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Updating

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This article is in need of updating, especially the sources. Thinking has changed among academics in the nearly-quarter century since this article was created. Some of the sources are over 50 years old. Valereee (talk) 11:12, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee In what way are you noting changes in how this topic is approached, specifically? I'm curious. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:53, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, @PARAKANYAA, some of the sources are over 50 years old, and academic thought has changed a lot in that time. Whether we call something a "cult" has profoundly changed, in particular. Valereee (talk) 21:58, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee I agree with that but the answer is probably not much better than it was in the 90s, i.e. cultic studies are pro "cult" label, NRM academics are against it (mostly), and the press don't care and call whatever a cult.
I do agree that the general article needs to be updated but with that specific question I don't think it will be able to be much changed. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:11, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Recent academic publishing doesn't seem to use "cult" very often, except in discussions of whether the term should be used? Valereee (talk) 22:21, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee The academic discussion was usually (less now) split between two groups, and (there are several articles/books on the academic debate on this topic itself)
  • "Cultic studies", examples being Janja Lalich, Stephen A. Kent, the publication Cultic Studies Review, academics who are usually explicitly "anti-cult", criticized by NRM academics, almost always use the word cult, the smaller movement
  • NRM/mainline, almost everyone else. Generally only rarely uses cult. Has been criticized by the Cult Studies academics of being "cult apologists" and the anti-cult movement, by far the larger movement of the two
Cultic Studies academics almost always use cult, NRM scholars rarely do except when discussing public perception. That is the crux of the issue and hasn't changed much. This is less of a thing then it was in the past, as they kind of reconciled, but it is An Issue when you have to deal with sources like pre-2015. The whole debacle is probably notable in and of itself given there is an entire book on it (the "Cult Wars") but the answers are more or less "always" from Cultic Studies academics and "almost never" from NRM scholars (though starting in the 2000s academics did use it in a different way sometimes). This is all off the top of my head so some of the details may be fuzzy. I once wrote a wiki article on a book that covers the whole debate which I feel gives context to the thing: Misunderstanding Cults PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:32, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the best sources are currently saying, we should be able to find recent sources instead of using ones that are 50 years old. Valereee (talk) 22:37, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not disputing that but the answer is split between two polarized groups of academics, so fixing it will be a pain. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:40, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hahaha...yep. Sometimes fixing this kind of thing is a pain. When it's a subject I've got expertise and interest in, I often do fix it myself, but in this case I have neither. I placed the tag hoping that someone who does have at minimum interest will want to do the work. Valereee (talk) 22:53, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee Really, the bigger problem with this article is that half of it is just piecemail details about specific movements that doesn't have anything to do with the topic as a whole. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:53, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, see topic below 'Reversion'. I trimmed it back hard, and Grorp disagreed that it needed to be trimmed back that hard. Valereee (talk) 22:56, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee I think we can probably have an article on "political cults". The merge was over a decade ago, and provided it fulfills GNG would be better off there than here.
In the mean time, I will be attempting to standardize the reference formatting because I have OCD and I find it helps me get a good look at the literature. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You go! Glad it helps in any way. :D Valereee (talk) 23:11, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, the age of the citations is irrelevant and is part of the history of the subject. Things may have changed over time, but then you include content about the history and changes of the subject. You don't simply discard it all in favor of only covering the here-and-now.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:17, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine to use old citations about the history, but not about what RS are saying now. Valereee (talk) 00:18, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Grorp For individual facts yes, but for a high level topic that drastically changed its approach (see the swing after waco and then the swing back after Aum), it is probably worth prioritizing more recent sources. This is the "high level" article, so more recent overview sources should be prioritized. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reversion

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Hey, Grorp. What do you see as particularly valuable about all the historical information about the organizations covered in this section to understanding the article subject? Each of those has its own article. Why do we need all this info here? Valereee (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am currently working on the section. Wait until I am finished.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 17:33, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee: I'm finished.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unmerging political cult

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Per above, the list of political cults is a drag on this article and for the quality of this one to be improved it should be removed. However the concept of "political cult" is probably notable and the merge was 11 years ago. Any consensus to split it back out again? PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:51, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PARAKANYAA: Well, you already cut it out of the article without any discussion, so I suggest you either put it back in and discuss it, or make an article out of the content you removed. (removed content & removed citations)   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:13, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Grorp I'm willing to do that provided there is sufficient consensus to undo the merge. Do you think there's enough for a whole article on the concept of "political cults"? I think probably. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:42, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I put the content and sources in User:Grorp/sandbox5, so you can read it there, or copy it, or rename/move it.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:52, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...meaning you could create a standalone article. I don't object to splitting it out of Cult. And come to think of it, it would be better for you to use the content by copying it and noting the copy being from Cult, to keep track of the edit history per wiki guidelines. I just slapped it into that sandbox; and I'll delete it afterwards.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:57, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am irritated but honestly I couldn't find many sources on the topic of "political cults" specifically, other than a single Turkish journal article and the On the Edge book. However the term is used so often it's drowned in a sea of mentions. I feel there should be... something. Can you find anything? PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:27, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll look.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 01:34, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add some potential sources here as I find them.[1][2][3][4]   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 01:55, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I too think all of this trivial discussion of the cults themselves isn't helpful here. I'd just list and link. Valereee (talk) 13:33, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Silayeva, Zoya Vladimirovna. "Political Cults as a New Phenomenon of Religious Studies" (PDF). Journal of History Culture and Art Research. 6 (4): 523–530. doi:10.7596/taksad.v6i4.1143.
  2. ^ "Political Cult vs. Political Party: Understanding the Differences". spiceislander.com. July 9, 2023.
  3. ^ Altemeyer, Bob (2006). The Authoritarians (PDF).
  4. ^ Márquez, Xavier (2018). "Two Models of Political Leader Cults: Propaganda and Ritual". Politics, Religion & Ideology. 19 (3): 265–284. doi:10.1080/21567689.2018.1510392.

National values

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List five causes of cultism 102.88.68.33 (talk) 11:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a controversial term, then label it as such

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The lead is not up to WP:MOS and WP:LEAD standards. English is being tortured (by whom?) and some vague notion of laity is being evoked (by us). If we need to make sure it's clear that there is an idealogical war being waged over this term, let's say it is "controversial" or "contested" or "pejorative" and then we owe the general reader a clear explanation of its common sense everyday meaning. "perceived to be" is vague and does no one any good. "lay" is meaningless as there relevant epistemic community is not specified and probably can't be specified without taking a side. Here is my proposed lead. We start with the common usage and then tack on caveats and modifiers further on in the article:

Cult is a pejorative term for a religious or idealogical group typically led by a charismatic leader who tightly controls the members.

Cheers.DolyaIskrina (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DolyaIskrina I agree with you that it could be written better. The problem with this is that this term has a tortured and inconsistent definition and half the sources about it nowadays are about people fighting about the definition - controversial is perhaps understating it. About the article now: a large majority of this article is citing antiquated works on the definition of cult from religious studies/sociology, which is the discipline that studies what the general person thinks of when they hear cult, but later abandoned the term, so a lot of this article functions as an antiquated snapshot of NRMs.
I tried to cut out the really old sources (of which there is still too much) and extremely bad sources a few months ago, but I had to stop making progress further because I cannot figure out what this article should should be about. Is it about the term cult (would probably be easier to write) or are we going to write about it acting as if it's a concept that has any agreed upon aspects besides a label, which is a very disputed idea. In any case we need to stop using sources that are very clearly just about NRMs without reference to the broader concept (but then what do we use? And then the sources that tend to use the word cult dispute the NRM label...). I keep trying to look at the more recent sources and come to the conclusion that everyone is talking about different things which is hard to write an encyclopedia article from. And that definition, which is currently in the article, seems not great. PARAKANYAA (talk) 17:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel your pain. Like "pseudoscience" there is a demarcation problem with cult. I'm reminded of the quip that the difference between a dialect and a language is an army. I'm willing to try to puzzle this one out if you want help. In the meantime, I just searched the term and an older wikipedia definition came up. "Cult is a term for a group with deviant beliefs and practices, often led by a charismatic leader. The term is controversial and has different meanings in popular culture and academia. " This seems good to me. DolyaIskrina (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah certainly something needs to be done here, and the more voices here the better. I like that older definition more than what we have now, and wouldn't mind reinstating it - though in academia there are many divergent senses of the term, so maybe just splitting that between the two is misleading. I think it would help if we had a clearer guide on what we are trying to make this page be about. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lead needs rewriting

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The lead sentence was recently removed, leaving the article to go straight into a defense. No, you need to describe "What is it?" before you dive into defending contentious contemporary usage. The lead is full of pompous-sounding scholarly-type gobbledygook. The lead should introduce the topic and be a summary of the article. I see no summary in this current lead. Use MOS:LEAD for guidance. Think "How would you describe 'cult' to a child?" Most people will only read the lead. It had better explain "What is a cult?" to the average reader. This is an encyclopedia, not a scholar's battleground.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:03, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My issue with that is the definition of cult I would use to explain to a child is "harmful group of weirdos" which may be difficult to find sourcing support for. We don't get to decide what something is or isn't. I do agree that the sentence as before was a very... bad definition, relative to pretty much anything, but I don't know what we should replace it with. Similar problem to Cargo cult I suppose where defining it tends to get lost in the academic weeds (see the year of arguing on the talk page) PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:07, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you added is definitely better, but it still raises a lot of questions, in that it is not supported in the body (WP:LEAD, almost everything in the lead should be in the body) and I question how agreed upon this is as a definition. I don't actually think "high control" is the most agreed upon aspect by the public, much less anyone else. Mostly perceived deviance or harmfulness. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:11, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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