That "Other" Cult in Texas - the Polygamist One

With the polygamist group from Texas in the news these days, the age-old debate about whether something is a "sect" or a "cult" rears its head again. Several highlights from the article:

"In a healthy or legitimate religion or sect, you are presumably worshiping some higher principle or some higher authority," Lalich said, "whereas in a cult people tend to end up worshiping that living human leader. She added, "Your salvation is tied up with that particular living leader, and obeying orders and not breaking the rules, and subjecting yourself to whatever personal transformation you're expected to go through to be on that correct path to salvation."

Once they become members of a cult, individuals become more and more isolated from society and from reality-checks found in a diverse world. "You take on new reality, this new interpretation of the world," Lalich said. "It doesn’t mean you have to live in a compound in the middle of Texas. But you've closed your world view. Everything you're interpreting, you're interpreting through the cultic belief system."

"A lot of these groups operate on fear. You're afraid of whatever punishment you might get from the group," Lalich said. "But more so, you're afraid that you're going to be missing out on that path to salvation, whatever that salvation might be."

By now I think it's pretty clear we were (they are) a cult. Not to dismiss the beautiful things that we might have gotten out of the experience... but it seems clear that it was a cult.