Individuals can make a cult out of anything. As I struggle over my issues regarding my daughter and Islam, I see that what attracts her to it is the simplicity… “Five Pillars,” all confusion taken away, she just does what she's told… the tradition and discipline.
But we had aspects of that in Orthodoxy, and there were whole groups who had a group response to Orthodoxy, and their own “House Rules.” I see it as a kind of living suicide, giving up oneself, giving up… a self-centered kind of irresponsible self-emptying, the ultimate Gnosticism and faithlessness. She experiences it as “The Answer” and doesn't see the pattern of the ultimate answers she's picked before to fill her emptiness. There is an Answer presented that is so tempting to many tired despairing people, giving up, going to Koresh or whatever such answer is offered… giving power over yourself to another. Relax, everything is done.“Magic pills.”
We abdicate thought and responsibility, compartmentalizing our participation in the church to liturgy and obedience which can become liturgical idolatry and blindness. But the image of the Body and community is not esoteric—it is didactic.
The eye has a job, the feet, the hands, all together in unity. There's diversity in the body. There's diversity in us. The principle to unity is freedom… not the Borg type, “You will be assimilated'.” As my daughter takes intoxicating, heady comfort in seeing hundreds on weekdays, mid-days, uniformed new friends praying, hind quarters high, heads low in sharp unison during the day (ridiculing our non-existent feeble presence on weekdays in church), she feels this makes it Real, really Real.I am horrified at that and see extreme loss of freedom, loss of diversity, homogenization of the wonders of creation, like girls having plastic surgery aiming for the same ideals, politicians eyeing Global My Way Takeovers.
I see psyches stuffing feelings, pain, shame, struggles, hopes and curiosities to fit in, a kind of living dead. It may be that the Muslims are all compartmentalized, and that is their version of shallow churching… the uniforms, the choreography, the rules. And they act out… hopefully in healthy ways, if they have healthy venues to celebrate and commune with God. But as with any rigid association, often the only outlets must be secret, must be dark, and often allow expression in darkness to only the darkness.
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos talked about and evidenced in Illness and Cure of the Soul, the groups he held every week for his spiritual children. They would talk of struggles, hagiography. I didn't take him for a homilist during these groups, but a father talking with his kids, and everyone together… a microcosm of the Body of Christ, helping each other along to greater gnosis and towards transfiguration.
I don't see that happening in America. Parishes focus on administration and financial priorities and on “putting the show on” every Sunday. Community life becomes coffee hour and volunteer projects like festivals which are again administrative and financial. There is rare, little constancy in parishes, save the demigods that rule, and it’s not unlike “serial fathers,” where the kids psychologically become fixated neurotics.
Our witness as the Church is feeble in America. How would a parish priest or lay community begin group therapy? It would be a novelty for a while, perhaps supported by hierarchs from time to time, second to administrative and financial priorities. But eventually, ego assaults the priest, envy assaults others, divisiveness erodes the work, and a new priest comes in, breaking the frame, and water seeks its own level. 
If it works, it very often is because of the tendency in people to transform the experience into a cult. Even positive or benign groups… work, A.A. N.A. types, social service ...For me, my family, overcoming the pain of isolation, has to begin with the prayer at home and the group is the family and friends. Pray for us. In Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.
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