cultという英語

英語の"cult"という言葉は、常に「オウム真理教のようなファナティックな宗教団体を指す侮蔑的な言葉」なのか、若干の疑問を持ちました。もちろん私は、宗教学関係の英語は全くわかりませんが、

Wikipediaの"Cult"という項目では、

In common usage, "cult" has a negative connotation, and is generally applied to a group by its opponents, for a variety of reasons. Understandably, most, if not all, groups that are called "cults" deny this label. It has been argued that no one yet has been able to define “cult” in a way that enables the term to identify only groups that have been claimed as problematic.

The literal and traditional meanings of the word cult is derived from the Latin cultus, meaning "care" or "adoration", as "a system of religious belief or ritual; or: the body of adherents to same"32. In English, it remains neutral and a technical term within this context to refer to the "cult of Artemis at Ephesus" and the "cult figures" that accompanied it, or to "the importance of the Ave Maria in the cult of the Virgin."

ています。Cult(religious practice)の項目と合わせ読むと、もともとは宗教の文化的側面一般を表す用語であり、カトリックの聖人信仰や、聖母マリア信仰を表すこともあったことがわかります。

By extension, "cult" has come to connote the total cultural aspects of a religion, as they are distinguished from others through change and individualization.

The meaning "devotion to a person or thing" is from 1829, and from that connotation comes the modern meaning of "cult" as in a "cultist" or a "cult following". Cult and cultist have recently accrued negative connotations that are separately dealt with at the entry cult.

In Roman Catholicism, cultus or cult is the technical term for the following and devotion or veneration extended to a particular saint.

また、「祖先崇拝」を意味する、ancestor cultという言葉はググった限りでは広く使われているようです。これはドイツ語になりますが、村上淳一先生は、穂積八束の「民法出テ忠孝亡フ」の中に登場する「祖先教」概念を"Ahnenkult"と訳しておられます（Junichi Murakami, Einfuehrung in die Grundlagen des Japanischen Rechts, 1974）。ただし、公平を期して付け加えれば、上記Wikipediaがいうように、ドイツ語と英語のニュアンスの違いもありうるでしょう。

In non-English European terms, the cognates of the English word "cult" are neutral, and refer mainly to divisions within a single faith, a case where English speakers might use the word "sect", as in "Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism are sects (or denominations) within Christianity"

 さらに付け加えれば、上のCult(religious practice)にある

Some Christians make refined distinctions between worship and veneration, both of which are outwardly expressed in cultus or cult and are indistinguishable to the observer. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy distinguish between worship (Latin adoratio, Greek latreia [λατρεια]) which is due to God alone, and venerationveneratio, Greek doulia [δουλεια]), which may be lawfully offered to the saints. These private distinctions between deity and mediators are exhaustively treated at the entries for worship and veneration.

説明などもふまえると、「靖国崇拝」を英語に直そうとするときには"cult"という言葉が一番はまったのではないかな、という気がしないでもありませんが、著者の意図は不明ですし、そもそも、宗教学の知識が皆無の私に判断できる事柄ではありません。

なおこの記事は、「cultが真に侮蔑的な言葉だったとすればそれをめぐって生じた事態も正当化される」ということを主張するものではありません。