There's a word getting thrown around a lot in regarding churches, ministries, an other faiths. It's a word I've seen used flippantly, jokingly, and sometimes with what I see as an appropriate level of gravity. Often it's a word spoken, and probably rightly so, by broken and hurting people. It's a word used by a commenter recent previous post in Provoketive Magazine, Slap on a Little Lipstick, You'll Be Fine. If I am being completely honest, it's a word I've used, sometimes quickly in anger and pain, and also after great prayer and thought.

That's right, I am talking about the 'C' word. Cult.

It's used by many Christians to describe Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and many other fringe religious groups and doomsday groups. It's also used against many other Christian churches and ministries that have an authoritarian structure, rigid rules, and apparent spiritual abuse. The commenter from my last article used it in reference to what he thought was a minister requiring me to wear lipstick (as a note, I never stated whether that incident occured at a secular or religious organization).

But what is a cult, really?

Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives the following defininition:
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<div class="scnt" style="margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px"><span class="ssens">: formal religious veneration : <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worship">worship</a></span></div>
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<div class="scnt" style="margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px"><span class="ssens">: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents</span></div>
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<div class="scnt" style="margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px"><span class="ssens">: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents</span></div>
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<div class="scnt" style="margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px"><span class="ssens">: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <span class="vi">&lt;health cults&gt;</span></span></div>
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<div class="scnt" style="margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px"><span class="ssens"><span class="sn">a</span> : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad</span><span class="ssens"><span class="sn">b</span> : the object of such devotion</span><span class="ssens"><span class="sn">c</span> : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion</span></div>
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Going by this definition, which is pretty much what you will find in any general dictionary, any religious group or faith is a cult. That's right, by this definition, any Christian church or group, mainstream or otherwise, is a cult. And it doesn't stop at religion: any fad or craze with a following could be called a cult, like the cult of Mac.  And, with the exception of the third definition above that describes cult as a religion "regarded as unorhtodox or spurious", the term 'cult' doesn't necessarily have a negative connotation.

However, when cult is used to describe other faiths or Christian groups, churches, or denominiations, it is clearly meant in the negative meaning, that of an "unorthodox" group, or one that