Cult is contested in the study of religion. In ordinary use it delivers a verdict rather than describing anything, and Bromley and Shupe's Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare argued in 1981 that the panic of that decade was itself the thing most in need of explanation. Several groups classed this way contest the word as defamatory. The heading is kept because the grouping it makes is a real one, and it is offset by saying what the grouping is rather than by pretending the word is harmless.
Movements that are new and unfamiliar without being in conflict with anyone are not filed here. They are treated as religions in their own right, under Religions in the New Religious Movement grouping, where Cao Dai, Tenrikyo, Cheondoism, Falun Gong, Spiritism, Spiritualism, New Thought, Eckankar and Discordianism will be found. A reader who came to this page expecting Tenrikyo should look there.
The entries within this heading are not all of a kind either, and the difference matters. Some concern movements whose leaders were tried and convicted. Some concern movements whose reputation rests on journalism and on the accounts of former members and has never been tested in a court. A few concern movements that were as much the object of hostility as the source of it. Each entry says which it is, and describes the beliefs and practices in the same terms it would use for any tradition.