And this is exactly the result of the aforementioned people actually marketing Lisp as a cult. IMO we can thank these Lisp "evangelists" for greatly contributing to the bad vibe that Lisp dialects have nowadays, along with a few Lisp-using haters such as Erik Naggum who provided the community with as much insight as toxicity.
He's been dead for a long time, though I've seen his posts being brought up now and then on the Lisp forums. Honestly, I'm thankful that these situations are rare. Most of his Lisp wisdom has been distilled from his other qualities and integrated into many contemporary Lisp libraries. This saves us from the need to dive into the verbatim Naggum posts from the c.l.l archives.
It maybe had that ethos in its heyday, especially with pg/jwz/c2, but if you for instance join #lisp on Freenode, you’ll find the community is by and large just a bunch of people hacking and collaborating with no evangelical agenda.