Important Differences

Shoemaker, H. Stephen wrote an article entitles, “ Cults and Religions Have Important Differences.” In this article, he attempted to iterate key dissimiliarities between widely established religions, and the smaller manifestations of religious belief, to which we designate the term cults. He often insinuates that Christianity is a model religion that has never exhibited any cult like traits, and that the lines between these followings could be easily defined by terms as simple as the leadership, human treatment, and patterns of logic. The case can be made, however, that no religion is entirely innocent, and that Christianity, though it is assumed the perfect model, can be referenced as being lead by a man put in the position as essentially the voice of god, has a widely acknowledged history of abusive behavior, and that the followers of this theological …show more content…
Originally, Christianity as well as many other sects was called cults with no negative connotation toward the word itself. We should not be using this term as it is used today to define superiority or inferiority to a given theology. Reality is that humans are evil and that they are more so in groups. The only times that it appears not to be this way is whenever we rely on our internal mechanism of validating our own behavior. In this same nature, the more aggressively an organization demands itself to be morally righteous, the more it will spawn corruption from the mortal units of which it is comprised. Religion as a way of perception is not impure. Trusting it without question out of the mouth of another, book or individual, is. The label cult does not change this, and only helps to further unhealthy validation. No organization of the same influence, labeled or otherwise, is any more or less capable of abuse, manipulation, and outlandish dogma than any other, and any approach to theology that is not both analytic and personal is only a recipe for