Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
Sociology
Date of Award
5-2024
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Dr. Martha Copp, Dr. Joseph Baker
Committee Members
Dr. Candance Bright Hall-Wurst
Abstract
This research analyzes the Word of Faith Fellowship (WOF), a female-led Evangelical church that social scientists have not yet studied. My thesis explores how a female leader operates within a patriarchal space and why WOF owns a Holocaust Museum. I conducted content analysis of the church and museum websites, Google reviews, and visited the museum in person. My research highlights the limitations of current taxonomies of religion in sociology. I address this oversight, argue for the re-introduction of “cult” as an analytical term, and propose a rubric for cult identification. I suggest that WOF is a sectarian cult with similar features to other female-led cults. I also find that the group expresses philosemitism through the museum and the tragedy of the Holocaust to pursue church legitimacy. I thus expand on current understandings of philosemitism and posit the concept of tragedy appropriation to describe narrative theft at the group level.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Summers, Olivia, "Reviving “Cult”: A Qualitative Analysis of a Female-led Cultic Sect" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 4388. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/4388
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.