Cult
Cult
Cult (/kʌlt/; from Latin cultus meaning "care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence") is a term that describes a group or movement with a shared devotion to a person, idea, object, or set of new or unconventional beliefs and practices.
Etymology
The term cult has been derived from the Latin word cultus, which means "care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence". The word was originally used to describe the care owed to deities and to temples, shrines, or churches. Cults were therefore understood to be a form of worship, differing from more mainstream religion, usually by the nature of its beliefs, its structure or its practices.
Related Terms
- Religion: A social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.
- Sect: A subgroup of a religious, political, or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger group. Although the term was originally a classification for religious separated groups, it can now refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and principles.
- New Religious Movement: A religious, ethical, or spiritual group or community with practices of relatively modern origins. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may exist on the fringes of a wider religion, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations.
- Doctrine: A codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system.
See Also
External links
- Medical encyclopedia article on Cult
- Wikipedia's article - Cult
This WikiMD dictionary article is a stub. You can help make it a full article.
Languages: - East Asian
中文,
日本,
한국어,
South Asian
हिन्दी,
Urdu,
বাংলা,
తెలుగు,
தமிழ்,
ಕನ್ನಡ,
Southeast Asian
Indonesian,
Vietnamese,
Thai,
မြန်မာဘာသာ,
European
español,
Deutsch,
français,
русский,
português do Brasil,
Italian,
polski