What’s the Difference Between Cults and the Church?

To a person of religious sensibility—someone searching for God—it is easy to be drawn into a cult, rather than one of the more respectable “religions.” But what is the difference between a cult and a religion? To outsiders they may appear indistinguishable. The early Christians were a cult in the eyes of the Romans. Modern Christians still are, in the eyes of Richard Dawkins.
Stratford Caldecott follows this observation with some wise words.