Is there a difference between cults and religions?

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Yes. There are differences.

From various websites:

Cult feature:

•Behavior control, monitoring where you go and what you do.
•Information control, discouraging members from reading criticism about the group.
•Thought control, placing sharp limits on doctrinal questioning.
•Emotional control, using humiliation or guilt
•Financial control, levying onerous dues or fees, or forcing members to work and placing them on stipends or sales quotas. (In the old days, those Hare Krishnas at airports weren’t trying to sell you books just for your own self-enlightenment, he notes.)
•Extreme leadership, someone forceful enough to impose ideas that don’t pass muster in the light of day.
•Untoward secrecy. A religious culture should be as easy to enter or exit as any free nation, he says, for members and observers alike. Its doctrine should be knowable to outsiders. There should be no barriers to any member’s travel, relationship or ideas. Finally, the group’s finances should be reasonably transparent.


1. Cults and religions are ways in which people can belong to a group and receive a way to interact with the world.
2. Cults are generally considered to be secretive and illegitimate whereas religion is open and legitimate.
3. Cults are joined through coercive persuasion whereas religion is generally inherited.


Cult: Deceit in recruitment
Religion: Information offered up front
Cult: Totalitarian
Religion: Allows freedom of thought and members have a say
Cult: Destroys that family unit
Religion: Promotes the family unit
Cult: Isolates its members
Religion: Works within society
Cult: Keeps non-believers out
Religion: Open to general community
Cult: Limits development of individual
Religion: Interested in promoting potential
Cult: Exploits and manipulates its members with mind control techniques
Religion: While there are guidelines members are not systematically controlled
Cult: Commitment is encouraged during recruitment process
Religion: Thought before commitment is encouraged as part of conversion process
Cult: Criticism is met with threats of legal action
Religion: People are free to speak out against the tenets of a religion
Cult: Leader and follower consider leader to be above reproach
Religion:Clergy are expected to be responsible for their words and actions
Cult: Questioning the leader, or basic tenets, is not allowed
Religion: Critical thinking is allowed and sometimes even encouraged

[John Dibble]

I'd say I largely agree with what you subscribe to be how we define a cult in modern day, but the line between a mainstream religion and a cult isn't always clear - I would say it's more of a sliding scale than a clear distinction.

[Redalgo]

I would say the only fundamental difference between cults and religions is whether one deems the spiritual belief system in question to be legitimate or dubious. Many of the other distinctions may be perceptions brought on by cultural values that do not necessarily have universal appeal, and also by a tendency for many folks to feel that deviance from traditional institutions and principles is - to one extent or another - disgusting, sacrilegious, and impure.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Yes. There are differences.

From various websites:

Cult feature:

•Behavior control, monitoring where you go and what you do.
•Information control, discouraging members from reading criticism about the group.
•Thought control, placing sharp limits on doctrinal questioning.
•Emotional control, using humiliation or guilt
•Financial control, levying onerous dues or fees, or forcing members to work and placing them on stipends or sales quotas. (In the old days, those Hare Krishnas at airports weren’t trying to sell you books just for your own self-enlightenment, he notes.)
•Extreme leadership, someone forceful enough to impose ideas that don’t pass muster in the light of day.
•Untoward secrecy. A religious culture should be as easy to enter or exit as any free nation, he says, for members and observers alike. Its doctrine should be knowable to outsiders. There should be no barriers to any member’s travel, relationship or ideas. Finally, the group’s finances should be reasonably transparent.


1. Cults and religions are ways in which people can belong to a group and receive a way to interact with the world.
2. Cults are generally considered to be secretive and illegitimate whereas religion is open and legitimate.
3. Cults are joined through coercive persuasion whereas religion is generally inherited.


Cult: Deceit in recruitment
Religion: Information offered up front
Cult: Totalitarian
Religion: Allows freedom of thought and members have a say
Cult: Destroys that family unit
Religion: Promotes the family unit
Cult: Isolates its members
Religion: Works within society
Cult: Keeps non-believers out
Religion: Open to general community
Cult: Limits development of individual
Religion: Interested in promoting potential
Cult: Exploits and manipulates its members with mind control techniques
Religion: While there are guidelines members are not systematically controlled
Cult: Commitment is encouraged during recruitment process
Religion: Thought before commitment is encouraged as part of conversion process
Cult: Criticism is met with threats of legal action
Religion: People are free to speak out against the tenets of a religion
Cult: Leader and follower consider leader to be above reproach
Religion:Clergy are expected to be responsible for their words and actions
Cult: Questioning the leader, or basic tenets, is not allowed
Religion: Critical thinking is allowed and sometimes even encouraged

yep, pretty much fits what I have seen.

[anvi]

Yes, there are a few major difference between them, but they're not as different as one might think.

Often, the major one is their age.  New religious movements are often considered cults by the religions that happen to enjoy longer historical traditions.  Long-established religions call new religious movements cults, in a derogatory sense, obviously.

A second is the degree to which they have become accepted by whatever is considered the mainstream culture at the time.  In the course of its development, a culture comes to consider certain forms of behavior as "normal" and other forms of behavior as "deviant," and the religious behaviors deemed deviant by the mainstream are considered "cultic."

A third is often the size of their membership.  Religions of historical pedigree and wide cultural acceptance generally have large memberships, and, when viewing the small memberships associated with new religions, the mainstream tends to think the newer movements are associated with "private" beliefs which, as above, are considered weird, and so labels them "cults."  

Almost every major religion in existence now was more than likely once considered a "cult" by the cultures that were predominant at the time they arose, even though the word "cult" didn't become widely used in anything like the modern since until the early 20th century.  

Last fun fact for those who noticed I used the word "culture" a lot above: the terms "cult" and "culture" come from the very same Latin word, which means "to till (cultivate-care for) land," "to worship," and "labor."