The Midwest is full of tiny communities that would look like cults to someone who hasn't lived here- Amish, Mennonites, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and more.

A big part of the difference is that- aside from Jehovah's Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing, and members tend to stay within the groups for longer- their activities rarely make hollywood-style media news because they're not particularly interesting compared to what we more typically think of as cults (i.e. the doomsday cult" in the article).

Oh yeah the Midwest is full of cults. There are a ton of radical and fundamentalist Christian offshoots. The only difference between many religions and cults is time.

West Coast cults have their own particular flavor though, like the Fellowship of Friends.

So if every religion is a cult then why many mainstream denominations are easy to leave?

You're making it harder for people to actually share how to escape an actual cult by calling every religion a cult

I’m not going to lie, the fellowship of friends sounds awesome. A group of cautiously hedonistic people with real world jobs sounds great.

> aside from Jehovah's Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing

From [1]:

Members are expected to participate regularly in evangelizing work ...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_practi...

Yeah, that's literally what they said.

I'm not a native speaker; I thought proselytising = evangelising work.

Did I get that exactly the wrong way around?

"Aside from" means "except for"... He said that most of them don't attempt to convert people's religion (proselytism) with Jehovah's witnesses being the exception.

Parse error on my side apparently: I read the "- aside from X, they do Y,... -" that "they" referred to X.

I'm from the midwest of the us, have lived roughly 18 years in california, never met any cult person, except for opt-in cults like crossfit and other macho communities which are seemingly creepily (laughably) similar. "spiritual gangster" shirts i've seen many times, which i can't tell the humor level of.

> it doesn’t take long to find someone who was raised in a cult, or has family members in a cult.

I'm gonna make an assumption that you have a much more liberal definition of 'cult' than most of us are thinking of - I've lived and worked my entire life on the west coast, the last 2 decades in Northern California, and I don't think I've ever met someone raised in a cult.

When thinking about other regions, you’re probably discounting churches that turn to just one or a few charismatic pastors to help them understand Christian faith and history.

These are ultimately as idiosyncratic and subject to community abuse as the 20th century belief communities that syncretize “Eastern” faiths, materialist philosophies, and various other post-globalization sources.

They may look different to you because the front-door teachings superficially make more sense in one than the other from your perspective, but they’re operationally pretty similar.

Having mostly worked for west coast companies, I'd be pretty surprised if this was common.

Granted, I was raised mormon, which is like a half-cult, but within tech companies themselves I haven't really seen any of this behavior. Perhaps it's more common in other departments (I'm a SWE), I dunno.

Coming from born in the bay area and fairly deep roots on the west coast.

The post war boom years are a fertile time for cults in California. You had a lot of people who were isolated from their previous communities that were often easy marks for grifter run cults of all sorts. And not just California. But probably less visible in the Midwest with a less dynamic and conservative population.

Also: My definition of a cult is the question what happens when you try to leave?

Just coincidentally, within a few minutes before your comment there was this thread posted alleging Maker Media of being a cult.

https://twitter.com/ViolenceWorks/status/1537524983961767936

Also coming from the Midwest, how is fanatical Christianity any better?