Church vs Cult

For me, the difference between a church, a sect and a cult is a difference of degree. A church is the original: it is the thing that starts it all off. In Christianity it would be the main churches that eventually became known as the Catholic Church with the base in Rome. Then there was the split between the East and the West—the schism. Then there was the Protestant Reformation. Sects would be subsets of both: they would have some of the teachings but would disagree on certain matters. Cults would introduce new and novel ideas and get further away from the original truths and teachings of the churches. So this is the difference in degree that I would point out.
I think that Stark and Brainbridge (Defining Cults/Sects, n.d.) define these distinctions well and I would use their definition as a rule to explain the differences. However, I do think that it would be easy to interchange all three as most would not be able to say that there was an “original” church. I think that only in Christianity was there ever an original church, as it is so unique in history. I disagree with the idea that the degree of difference is best explained by the amount of tension between the group and the rest of society, which is how it is explained in The Sect-Church Process (n.d.). I think historians do not like to use the words because they do not want to offend in today’s PC climate.
Response One
I agree that cult has a bad reputation and connotation and no one wants to use that word because it could offend someone. I think that in earlier times these words were used more frequently and without much worry. However, it always depended on who was doing the defining. A person in a cult would not define their church as a cult. A person in a church would look at a cult and define it as a cult. The same for a sect: it all depends on who is looking out and in and what they are seeing. I think that in any case it could also be called a church, but I think back in the Middle Ages when there was only one Church this all made much more sense, because the Christians could define cults and sects according to the degree that they separated from the Catholic Church. Today, it is much harder to do this—so people just avoid doing it.
Response Two
I agree that a church is a traditional religious group and that a sect has separated from that group and that a cult is something new. I think this definition makes the most sense, but I also think that it depends upon the perspective of the person. A person who feels he is in a church would feel much more comfortable with this definition than someone who thinks he has broken away from a church or is in something new. A person in a cult for instance would probably think he was in a church because he would not want to associate himself with something so negative as a cult. So determining how to look at these things can be tricky and a bit delicate but at the end of the day, everyone will see something different in most cases.

References
Defining Cults/Sects. (n.d.). Digital File.
The Sect-Church Process. (n.d.). Digital File.