Are all religions cults?

[Angrboda]

Personally I would absolutely categorize Christianity and Islam as cults. Obviously Mormonism and Scientology too. Certainly North Korea as well, as you say. It is, to my mind, what makes them more dangerous than the the less cult like religions mentioned earlier. The teachings are rigid, and the followers can be ousted if they disagree. This is fundamental to cultism. They keep followers in line with threats of cutting off from the flock, family, friends, and support. They teach you to rely on them, then threaten to take that away if you don't follow.

This points to an additional aspect of the cult question I hadn't considered and that is the group process. Does the group promote itself and maintain followers by appeal to the ideas, or does it use propaganda, coercion, shunning, and fear to maintain and increase its share of believers? The behavior of followers independent of doctrine is relevant, in addition to size, heterodoxy, and devotion to a small group or a single individual. Thus movements like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology would be considered more cult-like than mainstream Christianity. But then again there's the caveat. While Christianity doesn't use social mechanisms to maintain belief, the threat of hell is definitely a form of coercion, and it's questionable as to how many would follow the model of Christians if they believed that everyone was going to heaven regardless of belief or action. Many say that the motive for following Christ is the meaningfulness of God's love and purpose, but is that enough for all followers? I doubt it. I suspect without any hint of eternal punishment, the number of followers would drop off dramatically, to say nothing of the drop in new recruits. In the middle ages, threats of hell as well as temporal punishments from the church were used to keep followers in line, and to encourage others to join Christianity (Spain and its treatment of Muslims and Jews being a prominent example, as well as the Albigensian crusades and the wars of the reformation). Nowadays, Christianity tends to attempt to maintain and encourage followers through political manipulation more, and less so by direct threats, so in that it has become less cult-like. But for the majority of its existence, the social process of Christianity was very cult-like. And aspects of the cult-like social aspect remain, such as people de-friending people on Facebook and shunning families that don't share their beliefs. But the real example is Islam, which has yet to leave the period in which coercion and violence are prominent tools in maintaining and increasing the number of followers. And it seems unlikely that Islam will make a similar transition to that of Christianity as war with non-followers and violence towards non-believers seems not only deeply embedded in the culture, but also a core part of doctrine.