#STRask - Is Christianity Narrow-Minded and Dangerous?

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Questions about how to respond to the criticism that Christianity is narrow-minded and dangerous, and what to say to someone who thinks Christianity is a cult.   How would you respond to the criticism that Christianity is narrow-minded and dangerous? What would you say to someone who thinks Christianity is a cult?

Welcome back, friends. This is Amy Hall and... Greg Cogle. All right, Greg. We are going to answer some questions today. This one comes from Lucy. How would you respond to the criticism that Christianity is narrow-minded and dangerous? Well, this is a good opportunity for clarification. Question. What do you mean narrow-minded? and what do you mean dangerous? Now, I think I know what people mean when they say this. I'll cut to the chase and make a distinction.

There's a difference between a narrow view and a narrow-minded view. Okay. Something that's narrow-minded is a description of how the person comes to hold the view, not the view itself. Actually, narrow-mindedness is a characteristic of an individual, not a view. A view is narrow. if it says this is the right way and other ways are not correct. And especially if this right way is very, very precise and specific,

it excludes a lot of others, then that's considered narrow. By the way, all views are narrow in a certain fashion, and that is that they hold that the view itself is the correct one and those that oppose it are incorrect. Now, some people think, well, Hinduism is a much broader view because all religions are included, kind of. Baha'i would be like that, maybe, where all the religions are included as such, so to speak, but not Hinduism, because Hinduism basically has a picture of the world.

And it says that you could practice other religions with false views about the world and still accomplish the goals that Hinduism indicates we ought to be seeking to accomplish, working off karma or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And so in that case, the claim is that Hinduism is true, and the other views are actually false. However, even if you believe a false thing and you do certain pursuits of the false thing, it turns out to credit you according to the Hindu view. So my point here is that some views that appear to be broad are not as broad at all. And the fact is that every religion claims that its religious take on the world is accurate.

Every religion, every worldview means to be offering a true story of reality. And not just religion. Not just every worldview, exactly. Naturalism, physicalism, atheism, means to be offering a true character. characterization of the way the world actually is a true story of reality, and they can't all be true. And this is one of the problem with Baha'ism, because it wants to say all of these views, which are conflicting with each other, are equally true. Well, this turns out to be nonsense, because God can't be personal Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and not personal Hinduism at the same time.

Jesus can't be the Messiah Christianity and not be the Messiah Judaism at the same time. Somebody's mistaken. And by the way, understanding of Jesus and also the nature of God are core elements of these worldviews. They're not just ancillary. They're central. And so what you have then is you have the affirmation of two worldviews that don't affirm each other by their very nature. And so when you have religious views like that, that's just confusion. That's not broad-mindedness.

I should say that's not lack of narrowness. Now, so that's narrowness. There are, that goes to the issues themselves, the claims of the worldview themselves. And now, narrow-mindedness is different. It's the way a person holds a view. A narrow-minded person is someone who is, in a certain sense, locked down on their view, and there's no willingness to consider alternatives. I'm juggling now because the irony is that thoughtful Christians are not narrow-minded.

They're willing to consider other views, but when they do, they think they're mistaken, and they have reasons for this. When it comes to other people with contrary views who claim that they're broad-minded, they're not because they're not even willing to consider the claims of Christianity, for example, or anything that's outside of their very expansive view. So the narrow-minded ones, it really amounts to almost a close-mindedness. Okay, narrow-mindedness is kin to close-mindedness, except for there's a little bit more openness. So it's describing the person, the narrow-minded person can hold a true view.

A narrow view can be true. A narrow-minded person could believe something that's true. It's less likely they're going to be able to know that it's true, even though they believe it's true, because they haven't considered alternatives that might compete and might be better. I don't know. But narrow-mindedness is just simply an epistemic liability. Okay, liability to knowing. Incidentally, if every Christian was narrow-minded, notice this tells you nothing about Christianity,

just tells you something about Christians and about human beings in general. So when people say, well, that's narrow-minded. I guess I could say, so what? But they wouldn't understand that. But you understand the point of making here. Again, there is no quality of a believer that in itself, invades against the belief they hold. If you want to refute a belief, you have to talk about the belief, not something else.

For example, the character or mental habits of the one believing. And this happens all the time where there's a subtle change of subject instead of dealing with the issues at hand. It's like you're narrow-minded, you're arrogant, you're bigoted, you're racist, you're intolerant, whatever. All of these things may be true. but they're irrelevant to the question of the truthfulness of the claim that's being made, and that's where the focus ought to be.

That was so well said. I love the distinction you made between the person, a person being narrow-minded and a view being narrow. I think that is so key because truth by nature is narrow. It excludes things that are false. This is – everyone understands this. until it comes to religion. I think what you might be able to ask the person is, what is your view on spirituality?

Or it could be anything. What is your view on ABCD, whatever it is? Let them give their view and then tell them the opposite view and say, is this true or false? Well, they might him or ha a little bit. And this is where it might be helpful to not ask this about religion, but ask it about something else

because people, somehow when it comes to religion, people lose their ability to think clearly because they've been trained to think of it in relativistic terms. So you might want to use some other thing. What is two plus two? It's four. Okay. If I say it's five, am I wrong? Yes, you're wrong.

Why are you so narrow-minded? Yeah. So hopefully they will see the truth is narrow. The truth excludes false things. And then it becomes a question of if there's something true about spiritual reality, then obviously some things are true and some things are false. But this is where I think people who object to Christianity in this way don't have a whole lot of self-awareness because they may have their own spiritual view and they haven't realized that they're excluding Christians and saying they're wrong. It's a weird thing. I don't know why they can't see that. We're both arguing for the truth of our view, but hopefully you can help them to see that. What's interesting to me, I was just reading in Ezra today about how the Israelites were trying to rebuild Jerusalem and the people around them were, did not like it. And they didn't like the narrowness. Throughout the Old Testament, they didn't like the narrowness of the narrowness of the Israelites having the, one God in the New Testament, too.

Just think of the First Commandment. Yes, yeah. So this is not anything new. Believers in God have had this objection all along, and that's because people don't like being told that they're wrong. I mean, that's just the bottom line. But every time they're telling the Christians and the Jews that they're wrong, somehow they can't see that.

But anyway. That's acceptable. Yeah. That seems that makes sense. Okay, so let's see. The next question comes from Ashley. Hi, Greg and Amy. How would you respond to someone who thinks Christianity is a cult?

I'm having trouble finding reputable sources explaining the hallmarks of a modern-day cult. Thank you for your time. Well, the best question or the direction to go with a question like this is not to modern-day sources, but to the individual who makes the claim. So if they're claiming that Christianity is a cult, well, then there must be some reason that they think that. They have an idea what a cult is, and Christianity qualifies. And that's why I want to push back, not even push back, just ask for clarification. Well, when you say it's a cult, you mean what? It turns out that the word cult has multiple definitions.

For example, in the Old Testament, they had all kinds of particular practices that were connected to the temple. This is referred to, theologically, as the cult of worship. It's not a negative term. It's just saying those practices that are inherent to the enterprise of Judaism, to the official kind of religious function of Judaism, the tabernacle and all that other stuff. So there's the cult of worship. of this is a benign kind of word, okay? Well, then you have the word cult, which is another meaning here, where it's an offshoot of the standard group. So you could have, for example, currently now with LDS, since though they started out teaching plural marriage, they no longer teach plural marriage.

but there were offshoot groups that continue to teach polygamy. And these are considered by LDS, the standard LDS church, as splinter groups, as cults, in the sense that they don't hold everything that we hold to be true. Pardon me. And so we're the main deal, and these are kind of like us in some ways, but they have these deviations that make them not us. Now, that's also a term that can be used to describe quasi-Christian groups, and classically has been the case.

Walter Martin back in the, what, 70s, that would be in the 1970s or so, wrote a book called The Kingdom of the Cults. And he's talking there about Jehovah's Witnesses, about LDS, about Christian science, about, etc., etc. So these are groups that carry the name Christian in some sense but are not classical Christians. They deviate in some critical way. And so these are considered cults. Now, when – and so ergo-cult ministries, there's a lot of organizations that have sprung up to

deal with these kinds of things. The problem is, is this word is now taken out a very, very negative connotation. and to say cult, now you're talking about, like these are kind of people who all commit suicide, or you're all having group sex behind closed doors or some crazy stuff. So you have, I remember, during the Jesus movement, and maybe still around the children of God, Moses David was their leader, and that got really, really weird. Then you have the, who was that South American group that committed suicide back in the, early seven, Jim Jones.

Jim Jones, cult, and you have that group in Texas, you know, that we're in the compound. Oh, the Heaven's Gate. Oh, that's another one. You know, the Heaven's Gate. That was in North San Diego County, and they all committed suicide, hoping to, you know, catch the comet that was going by. And then you had the group that was in Texas, you know, in that compound, and they all got burned out or whatever. And they died. Anyway, so these are like weirdos.

A cult is a bunch of weirdos that are believing weird. It's a social definition rather than a theological way. Yes, that's right. That's a good way of putting it. So the question then is, what is it that you mean when you say cult of those three general definitions, certainly not the first one, but maybe the second. It actually, Christianity was considered a cult of Judaism at the time it sprung up. That is, it's an offshoot. it's not what everybody in the main body of that religious enterprise believed to be so.

Okay. Now, a theological case could be made, we would make it that this was Judaism, that Christianity was the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism. But nevertheless, that's the way Christianity was viewed at the time. And even the term was used to describe them as cultic in that sense. But now the term is completely useless, I think, for polite conversation because now when people say cult, they mean like a Jim Jones type cult, some suicide cult, some bizarre, mind control. Yeah, controlling leader. Yes, that's right. So then the question, if that's what they think, then the question I would ask is, what makes you think that Christianity is like that.

Now, of course, one characteristic of these groups is that they are the only way. Their little sliver of religious practice is the only way. But Christianity is not a little sliver of religious practice. It's huge, like we were talking about in another show of the largest, you know, religion in the world, if you just look at raw population and people who claim to be Christian. And ultimately, every person who's part of any enterprise, religious or not, who has a belief system about these kinds of things thinks they're right too. And that everybody that agrees with them are correct. So it isn't unusual to think that you're correct.

It isn't a sign of something amiss. But when you have a splinter group that is smaller and has a charismatic leader and is dissing everybody else, and they're the only thing. That's a bad sign. That's cultic in this sociological sense kind of teaching or behavior, and those things are dangerous. But if anybody's going to accuse Christianity writ large as a cult, then they're going to have to defend that point. How did you come to that conclusion our second Colombo question? What makes you think that Christianity is a cult?

Yeah, I actually, I agree with you that. It doesn't matter what the actual definition of cult is because what you don't want to do is end up arguing over the definition of cult because that's not going to get you anywhere. The simplest thing to do is just what you said. What do you mean by cult? What do you actually mean by that so that we can actually look at what your objections are to Christianity? I'm not exactly sure what they would say. Maybe thinking you're right. And then we're back to the previous question about it being narrow-minded. Because I have no problem. If someone wants to call me a cult, but they have an accurate view of what Christianity is, okay. That's fine. I don't care if you call me a cult. But I just want to make sure you understand. And maybe you have a misunderstanding about what Christianity is or how it works or how controlling the leaders are.

I mean, it's funny because we recently had questions about, oh, there are so many denominations. They believe different things. And now it's a cult, which kind of implies some sort of leader who's controlling everybody within it. So you can't really have both of those. Yeah. It's almost a universally negative word now. And that's the way people intend to be using it. I think it almost virtually every case.

It wouldn't be brought up in this kind of conversation unless they're thinking of it in a negative sense. Yeah. It's an accusation. And there are groups within the broader. you know, Christian family, so to speak, that demonstrate cultish behavior. And usually those groups have unorthodox, heterodox, Christian views. Look at the Bethel movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, the N-A-R. There's an example of a larger group that is cultish in the sociological sense.

And that's dangerous because that kind of heavy-handed oversight and control is not something justified by the New Testament. So we do see cultic kind of behavior, even in groups that are generally speaking. And, you know, I want to be careful because I don't want to characterize new apostolic reformation as kind of, you know, within the pale. I think they are borderline, depending on who you talk to, off the reservation. But these things kind of grow. They start out kind of normal and ordinary, and then all of a sudden, especially when you have leadership that's hearing from God and getting directives from God and becoming the apostles and et cetera, then these things get weirder and weirder and weirder and take on these

cultic, in a sociological sense, dimensions. And it's important for all of us to be aware of that. Yeah, as soon as you do have one leader who claims to be getting special information just for them, that is a danger sign and that is how cults form. But I think if you can just get their understanding of what a cult is, a lot of times it may be that you can apply what they said to things they believe. So, again, this help you help them realize that what we're doing is not different from what everyone does. So, for example, let's say their problem is that, well, they tell you what's right and wrong. Okay, but so does our government. And our government actually punishes people.

Would you say that our government is a cult? No, because it's legitimate what they are doing. So the question is— In some measure. But what I'm saying is it's legitimate for a government to have a jail and punish people for doing what's wrong. So if leaders of church are exercising some sort of church discipline, that's not necessary. automatically make it a cult if it's legitimate. So you have to know if it's true or not before you can even know if it's true and legitimate for them to exercise some sort of discipline.

I mean, even in families, people exercise discipline. So it's not necessarily a cult. So hopefully that can help you explain these things and help them think about it a little bit more and take away some of their fear. I mean, think about it. Every, I would say nearly every movie, TV show, whatever it is, if a Christian shows up, the Christian's probably the murderer or the psycho or the evil, bad choices. And there are people out there. That's all they know about Christians. They see that day in and day out. So whatever you can do to help them, maybe you could even invite them to church. Hey, nobody will make you do anything weird. Just come with me and see what you think. See if you think is cult. And then we can talk about what you saw and I can explain

it and you can see if it's a cult. So there are different ways to go at this. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Lucy and Ashley. We appreciate hearing from you. We would love to hear your question. So if you go to X and you use the hashtag SDRS, then I can find your question and include it in our queue. Or you can always go to our website. that's at STR.org. And it's very simple. Just look for our hashtag STR Ask page. And then you'll find a link there. And you'll be able to input your question. And I see them all. And I actually save them all. And I go back. Sometimes I'll go back to people. It's been a couple years. And I'll say, hey, we answered your question. Because I save them actually in categories. And then I go through and find things that work well together. So you never know when your question will be answered. So don't give up hope. All right. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kochel for Stand to Reason.