ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 6, 1997 TAG: 9704070017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LEO SANDON
``WHEN THE half-gods go, the minimal gods arrive.'' - H. Richard Niebuhr.
What does it take for marginal religious groups to startle a nation? The People's Temple Christian Church in Jonestown, Guyana, got our attention in 1978 when 913 of its members died in ritual suicide. It happened again in 1993 near Waco, Texas, when federal agents, against the advice of those of us who have studied such groups, insisted on interpreting the Branch Davidian commune as a hostage situation, attacking the compound and provoking the conflagration in which more than 75 people died.
The Order of the Solar Temple induced the ``reincarnation'' of 56 of its members through suicides in Switzerland and Canada in October 1994, followed by the deaths of 16 more outside of Grenoble, France, at the winter solstice in 1995. Earlier this month, another five members died in a mysterious fire near Quebec City.
Now, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate religious commune have ``shed their containers,'' thus mesmerizing the news media and energizing a spate of background investigations. The suicide dominated almost the entire hour on ABC's ``This Week,'' and the covers of both Time and Newsweek highlighted the story. As the facts and details fall into place, public intellectuals will be offering commentary.
One thing to be avoided is blaming human behavior on technology. The fact that the Heaven's Gate folk were involved in creating Web sites and used the Internet to promote their beliefs does not mean that this is an event produced by cyberspace evil.
Alternative religions often have been on the cutting edge of technology. Indeed, in the case of such groups as the Shakers and the Oneida community, they were pioneers in technological development. Technology is neutral, and technological expertise is not necessarily accompanied by spiritual discernment and wisdom. Policies formulated to police the Internet are neither necessary nor workable.
Another response we should refrain from indulging is one curtailing the activities of religious ``cults.'' If a group is so alienated from established institutions that it violates either civil or criminal codes, we should, of course, prosecute. But if we believe in religious liberty, we will refrain from censoring them on the basis of their peculiar ideology or bizarre behavior.
Liberty is an instrumental good. It does not guarantee excellence in taste or conduct. Or religious truth. Religious heresy can hardly be a serious vice for a culture in which religious orthodoxy is not an esteemed virtue.
If we err by responding too powerfully to peripheral religious groups, there is danger that we will push alienated people toward becoming paranoid people. We have not only enough space for the bizarre, but we might even learn from their madness.
One lesson we might learn is the way in which the religious landscape has changed in the last three decades. The authority of faith communities and their institutions has experienced much the same erosion as other established institutions. The plurality of religious beliefs is more radical than many of us have noticed. It may be that the Web does contribute to the rapid proliferation of religious beliefs.
The word for our condition, perhaps related to the concept of surfing, is drift. We should not underestimate the degree of religious drift in postmodern society. This is what Niebuhr meant by ``minimal gods'' in the wake of religious confusion and fragmentation.
Another insight we might gain from this most recent tragedy is the degree to which so many people in our society experience what the sociologists call anomie, a sense of worldlessness. Our nation's celebration of individualism often neglects the need for community. There are a lot of lonely people in the United States. Most people are joined to totalistic religious groups because they find a home in them. All of us should be about the task of the care and feeding of a sense of community.
As a character in one of Christopher Fry's plays put it, we should ``make wherever we are as much like home as possible.''
We should, finally, do all we can to affirm the essential goodness of physical reality. Religion should emphasize wholeness in body and in the biosphere. To denigrate the body as a mere container and to look for the good life in outer space or in heaven denies the essential goodness of the five senses, of bodily based human self-consciousness as the seat of our spirituality, and of the good Earth, our island home. How pathetic to view a hunk of dirty ice as the harbinger of that which will rescue us from the web of life.
LEO SANDON,-professor of religion and director of the program in American Studies at Florida State University, wrote this for the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat.
- KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE|
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