A cult is nothing more than a religion without political power.
Allow me an "Easter themed" metaphor:
Scientology is an egg with layers of insanity beneath a shell of deception. Mormonism is another such egg filled with the base desires of the man that founded it with the caveat that it's outer shell is more sugar coated than Scientology's. But the nougat inside each of them contain elements of similarity.
Contrast those two with the shit-coated outer shell of the nut of Islam. Inside is a rich, hate filled nougat of misogyny, pedophilia, torture, intolerance, violence and murder.
More often than not, when a person sets up a "religion", he does so with the idea of making money and getting sex from anyone they desire it with. Power does indeed corrupt. In order to gain absolute power one must push that corruption out to the masses.
Sometimes governments are just crap. And shit comes from a big asshole. As you know, the turd doesn't fall far from the anus. Should churches be taxed? Maybe, but recall the way the IRS treated the "Tea Party" groups and think of just how a really BIG anus would just love to crap all over anyone that they disagree with and taxing people or groups to extinction would be so easy, so "legal".
So "patriotic". So all about "fairness" and "equality" and all those other libtard and faux conservative terms that the DC crowd flings like so much monkey poo from the pulpits of their "church". Sounds like absolute power, doesn't it?
I don't think we should tax churches.