Does the BITE model prove the Church is a cult?

Which practices are you counting, and what happens when someone questions or refuses them? The checklist gives us issues to examine.

You take the concern seriously and ask for evidence about how control works. A category match alone leaves the setting, degree of pressure, and consequences unresolved.

Other religions have rules in those categories too, so the model tells us nothing.

Comparison can test consistency. It cannot show that a particular practice is harmless. Examine the behavior and its enforcement, even when it has parallels elsewhere.

They can contact their families, so there is no real restriction.

Family contact and restrictions can coexist. The source describes a bounded communication program; neither denying its limits nor treating it as ordinary membership addresses the concern.

Those restrictions are real. We should examine the rules for that mission and time, what information was accessible, and how concerns or requests to leave were handled.

You acknowledge the limits and investigate their effects. Agreeing to serve matters, but does not settle how informed that agreement was or whether later pressure became coercive.

A procedure does not answer that fear. What pressure are you facing, and how are people treating you?

You distinguish formal exit from its personal costs. The handbook describes membership consequences; it does not measure what happens in this person’s family.

Since resignation is allowed, leaving is a free choice and the concern is resolved.

Formal permission addresses one part of freedom. Social dependence and feared consequences still need examination; a rule cannot establish the absence of pressure.

If the leader meant well, I would treat it as a misunderstanding.

A good intention does not settle whether conduct was coercive or harmful. The revelation judges how authority is exercised, and an account still needs to be heard.

Doctrine and Covenants 121 condemns unrighteous dominion. I accept covenants and authority, and I also have to examine whether their use violated that standard.

You state an LDS commitment and a real limit on authority. That limit supplies a standard for accountability; it does not prove compliance or automatically resolve the person’s account.