Cultism is a spectrum, but a spectrum without a threshold warns no one. The Group Control Spectrum measures eight dimensions of control, sorts groups into six tiers, and draws the line with three conditions that must all be met.
Cult researchers are moving to high-control group and coercive control. The reasons are real. But for warning people before they walk in, the blunt word cult still does work the softer terms cannot.
The Potter’s House contracts, from Arizona to Australia to Zwolle, show central control behind a public claim of loose, autonomous, unaffiliated churches.
Acts 24 calls the early church a sect. Here is why that first-century word means something completely different from what we now call a cult.
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