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The Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack
In January of 1947, Ikuo Hayashi was born in Tokyo, Japan. The son of a doctor, he attended one of Tokyo’s top private universities and became a doctor himself, first a heart and artery specialist and then the head of circulatory medicine. In 1990, he abruptly resigned from his job and took his family to live with a religious organization, Aum Shinrikyo, led by Shoko Asahara, who had started the organization in 1984 as a yoga and meditation group.
On March 20th, 1995, Hayashi drove with another Aum member, Tomomitsu Niimi, to the Chiyoda Line of the Tokyo subway. Arriving during the morning rush hour, Hayashi left Niimi with the car and boarded one of the trains. Three stops later, Hayashi dropped two bags of liquid on the ground and pierced one of them with the end of an umbrella, which had been sharpened for that purpose, before exiting the train.
The liquid inside quickly evaporated and suffused the air inside. Within minutes, many of the commuters started experiencing various symptoms, including runny noses, coughing, and respiratory distress. The train continued for another four stops before the subway personnel realized something was wrong, stopped the line, and evacuated the train for cleaning. The symptoms of many of those affected rapidly worsened, resulting in severe respiratory distress, seizures, and in a few case, death. They, along with the passengers of four other Tokyo subway lines, had been poisoned by sarin gas, a powerful chemical weapon that had been manufactured by Aum Shinrikyo and deployed by Hayashi and other agents of the organization, resulting in over 6000 casualties, including 12 deaths.
I’ve read differing accounts regarding the motives for the attack. Some hypotheses involve possible political motives (Hall et al., 2005), but it’s clear that the religious beliefs of Aum Shinrikyo and its agents played a significant role in any case. In convincing himself to carry out his part in the attack, Hayashi told himself “This is just a yoga of the Mahamudra” (Murakami, 2001, p. 9), yoga and Mahamudra being concepts from Indian religion that Aum Shinrikyo had borrowed and integrated into their own teachings. It may have been that the motive for the attack was entirely religious: an attempt to kick-start the apocalypse that would, as they believed, precede the coming of the perfect Shambhala kingdom (Hall et al., 2005, p. 112).
I first learned of this event by seeing coverage on the news shortly after it occurred, but, not being especially attentive of world events at the time, paid little attention. Aum Shinrikyo came to my attention again in 2005 when, as a way of killing time during a military deployment to Iraq, I took an online class on new religious movements. I was struck by the intelligence and education levels of those who had participated in the attack. Ikuo Hayashi, as I described, was a very successful doctor. Three of the other four perpetrators—Kenichi Hirose , Toru Toyoda, and Masato Yokoyama—had excelled in applied physics, and the fourth, Yasuo Hayashi, had studied artificial intelligence.
At the time, I had a secular Zen Buddhist meditation practice but mostly aligned with the New Atheists, and Sam Harris in particular. I saw religion as being an antiquated concept which I largely associated with the uneducated. But this account confronted me with information that contradicted my worldview: many intelligent and well-educated Japanese had left their lives behind, joined Aum Shinrikyo, and participated in a terrible and entirely senseless attack on the rest of their society.
Circumscription of the Topic
Hail and welcome to A Satanist Reads the Bible. From the beginning, this has been a project about religion, an area of thought that I find closely associated with some of the largest problems we face as a species. My position on religion has been and continues to be both positive and apologetic: I believe that religion can, will, and should play an important role in human life and that contemporary criticisms of religion are often misguided or mistaken. That is not, however, to say that such criticisms are unwarranted; to the contrary, there are real and significant problems associated with religion, and these problems must be considered and addressed if religion is to be a healthy, viable channel for human thought and expression. Over the next two months and six episodes, A Satanist Reads the Bible will be exploring the problems of religion. In this episode I’ll be examining two particularly fanatical manifestations of religious belief, with some further discussion on Aum Shinrikyo and a look at the Branch Davidians. In the following episode I’ll be looking at religion and its problems more broadly, with an emphasis on what might be called popular religion, and then the November series will conclude with a response to contemporary criticisms of religion, in particular those originating from what is presently termed New Atheism. I’ll take up the second half of the series in December, focusing on the same theme from a different angle.
My questions are as follows: what are the problems of religion, first of all, and are those problems actually caused by religion or merely associated with it? Why does it seem that religion has such power to effect violence, oppression, ignorance, and generally reprehensible human behavior? And, in light of these problems, what does religion need to be in order for it to be healthy and viable? I’ve spent a great deal of time in this project pointing to nihilism as a key problem of religion, and my opinions on that matter haven’t changed. What are the other problems? Are they all outgrowths from religious nihilism or are they otherwise unrelated?
What seems certain is that religion is at the root of violent human conflict. That’s a certainty that I’ve long taken for granted, and I’ve begun to question whether that is indeed the case. That violence and religion are correlated is beyond question and the causal mechanism from religion to violence seems clear enough, but I’ve begun to wonder whether religion is actually an epiphenomenon of violent human conflict. Epiphenomena are phenomena which manifest as a secondary consequence of some other process but which actually have no casual efficacy in themselves. So, this would be to say that violent human conflict often manifests in religious ways without religion being a true causal factor. Often we look for epiphenomena when two phenomena are correlated but when there is no clear causal linkage between the two. But if a causal linkage is present but illusory, we may fail to search for the true underlying cause. Or it may be the case that violence is caused by religion, but not in a way that is distinct from the ways in which other beliefs and ideologies cause violence.
Aum Shinrikyo
Returning now to Aum Shinrikyo, rather than exploring the specific beliefs of the organization in depth, I’m going to focus on the experiences of its adherents, as described in their interviews with the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and detailed in his book Underground (2001). The reason for this approach is that it doesn’t seem to be the case that the specific religious beliefs are the cause of violence and other problems of religion. It may be the case that certain beliefs are more likely to inspire violence than others, although I’m not convinced of that, but at most those would be variations by degrees rather than qualitative differences. It does not seem to be the case that certain kinds of beliefs have the potential to inspire violence while others do not, in other words.
To summarize for context, the beliefs of Aum Shinrikyo are a syncretic mixture of Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with an emphasis on prophetic, apocalyptic belief inspired by the Book of Revelation and the writings of Nostradamus. But those whom Murakami interviewed spoke little on theological matters, excepting those concerning the questions which brought them to Aum Shinrikyo in the first place. Across the board, the interviewed adherents expressed a sense of deep alienation as a result of their lives in modern capitalist Japanese society. Many of them mentioned that, prior to finding Aum Shinrikyo, they went through their lives deeply concerned with spiritual questions and questions of meaning, and unable to connect with others regarding those questions.
I tried talking with my friends about these things, but got nowhere. Even my friends who were good students would only say something like, “Wow. Pretty amazing stuff you come up with,” and that’d be the end of it. The conversation would hit a dead end. I couldn’t find a single person who wanted to talk about the things that I cared about.
Aum Shinrikyo adherent Hiroyuki Kano in Murakami, 2001, p. 252
Many of the eventual Aum adherents looked to religion to provide answers to these questions and to provide a sense of meaning. “Maybe instead of painting,” said Hajime Masutani, “living a religious life will help me get closer to the reality inside me” (Murakami, 2001, pp. 292-293). Having set up yoga and meditation centers, and having attracted the public eye with a failed political campaign, Aum Shinrikyo was at least an available option, if a somewhat unorthodox one in Japanese society, for those seeking religious answers to these existential questions.
It appears to me, as well as to the adherents of Aum (even those who would later come to repudiate the organization) and even to Murakami, that Shoko Asahara, the founder and leader of the organization, was a person of authentic spiritual understanding and powerful personal charisma. He was also quite clearly delusional, possibly sociopathic, and at the very least not mentally sound, but as a result of his charisma and spiritual understanding, appeared to those with deep spiritual questions as someone who had the answers. Mitsuhara Inaba said of Asahara that he was “…a spiritual leader. Not a prophet or anything, but the person who would provide the final answer to Buddhist teachings. The one who would interpret it for me” (Murakami, 2001, p. 284). Hajime Masutani said that “…Asahara was seriously considering the question of salvation. Otherwise, no one would have renounced the world to follow him” (Murakami, 2001, p. 302).
This notion of “renouncing the world” appeared in almost every one of Murakami’s interviews. Having been alienated from the world by modernity, they rejected it as evil, and saw that rejection reflected in the teachings of the organization. In taking up the mantle of Aum Shinrikyo, they retreated from the modern world in order to seek authentic spiritual understanding. This understanding of the world and its resulting practice have been common throughout the history of religion, from the sadhus of Hinduism and Jainism to the monks of Buddhism and Christianity. Indeed, it’s difficult to find the exact point of departure between Aum Shinrikyo and conventional religion; I’m not convinced there actually is one. Everything attributable to Aum Shinrikyo is likewise attributable to the various manifestations of popular religion.
What struck me most of all was how much I have in common with the Aum Shinrikyo adherents that Murakami interviewed, and how much I related to what they were saying. Alienated from life in capitalist society and seeking a life of greater meaning, I too abdicated my will and joined an organization which answered my questions, built a new self for me to be, and set my own human capacity for violence against its enemies. I did so not under the pretense of any religious viewpoint but as an avowed atheist. Under every faculty available to me as a rational human being, I went to war on behalf of the state against its enemies. Religion was just one other line I could draw between myself and those whom I shot at, and I know that they drew the same line against me. I served under President George W. Bush, who, in the leadup to the Iraq war, “…referred to the Biblical prophecies regarding Gog and Magog that suggested to some evangelicals that the end times were approaching in the Middle East,” according to a 2018 article by John Feffer for the Institute for Policy Studies. I’m reasonably certain that I never would have gassed noncombatants; many of the Aum adherents interviewed said the same thing but nevertheless participated materially in the organization and aided its causes, though many of them were unaware that the inner circle was up to anything nefarious.
I’ve mentioned before that there’s a Lutheran pastor with whom I meet every week to chat religion. One of the reasons I enjoy talking to him so much is he’s one of the only people I ever get to talk to who understands the kind of questions I’m asking. And there’s so much we agree on, at times the theological differences between his Lutheranism and my Satanism seem irrelevant, even trivial. I asked him once whether he felt alienated, as I do, as a result of his being a religious person. He doesn’t; he has an entire congregation of fellow seekers with whom he speaks on a weekly basis. But aside from that container, he likewise feels alienated by modernity and by being a religious person searching for meaning in a world that seems devoid of it.
Murakami, himself primarily a teller of stories, mentions that humans need narrative in order to make sense of their lives, and that the Aum Shinrikyo adherents had, in effect, abdicated their narrative to Shoko Asahara (2001, p. 230). And to a certain degree, this is something that we all do. Murakami comments on this, saying:
Haven’t you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and taken on a “narrative” in return? Haven’t we entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that System at some stage demanded of us some kind of “insanity”? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be someone else’s visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares?
p. 233
Many of those interviewed by Murakami expressed a belief that their thinking was logical, rational, and scientific, and often they prided themselves on those qualities. In closing the book, Murakami comments on this in one of the most insightful passages on religion that I’ve ever read:
Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality. You might think that—by following language and a logic that appears consistent—you’re able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge….
The sad fact is that language and logic cut off from reality have a far greater power than the language and logic of reality—with all that extraneous matter weighing down like a rock on any actions we take. In the end, unable to comprehend each other’s words, we’d part, each going our separate ways.
2001, p. 363
Nothing that anyone related in their interviews with Murakami struck me as anything entirely novel, as anything that I had never heard anywhere before. Indeed, I had lived through much of it myself, and I’ve encountered many people throughout my life who experience that same sense of alienation and spiritual searching. People might ask, “Why couldn’t they have just joined a normal religion, like everyone else. Then maybe they wouldn’t have hurt anyone.” Well, I joined the U.S. Army “religion”, which is about as acceptable in American society as barbecue and apple pie, and I did end up hurting people. I really cannot find any distinction whatsoever between the harm effected by new religious movements, the harm effected by traditional religion, and the harm effected by secular institutions; nor can I find any meaningful distinction between the experiences of the Aum Shinrikyo adherents and my experiences in the U.S. Army, except that militaries are a recognized and accepted part of society and new religious movements are not. Indeed, many of the victims that Murakami interviewed had mentioned that, based on their experience working for companies, they might have acted just as the adherents had done and released the sarin into the subway (2001, pp. 353-354).
The Branch Davidians
Just two years earlier, in 1993, I watched on TV as another religious group came to violent conflict with the outside world. In between episodes of Frasier and Cheers, the news reported on a siege taking place in Waco, Texas between the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and a religious community called the Branch Davidians. This was likely my first encounter with religious violence; the mass suicide at Jonestown had happened two years before I was born.
The Branch Davidians, officially the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, was founded in 1955 by Benjamin Roden as an offshoot from the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists (also known as the Shepherd’s Rod) founded by Bulgarian immigrant Victor Houteff in 1935, itself an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Houteff died in 1955, leaving control of the Davidians to his wife Florence, who purchased property near Waco and developed it into the New Mount Carmel Center, a compound where her religious community could prepare for the apocalypse, which she had predicted would occur on April 22, 1959. When that date came and went without an apocalypse, she dissolved the Davidians and sold off much of the property. Some of that property fell to Roden, a member of the Davidians who thought himself the rightful heir to the leadership of the organization after Houteff’s death. He reestablished the community under the banner of his new Branch Davidians.
After Benjamin Roden died in 1978, the loyalty of the community was split between his wife Lois, who became the new leader, and their son George. In 1981, a man named Vernon Howell arrived and joined the community. He began an affair with Lois, who allowed Howell to preach his own interpretation of the Branch Davidian teachings, much to George’s chagrin. I really wish I had the space to cover the details of the power struggle between between George Roden and Vernon Howell that led to Howell becoming the leader of the Branch Davidians, because it’s fascinating and even, at times, hilarious. I’ll see if I can put it together as a special feature for my patrons, and you can also read about it in one of my sources, The Branch Davidians of Waco by professor and Anglican priest Kenneth Newport (2006). Long story short, by 1988, Howell, who had begun to call himself by the name David Koresh, was in control of both the Branch Davidians and the New Mount Carmel Center.
As with Aum Shinrikyo, I’m aiming to focus more on personal experience than on theology, but it’s worth noting that Seventh-day Adventism has a particular emphasis among the various Protestant denominations of Christianity on prophecy and eschatology, eschatology being beliefs concerning the end of the world. Koresh himself claimed to be a prophet and the Lamb of God who would precede the second coming of Jesus.
On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided the New Mount Carmel Center on suspicion of the possession of illegal firearms. A gun battle ensued between the ATF agents and the Branch Davidians, resulting in the deaths of four ATF agents. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team took control of the operation at that point and laid siege to the compound, seeking to force the Branch Davidians to surrender, as they feared a raid would put the compound’s child population at risk. The standoff lasted for a total of 51 days, at the end of which, the FBI, allegedly believing that the Branch Davidian children were in imminent harm, raided the compound. A fire started during the raid and consumed the compound, resulting in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 21 children. The exact cause of the fire remains disputed.
My main source in investigating the Branch Davidians was the book Waco: A Survivor’s Story by Branch Davidian survivor David Thibodeau, formerly published as A Place Called Waco. It’s a very different book than those I usually turn to: the cover is graced with the visages of the actors who played those involved in a TV miniseries derived from the book. It has the appearance of sensationalism, but it’s also cited by several of the more academic sources I used for reference and, in every respect I’ve been able to measure, appears to be a reliable account of the author’s experience with the Branch Davidians and David Koresh. In academic historical research, it’s generally considered to be a mark of reliability when someone speaks against their own self-interest, and Thibodeau’s account is largely defensive of the unpopular figure of David Koresh and he paints himself as complicit in Koresh’s morally reprehensible behavior. He acknowledges the problems of David Koresh’s actions explicitly in his afterward to the paperback edition. So despite the book’s appearances, I’m inclined to take it as an honest account, although there’s a caveat to that that I’ll discuss a little further on.
Thibodeau, a drummer by trade, met David Koresh, also a musician, at a Guitar Center in Los Angeles. Thibodeau jammed with Koresh’s band a few times and soon found himself visiting the New Mount Carmel Center. He asks himself in the text, “How could someone like me, who’d shown little previous interest in belief or Scripture, who had almost no religious background, later become so entranced by the Bible?
“The key,” he continues, “was David himself.” Thibodeau repeatedly refers to Koresh as a good friend, and he says that he was “taken by his deep sincerity and natural authority” (Thibodeau & Whiteson, 2018, p. 21, emphasis original). He describes the Davidian community in very positive terms throughout the book, in striking contrast to the descriptions of Aum Shinrikyo by the adherents interviewed by Murakami. Thibodeau’s account does not indicate that there was any overt manipulation, coercion, or abuse, although that comes with a huge caveat that I’ll get to presently. I found this positive depiction surprising, given how David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the events at Waco have been depicted in the media. I’m convinced that Koresh was, like Shoko Asahara, a person of authentic spiritual understanding, and while I wouldn’t quite describe Koresh as being a person of sound mental health and I certainly wouldn’t describe him as morally upstanding, he doesn’t seem to me to be the sociopath that Asahara was but rather someone of authentic religious belief with a deep and authentic love for his community.
Now onto that caveat I mentioned. In 1989, during his tenure as leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh claimed to have received a revelation that he called the New Light. This revelation mandated that most of those following him become celibate, and that a selection of the women of the community restrict their sexual relationships to Koresh alone. Koresh also had sexual relationships with girls of the community as young as twelve. While it does not seem as though any of those relationships were forced or coerced in the most literal sense of the words, I’m not of the opinion that a twelve-year-old is capable of giving informed consent to anyone, much less the leader of their community, even with parental involvement and consent. Nor is the law, for that matter; it seems fully evident that Koresh was guilty of statutory rape. That the parents of the girls involved, and indeed the entire Branch Davidian community at Mount Carmel, were either implicitly or explicitly permissive of these relationships makes the entire situation worse rather than better.
But this isn’t why the ATF and FBI got involved with the Branch Davidians. In 1992, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services investigated the Branch Davidian compound and found no evidence that any abuse was taking place. Clearly the Davidians collaborated to conceal the statutory rape. The Davidians also purchased large quantities of weapons for modification and resale—that was, in part, how they funded their operation—and, as Thibodeau admits, they didn’t always fill out the proper paperwork. This is what ultimately prompted the ATF raid and subsequent standoff.
Given the overall circumstances, some sort of intervention was absolutely warranted, but the intervention that actually took place was poorly conceived and poorly executed, with disastrous results. In order to serve an arrest warrant against David Koresh in particular, the ATF raided a community with deeply-held apocalyptic beliefs and a large stockpile of weapons, a community which the ATF knew housed many children. During the standoff, the FBI deployed CS gas against the Branch Davidians, knowing full well that the children would be affected by it; this would have been a war crime were the Branch Davidians foreign nationals. I’ve been exposed to CS gas twice during military training exercises, so I can say from experience how thoroughly nasty and brutal that stuff is. Its deliberate use against children is unconscionable. And in the end, 21 children suffered horrific, needless deaths. I think that, if the ATF and the FBI had made an honest attempt to understand the Branch Davidians and their beliefs, the siege would not have resulted in such tragic consequences. This is also the view expressed by Kenneth Newport in The Branch Davidians of Waco:
…[T]here is much about Branch Davidianism, even the Branch Davidianism during the period of Koresh’s leadership, that can only be understood if one sees it not as a personality cult, but as a fully functioning interpretative community. A failure to do this was a big mistake on the part of the FBI negotiators…. To misunderstand this group is to risk not learning ‘the lessons of Waco’… and to do that is to invite further catastrophe in the future.
2006, pp. 322-323
Newport presents a host of evidence strongly suggesting that the fire was started by the Branch Davidians themselves as part of their apocalyptic vision. Thibodeau, on the other hand, believes that it was an accident resulting from negligence on the part of the federal agents. The reliance among Adventists and especially among Branch Davidians on a divine “cleansing by fire” (reflecting several Bible verses but Isaiah 66:15-16 in particular) is a notable omission from Thibodeau’s text. Perhaps he was not a part of the inner circle which would have been responsible for starting the fire, if that is indeed what happened, but the theology of it certainly would have come up during the numerous Bible studies that he attended at Mount Carmel, yet he mentions nothing along those lines, not even by way of refutation. My guess is that he was unaware and does not believe that other Branch Davidians had started the fire, and does not consider himself qualified to address the relevant theology.
On “Cults”
Both Aum Shinrikyo and the Branch Davidians have been described by the popular media as “cults,” and it’s worth noting the power and weight of this term and the way that it frames discourse on religions in a particular light. Because of the negative connotations, academics generally avoid the term, preferring instead the more neutral term “new religious movements.” Thibodeau himself spends several pages detailing the ways in which the Branch Davidians were demonized by the media, in part through use of the word “cult.” He mentions in particular an episode of the show Oprah entitled “Inside Waco and Other Cults,” and says further on:
In the words of linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, groups labeled as “cults” are automatically living in a land beyond “the bounds of acceptable premises.” In today’s media-saturated climate, the word “cult” is an instant road sign for the audience: warning: weirdos ahead. All thought is stopped, all questions skewed, as the Oprah episode revealed. Even the most basic question—What exactly is a cult?—is shoved aside.
p. 201
Indeed, no formal distinction between cults and mainstream religion exists. A google search for the word “cult” features the Branch Davidians prominently, alongside the Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate, and displays Murakami’s Underground as one of several “books about cults.” Under the “People Also Ask” section is the question “What is the legal definition of a cult?” Opening that tab provides a definition, and it’s not immediately evident that it’s just a standard dictionary entry from Merriam-Webster rather than one with any legal standing or authority. A recent book by Professor Safiya Noble entitled Algorithms of Oppression (2018) describes how internet search results, which are broadly perceived as objective and factual, are in fact algorithmically curated to serve the commercial interests of Google and other internet advertising companies.
Although I doubt the motives behind the popular depiction of new religious movements and the use of the term “cult” are, in general, deliberate, it’s easy to see how such serve the interests of capitalism in a way that depicting new religious movements as a normal part of human religious expression would not. David Koresh, David Thibodeau, and many of the members of Aum Shinrikyo interviewed by Murakami expressed a sense of alienation from modern society, at times specifically mentioning its capitalist elements, and by joining these organizations, the adherents largely removed themselves from the role in the capitalist world to which they would have otherwise been fated: that of the worker-consumer.
The quote that Thibodeau provides from Noam Chomsky comes from the book he authored along with economist and media critic Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, originally published in 1988. This book presents what Herman and Chomsky call the propaganda model of mass media, which includes a number of filters through which the events being reported on pass in the course of becoming news. The second of these filters is the advertising license to do business. Mass media are funded by advertising; their existence is predicated upon businesses considering it to be worth their while to advertise on news channels (1988, pp. 14-18). So part of the way that the media serve those interests is to restrict debate to “the bounds of acceptable premises,” those premises which “inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups” (1988, p. 298). To put it plainly, “cults” make for good ratings—like I said, this news was offered up alongside shows watched by tens of millions of people. New religious movements, on the other hand, are potentially bad for business. Advertisers are unlikely to consider it to be worth their while to advertise on news programming that suggests there’s a life to be had not constantly buying stuff. (Chomsky and Herman’s book is also covered in an excellent video by economist Tom Nicholas: The Myth of a Free Press, n.d.)
Clearly there are significant problems with how religion manifests in these two cases, and, I’m certain, in many other cases as well, but the problem is much more complex than it seems at first. Clearly the problem is not just with religion itself, or with new religious movements themselves. I don’t think there’s a single root cause but rather a confluence of numerous factors. It seems to be the case that certain people are spiritually gifted, the way that a person might be musically gifted or athletically gifted, and that these spiritual gifts do not correlate to personal development in other areas, including morality, just as being musically or athletically gifted does not necessarily indicate moral development or intellectual development or anything else. It is also quite evidently the case that contemporary society is broadly and profoundly alienating, and given our natural propensity to be religious and to seek meaning and narrative within our lives, this leads many people to seek these things outside the mainstream. The resulting isolation is something that can be weaponized by the unscrupulous or by those with sincere but problematic religious beliefs. And as I’ve talked about on this show before, beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum but are tightly interwoven with community and personal identity.
The discourse surrounding new religious movements, just by its nature, prevents scrutiny into whether the ideas being promulgated within these groups are good ones. Exactly as Thibodeau said, the term “cult” renders such scrutiny unnecessary; the whole package of ideas is judged and dismissed without anyone having to go through the trouble of learning what the ideas actually are. Such an approach will only further isolate these individuals and groups and exacerbate the problems that they present.
I hope you’ve found this piece interesting and informative. If you’ve enjoyed it, I encourage you to look at some of my other essays, and if you find my approach to philosophy and religion at all valuable, I hope that you’ll stop in at my Patreon page, which features bonus content for patrons, and that you’ll stop back by to check on my new content.
Works Cited or Referenced
Feffer, J. (2018, March 1). Apocalyptic Christianity Returns to U.S. Foreign Policy. Institute for Policy Studies. https://ips-dc.org/apocalyptic-christianity-returns-u-s-foreign-policy/
Hall, J. R., Schuyler, P. D., & Trinh, S. (2005). Apocalypse Observed Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe and Japan.
Herman, E. S., Chomsky, N., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon.
Murakami, H. (2001). Underground (A. Birnbaum & P. Gabriel, Trans.; 1st Vintage international ed). Vintage International.
Newport, K. G. C. (2006). The Branch Davidians of Waco: The history and beliefs of an apocalyptic sect. Oxford University Press.
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.
The Myth of a Free Press: Media Bias Explained | Tom Nicholas. (n.d.). Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-8t0EfLzQo&t=2892s&ab_channel=TomNicholas
Thibodeau, D., & Whiteson, L. (2018). Waco: A survivor’s story (First Paperback Edition). Hachette Books.