If you’ve been in ex-Mormon online spaces long, you’ve probably seen or heard people refer to the Church as a cult. Others (most academics) do not regard “cult” frameworks as legitimate at all. Here are some resources on the topic.
The BITE Model
The BITE model was developed by Dr. Steven Hassan, author of Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-Selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. Most ex-Mormons arguing that the Church is a cult are using this framework as a reference.
Exmo Lex has a great series comparing LDS teachings with the BITE model.
Academic Discourse
As Dan McClellan explains in this video, scholars generally consider the cult framework to be, at best, (dangerous) pseudoscience.
At worst, as Megan Goodwin explains in articles like “The Making of the American Religious Monster,” “cult” is a label given to minoritized religions so that their members are seen as fair targets of state violence and so that the American populace at large does not have to reexamine the societal forces that spawned that religion in the first place.
In my blog post “Let’s Stop Calling Mormon Churches ‘Cults,'” I go in to why I think the word “cult” is damaging to fundamentalist Mormon (and potentially mainstream Mormon and ex-Mormon) families.
Uses of Hassan’s Work
I do think that ex-Mormons relate to Hassan’s descriptions of high-demand groups for a reason and that his work can therefore be useful for ex-Mormons who want to process their own experiences. However, I think it’s essential to do this with the realization that your assessment is personal and subjective rather than scientific or applicable to others.
You can see my “Control” YouTube playlist if you want to consider ways in which ex-Mormons often consider the LDS Church controlling.
Eternity of Cats 