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You’re in a Cult!
How Mainstream Religion Is Just a Larger Cult
Growing up, I used to attend church nearly every Sunday. This was because my mother attended church every Sunday, and this was because her own mother did the same. It was a family tradition, being handed down the generations. The church we attended was a single room brick building with hard wooden pews that we had to travel more than an hour to get to. It was set way back in the woods down a gravel road in the Kentucky countryside, and it did not even have indoor plumbing. If you needed a restroom, you had to use an outhouse. Bear in mind, I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s.
Attending this church, which was a southern variation of Baptist Christianity, the tenets of the faith were straightforward: this version of Christianity was the right version, all others were deceivers meant to lead you astray, and it should be your life mission to tell everyone you know to come to your church so you can save their soul. If you slipped from your faith, you should publicly confess this to the church in what they called “testimony.” After the preacher gave his sermon, which often involved telling the congregation how much danger their souls were in of being damned to an eternal hell of fire and brimstone, a sermon meant to put tribulation on the hearts of the young and unsaved souls, everyone would sing songs and shake hands, and then stand and wait for their…