Everyday you can hear from the mass media about sects.
What do you consider to be sect and why?

ersonally I would view a sect as a branch of a main religion, for example I would call gnosticisim a sect but not Scientology. A sect still obeys all the teachings of the original religion but had a few additions, they don't break the rules of the original religion but interpret some of them a little differently (lets face it, that's all that seperates religions anyway, interpretation)

a sect, i tend to associate with raving lunatics that disagreed with the main branch, so felt they had enough reasoning to branch out on their own...i tend to have a negative reaction to sect...i don't know why, it's just a term that suggests negativeness to me. Kinda like cult...just not nice!

I notice that the term sect is more often applied to non-Christian religions by the media. This is a lovely sort of wordcraft that helps put a negative spin on the word.

In answer to the question, sects are usually groups that share the same religion, but have significant differences in their worship styles that differentiate them from other groups. For example, in Islam you have various sects that are both Muslim, but fundamentally different, i.e. Shiite Muslims vs. Sikh Muslims.