Assess the view that cults and sects are fringe organisations that are inevitably short lived and of little influence on contemporary society.

Cults and sects are often hard to differentiate from one another, as a lot of them have very similar features such as a world-rejecting values and the offer of alternative explanations to traditional beliefs. According to Troeitsch, sects tend to be small, tight-knitted groups of individuals that often disagree with mainstream values and attempt to change society for the better. Cults on the other hand, are loosely knit, require a lot less commitment and do not always hold concrete beliefs.

While some sects are low profile and harmless, others carry out horrific actions and rituals which have become apparent to the public through the media, such as 'Heaven’s Gate': a sect that conducted mass suicides as a way of gaining access to heaven, and the 'People’s Temple', a sect lead by the Reverend Jim
Jones who famously drove a mass suicide in a jungle campsite in South America.

The idea that neither sects nor cults are long lasting is an important one, with theologians such as Richard
Neibuhr suggesting that sects cannot survive beyond one generation. He states that as they are often led and “held together” by one charismatic individual who claims to have some kind of “divine power”, following the death of this leader, the sect usually disappears. Furthermore, second generation members that are born into sects may not maintain the traditions of the movement with the same passion as the founding generation. As a result, it is difficult for sects to maintain their extreme values, and they may accommodate, or compromise, their ideologies and strict standards, and become denominations.

However, there are a number of problems with these explanations. First of all, the death of the leader does not necessarily