Cult Or New Religious Movement

Robert Fettgather holds a BA in psychology from San Jose State University as well as Masters and Doctoral degrees. He works as an associate faculty at Mission College in Santa Clara, educating students in different areas of psychology. An outdoorsman, Robert Fettgather likes to spend his free time hiking and camping.

A cult refers to any group of people with a specific religious or philosophical belief system and deemed socially deviant (deviance can be difficult to determine in some cases).  When Steven Hassan was 19 years old, he was recruited by the Unification Church, an infamous cult known for its mass marriage ceremonies. He spent two and a half years with the group, working to bring in new members, raise money, and preach the teachings of its controversial founder, Sun Myung Moon

In popular culture, most people associate the term cult with a group of people whose beliefs are so different from the mainstream that they are viewed with suspicion. Media portrayals may be sensationalistic and negative.  Some sociologists have now dropped the term cult concluding that it is a stigmatizing concept, and replaced it with a morally neutral term, such as "new religious movement". Others warn  that cults can be a destructive and dangerous force.