24th Sept - Definition of "Cult" French law

2.- The imprecision and diversity of the definitions resulting from the current language
The concept of cult, even in the current language, is not unequivocal; various levels of analysis are not undoubtedly enough to testify to the diversity - and the richness - of the concept.
a) Etymological approach
An etymological study shows that the term "cult" [the actual French word is "secte." I have been using "cult" because that's the sense in which it's used in the report. Wherever "cult" appears in this translation, "secte" is the original French. To my knowledge, there is no separate word for "cult."] appeared around the 13th - 14th centuries and that it can be connected to two Latin roots: one connecting it to the verb to follow, the other with the verb to cross.
This hesitation on the semantic origin still today impregnates all of the dictionaries.
Significant is the definition provided by the LittrŽ dictionary, for which a cult is "the whole of the people who make profession of same doctrines " or "which follows a marked opinion of heresy or error."
The Robert dictionary distinguishes between those people "who have the same doctrines within a religion" and those who "profess the same doctrines."
In all the cases, the two supposed origins of the concept induce, simultaneously or alternatively, the two ideas of common belief and/or rupture compared to a former belief.
It is on this concept of rupture that the dictionary of the religions (PUF, 1984) insists, defining a cult as "In the original sense, a group who dispute the doctrines and structures of the Church, generally involving dissidence. In a wider sense, any minority religious movement."
B) Sociological approach
Sociology defines a cult as a group in opposition to that of Church. Thus Max Weber proceeded to specify these two concepts one compared to the other; for him the Church is an institution of health [salut?] which privileges the extension of its influence, whereas a cult is a contractual group which stresses the intensity of the life of its members.
Ernst Troeltsh continued the work of Weber and stressed that the Church is ready, to extend its audience, to adapt to society, to pass compromises with the States. A cult, on the other hand, is located in withdrawal compared to global society and tends to refuse any link with it, and even any dialogue. It adopts an identical attitude with regard to the other religions, so that in this sense ecumenism could be used as a criterion to distinguish Church and cult.
c) Approach based on the danger of the cults
The term "cultish" appeared during wars of religion and impresses of a strong pejorative connotation. It is applied to the member of a cult characterized by his intolerance, blind adhesion, and narrow-mindedness.
The modern language was strongly marked by this pejorative connotation: nowadays, the term "cult" makes reference to minority religious or pseudo-religious movements of recent appearance, secessionists or not.
The debate regarding "dangerous cults" or "cultish drifts" still accentuated the pejorative aspect of the concept.
Several people heard by the Commission developed in front of it approaches of the definition of cults based on the danger of the movements. One of them thus formalized the result of this step, while giving as a definition of cults:
" Groups aiming by operations of psychological destabilization at obtaining from their followers an unconditional allegiance, a reduction in the critical spirit, a rupture with the references commonly allowed (ethics, scientists, civic, educational), and involving dangers to the personal freedoms, health, education, the democratic institutions.
These groups use philosophical, religious or therapeutic masks to dissimulate objectives to be able to influence and exploit their followers. "
From such a point of view, the stress is laid moreover on the insidious character of the cultish drift, because it is difficult to trace a border between "legitimate " operation and the danger zone, i.e. between:
- free association and the coercive group,
- conviction and a certainty which is impossible to circumvent,
- engagement and fanaticism,
- the prestige of the head and the worship of the guru,
- voluntary decisions and completely induced choices,
- search of alternatives (cultural, morals, ideological) and rupture with the values of society,
- loyal group membership and unconditional allegiance,
- skillful persuasion and programmed manipulation,
- the mobilizing language and the nŽolanguage (the "set language"), [literally "langue de bois," language of the woods, meaning perhaps language that hides things?]
- l'esprit de corps and the fusionnel [melted together without any individuality] group.
One measures at which point it is, under these conditions, difficult to reason in an objective way, to be located between vulgarizing and the diabolisation, blindness and the abusive tolerance on the one hand, generalized suspicion on the other hand: it is however this way which chose the Commission.
d) The concept retained by the Commission
The Commission indeed noted that if the difficulty of defining the concept of cult were underlined by all the people that it heard, the reality concerned seems unanimously encircled, except naturally by the followers and leaders of the cults which deny this character with their grouping (while being able to recognize it with others) and prefer to evoke the terms of "Churches" or of "religious minorities."
The Commission does not claim to succeed in it with what all those which work on the question of cults, often for many years, did not arrive, i.e. giving an "objective" definition of cults, likely to be accepted by all. Work of the Commission is thus based on a certain number of ethical choices which it does not seek to dissimulate.
Among the indices making it possible to suppose the possible reality of suspicions resulting in describing as cult a movement being presented in the form of a religion, it retained, endorsing the criteria used by the General Information in the analyses of cult phenomenon to which proceeds this service and which was communicated to the Commission:
- mental destabilization;
- exorbitant character of the financial requirements;
- isolation from society
- danger to physical health
- embrigadement [bringing into the "troops"] of the children;
- the more or less antisocial speech;
- disorders with the law and order;
- importance of the legal contentions;
- the possible diversion of the traditional economic circuits;
- attempts at infiltration of the public authorities.

Your Commission insists on the fact that, the definition of cults proving with many regards difficult, it carried out its work while taking care not to endorse the definitions of cults suggested by its interlocutors, by nature engaged, with a title or another in the promotion of the new religions or the fight against their excesses - realities or supposed --.
It was conscious that neither the innovation, neither the small number of followers, nor even the eccentricity could be retained as criteria making it possible to describe a religious movement as a cult; the greatest contemporary religions were often, at their beginnings, sects with a small number of followers; many established and socially allowed rites today could in the beginning cause reserves or oppositions.
The field of the Commission's study has thus been voluntarily restricted to a certain number of association joining together, generally around a spiritual head, some people sharing the same belief in a being or a certain number of transcendental ideas, itself located or not in rupture "traditional" religion" (Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist) which have been excluded from this study, and on which have, at one time or another, weigh the suspicion of an activity contrary with public law and order or with personal individual freedoms.
The difficulty in defining the concept of cult, which will however be used in the continuation of this report, led the Commission to retain a beam of indices, of which each one could lend to long discussions. It thus preferred, with the risk of [froisser?] many susceptibilities or to carry out an analysis partial to reality, to retain the common direction that the public opinion allots to the concept.
With defect[?], the Commission could not, noting the difficulties encountered at the time of the attempt at definition of the phenomenon, allow that to stop its work. Such an attitude would undoubtedly have diverted, and, moreover, would have prevented the Commission from analyzing the real problems arising from the development of a certain number of associations.
Difficult as it is to define, the phenomenon of cults cannot in addition - but also of this fact - be measured with precision.