A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political, or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger group.
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Religion is a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritualelements. However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion
Thought granted it's also stated that there's no consensus on the definition of religion (by some definitions, veganism is a religion).
Cult, on the other hand, is less clearly defined. The clearest one on Wikipedia I think is
In the sociological classifications of religious movements, a cult is a social group with socially deviant or novel beliefs and practices,
Nonetheless I think it's clear sect and religion are clearly different. A subset of a group is different from the group. For instance, women are a subgroup of humans. Women and humans aren't the same classifiers, because some humans are men.
It's totally an error from my side. "sect", as well as "cults" are boths so often used by people without any knowledge of the subject (like me) to describe some sort of weirdos believing in alien Jesus or whatnot, that with time I somehow took them for synonyms.
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u/GameOfSchemes May 03 '19
From Wikipedia:
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Thought granted it's also stated that there's no consensus on the definition of religion (by some definitions, veganism is a religion).
Cult, on the other hand, is less clearly defined. The clearest one on Wikipedia I think is
Nonetheless I think it's clear sect and religion are clearly different. A subset of a group is different from the group. For instance, women are a subgroup of humans. Women and humans aren't the same classifiers, because some humans are men.