Noun

Singular cult

Plural cults

cult (plural cults)

1. A group or doctrine with religious, philosophical or cultural identity sometimes viewed as a sect, often existent on the margins of society and/or exploitative towards its members.
2. Devotion to a saint.

Derived terms

• cargo cult
• cultic
• cultist

This article does not discuss "cult" in the original sense of "veneration" or "religious practice"; for that usage see Cult (religious practice). See Cult (disambiguation) for more uses of the term "cult".

Cult definitions coined from 1920 onward refer to a cohesive social group and their devotional beliefs or practices, which the surrounding population considers to be outside of mainstream cultures. The surrounding population may be as small as a neighborhood, or as large as the community of nations. They gratify curiosity about, take action against, or ignore a group, depending on its reputed similarity to cults previously reported by mass media.

The spelling c-u-l-t has at least nine defined meanings divided among positive, negative, and neutral connotations:

• Positive: In common or popular usage, "cult" has a positive connotation for fan groups of art, music, writing, fiction, and fashion devotees (see Cult following). "Cult" also has a positive connotation when used in the original and classic sense of veneration by any group of worshipers, though this meaning is usually applied to groups known from antiquity, including historic cults of the major religions (see Cult (religious practice)).

• Negative: Also in common or popular usage, "cult" has a negative connotation for new religious, extreme political, questionable therapeutic, and pyramidal business groups. Theological cults also have a negative connotation as defined by fundamentalist Christians to include both new and major religion groups. For these reasons, most, if not all, non-fan groups that are called cults reject this label.

• Neutral: In twentieth century and some current scientific usage, "cult" is a technical term with a neutral connotation (see Sociology of religion). Neutral usage of "cult" in sociological science has been partly replaced by the phrase new religious movement (NRM) – but not entirely: because not all sociologically-defined cults are new or religious, there was a formal objection to the term-replacing campaign as "politics of representation", and ultimately the public didn't accept the replacement term.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 neutrally-defined sociological cults existed in the United States in 1995. Since less than 200 groups have been reported by governments as cults entangled with the law, and less than 20 have been described as destructive cults, the vast majority of non-fan groups referred to as cults are well-behaved and known only to their neighbours.