
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 12, 1994                   TAG: 9405130001
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By GERALD McDERMOTT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRANCH DAVIDIANS REVISITED

FOR OVER a year now, we've been telling ourselves that what we learned from the Waco catastrophe is that religious cults can be dangerous. But there's another lesson we need to learn - that ignorance of religion is also dangerous.

The lesson can be learned from both David Koresh's followers and the FBI. The Branch Davidians teach us that even educated persons (some of them had college degrees) can believe the most ridiculous interpretations of the Bible if they themselves know little or nothing of the Bible. Nearly all sect members believed the Bible to be true, but because of their ignorance of its contents were unable to recognize their leader's massive distortion of its message.

But the lesson taught by the FBI is more instructive. On April 14, 1993, David Koresh announced that he would surrender peacefully in about two weeks, after explaining the ``seven seals,'' a series of events said by the book of Revelation to take place before the end of the world.

In March 1993, Koresh had insisted that he would remain indefinitely in his Waco compound because of his interpretation of the opening of the fifth seal in Revelation 7. According to this passage, martyrs killed for their faith were told by God to wait in heaven ``a little longer'' until the rest of their brethren on earth were killed. Koresh believed that the six Davidians killed in the Feb. 28 ATF raid were the martyrs in heaven, and that he and the remaining Davidians were being told by God to wait until the government came to kill them, too.

In early April, James Tabor and Phillip Arnold, two Bible scholars whose specialty is the history of groups that expect the imminent end of the world, seem to have convinced Koresh that the fifth seal had not yet been opened. They also persuaded Koresh that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, he must present his interpretation of the seven seals to the world.

Because of this new interpretation of the seven seals, Koresh made the announcement on April 14 that he would come out. Tabor, Arnold and Richard DeGuerin, Koresh's attorney, were all convinced that Koresh would finish his manuscript explaining the seven seals about May 1 and then surrender voluntarily to authorities. They urged the FBI to wait, and got the impression the FBI would.

But the FBI attacked just five days later, on April 19. Koresh had been up all night working on his seven seals manuscript. The attack must have convinced him that he was in the fifth seal after all, and that now it was time for all the Davidians to die, as his original interpretation of the seven seals had predicted.

The government's attempt to rescue children from an abusive environment led to the ultimate child abuse - a fiery death for 25 children.

If the FBI had studied the Branch Davidians' understandings of religious authority, secular power and the end of the world, it would have realized that a military siege would provoke, not intimidate, strengthen, rather than diminish, Koresh's power over his followers, and increase the resolve of those whose determination they hoped to weaken. The FBI would not have been irritated when, on each day of the eight days of Passover, Koresh declared that it was Passover. Because it wrongly assumed that Passover lasts only a day, it wrongly concluded that Koresh's word could never be trusted.

This was not the first time the U.S. government has invited catastrophe by ignoring religion. President Jimmy Carter toasted the Shah of Iran on New Year's Eve in 1977, calling him ``a leader greatly loved by his people,'' and calling Iran an ``island of stability in the sea of chaos in the Middle East.'' Less than a year later, the shah was driven from the Peacock Throne by a broad-based religious revolution that took 52 Americans hostage and toppled the Carter presidency.

Both Iran and Waco point to a substantial ignorance of religion in American media, academe and government, many of whose members assume that religion is private and has little or no social impact.

The Waco catastrophe is a wake-up call to the shapers and enforces of public policy - not to be more religious (though that might not hurt), but to begin to pay closer attention to religion's role in shaping individuals and communities, transmitting values and goals, and challenging the status quo.

With more attention to religion, future Wacos can be avoided.

Gerald McDermott is assistant professor of religion at Roanoke College.

by CNB