifton, Steven Hassan, and Janja Lalich all identify "us versus them" thinking and the demonization of outside influence as a core feature of high-control group dynamics.

A pastor who has trained their congregation to view every outside theological influence as dangerous, heretical, or cultic, or every departing member as a factious traitor, or every questioner with their own perspective as someone flirting with false teaching, is not protecting their flock from a cult. They’ve already built one.

The Tell: Discerning the Difference

Healthy churches can engage with outside ideas, questions, and even spirited debate without panic, feeling threatened, making threats of divine judgment, or ostracization. They can acknowledge that other believers, other traditions, and other theological views exist that differ from theirs without declaring them cultic or hell-bound. 

There are tens of thousands of denominations within Christianity. Safe ministry leaders don't need to control the thoughts and beliefs of other believers to maintain their authority, because believers exercising their right to think for themselves and disagree doesn’t threaten healthy leaders. Narcissistic, highly controlling, and insecure leaders demand complete loyalty and conformity to their perspective and teachings.  

When a church has to redefine "cult" to make sure the label never lands on them by declaring all other doctrinal perspectives destructive and dangerous cults, pay attention, because what they’re likely doing is trying to isolate you from outside views and perspectives that threaten their authority to keep you under their control. 

So remember, in the context of a Christian church or ministry, a cult is a high-control group that abuses the name of Christ and the Bible to financially, psychologically, spiritually, and socially control its members through coercion, manipulation, isolation, exploitation, and abuse.

The “cult” label can be unfairly and inaccurately weaponized to malign safe ministries that threaten the mind control of truly cultic ministry leaders, so use discernment, protect the sheep, and put the label where it belongs.