Actually, I think P.T. Barnum might have been offended by the comparison.
Barnum didn't try to hide his motives.
Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman remembered for hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum never flinched from his stated goal "to put money in his own coffers." He was a businessman, his profession was entertainment, and he was perhaps the first "show business" millionaire. He never said "There's a sucker born every minute" but his rebuttal to critics was often "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me."
Did you promote twi in any way? Did you invite folks to fellowship? Did you send money? Did you volunteer your time for an event?
See what I am saying is that we all partook because without our homes to hold fellowship and classes in, without our witnessing and introducing people, without our enthusiastic endorsement, twi would never have survived.
If VPW had jumped out and said *BOO! I am a serial sexual abuser, I will require sexual service from your wives and daughters. If I cannot manipulate them into providing what I require, My bus driver will serve them a drink that will ensure their compliance. Any whom have a problem with this will be declared possessed and removed from the presence of any whom might listen to their accounts. Their reputations to be destroyed, their lives ripped to shreds. Children will be deemed a nuisance and disposable when they become inconvenient.
You will be required to donate 15 percent of your income for the rest of your life. You will be required to participate in any and alll programs. You will submit to any leaders demands, any invasion of your privacy, ranging from finances to your sex life. You will be required to forsake your natural man familes. And FINALLY, when every last ounce of usefulness has been squeezed from you, when you are broken or ailing, you will be tossed away like so much garbage :(
If VP had been honest, twi would have never had access to tens of thousands of people.
We were what enabled the evil to operate. It was our money that bought the food that they ate, our money that paid for the classes they produced, the houses and buildings that housed the leaders. It was our witnessing that brought people to the ministry. How many young people did we bring to fellowship that ended up abused or dead?
TWI couldn`t have operated without us, it still operates today, poisoning, enslaving the unwarey on the nest egg that WE provided.
I think to deny that we were in a cult simply because we didn`t participate in the more unseemly aspects is yet still another form of denial, an inability to honestly take responsibility for what we participated amd promoted. :(
my great grandparents were chemists and they dyed PT's elephant. i'm not sure if we still have the letter between them. my mom may have given to the museum or whatever. but we still have a beautiful elephant statue in our family from him.
my great grandparents were chemists and they dyed PT's elephant. i'm not sure if we still have the letter between them. my mom may have given to the museum or whatever. but we still have a beautiful elephant statue in our family from him.
Would this mean that all the TWI offshoots are still cults?
I won't ask you to define "offshoots"...I think we all know what you mean...and in that sense, I would say, yes, they are all cults.
...but I also know of former twi leaders who have taken a different path and have directed their Christian service towards mainstream churches...they have gotten involved with people on a grass roots level and are involved with more "traditional" (are you listening JAL?) organizations that actually help people.
As I said in my earlier post...it was the snow on the gas pumps story. Lynn still is evoking this story to add legitimacy to his own cult...afterall, "Dr." Wierwille would be proud of him.
I think that the relationship with Christ begins on a personal level...and is a private matter. Christian fellowship is established AFTER you have made your own personal trek into faith...
What you are saying does not make sense. If what you're saying is true, then anyone who was in the Way, left, and sometime later decided to organize some sort of fellowship/church/ministry, would by default be creating
another cult. And that makes no sense.
"all of the splinters are cults" is in effect saying that anyone who was in the Way has no spiritual
future, and that is obviously false.
There were some who were in the Way who filtered out the good among the bad, grew from the
seems they didn't exactly "filter out" the good.. they sifted out the conceivable good and left the worst of the practice of "prophecy", authoritarianism and "we're rightism" that da way had to offer..
The boasting that "doctor" would be "proud" of what they are doing, that "dad" would appreciate their organization really suggests to me they are cut from the same cloth, share their ancestor's spiritual dna..
I think the moment they close their eyes and affectionately call vic "doctor".. it quacks like a cult..
and the statement that *we* left twi with da GOLD..
personally.. I think a few stolen doctrinal treatments of how many died with the lord, or how many days and nights he laid in the earth.. or analysis of the bible in terms of "administration" to be pretty trivial currency..
seems they didn't exactly "filter out" the good.. they sifted out the conceivable good and left the worst of the practice of "prophecy", authoritarianism and "we're rightism" that da way had to offer..
The boasting that "doctor" would be "proud" of what they are doing, that "dad" would appreciate their organization really suggests to me they are cut from the same cloth, share their ancestor's spiritual dna..
I think the moment they close their eyes and affectionately call vic "doctor".. it quacks like a cult..
and the statement that *we* left twi with da GOLD..
personally.. I think a few stolen doctrinal treatments of how many died with the lord, or how many days and nights he laid in the earth.. or analysis of the bible in terms of "administration" to be pretty trivial currency..
My point is that some who left the Way have been part of new groups, or were involved in developing new groups, which are good and fruitful. I'm not talking about any new group in particular, I'm just talking in general terms.
The definition of a cult is another thing. From my experience, neither the Way nor CES had any of the controlling characteristics of cults. There were some incidents with specific people and situations where there may have been cultish controlling beahvior, but that was not the norm, at least in my experience. Not believing in the doctrine of the trinity doesn't make them cults, it makes them heretical groups in many folks' minds.
The definition of a cult is another thing. From my experience, neither the Way nor CES had any of the controlling characteristics of cults. There were some incidents with specific people and situations where there may have been cultish controlling beahvior, but that was not the norm, at least in my experience. Not believing in the doctrine of the trinity doesn't make them cults, it makes them heretical groups in many folks' minds.
Cheers,
CS
Your experience is how you evaluate and define these groups. That is fine. BUT, to say that not adhering to traditional historic Orthodox theology does not define them as a cult to others is just plain wrong. That IS how a cult is defined in Christian terms. The secular view is different.
Walter Martin described a cult like this: "as a group of people gathered about a specific persons interpretation of the bible... from a theological view point, the cults contain not only a few major deviations from historic Christianity. They paradoxically, they continue to insist that they are entitled to be classified as Christians." (Kingdom of the cults p.11)
In his book The New Cults, Walter Martin defines a cult as “a group religious in nature which surrounds a leader, or a group which either denies or misinterprets essential biblical doctrines.”
"A THEOLOGICAL DEFINITION A THEOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF "CULT" MUST BE BASED ON A STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY. USING THE BIBLE'S TEACHING AS A FOCAL POINT. A CULT IS ANY RELIGIOUS GROUP THAT CLAIMS TO BE CHRISTIAN (OR MAY NOT BE) IS DISTINCT AND HAS DOCTRINES AND PRACTICES THAT CONTRADICT THOSE OF THE SCRIPTURES AS INTERPRETED BY ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY. THOSE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN UPHELD IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY .
ORTHODOXY IS REPRESENTED FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH, AND IS EXPRESSED IN STATEMENTS SUCH AS THE APOSTLES CREED WHICH ARE DENIED . THEY WILL DENY THE BIBLE AS THE COMPLETE BOOK OF REVELATION AND OUR GUIDE TO KNOWING GOD. THEY WILL DISTORT THE CENTRAL MESSAGE OF THE SCRIPTURES AS CHRIST BEING THE SAVIOR ALONE. THEY WILL DENY HIS DEITY AND DISTORT HIS NATURE. THEY FORM THEIR GROUP AROUND A SINGLE PERSONS INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE, OR CHRIST USUALLY BY A NEW REVELATION. THEY REMOVE THEMSELVES FROM THE LARGER BODY AND OPERATE AUTONOMOUSLY. A CULT IS ORGANIZED HERESY. THEY WILL DISTORT ONE OR MORE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS."
Excuse the diversion--back to the topic at hand.
Tz--do you really know and understand how much TWI had an impact on your life? If you have honestly looked at this and evaluated it with great understanding and still say it didn't effect you. Good for you. I am happy for you.
I wish I could say that.
I stood up to plenty of Corps and leadership--I was still in a cult.
Tz--do you really know and understand how much TWI had an impact on your life? If you have honestly looked at this and evaluated it with great understanding and still say it didn't effect you. Good for you. I am happy for you.
I wish I could say that.
I stood up to plenty of Corps and leadership--I was still in a cult.
As a twenty-something, I was attracted to the "specialness" and the ideological "rightness" of the organization - after I took the class, which I would have never done had I had to pay for it. I have honestly evaluated and believe that because I had no desire to take it any further than I did, that I simply didn't have the same experience that many others who were involved did. I was kind of involved in a cult, but it didn't have me. I didn't limit how I lived my life in order to fit into the structure.
I never witnessed. I never brought anyone to fellowship (heck, my attendance put me in the backslider category). I did not sign up one person to take the class. I never had a green card to give to anyone. I simply did not think it was a ministry that was a good fit for most of the people I knew or came into contact with. I was of the opinion that if what you were doing was working, by all means continue with that.
I did struggle with the notion of needing to fellowship with people with "right doctrine." That notion sent me into a splinter for a while, but when I started seeing the same behaviors that I did not like about TWI, I dropped the fellowship and simply did nothing for a few years. Once I dispensed with doctrine as a requirement for fellowship, which was about 8 years ago, I haven't felt an impact other than an amazement for putting so much emphasis on it in the past. I find doctrinal disputes to be divisive and I don't go there anymore.
I believe there is a need for corporal worship and a need to function within the body for all believers and I do not believe there is one best way to accomplish that, nor have I ever believed that.
For what it's worth, I think I understand what you are saying here.
When my wife and I met 25 years ago, I was still active in TWI but most of my really extreme commitment and activity was on the wane. She took PLAF and a handful of the core (not corps) classes so that we would qualify as being equally yoked together. Can't marry an unbeliever now can we? She took TIP and even faked SIT/Interp. for at least 2 years. It still baffles her how it could continue to affect me. So, she was "in" it, albeit on the periphery, but it was never really "in" her.
She took PLAF and a handful of the core (not corps) classes so that we would qualify as being equally yoked together. Can't marry an unbeliever now can we?
That's it in a nutshell. My boyfriend (now my husband of 28 years) could not have a relationship with someone who had not taken the class. Ok, whatever. I'll do it if you pay for it. Once he saw what a pain in the butt it was to keep up with the jones' as far as involvement with a kid (much less 3 of them), we really scaled it back. He'd done the WoW thing in college - wasn't impressed. He'd taken the AC - and wasn't impressed. I read the WoW requirements from the stuff he had kept along with the AC syllabus and didn't want to go there or do that. I just didn't have the heart for it.
One of my nephews got married a couple years ago to a Catholic girl. They were married in his church, which was a Protestant one, and her priest came and participated in the ceremony.
Last summer he converted to Catholicism. I've know this kid for, well, all his life, and I really don't understand why he would do this, especially now, after they've been married a while. But they are back in their hometown and her family I'm sure would want her married to a true Son of The Church.
When my own son asked me what kind of girl I wanted him to marry, I just told him to marry someone who loves God, loves him, and can make him happy. A clean house and healthy happy kids were on the menu, but not as important, I thought.
Cult, denomination, sect, I dunno. Seems like some care more than others.
I'm glad for Mrs. Waysider, really glad she didn't get sucked into the vortex.
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waysider
Actually, I think P.T. Barnum might have been offended by the comparison.
Barnum didn't try to hide his motives.
Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman remembered for hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum never flinched from his stated goal "to put money in his own coffers." He was a businessman, his profession was entertainment, and he was perhaps the first "show business" millionaire. He never said "There's a sucker born every minute" but his rebuttal to critics was often "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum
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rascal
Tzaia,
Did you promote twi in any way? Did you invite folks to fellowship? Did you send money? Did you volunteer your time for an event?
See what I am saying is that we all partook because without our homes to hold fellowship and classes in, without our witnessing and introducing people, without our enthusiastic endorsement, twi would never have survived.
If VPW had jumped out and said *BOO! I am a serial sexual abuser, I will require sexual service from your wives and daughters. If I cannot manipulate them into providing what I require, My bus driver will serve them a drink that will ensure their compliance. Any whom have a problem with this will be declared possessed and removed from the presence of any whom might listen to their accounts. Their reputations to be destroyed, their lives ripped to shreds. Children will be deemed a nuisance and disposable when they become inconvenient.
You will be required to donate 15 percent of your income for the rest of your life. You will be required to participate in any and alll programs. You will submit to any leaders demands, any invasion of your privacy, ranging from finances to your sex life. You will be required to forsake your natural man familes. And FINALLY, when every last ounce of usefulness has been squeezed from you, when you are broken or ailing, you will be tossed away like so much garbage :(
If VP had been honest, twi would have never had access to tens of thousands of people.
We were what enabled the evil to operate. It was our money that bought the food that they ate, our money that paid for the classes they produced, the houses and buildings that housed the leaders. It was our witnessing that brought people to the ministry. How many young people did we bring to fellowship that ended up abused or dead?
TWI couldn`t have operated without us, it still operates today, poisoning, enslaving the unwarey on the nest egg that WE provided.
I think to deny that we were in a cult simply because we didn`t participate in the more unseemly aspects is yet still another form of denial, an inability to honestly take responsibility for what we participated amd promoted. :(
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GrouchoMarxJr
My apologies to PT Barnum... :)
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Rejoice
Would this mean that all the TWI offshoots are still cults?
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waysider
"All" is a really big word. I think you would have to evaluate each one based on its own merits.
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Thomas Loy Bumgarner
Is that all without exception or all without distinction? :huh: ^_^ -_- <_< :unsure: :wacko: :blink:
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Ham
I dunno.. if it looks like twi, quacks like twi.. to me it's pretty obvious..
if it has a system of "overseers" who function with no observable accountability..
if the group exists, mainly to serve it's own little self..
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excathedra
my great grandparents were chemists and they dyed PT's elephant. i'm not sure if we still have the letter between them. my mom may have given to the museum or whatever. but we still have a beautiful elephant statue in our family from him.
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GrouchoMarxJr
wow!...that's really cool.
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GrouchoMarxJr
I won't ask you to define "offshoots"...I think we all know what you mean...and in that sense, I would say, yes, they are all cults.
...but I also know of former twi leaders who have taken a different path and have directed their Christian service towards mainstream churches...they have gotten involved with people on a grass roots level and are involved with more "traditional" (are you listening JAL?) organizations that actually help people.
As I said in my earlier post...it was the snow on the gas pumps story. Lynn still is evoking this story to add legitimacy to his own cult...afterall, "Dr." Wierwille would be proud of him.
I think that the relationship with Christ begins on a personal level...and is a private matter. Christian fellowship is established AFTER you have made your own personal trek into faith...
...and afterall, Christ was absent from twi.
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Rejoice
Lynn still is evoking this story to add legitimacy to his own cult...afterall, "Dr." Wierwille would be proud of him.
GAG, YUCK, P-TOOEY!!!
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waterbuffalo
Yes, you (we all) were in a cult.
Yes, all of the splinters are cults.
:(
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caribousam
What you are saying does not make sense. If what you're saying is true, then anyone who was in the Way, left, and sometime later decided to organize some sort of fellowship/church/ministry, would by default be creating
another cult. And that makes no sense.
"all of the splinters are cults" is in effect saying that anyone who was in the Way has no spiritual
future, and that is obviously false.
There were some who were in the Way who filtered out the good among the bad, grew from the
experience, and continue to prosper.
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Ham
Like, who? CES/stiffy?
seems they didn't exactly "filter out" the good.. they sifted out the conceivable good and left the worst of the practice of "prophecy", authoritarianism and "we're rightism" that da way had to offer..
The boasting that "doctor" would be "proud" of what they are doing, that "dad" would appreciate their organization really suggests to me they are cut from the same cloth, share their ancestor's spiritual dna..
I think the moment they close their eyes and affectionately call vic "doctor".. it quacks like a cult..
and the statement that *we* left twi with da GOLD..
personally.. I think a few stolen doctrinal treatments of how many died with the lord, or how many days and nights he laid in the earth.. or analysis of the bible in terms of "administration" to be pretty trivial currency..
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caribousam
My point is that some who left the Way have been part of new groups, or were involved in developing new groups, which are good and fruitful. I'm not talking about any new group in particular, I'm just talking in general terms.
The definition of a cult is another thing. From my experience, neither the Way nor CES had any of the controlling characteristics of cults. There were some incidents with specific people and situations where there may have been cultish controlling beahvior, but that was not the norm, at least in my experience. Not believing in the doctrine of the trinity doesn't make them cults, it makes them heretical groups in many folks' minds.
Cheers,
CS
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geisha779
Your experience is how you evaluate and define these groups. That is fine. BUT, to say that not adhering to traditional historic Orthodox theology does not define them as a cult to others is just plain wrong. That IS how a cult is defined in Christian terms. The secular view is different.
Walter Martin described a cult like this: "as a group of people gathered about a specific persons interpretation of the bible... from a theological view point, the cults contain not only a few major deviations from historic Christianity. They paradoxically, they continue to insist that they are entitled to be classified as Christians." (Kingdom of the cults p.11)
In his book The New Cults, Walter Martin defines a cult as “a group religious in nature which surrounds a leader, or a group which either denies or misinterprets essential biblical doctrines.”
"A THEOLOGICAL DEFINITION A THEOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF "CULT" MUST BE BASED ON A STANDARD OF CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY. USING THE BIBLE'S TEACHING AS A FOCAL POINT. A CULT IS ANY RELIGIOUS GROUP THAT CLAIMS TO BE CHRISTIAN (OR MAY NOT BE) IS DISTINCT AND HAS DOCTRINES AND PRACTICES THAT CONTRADICT THOSE OF THE SCRIPTURES AS INTERPRETED BY ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY. THOSE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN UPHELD IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY .
ORTHODOXY IS REPRESENTED FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH, AND IS EXPRESSED IN STATEMENTS SUCH AS THE APOSTLES CREED WHICH ARE DENIED . THEY WILL DENY THE BIBLE AS THE COMPLETE BOOK OF REVELATION AND OUR GUIDE TO KNOWING GOD. THEY WILL DISTORT THE CENTRAL MESSAGE OF THE SCRIPTURES AS CHRIST BEING THE SAVIOR ALONE. THEY WILL DENY HIS DEITY AND DISTORT HIS NATURE. THEY FORM THEIR GROUP AROUND A SINGLE PERSONS INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE, OR CHRIST USUALLY BY A NEW REVELATION. THEY REMOVE THEMSELVES FROM THE LARGER BODY AND OPERATE AUTONOMOUSLY. A CULT IS ORGANIZED HERESY. THEY WILL DISTORT ONE OR MORE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS."
Excuse the diversion--back to the topic at hand.
Tz--do you really know and understand how much TWI had an impact on your life? If you have honestly looked at this and evaluated it with great understanding and still say it didn't effect you. Good for you. I am happy for you.
I wish I could say that.
I stood up to plenty of Corps and leadership--I was still in a cult.
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Tzaia
As a twenty-something, I was attracted to the "specialness" and the ideological "rightness" of the organization - after I took the class, which I would have never done had I had to pay for it. I have honestly evaluated and believe that because I had no desire to take it any further than I did, that I simply didn't have the same experience that many others who were involved did. I was kind of involved in a cult, but it didn't have me. I didn't limit how I lived my life in order to fit into the structure.
I never witnessed. I never brought anyone to fellowship (heck, my attendance put me in the backslider category). I did not sign up one person to take the class. I never had a green card to give to anyone. I simply did not think it was a ministry that was a good fit for most of the people I knew or came into contact with. I was of the opinion that if what you were doing was working, by all means continue with that.
I did struggle with the notion of needing to fellowship with people with "right doctrine." That notion sent me into a splinter for a while, but when I started seeing the same behaviors that I did not like about TWI, I dropped the fellowship and simply did nothing for a few years. Once I dispensed with doctrine as a requirement for fellowship, which was about 8 years ago, I haven't felt an impact other than an amazement for putting so much emphasis on it in the past. I find doctrinal disputes to be divisive and I don't go there anymore.
I believe there is a need for corporal worship and a need to function within the body for all believers and I do not believe there is one best way to accomplish that, nor have I ever believed that.
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waysider
Taz
For what it's worth, I think I understand what you are saying here.
When my wife and I met 25 years ago, I was still active in TWI but most of my really extreme commitment and activity was on the wane. She took PLAF and a handful of the core (not corps) classes so that we would qualify as being equally yoked together. Can't marry an unbeliever now can we? She took TIP and even faked SIT/Interp. for at least 2 years. It still baffles her how it could continue to affect me. So, she was "in" it, albeit on the periphery, but it was never really "in" her.
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Tzaia
That's it in a nutshell. My boyfriend (now my husband of 28 years) could not have a relationship with someone who had not taken the class. Ok, whatever. I'll do it if you pay for it. Once he saw what a pain in the butt it was to keep up with the jones' as far as involvement with a kid (much less 3 of them), we really scaled it back. He'd done the WoW thing in college - wasn't impressed. He'd taken the AC - and wasn't impressed. I read the WoW requirements from the stuff he had kept along with the AC syllabus and didn't want to go there or do that. I just didn't have the heart for it.
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Watered Garden
One of my nephews got married a couple years ago to a Catholic girl. They were married in his church, which was a Protestant one, and her priest came and participated in the ceremony.
Last summer he converted to Catholicism. I've know this kid for, well, all his life, and I really don't understand why he would do this, especially now, after they've been married a while. But they are back in their hometown and her family I'm sure would want her married to a true Son of The Church.
When my own son asked me what kind of girl I wanted him to marry, I just told him to marry someone who loves God, loves him, and can make him happy. A clean house and healthy happy kids were on the menu, but not as important, I thought.
Cult, denomination, sect, I dunno. Seems like some care more than others.
I'm glad for Mrs. Waysider, really glad she didn't get sucked into the vortex.
WG
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OperaBuff
Someone once defined "cult" as a religion that has not gained significant political power. I quite like that definition.
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FreeFromCults
Were you involved with a cult (TWI)?
Like they said: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..."
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GrouchoMarxJr
...That doesn't speak too highly of religion.
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Lifted Up
I know my deprogrammers back in 1979 didn't use that definition; they slapped the LDS church onto the cult list with all the others.
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