ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 15, 1997 TAG: 9704150044
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GERALD McDERMOTT
MOST OF US are asking the wrong questions about the Hale-Bopp ascetics who killed themselves in an attempt to find a higher level of life in deep space. We've been asking, for instance, what other ``cults'' are out there, poised to do similar crazy things.
The question assumes that we know what a ``cult'' is, and that all ``cults'' pose a threat to society. ``Cult'' is usually defined by ``cult experts'' as groups with markedly different lifestyles led by a charismatic leader who claims to have a pipeline to heaven, rejects mainstream culture, tries to get members to think alike, and teaches that the group has the only way to salvation. The problem with this definition is that it applies not only to Marshall Applewhite and his disciples, but also to the beginnings of religions many of us hold dear - such as the movement started by Jesus and his 12 Apostles.
Many commentaries on Heaven's Gate assume that it must have ``coerced'' its members into joining by ``mind-snapping'' and/or ``brainwashing.'' But there is little evidence of this, as there was little evidence in Waco and most other nontraditional religious sects in America. Research, in fact, indicates that nearly all joiners of these groups leave voluntarily, and 75 percent within the first year. Heaven's Gate literature on the Internet boasts that members had left voluntarily, and were given cash, a car and help to get a job in the outside world.
The more common question being asked is, ``How could intelligent, educated people fall for these bizarre beliefs?'' One answer to this is that history is full of educated and intelligent people who have believed crazy (and sometimes diabolical) schemes. Why did the most educated society in Western history embrace Nazism? Why did several generations of intellectuals defend Stalinism even as it was killing millions in the Gulag? Why do some of these intellectuals still refuse to retract (publicly) their support for the regime that sponsored these killings?
The San Diego suicides were not unlike millions of other Americans - religious seekers of a system that could channel their search for significance and transcendence. They were disillusioned by mainstream religion and attracted to what appeared to be selflessness in Heaven's Gate leaders. Applewhite's sophisticated theology appealed to them because it made sense of a confusing world by incorporating elements of contemporry culture in ways that major American religions do not: evolution, reincarnation, UFOs, gang wars, ethnic cleansing, infotechnology, genetic engineering and feminism.
Questions about other cults and why people join a cult are the wrong questions because they obscure the more troubling questions that Heaven's Gate raises about our own culture.
For instance, we now have to question the myth of sincerity epitomized by President Dwight Eisenhower's ``faith in faith'' - the notion that it doesn't matter what we believe as long as we are sincere. If ideas have consequences, then so does faith, both for life and for death.
Another way of putting this is that truth matters. It's not enough to say that ``it's true for you, but not for me.'' There is reality outside of our own heads - despite the protests of some postmodernists - and the Hale-Bopp ascetics have now discovered it. Instead of despairing over our supposed inability to discriminate among competing claims for truth (as one religion scholar puts it, ``One man's faith in Jesus' miracles is another man's faith in a UFO hiding behind a comet''), we should use the plenteous resources provided by both philosophy and religion to make rational evaluations of what is closer to or farther from the truth.
This also calls into question the '90s indiscriminate welcome to ``spirituality,'' no matter what flavor. No one can question now that some spiritualities are toxic to one's health, and that spirituality alone is not enough.
Rather than dismissing the California celibates as deluded freaks, we should take seriously their challenge to many assumptions of elite American culture. For hidden within their outlandish theology is a series of protests that are voiced by millions of other Americans. Most striking is their denunciation of our culture's sexualism - the notion that we are defined most essentially by our sexual orientation and sexual practice. They found what many other Americans are finding, that sexual indulgence does not produce the happiness the Sexual Revolution of the '60s had promised, and in fact has many troubling unintended consequences. This is why some Gaters castrated themselves and others took drugs to suppress their sexual hormones.
More basically, these ardent ascetics challenged the Carl Sagans of the world who proclaim religiously that the physical cosmos is all there is or ever will be. They were convinced that a culture based on such a leap of faith is necessarily shallow and unimaginative, and will have no reason not to judge people by their physical beauty and sex appeal.
Most provocatively, this group's condemnation of Christian churches (particularly of the charismatic variety) as big businesses attached to the pleasures of this world should give thoughtful Christians some pause. Theologically informed believers may be amused by its portrayal of Paul as an antinomian and Jesus as a law-giver who teaches us we should overcome our ``humanness'' by forsaking our families and abstaining from sex and debt. But they may also be provoked into re-examining their churches for materialism and easy-believism.
Finally, we should question why we are so appalled by this mass suicide. If Dr. Kevorkian is correct (not coincidentally, the Heavens Gaters explicitly praised his work, calling for euthanasia on demand), we should give social support to those who freely decide to depart, either to escape anticipated distress or embrace anticipated delights. The carefully planned departure of these 39 is the logical end of the Kevorkian philosophy, the basic lineaments of which are supported by a majority of Americans.
GERALD McDERMOTT, an associate professor of religion and philosophy at Roanoke College, is author of ``Seeing God: Twelve Reliable Signs of True Spirituality.''
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