One of the most successful (or pernicious, depending on your point-of-view) cults of the 1800s was founded by a relative: Joseph Smith. The Mormon church didn't depend on the internet, let alone on an orange wig, but rather on a story: that angels appeared to Smith and told him where to unearth a set of plates, which held records of the past of North America, in which a white, proto-Christian society (Nephites) had been overwhelmed by the dark-skinned, evil Lamanites, and destroyed.
The story appealed to whites a generation or three from colonization, who were trying to dominate and destroy the descendants of those Lamanite buggers, in order to steal (or reclaim) their land and resources.
The history of Mormonism is the stuff of trashy TV serials, with murders, betrayals, mob violence, rebellion, schism, and an eventual mass migration (like that riff in Exodus.)
My branch of the Smith family descended from Chileab Smith while Joseph was the spawn of a younger brother, Preserved Smith (so-called because he was ill as a baby and the Lord preserved his life). When granny worked out our genealogy and realized our branch of the Smiths was the elder, she wanted to name my dad Chileab. But granddad prevailed.
The Mormon church fits every definition of a cult, but having endured, it has become a religion: more-or-less respectable, rich, and influential.
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