Cult apologist

The term cult apologist is used by opponents of cults and new religious movements to describe social scientists, religious scholars, and other persons who write about cults and new religious movements whose writings they consider as uncritical or not sufficiently critical. Scholars have referred to the term as "derisive" and a "handy ideological tool".

Uses of term
In 2000, Eileen Barker was criticized by Tom Sackville because "she refuses to condemn all new religions as 'cults'". She responded by pointing out that "we are not cult apologists. People make a lot of noise without doing serious research – so much so that they can end up sounding as closed to reason as the cults they're attacking. Besides, I imagine FAIR was disappointed not to get our funding." In her book Aliens Adored, Susan J. Palmer acknowledged that in some television interviews discussing Raelians, she "came across as a gullible cult apologist," while trying to "deconstruct the cult stereotype".

In a joint hearing before the United States Congress on the Waco Siege entitled: Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Toward the Branch Davidians, it was stated into the record that publicists for the New Alliance Party had circulated a report to Congress and the media called "What is the Cult Awareness Network and What Role Did it Play in Waco?". Testimony was also entered into the record stating that: "Their report relied on Linda Thompson, organizations created or funded by the Church of Scientology and the Unification Church.." and a "long-time cult apologist".

As reported by Singapore's The Straits Times in a 1997 article about the Central Christian Church, an attorney referenced a 1988 Milwaukee Journal report wherein an unnamed expert described religious scholar J. Gordon Melton as a "cult apologist who has a long association of defending the practices of destructive cults." In 1997, Melton was called an "apologist" for cults by Ronald Enroth. Anti-cult activists have also called Melton an "apologist" for Aum Shinrikyo because of his initial defense of the group after the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

Responses
Scholars accused of being cult apologists reply to the criticism in various ways, including expressing their concern for religious freedom and tolerance. Douglas E. Cowan wrote that he had been referred to as a cult apologist, along with Eileen Barker, Massimo Introvigne, Jeff Hadden, Irving Hexham, Anson Shupe, David G. Bromley, and Gordon Melton. Cowan stated that he felt this characterization was "inaccurate and insulting", and that these individuals actually stand for the values of religious tolerance.

Cowan also refers to the term as a "pejorative" with potentially unhelpful consequences. Michael Kropveld agrees with Cowan that the term "cult-apologist" is pejorative but also adds "Anti-Cult Movement", "Pro-Cult Movement", and "anti-cultist", to a list of divisive labels that are not constructive towards productive dialogue between academics, and should be avoided.

Gordon Melton also dismisses these criticisms by stating that the usage of the term "cults" by what he calls "anti-cultists" reflects the negative evaluation that new religious movements have endured. He also objects to being personally labeled an "apologist" by the "anti-cult movement".

Anson Shupe has defined cult apologist as a "derogatory term employed by anticultists to refer to scholars and civil libertarians whose research conclusions and views disagree with the anticult movement's own suspicions or conclusions, to wit, that many religious movements are necessarily subversive to society and dangerous to individuals who join them."

Positive usage
The expression "cult apologist" was used in a different manner than its current usage by the evangelical Christian countercult movement writer Walter Martin in 1955, in Martin's Christian handbook The Rise of the Cults. Martin used the neologism in a positive and self-referential way to identify ministries that evangelize those involved in cults. He used the term again in his next book The Christian and the Cults (Zondervan 1956, p. 6). The positive use of the term cult apologetics by evangelicals recurs in the book by Robert and Gretchen Passantino, Answers to the Cultist at Your Door and also by Alan Gomes in his contributory chapter in the first posthumous edition of Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults.