[samhw]

Your friend was in an organisation which (a) didn't recruit new members, (b) gave its members total freedom to do whatever they wanted, and (c) gave its members money? And you're calling this organisation a cult?

No offence, but is English your first language? This sounds entirely unrelated to the concept of a cult. I think you're just describing a company, an LLP with a religious focus.

[0x000000001]

I think you believe a "cult" only means a situation where people are held against their will by crazy religious nuts trying to assert their sovereignty. Those are the only examples the media wants you to know about.

Hearing about a group of people who have successfully implemented small scale communism with a religion involved and they thrived for over 100 years isn't something you want to shout from the rooftops as it would encourage more of this behavior.

[retrac]

That's not a cult, then. Its just an odd religious community.

In contemporary English, cult refers specifically to brainwashy abusive practices that attempt to control every aspect of the person's life and tend not to allow you to leave.

Some groups like the Amish and the ultra-Orthodox Jews in North America live in insular communal societies, but most would not describe them as cults. (Though sometimes the more isolationist groups do get called so, maybe with some cause.)

[ChainOfFools]

a cult in the pejorative sense is one in which members exhibit what used to be called "snapping," where the confluence of dogma internalization and pressure to resist out-group messaging effectively disables one's ability to question their in-group messaging.