has become meaningless as a description of human behavior, so laden is it now with negative emotional baggage. Any small and vaguely eccentric group of religious seekers-after-truth is apt to find itself slapped with the label and instantly converted in the minds of outsiders into a potential People’s Temple or Branch Davidian. This is a heavy burden to carry, and serves primarily to increase the level of paranoia in even the most level-headed group. Of course, short words with hefty emotional impact are the stock in trade of the media. When a newspaper reporter describes a group as a “cult,” it has nothing to do with the actual technical definition of that word. The media are not interested in matter-of-fact; that sells no papers. It speaks in polemic, describing not what is, but what has been in the past and, more to the point, how we as readers have to feel about it: outraged, righteous, and moved to demand action. Cults--or as they should usually be termed, sects--can be vicious, stupid, paranoid, murderous, suicidal, incomprehensible, and hysterical; as indeed may any group of human beings involved in a quest and immersed in passion.
