clipped from www.therazor.org

In the book Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D. created a list of common cult characteristics. It’s not intended to serve as “cult scale”, but it does serve as a layman’s scorecard for deciding when a religion has cultish tendencies. After reading the list I was struck by how many on the list applied to social and political fads like Global Warming. Is Environmentalism a religion? Could Global Warming be considered a cult within that religion? Let’s take a look at Lalich & Langone’s cult characteristics and see for ourselves.

The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).