America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)
To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.
They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.
The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.
BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.
The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.
I think this model is the best one for several reasons:
It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups
It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.
It focuses on what’s important, which is what the cult does to its members, and those members’ experiences, and not on irrelevant details like how uncommon their doctrines are or whether they have a charismatic leader
This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.
The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.
It’s important to note that almost every sect of evangelical christianity in the US today fails the BITE Model.
This was the post that lead to breaking my JW mindset. Been a while since I seen it.
I’m glad I could help in your deconstruction, if only a little bit. I wish you all the luck in your journey moving forward.
For some difference between a religious group and a cult, you could compare the Amish to Mennonites (Mennonites have very similar lifestyles and beliefs to the Amish, as the Amish were originally a splinter group of the Mennonites)
i met a large family (or two families?) while on a greyhound bus trip across the country and they were Mennonites and they seemed less culty than the Amish. I passed a fascinating hour talking to one of the middle-aged men of the group.
Basically, as far as i could tell from talking to this guy, where the Amish sort of believe that technology is from-the-devil evil, the Mennonites believe something more along the lines of: it is generally better to not live a life that requires things you cannot make or do for yourself.
So, like, this guy was in all handmade clothes made by people in his community, but when i asked about technology he pulled out a cell phone (simple flip phone) and explained that it was unconscionable to consider putting his family in the kind of danger that not having access to a cell phone might entail, but that it was only for real emergencies, and their practice was to do everything they could do without such technology.
He gave another example, on his farm he had an electric generator, but it was also only for emergencies – so if a bad storm came through and having a generator meant that animals or people would be safe, but they were in danger if they did
not use the generator, then the correct moral decision was to use the generator.
I asked about grey areas and slippery slope situations, like how do you decide what level of discomfort becomes danger (is the possibility of a tiny bit of frostbite on your fingertips enough to turn on the generator or do you turn it on at some point before that?) and he basically said that life is made of grey areas, and that such hypothetical situations were the subject of many discussions in his church, but ultimately a person had to decide in the moment what was appropriate.
Essentially, their point of view was something like “we get why TV is so compelling, but we just think there’s more value in telling stories and playing games with the people you love, and TV is SO compelling that if you don’t make conscious lifestyle choices to avoid it you might default to TV over stories and games with loved ones, and we think that kind of defaulting is usually bad”
It all seemed much more reasonable than i had thought it would, but the thing that really differentiated them from the more culty Amish for me was that
Mennonites don’t engage in shunning practices.
In other words, if they have a family member who leaves the church/community, that family member is still welcome in their home etc. They don’t cut ties or enforce any “us or them” ultimatums. The Amish DO shun their family members for breaking faith or whatever. And i think that is a huge difference.
Overall, this guy had a very “i’m happy with my lifestyle, and do not think there is any problem that you are happy with your lifestyle” kind of vibe that was at odds with what i was expecting of a Mennonite. He seemed to believe that the Amish were religious extremists in a way that he was not, while being aware that many people would also consider him to be a religious extremist.
Anyway, i do still think almost all evangelical christian sects are cults, but this was a very interesting look into the differences between the Amish, who are a definite cult, and other Mennonites, who may or may not be less culty.
