Is Mormonism a cult

#Is Mormonism a Cult? What is a Cult Anyway?

The nasty name sometimes flung at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by its detractors is “cult.” While there are no particular objective criteria separating cults from religions, generally the term cult is used for religions that are thought to be unorthodox or extremist. The word also seems to suggest a religion heavy in unusual rites or ceremonies. Perhaps the term is meant to call up images of Druids burning captives alive in wicker baskets, of painted priests flinging virgins into volcanoes, or of satanic rituals performed in the dark of the moon. When critics call the LDS church a “cult,” the implied logic seems to be that there are objective criteria for distinguishing “cults” from “religions,” and that since Mormonism is a “cult” and Christianity is a “religion,” Mormons can’t be Christians. There actually are no such criteria.

Those who use the term cult for the LDS Church obviously have negative meanings in mind. They want to communicate their negative opinions. They mean to imply something like: It is smaller than mine or newer than mine, and I don’t like it. It is unorthodox and spurious (false, counterfeit).

To both the pagans and the Jews, earliest Christianity was a “cult,” but this says nothing objective about Christianity except that it was disliked by those who so described it. There is no objective definition for the word cult in standard English that does what the anti-Mormons want it to do (from Stephen E. Robinson’s, Are Mormons Christians?, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991).

I suppose our best approach to this name calling is simply to ignore it. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but . . .