Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).
Something went wrong with the communication channel if you ended up feeling defensive.
However, despite generally agreeing with you about problems with the world “cultish”, I actually think this is a reasonable use-case. It has a lot of connotations, and it was being reported that the description was triggering some of those connotations in the reader. That’s useful information that it may be worth some effort to avoiding it being perceived that way if the idea is pursued (your stack of examples make it pretty clear that it is avoidable).