The Sacred Orders of Secular Society

It is a sign of our aggressively secular age that the term "cult" is almost exclusively used to refer to small groups of people who are fanatically devoted to irrational mystical beliefs. This kind of cult deliberately isolates itself from the larger society in which it operates. These groups typically only earn the title of cult once there is some general agreement among "normal people" that membership in the sect is detrimental to anyone who joins. Of course, the word cult is also occasionally applied to much larger movements like evangelical Christianity or secular movements like wokeism and Trumpism. But such a usage is exclusively rhetorical. The term is used to highlight the irrational elements of the group to which it refers, suggesting that it represents a threat to civil society.