A religion is the embodiment of spiritual principle. A cult is an institution which exists to empower and enrich leadership structure of the cult. Given the i

A religion is the embodiment of spiritual principle. A cult is an institution which exists to empower and enrich leadership structure of the cult. Given the infallibility of humans, there can be lot of cultishness in religion. Paradoxically, a lot of cult members are actually true believers, often trying to - and doing - quite some good, meaning there can in many cases be some good 'conscientious externalizations' of even some otherwise crappy cults. This is harder to grasp but it's real. There are many otherwise secular groups that exist in this sphere especially among 1) ideologically oriented groups - and 2) corporations. My personal exposure to these kinds of environments triggers that 'weird feeling' whenever I visit such-and-such campus, in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere. There are political organizations, even 'nice ones' in 'nice countries' that take children, not even teens, off in isolation to places like 'camps on islands' to 'teach them their values'. Because of the lack of obvious religious artifacts, it doesn't set of the usual triggers, but when taking a more holistic view ... it seems a bit unhealthy. Even more meta, it seems to me that cultures that have very deep and complex behavioural patterns, idioms, norms, language structure etc. exhibit a lot of the same attributes. You could go so far as to point at many 'major cultures' ... but to be a little less controversial, my experience with both Amish and Mennonite community certainly has elements of this. But I reserve judgment. It's complicated. And also they are some of the most inconceivably kind people on the planet. FYI they are effectively pacifists, as 'God's Children should not take up arms against one another' etc. - they won't join the Army. Edit: from a purely secular perspective, where the notion of 'there being a god or not' or where 'beliefs' etc. irrelevant ... than really what is the difference between the Soviet Union, for example, and a cult? They exhibit all of the same artifacts. The only difference being, in some cults, there might be some kind of supernatural extra beliefs to go along with it. Stalin used (perverted?) a secular ideology in the same way as a cult would use their own system of beliefs. 99% of the resulting systematic and authoritarian externalizations have nothing to do with the 'core beliefs' in both cases. Edit 2: whether 'core principles' are ideological, spiritual, corporatist, nationalist, or even cultural, you get a lot of the same type of group dynamics forming.