The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.
Religious ritual is a way of structuring time so that we, not employers, the market or the media, are in control. Life needs its pauses, its chapter breaks, if the soul is to have space to breathe.
One person's religion is another person's cult.
Organized belief in spirituality - that's what a religion is.
Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.
What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.
There are a few people who are, let's say, personality-challenged, who would like to set up a cult, but in large part they fail due to the innate stroppiness and independence of their fellow pagans.
Religion is like magic. It is all about tricks.
A religion must be instrumental in spiritualising the individual into a boundless and holistic nature.
Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.