I don’t know about across the pond, but to me that always seemed to be a loud minority of charismatic leaders gathering big flocks. Which the rest of The Church tries to distance itself from.

I think this isn’t specifically tied to religion. It’s just it’s noticeable when it is. People are manipulated by governments and the media all of the time. It even happens in largely secular states as well.

You say evangelicals, but there’s also the likes of Mormons, Seventh day Adventists (not really a big cult now as it used to be), Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are Sunni extremists and Shia extremists in Islamic countries. China had weird cults as well such as the Falun Gong. But that also had an atheistic movement in the cultural revolution. Nazi Germany’s movement was borderline pagan in nature.