A race or nation can only assimilate from any advanced religion that which is reasonably consistent and compatible with its current evolutionary status, plus its genius for adaptation. [1] Atheistic cults claim that such salvation as was attainable could come only by man’s own unaided efforts. [2] Destiny of cults depends on leadership. [3] The cults are formed, not to discover truth, but rather to promulgate their creeds. [4]
Fetishism ran through all the primitive cults from the earliest belief in sacred stones, through idolatry, cannibalism, and nature worship, to totemism. [5] The ceremonies of the cult were primitive man’s attempt to control the material world in which he found himself. [6]
The early Christian cult was the most effective, appealing, and enduring of any ritual ever conceived or devised, but much of its value has been destroyed in a scientific age by the destruction of so many of its original underlying tenets. [7]
Cults provide symbolism to preserve religious loyalties. [8] Religion rarely survives without institutions, as private practice of isolated individuals. [9]
The cult preserved sentiment and satisfied emotion, but it has always been the greatest obstacle to social reconstruction and spiritual progress. [10] Sectarianism is a disease of institutional religion, and dogmatism is an enslavement of the spiritual nature. [11]
In the spiritual fellowship of the believer-son with the divine Father there can never be doctrinal finality and sectarian superiority of group consciousness. [12] The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it. [13]
Jesus avoided in every possible manner the formal establishment of an organized cult, a crystallized religion, or a segregated ethical grouping of mortal beings. [14]
It must be the outgrowth of applied love. [15] Cult must be predicated on Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. [16] But a religious cult cannot be manufactured; it must grow. [17] No cult can survive if it retards moral growth and fails to foster spiritual progress. [18] It must symbolize spiritual experience, significance of home; embody mystery; be elastic; not be overly complex. [19]
The new cult must foster sentiment, satisfy emotion, and promote loyalty; but it must do more: It must facilitate spiritual progress, enhance cosmic meanings, augment moral values, encourage social development, and stimulate a high type of personal religious living. [20]
The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the theologic sense but lost in the directional meaning, wandering about in confusion among the isms and cults of a frustrated philosophic era. [21]
The great danger in all this is that the ritual tends to become a substitute for religion. [22] It is better to reform than destroy group function. [23] Endless rituals have hampered society and cursed civilization, have been an intolerable burden to every act of life, every racial undertaking. [24] The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision. [25] The more this ritual has been an unconscious growth, the stronger it has gripped its devotees. [26]
See also: UB 90:5.1-3.