Amid the spreading ripples of news analysis following the FLDS raid, the Scripps Howard News Service has tackled that stickiest of questions: Is it a cult or a church?

Benjamin Bistline, former FLDS member, says cult:

It’s nothing more than a cult. A cult is controlled by one person. What he says goes or you get booted.

Steven Shields, who teaches at the Community of Christ Church in Independence, Mo., and has written on Mormonism's dozens of splinter groups, says church:

To meet the definition, a church needs only a small group of people meeting to share religion and some sort of chain of command.

Douglas Laycock, constitutional law expert at the University of Michigan, says church — but that alone won't make the raid on the ranch unlawful:

If there’s probable cause, the government can search churches like anyplace else.

Alonzo Gaskill, an assistant professor of World Religions at BYU, refuses to make a call:

One first has to define what is meant by "legitimate." In the end, legitimacy must be defined by the believer. An onlooker might claim a faith is somehow ‘illegitimate,’ but that doesn’t make it such to the practitioner.

One authority on church status, the IRS, hasn't had to decide the cult/church question. Neither the FLDS nor the YFZ Ranch has filed for status as a nonprofit organization. (I'll bet the taxman is breathing a sigh of relief on that one.)

And Schleicher County, Texas, says Eldorado Ranch has not requested an exemption from its $1 million in property taxes on the grounds it's a religious organization.