Politics & Power Quote by Tom Wolfe

Wolfe’s line is a knife disguised as a definition. By swapping theology for sociology, he suggests that “cult” isn’t a neutral description of weird beliefs; it’s a label societies use when a faith lacks the clout to defend its legitimacy. Once a movement acquires enough followers, money, institutional allies, or simple longevity, the same fervor gets rebranded as tradition. The joke lands because it’s uncomfortably plausible: we don’t just argue about truth claims, we arbitrate status.

The subtext is classic Wolfean suspicion of the respectable. “Religion” reads less like a sacred category than a victory condition. If power is the difference, then orthodoxy is partly a political achievement, not a spiritual one. That reframes moral panics about “cults” as boundary maintenance: a way for mainstream institutions to mark outsiders as dangerous, unserious, or mentally compromised. It also hints at the media’s complicity. Journalists help decide which groups are “quirky,” which are “fringe,” and which are “a faith community,” often tracking the same indicators politicians do: organization, fundraising, demographic reach, and the ability to litigate back.

Context matters: Wolfe came out of an era when “cult” was a hot-button word, sharpened by the ’60s and ’70s boom in new religious movements and the public horror of high-control groups. His cynicism doesn’t excuse abuse; it questions the rhetorical shortcut. The line works because it flips the reader from moral certainty to an unsettling institutional question: who gets to be called “religious,” and what kind of power makes the answer stick?