Cult vs. religion

Remember when Mike Huckabee was asked by a New York Times reporter if Mormonism is a cult or a religion and he answered: "I think it's a religion; I really don't know much about it."

That makes 180 million of us.

The question of "cult" versus "religion" versus "sect" is an interesting one. What is the difference? From a relativistic point of view, of course, one man's "religion" is another man's "cult." And Merriam-Webster's shows that equivocation is built into the semantic nomenclature:

"Sect": 1(a) a dissenting or schismatic religious body; esp: one regarded as extreme or heretical; (b) a religious denomination.

"Cult": 2: a system of religious belief and ritual; 3: a religious regarded as unorthodox or spurious.

"Religion": 2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.

At what point does a religious sect become so deviant from its roots that it needs reclassifying as a cult? Can it be when the simple gospel is so overlaid with suffocating tradition that a church traverses land and sea only to make a convert "twice as much a child of hell as yourselves"? Like Huckabee, everyone will give his best guess, and the self-consistent Christian will make his judgments according to the touchstone of Scripture.

Isn't it comforting to know the Lord isn't confused: "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19).