Yes

by Ann Sterzinger

Created on: January 07, 2011

My gut tells me Christianity is definitely a big cult, but my brain tells me that before I get too certain about that statement I need to make some arguments that might stand a snowball’s hell in that-place-which-doesn’t-exist of convincing any of that cult’s members to wonder whether they need a spot of brain-unlashing. So first, let’s define our terms: what’s a cult? And what’s a big cult?

Well, I’d define a cult by three criteria: A. It’s a bunch of people who believe something that no rational person would believe if their emotions, particularly fear, had not been worked into a lather; B. It’s a minority group, otherwise the pejorative hint of ostracism we hear in the word wouldn’t really apply; and C. It’s not a harmless group, and its fanatacism often manifests as action that has negative consequences for cultists as well as bystanders, whether innocent or members of other cults.

Well, point A here certainly seems to hold water here for me. I just watched the excellent Helena Bonham-Carter period piece Lady Jane, in which an otherwise rational and perfectly learned young woman decides she would rather follow her equally loony but also touchingly heroic husband to the executioner’s block rather than change her brand of sky-man-believer from Protestant to Catholic. It has always astounded me that Germans and English people after the Renaissance put all their faculties of logic together and, under the banner of logic and rationality, could only inch their way to the conclusion that the Papists were worshipping the all-knowing, all-beneficent, nonexistent God of Love all wrong.

The film also raised another question in my mind: if Reform-era (not to mention Inquisition, Puritan, etc) Christian leaders REALLY believed that we’ll all be rewarded in Heaven, then why did both teams ‘punish’ people by putting them to death AND offer them last rites?! Are they really that sure that the opposite cult’s last rite won’t work? Because if it does work, then they’re basically giving their enemies an instant cash-in on eternity without having to take the ineffective shortcut of a (verboten) suicide. Yeeeeeaaaaah, that makes sense. Either their ‘theo-logic’ stops exactly where political expediency begins, or they don’t believe the horseshit they foist on their hapless followers one bit. And what’s more culty than that?

Point B might look like a loss for my side from the POV of someone who lives in a 98 percent Christian small town in the U.S. South, but I got news for ya… lined up against all the humans who believed in religions in the past and present, um, yer a minority. Just think of all the pagans, Romans, Greeks, Buddhists, Egyptians, Native Americans, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, cave men who thought christ knows what about the cosmos, etc. etc. etc… and then American Christians go and marginalize themselves further by deciding they don’t have quite enough people of other ethnicities surrounding them to keep their hate glands occupied so they need to define Catholics as not-Christians too. From where I’m sitting it’s the same damn cult, but hey, you want to marginalize yourselves further, be my guest. Numbers-wise, I guess it’s a pretty big cult still - which just helps me answer this question.

I think point C may be a no-brainer. The number of people Charles Manson killed is sick bitty compared to the Crusades, the Inquisition, Lady Jane above, etc etc… I think you can probably even throw the KKK in there as well, and guess what? Without Christianity to hate (and, oh yeah, supply prophets) where do you think the Muslim cult that destroyed the WTC would have gotten traction and a big enemy to hate in the first place? Nutty monotheists breed… well, you add it up.

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