The difference between the inner level of cult membership and the outer level

From a comment here:

Well, see, that's the really big problem. The "good" in any religion provides cover for the "bad."

I used to be in a cult. It wasn't properly a religion at all; it utilized crazy kinds of mind control and was extremely abusive, and (as I didn't know at the time) the leader was actually a pedophile, drug addict, and embezzler. It was bad news.

When I first got out and finally started opening up about how bad it was, people would dismiss what I said. Because THEY'D been involved in it and THEIR experience was great! I realized then that every abusive group has an inside and an outside level. Criticisms can be dismissed by pointing to people on the outside level, who aren't damaged by the cult at all. But when you're on the outside, there's a constant pressure to move inward, because if you think this is great, well, it'll be much better when you commit completely!

Now the different kinds of Christianity aren't so much like this because they're not all the same group. Episcopalians don't feel pressure to become Baptists. But they do serve as a way to deflect criticism from the Baptists.

However, since more-progressive Christianity is such a force for good in the world, and since it also serves as something of an off-ramp for people getting out of repressive kinds, I feel like I ought to support it. Except that I fear in some ways it can be an on-ramp, as people think "I was in X group and it was perfectly wholesome, and here is Y group preaching lots of the same stuff! It can't possibly be bad!"

TL;DR -- I have mixed feelings about "good" religion.

We see that a lot - these n00bs who've only been in, like, 5 - 7 years, who are still all rah-rah. They're never at a leadership position, though, or anything higher than the bottom rung, group leader. And now, the cult's changed - SGI-USA is doing more "interfaith" (condemned by all 3 Soka Gakkai presidents back in the day) and the meetings/activities are once monthly rather that at least once a week and sometimes several times a day, so the newer members form a much more casual, acquaintance-type relationship with the SGI cult, instead of the intensive, consuming, isolating, cult experience we oldsters had. The most significant line is the excommunication in the early 1990s - after that, everything changed and the cult both became less crazy AND less popular.

We've noted before that the SGI is top-heavy with leaders - it's all chiefs and no Indians - so there's much less opportunity for members to move from the outer level into the inner level (where the crazy is soooo much more concentrated).