For a movement to be considered a religion in its own right it surely must have a relatively coherent worldview, a system of thought, that is different on some very basic matters from other movements that want to inform us about our relationship to the divine. From that perspective Mormonism is a religion; it has a fairly robust worldview that distinguishes itself from, say, traditional Christian and Jewish understandings of reality. The Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, do not constitute a religion as such; they are defined by things that they reject in Christianity, such as the full divinity of Christ in particular and in their idiosyncratic interpretations of various biblical passages.

Our attempt to get clear about these definitions is muddied by the prominence of "counter-cult" evangelical groups, who use the term "cult" as a disparaging label. Any group that we especially want to condemn that has any link to Christianity we call a cult. Given that reality, the label has come to carry a lot of baggage. I prefer to think of major and minor religious movements.