CONCERNED CHRISTIANS TIMELINE

Founder : Monte Kim Miller.1

Date of Birth : April 20, 1954 2 .

Birth Place : Burlington, Colorado 3 .

Year Founded : 1985 4 .

Sacred or Revered Texts : Bimonthly newsletter, Report from Concerned Christians . Our Foundation radio program. The Old Testament is also used, but their beliefs primarily deal with the New Testament.

Size of Group : There were 78 members of the group in September 30, 1998. How many perceive themselves to still be members of the group is unknown. 10

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Monte Kim Miller was born on April 20, 1954 and raised in the small farming community of Burlington, Colorado. Miller’s family did not attend church, but he claims to have converted to Christianity after listening to Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ. He allegedly worked for Campus Crusade, but no record of that work can be found. Miller received no formal theological training. Thus, he claims he avoided any “disciplining in ‘man’s’ traditions” and was able to learn solely from God. 5

Miller was an anti-cult activist in the early 1980’s, around the same time he formed Concerned Christians. He was working as a marketing executive at Proctor and Gamble at the time and he began to lecture at local Denver churches. Miller formed Concerned Christians in response to the New Age movement and his perception of anti-Christian bias in the media. His newsletter, Report from Concerned Christians focused on such topics as feminist spirituality, the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, New Age trends in the Christian church, and alternative medicine. 6

By the mid-1980s Miller’s views began to deviate from orthodox evangelical Christian doctrine and practice. It is claimed that Miller began to have conversations with God at this point, but this is disputed. By around 1988 Miller’s focus began to shift even more. This is evidenced in a series of newsletters criticizing the World-Faith movement and the Roman Catholic Church. Although this in itself is unremarkable, as many religious organizations were also voicing concern in regards to these groups, it served as a precursor to Miller’s attacks on organized Christianity.

Miller began to isolate himself starting in the early 1990’s. In 1996 he began producing a radio program entitled Our Foundation . The program was removed from the air after Miller refused to pay for air time, claiming that God had ordered him not to pay. Miller declared bankruptcy after becoming more than $600,000 in debt. He asked his followers to contribute up to $100,000 apiece. When they refused, it is alleged that he advised his followers that they were going to hell. 7

It was also during this time that Miller began to channel messages from God. His prophecies became increasing apocalyptic. He proclaimed himself to be one of the two witnesses of Revelation 11, who would be killed in Jerusalem in December 1999, and then resurrected after three days. He also prophesied that the Apocalypse would begin after Denver was to be destroyed by and earthquake on October 10, 1998. 8

Seventy-two members of the Concerned Christians group abandoned their homes on September 30, 1998 and apparently fled to Jerusalem. The alleged reason for their abrupt departure was both to avoid the destruction of Denver and also to prepare themselves to witness the coming of the Messiah in Jerusalem during the millennium. Israeli authorities raided the homes of 14 members of the group on January 3, 1999, alleging that the group was planning to commit a violent action in an attempt to instigate Christ’s Second Coming. The members were deported on January 8, 1999, and they were returned to Denver. 9

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The beliefs of the Concerned Christians group reflect those of many religious fundamentalist groups. Monte Kim Miller focuses on several key issues and is concerned primarily with the New Testament, especially the Book of Matthew. The following concepts are derived from the only known source available regarding the beliefs of this group, the transcripts of a radio program, Our Foundation , preached by Miller. There are 45 numbered programs.

First and foremost, Miller teaches about the importance of spiritual rebirth. This spiritual birth, as opposed to our natural birth, leads to eternal life. To glorify the importance of flesh is to lead a life contrary to the spirit of God. Following that, Miller preaches that humans must become meek and lowly in heart so that they can decrease themselves and Christ can increase himself in them. This suffering and the death of self (and his own ways and desires) correlates with the theme of diminishing so Christ can prosper, and this is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.

Through this decreasing/increasing of the self and Christ and the concept of “cross- carrying” (the idea of suffering identified with Christ bearing the cross), the fruits of the Holy Spirit can be attained. When it is no longer the self that lives, but Christ within the self, it is then that the fruit of the Holy Spirit can be manifested. The fruits of the Spirit include meekness, temperance, longsuffering, gentleness, love, joy, peace, and goodness. Faith is also a fruit of the Spirit, but more importantly it is the means by which these fruits can be achieved.

Humility and self-denial are the next two issues dealt with in the radio programs. Humility is produced by faith, and humility is a centerpiece of each fruit of the spirit. Christians are to humble themselves before one another and also before non- believers. Christians are not to attempt to achieve ruler ship status over the governments of the world during this age (the present). This is the age for humility, not reigning over the fallen world system. Miller believes that the Heavenly Kingdom Teachings are what Christians should live by, and they include:

By denying ourselves,

Carrying our crosses,

Being humble before others, and

Living in Faith.

One cannot abide by these teachings unless the Holy Spirit is in the heart. These teachings to Miller represent the divine edict to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies. It is this concept that is later expounded on it great detail in future programs. Miller’s focus in the programs numbered 10-20 is on self-denial and its consequences.

One should submit to the Holy Spirit and deny oneself. Men who do not know Jesus Christ pursue self; they pursue their own lives and dreams. They pursue the desires of their flesh, and these are the fruits of self-will. The fruits of the Spirit come from self-denial – and that self-denial is a result of the giving up of your own life for the pursuit of Christ’s. One must ignore the earthly kingdom’s “wisdom of this world” because it will lead to the pursuit of self and the fallen natural man. One must strive at all costs to avoid this downfall. The fallen natural man, for example, will take revenge when wronged. Miller then describes the various characteristics ascribed to the self, such as selfishness, self-importance, self-centered, self-serving, self-interest, self-love, and self-pity, among a few.

Miller contends that the only positive aspect of self is self-improvement, which comes about only through a denial of self (a “death to self”) and a subsequent victory in Jesus Christ. There should be no self-defense, even in the example of slanderous accusations are made against one’s nature. Like Christ on the cross, one should merely accept those accusations and forgive his enemies. Along these lines, Miller challenges people to:

Bless them that curse us,

Do good to them that hate us,

Pray for them which despitefully use us.

The next issue that Miller addresses is resistance to evil. He argues that true believers should not resist evil, but should resist Satan. Consequently, Miller argues that one is in fact resisting Satan when one refuses to resist the evil perpetrated by those who do not have Jesus Christ in their lives, and who are Satan’s agents in the flesh. Miller contends that any form of resistance to evil, even non-violent (as demonstrated in the actions of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,) is unbiblical.

The rest of Miller’s sermons are devoted to the transition from the Old Testament rule of law to the New Testament world of grace.

One should not merely see God’s grace directed to the believer, but one should see God’s grace shining through the believer. One is not to render judgment and attempt to punish non-believing sinners according to Old Testament law, because the new covenant is stronger than the old.

Miller’s emphasis in the last sermons is to establish the idea that believers not challenge government, or attempt to create laws that would punish sinners, but rather to not resist their evil, because one had no legitimate right to judge non-believers.

Like Christ, who came to earth without judging but only to save, believers should try to offer the non-believer eternal life through Jesus Christ, in the same spirit that Christ saved the world. Miller cautions his listeners against the easy trap of a “common religious purpose”, which serves to bring together true believers into deception and alliance with those who are religious but do not truly follow Jesus Christ into the resistance of evil in society. This deception can lead a believer to think is acceptable to resist evil in order to make society more righteous. An example of this is an anti-abortion law. Miller argues that it is not the place of believers to make these laws, because that is an example of resistance to evil.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

“There’s a gulf of Biblical dimensions between what Monte Kim Miller preaches on tape and what some have heard firsthand” 11 .

So begins an article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News , and so also begins the difficulty of distinguishing and discerning the truth from opinion, not only in this article but also all articles written about the Concerned Christians. There most certainly is a discrepancy between the written and/or oral teachings of Monte Kim Miller and the accounts given by family, friends, former members, and self proclaimed “cult experts”. While there doesn’t seem to be any immediate consequences arising from this simple fact, complexities arise because only one faction of this divide is talking to the media – and it isn’t Mote Kim Miller and his followers.

A careful examination of the archive of newspaper articles written about the Concerned Christians, suggests that local newspapers have been less than objective. The statistics that follow are derived from the archives of the Denver Post – I have also read through all of the articles from the Rocky Mountain News and found that the articles presented in it follow the trend that is illustrated below, therefore I have chosen to only focus on one newspaper for the sake of clarity.

There were 39 total articles published on the subject of the Concerned Christians between October 7, 1998 and January 3, 2000. In those articles there were 57 sources quoted. By calculating the number of times any given source was quoted, I concluded there are 132 “quotes” in the 39 articles. A few persons accounted for many of the quotes. To clarify, a quote is not calculated by ascertaining the number of times a certain person spoke throughout the same article, but rather if that person is quoted at least once in the article, that is considered a “quote” for him or her. The “quote” number ascribed to a person or group is the number of times that person or group was cited as a source in the articles. The majority of these sources (35) were quoted only once. The breakdown of the sources is as follows:

There were 22 family members or friends quoted. These family members and friends accounted for 52 “quotes”.

There were 5 anonymous sources quoted. These sources accounted for 10 “quotes”.

There were 13 “official” sources quoted. These sources accounted for 15 “quotes”. Of these 13 “official” sources, 9 issued neutral statements regarding Concerned Christians, 3 issued what can be considered negative statements, and 1 issued a positive statement on their behalf.

Perhaps most interestingly, there were 3 anti-cult activists quoted as sources, but between the three of them they make up 35 “quotes”. That is almost 1/3 of the quotes attributed to 3 people.

Family spokespersons

Among the family members and friends portion, the most often quoted include John Weaver, Sherry Clark, Jennifer Cooper and Del Dyck.

John Weaver is the father of Nicolette Weaver, an outspoken critic of the group who falls under both the family member and former member rubric. Nicolette’s mother, Jan Cooper, is believed to be a high-ranking member of the group and Nicolette has testified that her mother often told her of the short time they had left on earth and that if directed by Miller, she would kill Nicolette. 12 John Weaver often makes highly derogatory statements regarding the group, including claims that the group demands members surrender their lives to Miller’s dictums, charges that Miller is a “con” and “biblical illiterate” 13 and beliefs that Miller is like Almighty God to members and has the ability to plot his own martyrdom and lead them to mass suicide.

Sherry Clark is often the unofficial spokeswoman of the family members, and she testifies that when she met with Miller he told her the only way to be saved was to write a check for $70,000 while simultaneously twisting his mouth and talking in a “weird voice” 14 . She has also questioned his ability to make choices. She is the primary source for characterizing the feelings of family members regarding the cult – she has said that the experience has tragically divided and pulled families apart. 15

Jennifer Cooper is the daughter of John Cooper, who is the husband of Jan Cooper and who also is believed to be the primary financer of the group’s activities. Jennifer successfully petitioned for a conservatorship for control of her father’s estate. To do so, she had to convince a judge that her father was unable to make financial decisions for himself. Cooper claimed that her father had been “brainwashed” and was acting out of character. 16 She feels as though Miller is only after her father’s money.

Lastly, Del Dyck only made the news around January 7, 1999, when 14 of the members were being deported from Israel back to the United States. Knowing his son would be among the members returning, he flew to Denver and met every incoming flight from Tel Aviv – to no avail. These four people are characteristic of the family member’s testimonies as a whole. Generally, family and friends express frustration, anger, sadness, and hurt, which is not surprising. Their sentiments, however, cannot be considered objective.

The anti-cult experts

It is understandable that a group that believes the media to be biased against them would be reluctant to respond to requests for interviews. How much effort the Denver media made to speak with group members is not known, but there are no quotes from members of Concerned Christians in the news stories I examined. One would expect the media would call upon family members for perspective about a group that was believed to be controversial even before they disappeared. If this is understandable, it is also clear that the media have not sought more objective or neutral perspective. Indeed, as I noted above, three local anti-cult activists account for approximately one-third of all quotes. To more clearly understand the context of the quotes used by the media, it may be instructive to offer brief sketches about the three most frequently cited “experts.” In each instance, it is clear that these “experts” are working with presuppositions that preclude much objective analysis.

Bill Honsberger is referred to in many news articles as a “local cult expert.” He is, in fact, a Christian missionary with the Baptist church. Honsberger virulently attacks the legitimacy of both Miller and his followers. He is quoted in 15 of the 39 articles. Some of his more aggressive accusations include:

“Miller is liable to do something bizarre to ensure his place in history” 23 .

“[H]e has that much control. You question him, you question God” 24 .

Honsberger also believes Miller’s divine edicts could turn violent, and that he [Miller] is capable of ordering a group suicide. Honsberger feels that Miller would not mind dying if his prophetic role in the universe was intact. He further considers Miller to be a danger both to those in his group and those around him. Miller’s power, Honsberger asserts, lies in his ability to convince his followers to abandon their families and isolate them completely. 25

Honsberger has also said that Miller has threatened to kill him and casts him as the Antichrist. 26 What is more interesting than all of these characterizations, however, is the fact that Honsberger is one of the only people who can testify to the beliefs of the Concerned Christians. He is often called upon to present their beliefs to the media. This can raise some concerns, as will be discussed later, with the validity of the presentation of their beliefs.

Mark Roggeman , tied with Honsberger as the most quoted source about Concerned Christians, is a Denver police officer who “tracks cults in his spare time”. 27 Roggeman often issues statements of a rather generic sort, usually he comments on the status of family members or general concepts of the members’ beliefs. While he may not provide harsh attacks on the cult members, Roggeman is clearly anti-cult. He was indicted on June 11, 1981 for second degree kidnapping and false imprisonment. He was charged with forcibly kidnapping Emily Dietz and holding her against her will for nearly two weeks before she finally escaped by jumping from a second story window in the middle of the night. 28 It is clear that Roggeman should not be considered an unbiased source.

Hal Mansfield is the director of the Religious Movement Resource Center. The Center is concerned with dissuading people from entering into what they term “destructive cults”. They define a destructive cult as “an organization that inhibits individual freedom of thought through the use of violence, deception and mind control”. 29 A destructive cult is not defined on the basis of its belief system or theology, but rather the dynamics of group organization. There are two different methods by which a group is deemed to be a “destructive cult”. First, from “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism” by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, there are eight points of mind control. They are:

Milieu control

Mystical manipulation

The demand for purity

The cult of confession

Sacred science

Loading the language

Doctrine over person

Dispensing of existence. 30

Another guide used by the Center is the Cult Danger Evaluation Frame developed is P. E. I. Bonewits. This evaluation uses a ten-point scale. The areas rated are:

Internal control

Wisdom claimed

Wisdom credited

Dogma

Recruiting

Front groups

Wealth

Political power

Sexual manipulation

Censorship

Dropout control

Endorsement of violence

Paranoia

Grimness

Surrender of will. 31

Both of these resources are considered by scholars of religious movements to have dubious validity.

Mansfield is the most outspoken and derogatory of the anti-cultists. He often compares the Concerned Christians to the members of Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, and the Branch Davidians. He has said he considers the Concerned Christians a “very dangerous group”, 32 .and charges that Miller is wrapped up in a power trip. Hansfield also has made assumptions about the violent tendencies of the group. When there were no weapons found on the members after a raid on their house in Jerusalem, Mansfield indicated that weapons were readily accessible to the members. “Come on, that’s the Middle East. You can go across the border and come back with an armful of AK-47s,” he said. 33

Mansfield has also alluded to previous instances of Miller’s “violent tendencies,” but there is no verifiable evidence to support his statements.

Official sources

The “official” sources that were quoted usually offered neutral statements, and many times were not directed at Concerned Christians specifically but rather at new religious movements generally. There were, however, some interesting contradictions among these sources. Consider the following:

Linda Menuhin, and Israeli police spokeswoman, said that Israel would act vehemently against any attempt of extremist groups that distract the arrival of Christians. 17

Yair Yizahki, the Jerusalem police commander, also said that the deportation was merely a reaction to the need to fight for freedom of religious worship. 18 This raises an interesting question – how can barring the existence of one religious group promote the freedom of others? This might follow only if, as alleged by the Israeli police, the members of that group are plotting violence.

Brig. Gen. Elihu Ben-Ohn, the national police spokesman, said that the members of Concerned Christians planned to carry out violent and extreme acts in the streets of Jerusalem. 19

There were not, however, any charges filed. John Russel, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department said there were no charges against the deportees and Bill Carter, a FBI spokesman, said no action was going to be taken against the members. 20

A police source said it was “not in the public interest to spend the time and money to try these men in Israel” 21 .

David Parsons, the director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem believed the action was overzealous and was just an excuse to get them “out of Israel’s hair”. 22

Many have argued that Israel was acting in order to defer other “extremist” groups from causing trouble. The Concerned Christians were used to make an example.

Conclusions

There is no question that there is an obvious discrepancy between the theology presented in the Our Foundation radio program and the reports of mass suicide and violent tendencies, apocalyptic predictions, “God-voice”, and anti-government rhetoric.

The only testimony relating Miller and his followers to the extremist ideas presented in all of the news articles are former members, family members, and anti-cult activists. The problem at hand is assessing the objectivity of these sources and getting to the truth of what really happened.

An issue of considerable importance is why the media so readily adopted these stories as the truth, and why the media seemingly made such little effort to engage Miller and current members. In the early articles about the Concerned Christians, Bill Honsberger was the only person who could attest to Monte Kim Miller’s prophesies and “extreme” beliefs. Consequently, the statements about these beliefs were always credited to Honsberger. For example, “Honsberger said that Miller teaches Concerned Christians members that he is God and prophesies he will die in the streets of Jerusalem in December 1999, only to rise again in three days. He also believes the apocalypse will strike Denver on Saturday,” 34 .

However biased the presuppositions of the source, this is probably proper journalism. Around November, 1998 the attribution “Honsberger said” began to be left out of stories. So, for example, we read “Miller, who considers himself the last prophet of God, has said he will die on the streets of that ancient city [ Jerusalem] in December 1999 and be resurrected three days later” 35 . This leads the reader to the impression that these statements are a proven fact, when in reality that can only be attributed to one anti-cultist.

The group known as Concerned Christians remains shrouded in mystery. Monte Kim Miller seems clearly to be a charismatic leader who holds (or has held) considerable influence over his small group of followers. Whether Miller and his followers are dangerous to themselves and others is not clear. The uncertainty pivots very substantially on the credibility of the evidence about them.

We have essentially no first hand information about the group — only accounts of a few persons who claim some level of involvement in the group in the past. And, at this point, we have little basis for assessing the reliability of their accounts.

What we do know is that a small number of zealous anti-cultists have waged an assault on the Concerned Christians, and these attacks have been transmitted uncritically by the mass media. I have focused on the Denver media, but the national media in the U.S., as well as well as Israel and Great Britain, have largely accepted the anti-cult presuppositions.

Religious movements are the product of human initiatives and, thus, are subject to all the shortcomings of human beings. Monte Kim Miller may turn out to be a real scoundrel, but that is not clear to me at this point.

As a student of religious movements, I am struck by how closely this case seems to conform to the gulf between public perceptions and the objective reality of so many other religious movements in the course of American history.
REFERENCES

Abanes, Richard. 1998. End-time Visions: The Road to Armageddon? New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.

Elliot, Paul. 1998. Warrior Cults: A History of Magical, Mystical, and Murderous Organizations. London: Blandford.

Hubback, Andrew. 1996. Prophets of Doom: The Security Threat of Religious Cults. London: Alliance Publishers for the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies.

Lewis, James R. 1999. Peculiar Prophets: A Biographical Dictionary of New Religions. St Paul, Minn.: Paragon House.

WILSON, Bryan, and Jamie Cresswell. eds. 1999. New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response. London; New York: Routledge.

Weber, Eugen Joseph. 1999. Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

References

• www.watchman.org/concernedchristianspro.htm
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid. and www.religioustolerance.org
• www.watchman.org
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• www.religioustolerance.org
• Rocky Mountain News , December 13, 1998.
• Denver Post , January 4, 1999.
• Denver Post , November 1, 1998.
• Ibid.
• Denver Post , January 10, 1999.
• Denver Post , January 9, 1999.
• Denver Post , January 4, 1999.
• Ibid.
• Denver Post , January 4, 1999.
• Denver Post , January 6, 1999.
• Denver Post , January 7, 1999.
• Denver Post , January 5, 1999.
• Denver Post , October 7, 1998.
• Ibid.
• Denver Post , October 8, 1998.
• Denver Post , January 9, 1999.
• Denver Post , October 7, 1998.
• http://cultawarenessnetwork.org/cani1/page09.html
• http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ucm/rmrc1.htm
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Denver Post , October 8, 1998.
• Denver Post , January 4, 1999.
• Denver Post , October 7, 1998.
• Denver Post , November 9, 1998.
• Denver Post , January 18, 1999.
• Ibid.
• http://www.jeack.com.au/~parkdale/cultaware_unzipped/intro.htm
• Ibid.
• Ibid.

Created by Kacey Chappelear
For Soc 257: New Religious Movements
University of Virginia
Spring Term 2000
Last modified: 04/19/01

CONCERNED CHRISTIANS VIDEO CONNECTIONS

CREATION EVIDENCE MUSEUM TIMELINE

1936 (October 21):  Carl Edward Baugh was born in Kennedy, Texas.

1955:  Baugh graduated from Abilene, Texas High School.

1959:  Baugh graduated from Baptist Bible College.

1968:  Baugh founded Calvary Heights Baptist Church in East St. Louis, Illinois.

1984:  Baugh founded the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas.

1996 (February):  Baugh’s creationist views were broadcast in a one-hour NBC television special, “The Mysterious Origins of Man.”

2009:  The Creation Evidence Museum moved into a new building in its current location.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The longstanding tensions between the scientific and biblical narratives have flared historically whenever advances in various scientific disciplines have raised questions about the empirical validity of biblical accounts of creation. For example, around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the development of Geology as a discipline, with its findings that the Earth was far more ancient than suggested by the account in Genesis, led to increased support for Gap Theory and Day-Age Theory as alternative theories for the discrepancy between geological and biblical accounts. Gap Theory posits that there was a long time-gap between the first two days of creation as chronicled in Genesis while Day-Age Theory proposes that the days of creation listed in Genesis were themselves long periods of time (thousands or even millions of years). Most recently, evolutionary creationism, which postulates that God created life and humankind while evolution constitutes an explanation for how life developed (Saletan 2014).

Beginning in the 1960s, conservative Christian groups of various kinds have mounted active opposition to evolutionary theory with creationism, in part due to the struggles over a variety of issues (e.g., science education, sex education, prayer in schools) in the public school system. One outgrowth of these struggles has been the formation of a variety of museums, research institutes, and foundations defending the biblical creation narrative (Numbers 2006; Duncan 2009). Creationist museums are found primarily in the United States, but there is a sprinkling of such museums around the world ( Simitopoulou and Xirotitis 2010). One of the more significant creationist museums in the U.S. is the Creationist Evidence Museum.

Carl Baugh, the founder of the Creation Evidence Museum, was born in Kennedy, Texas in 1936. He graduated from high school in Abilene, Texas in 1955 and then attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri where he earned a three year Graduate of Theology degree. Following graduation, Baugh was ordained as a minister in the conservative Baptist Bible Fellowship denomination. In 1968, he founded Calvary Heights Baptist Church in East St. Louis, Illinois and then during the 1970s founded International Baptist College there (Henry 1996).

Baugh recalls having a longstanding interest in the origins of life: “”I have always been interested in answering the questions…of life origins,” Baugh says “I wanted to know who I really was. And after a period of decades of looking into this, I found that I specifically needed to know what was in the fossil record, so I came to Glen Rose” (Henry 1996). Baugh acted on this interest in 1982 when he moved to Glen Rose Texas, which is about fifty miles from Ft. Worth and near the Dinosaur Valley State Park. The park has become a tourist attraction that features dinosaur tracks in the stream bed of the Paluxy River estimated to be 113 million years old (Beets 2005). Footprints from the Paluxy site have been featured in books written from a creationist since at least the 1960s (Morris and Whitcomb 1961; Wilder-Smith 1965; Moore 2009). Baugh began his explorations around the Paluxy River in March, 1982 and within a few days reported findings of “unparalleled historic significance.” He went on to found the Creation Evidence Museum there in Glen Rose in 1984.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Contemporary creationists can be divided into “old earthers” and “young earthers.” The former postulate that science-based dating of the evolutionary process is correct but that the process itself was initiated by a Creator. The latter, the strong creationists, attempt to validate biblical dating and the biblical creation narrative. By his own account, Baugh has come to his strong creationist position gradually. He initially held both biblical and “atheistic” (evolutionist) views simultaneously. He initially was a “theistic evolutionist.” He believed that there was a God of creation who Himself created the lowest life forms and then put in place the process of evolution: “It means that there is a God superintending all the universe, but he developed man through the lower life systems in a progressive, evolutionary epoch” (Henry 1996). It was his experience excavating limestone formations along the Paluxy River that converted him into a strong creationist. In the course of his excavations, he discovered in the context of what was an ancient limestone formation (in situ) containing what he believed to be a perfect human footprint. He recalled that “It blew my mind. My explanation for my origins had been blown. If man and dinosaur had existed contemporaneously in the fossil record, that meant that the whole fossil record had to be recent in origin,” he says. “I had to examine my own philosophical posture. That was traumatic. It was exhilarating, but traumatic” (Henry 1996). Baugh subsequently authored a book, Dinosaur: Scientific Evidence that Dinosaurs and Men Walked Together in which he presented the evidence produced from his excavations (Baugh 1987).

The Creation Evidence Museum also takes on other problematic biblical accounts, such as the claim that biblical figures lived for hundreds of years and acts of divine origin (Duncan 2009:25-31). Baugh argues that before the Great Flood, Earth had a smaller and denser atmosphere, which had higher concentrations or oxygen and carbon dioxide. The electromagnetic field surrounding Earth was stronger, operating as a filter to eliminate impurities. The atmosphere was a magenta-colored protective canopy. Together these features prolonged lifespan and permitted the development of larger life-forms, both animal and human. Baugh also offers an explanation for biblical passages referring to God causing the Earth to tremble. By his account, God created “gravity waves” that stretched the “space fabric” to such an extent that distant stars exploded, sending shock waves back to Earth (Beets 2005). This same stretching of the space fabric also is used to reconcile scientific and biblical universe origin narratives in a way that resembles Gap Theory and Day-Age Theory. In this account, what occurred in deep space through space fabric stretching could have occurred over millions of years and had little to do with events on Earth.

LEADERSHIP/ORGANIZATION

The Creation Evidence Museum reflects the vision and personal mission of its founder, Carl Baugh. The museum itself has evolved over time. It originated in a small, one hundred year-old log cabin (in 1984) and then moved to a double-wide trailer (in 1993) and, most recently, to its own building (1993). The museum space remains too limited to adequately display range of artifacts necessary to support its basic premise. Baugh claims to have located and excavated 475 dinosaur footprints along with 86 human footprints. The museum features exhibits such as a painting of a baby playing alongside, a painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a videotaped lecture titled “Creation in Symphony,” the fossil collection gathered from the Glen Rose area, and, somewhat inexplicably, a statue of legendary Dallas football coach Tom Landry.

Outside of the museum, Baugh is erecting a “hyperbaric biosphere” that is intended to replicate the pre-Flood atmosphere of Earth (strong electromagnetic field, oxygen-rich and carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, and protective canopy) that Baugh claims permitted the growth of large life-forms within the creationist timeframe (Duncan 2009:31-35). Baugh claims to have already extended the lifespans of fruit flies three-fold and detoxified copperheads in the biosphere. The museum also sponsors research trips to Papua New Guinea in search of living pterodactyls. Baugh reports that five colleagues have spotted the flying dinosaurs, “but all the sightings were made after dark, and we were not able to capture the creatures” (Powers 2005; Moore 2009).

The nonprofit museum has struggled with financial support issues through its history. Baugh has at times drawn on family members to staff the operation, and admission rates have remained modest (Henry 1996). The museum has received support from the conservative Christian Father House Foundation, and Baugh has generated funds through speaking engagements (Father House Foundation n.d.).

In addition to the museum, Baugh has pursued his mission through personal appearances. For a time he hosted a creationism program, Creation in the 21st Century on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. During the 1990s, he also appeared on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s television program in a series, Evidences of Creation, which featured some of Baugh’s most extreme claims and explanations ( Scaramanga 2012). In 1996, NBC broadcasted a one-hour special program, hosted by actor Charlton Heston ,”The Mysterious Origins of Man,” that featured Baugh’s claims. The NBC program drew intense opposition from mainstream scientists and skeptics. One review concluded that “Rather than being an objective documentary on human origins, or legitimate scientific debate about the subject, the show promoted many unfounded and pseudoscientific claims, presented a very misleading picture of the way science works, and largely ignored what mainstream scientists have to say on these subjects (Kuban 1996; see also Thomas 1996).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Creationist Evidence Museum, like counterparts, such as The Creationist Museum in Kentucky, has generated considerable controversy. Some major sources of controversy in the Creationist Evidence Museum case have been Baugh’s educational claims and credentials and the validity of the artifacts presented to support the creationist case.

Carl Baugh’s educational credentials have been repeatedly questioned as the degrees that he claims and the institutions from which they were obtained ( California Graduate School of Theology in Los Angeles, Pacific College of Graduate Studies , College of Advanced Education) are defunct or of dubious legitimacy in the academic community. For example, the College of Advanced Education is a unit within the International Baptist College; Baugh is president of International Baptist College (Duncan 2009:44-45; Vickers 2002; Henry 1996).

Baugh has promoted his Paluxy findings as a direct challenge to evolutionist claims: “Leading evolutionary scholars have admitted that if we could prove that man and dinosaur existed contemporaneously, that would destroy the entire theory of evolution,” Baugh explains. “I have that evidence” (Henry 1996). However, the evidence presented has been contested, not only by mainstream scientists and skeptics but also by other creationists. There are a number of artifacts offered in support of creationism at the Creationist Evidence Museum, but independent investigations have rejected all of the creationist interpretations (Hastings 1988; Neyman 2014). There is a hammer of recent origin that was discovered in a limestone formation (“London Artifact”); it appears that limestone simply formed around the contemporary hammer, There is a footprint (“Burdick Print”) that appears to have been carved into the artifact. What is presented as a fossilized finger is simply an “interestingly shaped rock.”

Baugh’s most direct challenge to evolutionary theory is contemporaneous dinosaur and human footprints. In a thorough assessment of the mantracks debate, Hastings asserted: “ To conclude that there are no mantracks in Cretaceous limestone along the Paluxy River in Texas is to take no necessary ideological stand; it merely is stating matter-of-factly the results of an evidence-based scientific position. From a variety of viewpoints among the careful and probing mantrack investigators came our common scientific conclusions. That variety includes both conservative and liberal Christianity, atheistic humanism, and agnostic skepticism. Though we differed on some details of interpretation, we have come to the same or very similar overall conclusions concerning creationist mantrack claims along the Paluxy. The absence of mantracks is not necessarily a pro-evolutionary statement, although none of the research in pursuit of them does harm to modern evolutionary conclusions. Nor is it anti-creationist for the myriad of philosophical and theological positions embodying the concept of a Creator. It is, however, a devastating indictment against scientifically irresponsible claims fueled by an anti-evolutionary zeal notable among many fundamentalist Christian believers – a zeal sufficient to obscure or diminish sensitivity to the scientific irresponsibility of the claims” (Hastings 1988; see also Kuban 2010). It is also worth noting that the expansive Dinosaur Valley State Park, which is just a short distance from the Creationist Evidence Museum, has yielded thousands of dinosaur tracks along the Paluxy, but no contemporaneous human footprints ( Henry 1996; Moore 2009). It does not help Baugh’s case that there have been some admissions of deliberate fabrication of artifacts (Kennedy 2008).

Just as significantly, stiff challenges to Creation Evidence Museum claims have been mounted by other creationists. Henry (1996) summarizes their position as follows: “Baugh has misinterpreted his evidence, they say–and is, in fact, a myth himself. They say he’s fabricated his own credentials, horribly botched a major dinosaur dig, and claimed credit for archaeological discoveries he did not make. He has stretched the “evidence” to perpetuate his own version of the truth, much to the chagrin of fellow creationists.” Greg Neyman, founder of Old Earth Ministries (formerly, Answers in Creation), harshly assessed Creation Evidence Museum displays: “Creation Evidence Museum is a collection of fabricated, faked items. Items which cannot be verified, such as the iron pot, leave us with no choice but to assume these also are faked.  When presenting evidence, it is the burden of the creation science advocate to provide evidence to corroborate the authenticity of the item.  Baugh and CEM provide none whatsoever.  When considering any evidence from young earth creationist Carl Baugh, one should immediately suspect deception and deceit” (Neyman 2014).

For his part, Baugh, now at an advanced age, continues his mission and vision, undeterred by critiques and disconfirmations from a variety of sources. His mission continues to be to attempt to provide scientific legitimation for the biblical account of creation. As Duncan (2009:27) has summarized the matter, Baugh’s model “was very clearly developed from the pages of the Bible. Uniquely, however, this model is not an attempt to make the biblical account of creation “fit” with more broadly accepted scientific thought about the universe; it is, rather, an attempt to take the biblical account of creationism and adorn it with scientific-sounding rhetoric.”

REFERENCES

Baugh, Carl. 1987. Dinosaur: Scientific Evidence that Dinosaurs and Men Walked Together. Columbia, TN: Promise Publishing.

Beets, Greg. 2005. “Creationism Alive and Kicking in Glen Rose.” Austin Chronicle , August 5. Accessed from http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2005-08-05/283058/ on 24 December 2014.

“Creation Evidence Museum.” RoadsideAmerica.com. Accessed from http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/8196 on 24 December 2014 .

Duncan, Julie A. 2009. Faith Displayed as Science: The Role of the Creation Museum in the Modern Creationist Movement. Honors Thesis, Department of the History of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Father House Foundation. n.d. Accessed from
http://fathershousefoundation.com/pages/creation-evidence-museum.php#sthash.Gh6Oi0TS.dpuf on 28 December 2014.

Hastings, Ronnie. 1988. “ The Rise and Fall of the Paluxy Mantracks.” Accessed from
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1988/PSCF9-88Hastings.html on 24 December 2014 .

Henry, Kaylois. 1996. “Footprints of Fantasy.” Dallas Observer, December 12. Accessed from
http://www.dallasobserver.com/1996-12-12/news/footprints-of-fantasy/full/ .

Kennedy, Bud. 2008. “Human Footprints along with Dinosaur Tracks?” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 10.

Kuban, Glen. 2010. “ Man Tracks? A Summary of the Paluxy “Man Track” Controversy.” Accessed from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/mantrack.html on 24 December 2014.

Kuban, Glen. 1996. “ A Review of NBC’s “The Mysterious Origins of Man” Accessed from http://paleo.cc/paluxy/nbc.htm on 28 December 2014.

Moore, Randy. 2009. “Reports of the National Center for Science Education: Creation Evidence Museum.” 29:34–35. Accessed from http://ncse.com/rncse/29/5/creation-evidence-museum on 27 December 2014.

Neyman, Greg. 2014. “Creation Science Rebuttals: Creation Evidence Museum Lacks Evidence!” Old Earth Ministries . Accessed from http://www.oldearth.org/rebuttal/cem/cem.htm on 24 December 2014.

Numbers, Ronald. 2006. The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Powers, Ashley. 2005. “Adam, Eve and T. Rex.” Los Angeles Times, August 27. Accessed from http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/27/local/me-dinosaurs27 on 24 December 2014.

Saletan, William. 2014. “Creativity for Creationists.” Accessed from http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2014/12/evolutionary_creationism_jeff_hardin_reconciles_evangelical_christianity.html on 28 December 2014.

Scaramanga, Jonny. 2012. “Five Most Epic Creationist Fails.” Accessed from http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2012/07/25/five-most-epic-creationist-fails/#ixzz3NCPb3MMM on 28 December 2014.

Simitopoulou, Kally and Nikolaos Xirotitis. 2010. “ The Revival of Creationism in Cntemporary Societies: A Short Survey.” Bulletin der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie 16:79–86.

Thomas, Dave. 1996. “ NBC’s Origins Show.” Skeptical Inquirer. Accessed from
http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/nbcs_origins_show/ on 28 December 2014.

Vickers, Brett. 2002. Some Questionable Creationist Credentials.” The TalkOrigins Archive. Accessed from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html on 24 December 2014 .

Whitcomb, John C., Jr., and Henry M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed.

Wilder-Smith, Arthur Ernest. 1965. Man’s Origin/Man’s Destiny: A Critical Survey of the Principles of Evolution and Christianity. Chicago: Harold Shaw.

Post Date:
30 December 2014

CREATION EVIDENCE MUSEUM VIDEO CONNECTIONS

CULT OF THE DEAD TIMELINE

1274:  Purgatory was formally accepted as Catholic doctrine and defined by the Church as “the place of purification through which souls pass on their way to paradise” at the second Council of Lyons.

1438-1443:  The Council of Florence added that “the suffrages of the faithful still living were efficacious in bringing [souls in purgatory] relief from such punishment…”

1563:  An additional decree concerning purgatory was passed at the Council of Trent, delineating Church-sanctioned ideas about purgatory from “those things that tend to a certain kind of curiosity or superstition, or that savor of filthy lucre”.

1476:  Pope Sixtus IV confirmed that indulgences might be earned by the living for souls in purgatory, thus shortening individual souls’ time there.

1616:  A group of Neapolitan noblemen founded the Congrega di Purgatorio ad Arco, a group dedicated to burying the poor and praying for their souls in purgatory.

1620s:  St. Robert Bellarmine taught that souls in purgatory could help the living because they are closer to God than people on Earth; however souls in purgatory cannot hear specific prayer requests.

1638:  The church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco was completed and consecrated. Below the church was a hypogeum which is used by the Congrega di Purgatorio ad Arco for burying the city’s poor.

1656-1658:  The Black Death, or Bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), devastated Naples, killing roughly half of the city’s inhabitants. Of the estimated 150,000 dead, many were hastily buried in pits or existing tufa caves without markers.

1780s:  Neapolitan priest, St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori of Naples, built on St. Robert Bellarmine’s teaching on purgatory. Liguori taught that God makes the prayers of the living known to souls in purgatory, which made it possible for the dead to help the living with specific matters on Earth.

1837:  Victims of a cholera epidemic in Naples were buried in the mass graves around the city, including the Fontanelle cemetery.

1872:  Father Gaetano Barbati sorted and catalogued the bones in the Fontanelle Cemetery with volunteers from the city, who prayed for the dead while they completed the work.

1940-1944:  A number of the tufa caves used as burial grounds served as bomb shelters during World War II, giving new reason for the living to pray to the souls in purgatory, who were represented by the bones buried there.

1969:  Archbishop of Naples, Corrado Ursi decreed that “expressions of cult addressed to human remains” were“ arbitrary, superstitious, and therefore inadmissible.”

1969:  The Fontanelle cemetery was closed, and the Cult of the Dead was suppressed.

1980:  The Irpinia earthquake struck Naples, closing the church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco, effectively suppressing remaining activities of the Cult of the Dead.

1980s (Late):  I Care Fontanelle was formed to give tours and counteract “degradation” to the Fontanelle cemetery, both the structure of the cave itself and the lingering activities of the Cult of the Dead.

1992:  The church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco was reopened after restoration work was completed.

2000-2004:  More restoration work at Fontanelle Cemetery took place.

2006:  The Fontenelle Cemetery was reopened on a limited basis.

2010:  The Fontenelle Cemetery was reopened full time.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

To its adherents, the Neapolitan Cult of the Dead exists as a part of the Catholic faith. In fact, adherents often do not identify their religious beliefs as anything other than Catholic or use the designation “Cult of the Dead.” However to the Catholic Church, the cult is heretical and exists outside of the faith. The core beliefs of the cult can best be understood as a mixture of Catholic doctrine concerning purgatory and pre-existing folk-religion within the former Kingdom of Naples (now Southern Italy). In this regional folk-religion, the living attempt to build personal relationships with the souls of the dead. They view these relationships as a practical way to obtain miracles and improve everyday life.

To understand how the Cult of the Dead departs from Catholic interactions with the souls of the dead, one must first understand the concept and origin of purgatory.

As Jaques Le Goff outlined in his seminal book, The Birth of Purgatory, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the concept of theafterlife became increasingly specific due to a number of cultural shifts. One particularly important shift was the evolution of the concept of justice; punishments for crimes began to be tailored to individual circumstances. This concept eventually extended into the afterlife and a person’s fate after death reflected the magnitude of his or her sins. This was accomplished through the conception of a third place, other than heaven and hell. It was a temporary place for punishment and atonement thought to be adjacent to hell. All souls marred by sin were believed to go there for a time that corresponded to the number and severity of an individual’s sins before being admitted into heaven. The place was called “purgatory” [Image at right is Fresco of souls in purgatory], and the concept was formally accepted as doctrine in 1274 at the second Council of Lyons.

By the fifteenth century, Catholic doctrine allowed the living to earn indulgences for the suffering souls in purgatory as they had previously earned indulgences for themselves. (An indulgence is a remission or reduction of temporal punishment for sin, earned through spiritual exercises and acts of charity.) This effectively extended the power of the pope (who granted these indulgences) from the earthly realm into the afterlife for the first time. For this reason, the concept of indulgences for the dead was quickly embraced by elite clergy members eager to expand papal power. However the laity embraced this new form of charity for the dead for entirely different reasons.

Throughout the Kingdom of Naples, popular Catholicism already operated in an unorthodox way, through a tit-for-tat system of prayers said in exchange for divine favors granted. This folk Catholicism appeared orthodox to the clergy but was heterodox inpractice. It was an individualistic, results-based style of worship that coexisted with belief in folk-magic and witchcraft, especially among the lower classes. Specific icons of the Madonna, as well as the relics of saints appeared to be venerated by the laity in the orthodox way (by praying with the icon or relic, not to it) but these prayers were, in practice, said to the icon or saint. In turn these images and objects were expected to use their supernatural powers to aid the venerator. When prayers were answered, the person who made the request would bring a token of gratitude, called an ex voto, to the shrine where the request was made [Image at right]. In orthodox Catholicism, ex votos are offered freely in thanksgiving; however, in Neapolitan folk Catholicism, these gifts establish a unique, reciprocal relationship between the individual and the tangible sacred object (the icon or relic). From this moment of reciprocity on, the relationship was expected to be mutually beneficial and could be reversed at any time should the sacred object fail to perform or the venerator fail to express appropriate gratitude.

When the Catholic Church eventually permitted prayers to be said on behalf of souls in purgatory, these reciprocal relationships, formerly limited to saints and the Virgin Mary, expanded to include the dead even though the Church remained adamant that souls in purgatory had no supernatural powers. This dissenting belief, that the souls of ordinary dead people had the power to help the living, formed the basis of the Cult of the Dead in the Kingdom of Naples. Prominent Catholic theologians and clergy such as St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori attempted to expand the orthodox relationship with souls in purgatory to include addressing prayers directly to them. The hope was to include the heretical Neapolitans instead of ostracizing the faithful in a region that had historically been a stronghold for the papacy. However these measures failed to fully bring the Neapolitan concept of purgatory into orthodoxy since the logic of purgatory with its approved system of indulgences neatly meshed with the existing logic of folk Catholicism.

The impact of the Cult of the Dead on Catholicism in Italy has waxed and waned but its presence has often been most noticeable during times of strife: specifically among women affected by disease, natural disaster, or war who lack access to power and resources within the Catholic Church. Though the Cult of the Dead is present throughout the former Kingdom of Naples which encompasses much of Southern Italy today, it took a strong hold in the city of Naples due to its unique history of large-scale disasters. This is primarily where the presence of the cult can still be felt today.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

While praying for souls in purgatory exists within the Catholic Church, there are two main differences that separate the beliefs of the Cult of the Dead from those of the Church. The first is the reciprocal relationship between the dead and the living. Catholic doctrine does not allow the souls in purgatory the power to bestow favors on the living, nor does it believe they ought to be venerated as one would venerate saints or the Virgin Mary. For orthodox Catholics, the relationship between the living and souls in purgatory is strictly one-sided and charitable: prayers said by the living are intended to shorten the dead’s time in purgatory without the expectation of reward. In contrast, members of the Cult of the Dead expect the souls in purgatory to hear their prayers and affect change quickly in their lives. This added benefit explains the unique preoccupation with purgatory in Naples, from the unusually high number of confraternities devoted to caring and praying for the dead, such as the Arciconfraternita dei Bianchi and the Congrega di Purgatorio ad Arco, to the Neapolitan practice of building shrines to souls in purgatory in niches on the street, [Image at right] often complete with terra cotta figurines of people standing in flames and photos of deceased family members.

The second difference is in the distinction that the Cult of the Dead makes between the known and unknown dead. In the Catholic Church, prayers said for souls in purgatory can be specific for a person or for the souls in purgatory in general. Either is considered a charitable way to shorten time in purgatory for the intended. However the Cult of the Dead divides souls into two categories: the known dead and the unknown dead. These two groups are venerated differently and are believed to have two very different fates.

The known souls are addressed in prayer by name. Prayers said to them are thought to shorten their time in purgatory, but when it comes to the reciprocal relationship, these souls are thought to be less powerful and less likely to grant miracles to their living benefactor.

The unknown souls are more important to the Cult of the Dead, and here the cult departs dramatically from Catholic doctrine. Thecult believes that souls whose names remain unknown, typically people who died in plagues, wars, or natural disasters, are doomed to an eternity in purgatory. These souls are represented by the anonymous bones in Naples’ numerous mass graves and burial caves which have been entombed without markers. [Image at right]. Within the Cult of the Dead, these souls are collectively venerated and are thought to be extremely powerful when it comes to bestowing miracles on the living. For this reason, the dead are often commemorated collectively, through the stacking and cataloguing of their bones (as in the case of the Fontanelle Cemetery), building churches above the places they were buried (as in the cases of Santa Maria del Pianto and Santa Croce e Purgatorio al Mercato which replaced the original plague column memorial), or in the preservation of anonymous bodies within the church (as are on display at the Chiesa del Santissimo Crocifisso detta la Sciabica).

Within the cult, the relationship between living and anonymous dead must still remain reciprocal. But without the possibility of releasing a soul from purgatory, the living pray for refrisco for the unknown souls. Refrisco is thought to be a temporary relief from the fires of purgatory, like a cool drink on a hot day. This concept was illustrated in the image of the Madonna of Graces, a popular image of the Virgin Mary expelling breast milk into purgatory. Though some examples still exist, this image was successfully diminished by the Church during the Counter-Reformation due to its sensuality and association with popular but heretical views on purgatory.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

As in its beliefs, in its practices, the Cult of the Dead shares some overlap with Catholicism. These co-practices include having masses said for the dead and earning indulgences for the souls in purgatory through prayers and penance (although the concept of earning refrisco for unknown souls is strictly part of the folk view of purgatory that the Cult of the Dead embraces, rather than official Catholic doctrine).

The primary ritual associated with the Cult of the Dead that does not exist in within the Catholic Church is the adoption andveneration of anonymous human remains. This can take several forms. In the broadest sense, an entire town may adopt a mass grave site such as a prisoner’s cemetery, plague pit or potter’s field and erect a monument where people can come to pray to the souls and leave ex votos. In other instances, specific anonymous remains are adopted by a community and elevated to folk-saint status, as in the case of a mummy nicknamed “Uncle Vincent” [Image at right] in the town of Bonito.

However, this practice of adoption and veneration is most closely associated with the city of Naples and its burial caves and hypogea. This is where members of the Cult of the Dead come to adopt skulls called “pezzentelle,” which means “poor little ones” in Neapolitan dialect. Though considered heretical by the Church, this practice of petitioning a found skull can be understood as a logical outgrowth of the Catholic practice of veneration of saints’ relics.

Indeed, the more famous skulls in Naples such as “Lucia the Virgin Bride” (who rests in the hypogeum at Santa Maria delPurgatorio ad Arco), “Donna Concetta,” [Image at right] and the “The Captain” (both at the Fontanelle Cemetery) are treated like the relics of saints, in that they are considered community property and cannot be adopted by an individual. They receive prayers and thanks from many people and collect ex votos, for prayers answered, just as saints do at the shrines where their relics rest.

While these famous skulls attract the attention of devotees and tourists alike, private skull veneration is more typical within the Cult of the Dead in Naples. While not unheard of in orthodox Catholicism, private relic veneration has been frequently discouraged, fearing it would lead to idolatry or fetishism, and nearly always occurred in the context of a wealthy individual keeping the relic of a saint at home. In contrast, private relic veneration within the Cult of the Dead still happens in public, usually at an ossuary like the Fontanelle cemetery or one of the small hypogea that are still scattered around Naples, such as the one at Santa Maria delle Anime al Purgatorio ad Arco.

The process begins with the adoption. In some cases the skull is chosen by the faithful who dedicates prayers to it, lights candles,or may place a coin on it [Image at right] . In other cases, the person is adopted by a particular skull who comes to the living in a dream to ask for veneration. Communications between the living and the dead typically occur through dreams and the unnamed soul will often reveal its name to the living in this way.

In successful adoptions, the skull and its corresponding soul in purgatory enter into a reciprocal relationship with the living venerator. The living provides prayers and refrisco for the soul in purgatory, and the soul responds by seeing that the person’s prayers are answered. Adopted skulls are often said to cure infertility or other health problems, provide winning lottery numbers, or solve domestic problems. When the living receive answers to their prayers, they reward the skull with ex votos such as rosaries, flowers, or little shelters typically made of marble, glass, Plexiglas, or wood. [Image at right] These are meant not only protect the skull, but also to send the message to other favor-seekers that this skull isnot available for adoption. Skulls that do not answer prayers can be stripped of their gifts and sometimes re-abandoned in favor of a skull with a more generous soul. (Though this vengeful behavior isn’t limited to the Cult of the Dead in Naples, the bust of the city’s most famous patron saint, San Gennaro, was thrown into the sea in 1799 for traitorously granting the wishes of an occupying French general.)

Neapolitan followers of the Cult of the Dead are often thought to come with gifts for their skulls on Mondays, particularly at the Fontanelle cemetery. While this may have been true in the past when the cult was more active, contemporary evidence of the Cult of the Dead appears to show up sporadically.

LEADERSHIP/ORGANIZATION

While there are Church officials who have certainly advanced the orthodox concept of purgatory particularly in Naples, such as St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori (who first theorized that God could make the specific prayer requests of the living known to the dead) and Fr. Gaetano Barbati, there is no leadership or organization specifically for the Cult of the Dead. The traditions are passed down and often turned to during times of particular strife and hardship.

Though high-ranking members of the Catholic Church have engaged with and addressed the Neapolitan Cult of the Dead, the cult itself has never had a formal structure, head, or even representative. It is simply a group of laity who often view the existing institutional structure of the Church as their own, although their practices pertaining to the cult remain at odds.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Today the Cult of the Dead is only slightly active and particularly within Naples, evidence of it is often downplayed or blamed ontourists by locals with more orthodox views. While several of the mass grave sites and confraternity burial grounds have been closed to the public entirely, sites such as the catacombs of San Gennaro and church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco are now primarily cultural institutions controlled by the Council of Naples. Visitors must pay an entrance fee and are restricted to guided tours to discourage participation in the cult. While this has virtually eliminated unwanted ex votos and bone theft from the catacombs and hypogea, one can still find persistent traces of the cult in the form of ex votos, letters and candles left near these sites, or in the case of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco, near the grated window to the hypogeum on the street. [Image at right].

The main focus of cult activities today centers around the Fontanelle cemetery where there is no entry fee and tour guides are not currently mandatory. The community group, I Care Fontanelle, formed in the 1980s in an attempt to eliminate the theft and relocation of bones, as well as to discourage people from erecting new shrinesand leaving devotional items that could damage the site. Over the years, the group has also addressed ongoing structural issues with the tufa cave (most recently a cave-in that closed the cemetery for several months in 2011 and water leaks that persist today). While I Care Fontanelle’s leadership has successfully addressed these pressing issues, the ongoing lack of funds has left the lighting and video surveillance systems in disrepair. Without these safeguards, the Cult of the Dead still operates. Its adherents leave rosaries, prayer cards, candles, lottery tickets, coins, and even plastic dolls and religious figurines for specific skulls; and new housings for skulls still occasionally show up.

IMAGES

Image #1: A fresco of souls in purgatory inside the Catacombe di Dan Gaudioso Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #2:An offering of a plant and a note outside the Church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #3: A typical street shrine made to souls in purgatory. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #4: An alley dedicated to the “fig tree of purgatory.” Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #5: The anonymous mummy, nicknamed “Uncle Vincent” or “Vincenzo Camuso.” He is said to be a “soul in purgatory” and was adopted by the town of Bonito, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #6: One of the famous, un-adoptable skulls at the Fontanelle Cemetery, donna Concetta. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #7: Coins placed on skulls to initiate possible adoption, along with a lottery ticket. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #8: A humble cardboard shelter for an adopted skull with ex votos at the Fontanelle Cemetery. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #9: The grated window to the hypogeum at the Church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.
Image #10: A selection of recent ex votos left at the entrance of the Fontanelle Cemetery. Naples, Italy. Photograph taken by and used with the permission of Elizabeth Harper.

REFERENCES

Ariès, Philippe. 1981. The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years. New York: Knopf.

Carroll, Michael P. 1996. Veiled Threats: The Logic of Popular Catholicism in Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Cenzi, Ivan, and Carlo Vannini. 2015. Il Cimitero Delle Fontanelle Di Napoli: De Profundis. Translated by Sally McCorry. Modena: Logos Edizioni.

Ehlert, Rebecca Lisabeth. 2007. “S. Maria Del Pianto: Loss, Remembrance and Legacy in Seventeenth Century Naples.” Thesis. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Accessed from //Users/elizabethharper/Downloads/Ehlert_Rebecca_L_2000710_MA%20(1).pdf.

Goff, Jacques Le. 1984. The Birth of Purgatory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Koudounaris, Paul. 2011.  THE EMPIRE OF DEATH: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Leeden, Michael A. 2009. “Death in Naples.”  First Things, August. Accessed from http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/08/death-in-naples on 26 March 2016.

Maria, Lombardi Satriani Luigi, and Mariano Meligrana. 1982.  Il Ponte Di San Giacomo. Milano: Rizzoli.

Stratton, Margaret. 2010.  The Living and the Dead: The Neapolitan Cult of the Skull. Chicago: Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago.

“Discovering the Mysteries of Naples.” 2001.  City of Naples, May 17. Edited by Giuseppe Contino. City of Naples. Accessed from http://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/EN/IDPagina/5645 2001 on 26 Mar. 2016.

“I Care-fontanelle.” 2015. I Care Fontanelle. N.p., n.d. Accessed from http://www.icare-fontanelle.it on 26 March 2016.

“Purgatorio Ad Arco.” N.d. Purgatorio Ad Arco. Santa Maria Delle Anime Del Purgatorio Ad Arco. Accessed from http://www.purgatorioadarco.it/ on 26 March 2016.

Post Date:
31 March 2016

DISCORDIANISM TIMELINE

1932  Robert Anton Wilson was born.

1938  Kerry Wendell Thornley was born.

1941  Gregory Hill was born.

1957  Thornley and Hill had a revelation of Eris, Greek Goddess of Chaos (Latin Discordia), in a bowling alley in East Whittier, California.

1959  Thornley joined the U.S. Marines and met Lee Harvey Oswald at El Toro Marine Base near Santa Ana, California.

1963  Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas Texas, and murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby two days later.

1965  Hill produced the first edition of Principia Discordia. Kerry Thornley published a novel, Oswald, and married Cara Leach.

1967  Thornley and Hill met Robert Anton (‘Bob’) Wilson.

1969  Hill founded the Joshua Norton Cabal.

1975  The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson was published. Discordianism became part of Western popular culture.

1995  Discordianism established a prominent Internet presence via the World Wide Web.

1998  Kerry Thornley died.

2000  Greg Hill died.

2007  Robert Anton Wilson died.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill met at high school in East Whittier, California in 1956. They, and their friends Bob Newport and Bill Stephens, were enthusiastic fans of Mad magazine, science fiction, radical politics, and philosophy. In 1957, the friends were drinking in a twenty-four hour bowling alley where they allegedly had a vision of a chimpanzee that showed them the Sacred Chao, a symbol similar to the yin-yang, with pentagon in one half, and an apple captioned Kallisti (“most beautiful”) in the other half. The Sacred Chao is a symbol of Eris, the Goddess of Chaos (Discordia in Latin). Five nights later Eris herself appeared to Thornley and Hill. She told them:

I have come to tell you that you are free. Many ages ago, My consciousness left man, that he might develop himself. I return to find this development approaching completion, but hindered by fear and by misunderstanding. You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor and clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements are clumsy and painful, your skin is bruised, and your spirit is broiled in the sun. I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive and I tell you that you are free (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:2-3).

It is clear from later writings and interviews with Thornley, Hill and others that at this initial stage, Discordianism was intended as a joke, a parody of religion that exposed the deficiencies of mainstream Christianity, and the materialist and conformist culture of post-war America.

The origin and teachings of Discordianism were recorded in Principia Discordia, the first edition of which was written by Greg Hill and published (as five xeroxed copies) in 1965. Principia Discordia (also known as ‘The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger’, subtitled How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her) was an anarchic ’zine, which contained hand-drawn pictures, a jumble of typefaces, selected reproductions of “found’ documents, and instances of absurdist humor. Despite the fact that it lacked a coherent narrative or formal doctrines, the philosophy expounded in Principia Discordia was broadly consistent: Chaos is the only reality, and apparent order (the Aneristic Principle) and apparent disorder (the Eristic Principle) are merely mental constructs, created by humans to assist them to cope with reality. Humanity’s miserable existence, oppressed by convention, wage-slavery, sexual repression and a myriad other ills, results from the Curse of Greyface, discussed in the next section. Principia Discordia became a subcultural classic: it is freely available to all under what Hill and Thornley called “Kopyleft,” it is original, sharply clever, and funny (Cusack 2010:28-30).

Thornley joined the Marines in 1959, and met Lee Harvey Oswald while stationed at El Toro Marine Base near Santa Ana, California. The two men were acquainted for three months and shared many interests; Oswald influenced Thornley briefly to adopt left-wing politics (this was short-lived, and he later embraced Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, before becoming an anarchist). When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime, but was killed by Jack Ruby shortly after. Thornley testified about his acquaintance with Oswald to the Warren Commission in 1964, and returned to California with his girlfriend Cara Leach to edit a libertarian publication, The Innovator. Thornley and Leach married in 1965, the year his book Oswald and the first edition of Principia Discordia both appeared (Gorightly 2003:64-69).

In the 1960s, Hill and Thornley developed their religious personae, Malaclypse the Younger (Mal-2) and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst (Lord Omar). Bob Newport was Dr. Hypocrates Magoun and Robert Anton (“Bob”) Wilson, whom Hill and Thornley met in 1967, became Mordecai the Foul. This fortuitous meeting happened a decade after the founding of Discordianism. Both Mal-2 and Omar had changed radically during that time, in part due Omar’s experience of being pursued by District Attorney Jim Garrison as a suspect in the Kennedy assassination (Gorightly 2003:57-62). In 1969, Mal-2 founded the Joshua Norton Cabal, named for homeless San Franciscan who had declared himself Emperor of the United States. This group inspired the formation of other Discordian cabals. Discordianism, already a religion of the goddess, moved in the direction of modern Paganism in 1966 when Thornley joined Kerista, a sexually experimental commune founded in the early 1960s by John “Brother Jud” Presmont. Margot Adler claimed the first use of “pagan” to describe modern nature religions was by Thornley in 1966, when he wrote, “Kerista is a religion and the mood of Kerista is one of holiness, Do not, however, look for a profusion of rituals, dogmas, doctrines and scriptures. Kerista is too sacred for that. It is more akin to the religions of the East and, also, the so-called pagan religions of the pre-Christian West. Its fount of being is the religious experience …” (Adler 1986:294).

The important Discordian theme of the conspiracy was also intensified in the late 1960s. Thornley changed his view that Oswald alone had assassinated Kennedy after meeting David Lifton, an outspoken critic of the Warren Commission. The Kennedy assassination cast a long shadow over Thornley, as Jim Garrison pursued him in an attempt to prove he was involved in Oswald’s plotting. On February 8, 1968, Thornley made a statement regarding these matters at the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office. He wrote to Hill on February 17, “I’m up to my ass in a cheap spy novel. And right now that means I am over my head” (Gorightly 2003:97). His growing paranoia manifested in Discordian activities such as “Operation Mindfuck” which he and Bob Wilson initiated in 1968. This was a “Marx Brothers version of Zen,” designed to mess with mainstream views of reality, and involved civil disobedience, culture jamming, vandalism and performance art, and other strategies (Gorightly 2003:137). The goal was the realization of guerrilla enlightenment.

Robert Anton Wilson intensified the tendency of Discordianism toward Paganisation. Wilson, a lifelong agnostic and skeptic, was nevertheless profoundly attracted to all sorts of “strange” phenomena. He was a friend of Timothy Leary, the controversial advocate of psychedelic drugs, and had interviewed the popularist Zen author Alan Watts, for The Realist, a freethought magazine. In 1975, he and speculative fiction author Robert Shea, published the vast, sprawling, epic novel, Illuminatus! Trilogy, which ushered in the next phase of the Discordian penetration of popular culture. The first twenty years had been dominated by founders Thornley and Hill, and the religion had spread primarily by word of mouth, personal contact, and ’zines, the circulation of which was limited. By 1988, Illuminatus! was the highest selling science fiction paperback in the United States; it had been made into a rock opera and won awards (LiBrizzi 2003:339). The novel has a complicated, conspiratorial plot that will be discussed below. Most importantly, Shea and Wilson reproduced much of the text of Principia Discordia throughout it, winning a huge, mainstream audience for the subcultural scripture. Knowledge of Discordianism thus ceased to be truly esoteric and rare, and entered Western popular culture.

In the late 1970s, Hill withdrew from the religion, becoming a bank employee after a painful divorce. Thornley, in collaboration with Vietnam veteran Camden Benares (born John Overton), developed Zenarchy, which he deemed “the social order arising from meditation” (Thornley 1991). He took the name Ho Chi Zen during this period. 1989 marked the commencement of the third phase of the history of Discordianism. While the Internet had existed since the late 1950s, particularly within the military, in 1989 the World Wide Web was established. Due to crossover between anarchists, gamers, musicians, artists, computer “nerds” and occultists, Discordianism made a seamless transition to the Web (Cusack 2010:44-45). In the twenty-first century the religion boasts online cabals, websites dedicated to Thornley, Hill, Wilson and other prominent Discordians, and a multitude of other related sites and information. During the fifth decade of Discordianism, from 1997 to 2007, Kerry Thornley died in 1998, Greg Hill died in 2000, and Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

In the Discordian universe, Eris and her twin sister Aneris are the daughters of Void. Eris is fertile and creative, whereas Aneris is sterile and destructive. Eris ordained order, which caused the emergence of disorder (which till then escaped notice as all was chaos). Void also generated a son, Spirituality, and mandated that if Aneris tried to destroy Spirituality he would be reabsorbed into Void. This became the Discordian doctrine concerning the fate of humans; “so it shall be that non-existence shall take us back from existence and that nameless spirituality shall return to Void, like a tired child home from a very wild circus” (Malaclypse the Younger 194:58). Discordian understandings of reality are monistic, a view that is usually understood to be Eastern in origin. Discordianism asserts that binary oppositions are illusory (male/female, order/disorder, serious/humorous) and affirms the oneness of all. Discordians follow Mal-2’s position, dismissing the “truth question” and stating that everything is true, including false things. He is asked how that works, and replied, “I don’t know, man. I didn’t do it” ( Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst 2006:34).

Thus it is irrelevant to Discordians whether they believe in the religion, or adopt a Discordian identity as a joke. For Discordians to be is to participate in the eternal, undifferentiated Chaos that is Eris (Cusack 2011:142).

Two other important myths are explained in Principia Discordia. First is the “Original Snub,” which focuses on Eris’ golden apple of discord, a gift to the “most beautiful.” In this myth, Eris arrived at the wedding of the sea-nymph Thetis and the hero Peleus furious as the couple had not invited her. She threw the apple and the guests rioted, as the goddesses argued over who should possess it. The apple was awarded by the Trojan prince Paris to Aphrodite the goddess of love, which was resented by her rivals Athena and Hera (Littlewood 1968:149-51). She promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta, which led to the Trojan War when her husband Menelaus and Agamemnon of Mycenae invaded Troy. The Discordian version of the myth has Eris “joyously partake of a hot dog” after she departs, and concludes “and so we suffer because of the Original Snub. And so a Discordian is to partake of No Hot Dog Buns. Do you believe that?” (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:17-18). The second myth is the “Curse of Greyface,” which explains humanity’s predicament, which is due a “malcontented hunchbrain,” Greyface, who in 1166 BCE taught that humor and play violated Serious Order, the true state of reality. Greyface and his followers “were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own,” which resulted in humanity “suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance” called the Curse of Greyface (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:42). These myths teach that humanity needs liberation.

The creed of Discordianism is the Law of Fives, which states that “all things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five … [and] the Law of Fives is never wrong” (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:16). The pentagon in the Sacred Chao is a five-sided figure, and the Law of Fives results in 23 being a number of significance for Discordians, as 2 + 3 = 5. The Pentabarf, the Discordian profession of faith (“catma,” which is flexible and provisional, as opposed to “dogma,” which is rigid and unchanging), has five principles (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:4):

I – There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.

II – A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.

III – A Discordian is required to, the first Friday after his illumination, Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Roman Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).

IV – A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub.

V – A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he reads.

This statement of faith is playful: the first point recalls the Islamic profession of faith (shahada); the third point mocks dietary restriction; and the fifth point mandates skepticism in place of blind faith. In the case of instinct, Discordians are told to consult the pineal gland as a more reliable source of knowledge than either the brain or the heart.

One other major teaching that requires discussion is the conspiracist nature of the Discordian worldview. Principia Discordia contained references to the Illuminati, and this theme took a much greater prominence after the publication of Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975). The historical Bavarian Illuminati was an order founded by the scholar Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830). He, with four others, initiated the order in 1776, and numbers grew after Baron Adolf Franz Friederich Knigge, a Freemason, joined in 1780. The order was suppressed in 1784, but lives on in conspiracist circles to the present (Cusack 2010:34-35). The Illuminatus! Trilogy is described as follows by David Robertson: “[i]ts central motif is to treat all conspiracy theories as though true, and it mixes Discordianism with the John F. Kennedy assassination, the occult interests of Nazism, rock and roll music and H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, into an eight hundred-page psychedelic gumbo” (Robertson 2012:429). The Illuminati, who intend to bring about the end of the world at Woodstock Europa, a rock festival to be held at Ingolstadt, are at war with the Justified Ancients of Mummu (JAMS), led by the enigmatic Hagbard Celine, head of the Legion of Dynamic Discord. The “everyman” characters, journalists George Dorn and Joe Malik, and investigators Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon, all become part of the conflict between the Illuminati and the JAMS. At the novel’s close, Hagbard Celine is revealed to be one of the five heads of the Illuminati (along with Wolfgang, Winifred, Werner and Wilhelm Saure, members of a rock band called the American Medical Association). These four die at Woodstock Europa, when Eris appears and foils the Illuminati plot to awaken undead Nazi troops hidden in Lake Totenkopf (Shea and Wilson 1998[1975]). Celine reveals that true members of the Illuminati seek only to liberate all.

The conspiracy is crucial to Discordianism, both in due to the importance of the Illuminati and other shadowy fraternities, such as
the Assassins, but also as part of Kerry Thornley’s life in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. In the late 1970s, he descended into paranoia, believing his friends had been replaced by look-alikes and that he was living in the reality of Operation Mindfuck. A key Discordian term, fnord, which is disinformation spread by a worldwide conspiracy appears in Principia, but is amplified in meaning by Shea and Wilson, for whom the ability to “see the fnords” is a quality of the enlightened characters (Wagner 2004:68-69). Thornley’s later years were chronicled in interviews with the journalist Sondra London. These are available on YouTube, and the full text of the interviews, titled The Dreadlock Recollections, was released in 2000 (Thornley 2007). Thornley by then regarded Discordianism as essentially Zen Buddhist in nature, and it is true that its worldview is non-dualist, a monistic view of reality in which all is underscored by chaos. This view fits with many Eastern religions that are pantheist and mystical in orientation; as Principia Discordia stated, “all affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense” (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:39-40).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

With regard to ritual, there are only hints in Principia Discordia. To counteract the Curse of Greyface, Discordians are told to perform the ritual Turkey Curse, which summons eristic power to interrupt the Curse of Greyface, which is aneristic (anti-life). Doing the Turkey Curse involves waving your arms and chanting “GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE. The results will be instantly apparent” (Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst 2006:175). It seems probable that dancing while making turkey noises would raise the spirits of any person who is overly serious or otherwise alienated from play (Cusack 2010:30). Other rituals in Principia Discordia include the “POEE Baptismal Rite,” which involves nudity, dancing and wine, and the “Sacred Erisian High Mass of the Krispy Kreme Kabal,” which involves doughnuts (Cusack 2011:134).

There is also one possible example of Discordian magical thinking; the “Tests by Doctors Prove it Possible to Shrink” entry, subtitled “On Occultism.” This argues that Western magicians have been too concerned with binary opposites (good/evil and male/female), while ignoring the most important polarities, order/disorder and serious/humorous, the specific area of the goddess Eris. It is then claimed:

… when magicians learn to approach philosophy as a malleable art instead of an immutable truth, and learn to appreciate the absurdity of man’s endeavours, then they will be able to persue [sic] their art with a lighter heart, and perhaps gain a clearer understanding of it, and therefore gain more effective magic. CHAOS IS ENERGY. This is an essential challenge [sic] to all basic concepts of western occult thought, and POEE is humbly pleased to offer the first major breakthrough in occultism since Solomon (Malaclypse the Younger 1994:61).

The statement that Chaos is energy relates Discordianism closely to the position of Chaos magick, an unpredictable occult paradigm developed in opposition to Western ceremonial magic by Peter Carroll, Ray Sherwin, and others in the late 1970s (Sutcliffe 1996: 127-128).

As noted above, Kerry Thornley came to the view that Discordianism was “an American form of Zen Buddhism” ( Wilson 2003:11). Therefore, Discordian humour and absurdism are ways to realize satori, the momentary enlightenment of Zen (“seeing the fnords”). Arguably, Operation Mindfuck’s handing out of cards with “There is no Friend Anywhere” and “There is no Enemy Anywhere” on either side may be interpreted as a ritual designed to bring about enlightenment, as it has similarities to the koan riddle system of monastic training found in the Rinzai school of Zen (Cusack 2010:50). As Discordianism is broadly located within Paganism, and Pagans worship deities that are personally meaningful to them, eclectic Discordian rituals are commonplace. It is worth mentioning that the Illuminatus! Trilogy draws other fiction-based religions into the mix, as Shea and Wilson employ the Cthulhu Mythos (invented by H. P. Lovecraft and expanded, through the introduction of the lloigor, by Colin Wilson), which features such “dark gods” as Yog-Sosoth, Azathoth, and Nyarlathotep (Hanegraaff 2007:85-109).

In a study of Finnish Discordians, Essi Mäkelä and Johanna Petsche record instances of new Discordian rituals, which include “worshipp[ing] a cabbage,” making “a pilgrimage to a rubbery gorilla statue in Helsinki,” and meditating “around a plastic golden apple” to receive illumination regarding Discordian power animals, a concept familiar from shamanism (Mäkelä and Petsche forthcoming). This contemporary field research suggests that Discordians engage in an ongoing process of innovation and development in terms of their ritual life.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Principia Discordia ordained a chaotic organizational structure for Discordianism. Members began by joining the Discordian Society, of which Principia stated, “the Discordian Society has no definition.” (Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst 2006:93). Discordianism was divided into two sects; the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE), which was founded by Mal-2, and the Erisian Liberation Front (ELF), which was founded by Omar. This oppositional structure reflected the popular motto “We Discordians Shall Stick Apart” (Adler 1986:332). Members are encouraged to become an Episkopos (Greek “overseer,” cognate with the English word “bishop”) by founding their own splinter sects. Later, all menbers were given the status of pope, and to become a member of the Discordian society was a simple process of self-identification.

However, even without self-identification Discordians assert that every human being is a member and a pope, which means that
Discordianism is “the fastest growing religion in all creation (Discordians grow at the exact same rate as the population)” (Chidester 2005: 199). Despite POEE being deemed a “non-prophet irreligious disorganization” and Discordianism “an anarchist’s paradise” (Adler 1986:332), as noted above members do get together to practice the religion. Discordian groups are called “cabals” (from kabbalah, the Jewish mystical system). Discordians do not have to join a cabal, but members often do. In the early twenty-first century many cabals are online (Narizny 2009).

There is evidence that Hill and Thornley came to accept the reality of Eris. Margot Adler interviewed Hill in Drawing Down the Moon (1979), where he admitted that he identified as an atheist in the 1950s and Discordianism began as a parody of religion. By the1970s, his worldview had shifted, and he admitted that:

Eris is an authentic goddess … In the beginning I saw myself as a cosmic clown. I characterized myself as Malaclypse the Younger. But if you do this type of thing well enough, it starts to work. In due time the polarities between atheism and theism become absurd. The engagement was transcendent. And when you transcend one, you transcend the other. I started out with the idea that all gods are an illusion. By the end I had learned that it’s up to you to decide whether gods exist, and if you take a goddess of confusion seriously, it will send you through as profound and valid a metaphysical trip as taking a god like Yahweh seriously. The trip will be different, but they will both be transcendental (Adler 1986:335).

Adler was unable to interview Thornley, who was increasingly paranoid and reclusive by the mid-1970s, but Hill assured her that a similar transformation of Discordianism had also happened for Omar. In what is now possibly his most famous observation, Thornley had told Hill, “You know, if I had realized that all of this was going to come true, I would have chosen Venus” (Adler 1986:336).

Although Malaclypse the Younger occupied the position of Polyfather of the religion until the mid-1970s, contemporary Discordianism is a religion in which leadership and formal organizational structures are largely irrelevant. There are many Discordian groups, a plethora of websites, and individuals give their religion as ‘Discordianism’ in those countries where the Census data collection involves a question about religion. Yet, in practice and despite the assertions of the very real power of Eris made by Hill and Thornley cited above, contemporary Discordians (like those who self-identify as Pagans, as Discordianism has found a niche as a form of revived Paganism) do not have to believe in the ontological reality of Eris as the goddess, and may regard the religion’s theology as a myth, a metaphor, or a joke (or all three simultaneously). Discordians regularly combine their religion with elements of other spiritual paths, or even atheism or agnosticism (Cusack 2010:47).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Cultural commentators and the academy alike have derided Discordianiam as a “fake religion,” and to date study of it as a new religion has been minimal (Cusack 2010:27-52). The reasons for lack of serious research on Discordianism, and for suspicion of its bona fides, are threefold. First, religion is serious, thus Discordian parody and jokes are inappropriate. Second, its founders admitted that it was a fiction (and their later professions of faith are not to be trusted or believed). Finally, members tend to congregate online and do not have church buildings, schools and hospitals like “real” religions. However, it may be that the scholarly lack of interest will soon dissipate, as although Discordianism looked very unorthodox in the late 1950s, it has become less “odd” over time, as a vast array of new religions have emerged since the 1960s. If the model of Zen Buddhism that Kerry Thornley developed with Camden Benares is used as a prism through which to examine the religion, it is found to be appropriate. For the Beats in the 1950s, Zen represented the rejection of wage-slavery and convention, and the pursuit of the spiritual path of a hobo, uncomfortable in this world and seeking enlightenment (Prothero 1991).

Discordians concur that the sacred is secular, and the secular is sacred. Greg Hill asserted to Margot Adler that, “in due time the polarities between atheism and theism become absurd. The engagement was transcendent. And when you transcend one, you transcend the other” (Adler 1986:335). Adam Gorightly’s portrayal of Thornley’s last years shows him living on the margins, selling libertarian newsletters and practicing what he termed “Zen and the art of dishwashing” (Gorightly 2003:233-34). The spiritual journey of both founders are powerful and real narratives of transformation; scholars presently have no way of estimating the impact of Hill and Thornley’s lives on their followers, but it is not improbable that that impact is considerable. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s literary output has reached millions and continues to attract new readers; spiritual seekers and jokers alike find Discordian websites every day. Discordianism as a religion is attracting a higher degree of serious academic interest in the twenty-first century, and although it will probably never be numerically significant, it is broadly recognized by those interested in fiction-based religions, the invention of modern Pagan religions, and a range of esoteric topics, as the earliest and most important of the small family of invented religions (Cusack 2010).

REFERENCES

Adler, Margot. 1986. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, second edition. Boston: Beacon Press.

Chidester, David. 2005. Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cusack, Carole M. 2011. “Discordian Magic: Paganism, the Chaos Paradigm and the Power of Parody.” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2:125-45.

Cusack, Carole M. 2010. Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Gorightly, Adam. 2003. The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How he Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture. New York: ParaView Press.

Hanegraaff, Wouter J. 2007. “Fiction in the Desert of the Real: Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.” Aries 7: 85-109.

LiBrizzi, Marcus. 2003. “The Illuminatus! Trilogy.” Pp. 339-41 in Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, edited by Peter Knight. Santa Barbara: ABC:CLIO.

Mäkelä, Essi and Johanna Petsche. 2013. “Serious Parody: Discordianism as Liquid Religion.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14:411-23.

Malaclypse the Younger. 1994. Principia Discordia: How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her. Austin TX: Steve Jackson Games.

Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. 2006. Discordia: Hail Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion. Berkeley: Ronin Books.

Narizny, Laurel. 2009. “Ha Ha Only Serious: A Preliminary Study of Joke Religions.” Bachelor of Arts (Honours) dissertation, Department of Religious Studies, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. Accessed from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/9336/Thesis%20Laurel%20Narizny.pdf?sequence=1 on 19 August 2009.

Prothero, Stephen. 1991. “On the Holy Road: The Beat Movement as Spiritual Protest.” Harvard Theological Review 84: 205-22.

Robertson, David G. 2012. “Making the Donkey Visible: Discordianism in the Works of Robert Anton Wilson.” Pp. 421-41 in Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production, edited by Carole M. Cusack and Alex Norman. Leiden: Brill.

Shea, Robert and Robert Anton Wilson. 1998 [1975]. The Illuminatus! Trilogy. London: Raven Books.

Sutcliffe, Richard. 1996. “Left-Hand Path Ritual Magick: An Historical and Philosophical View.” Pp. 109-37 in Paganism Today, edited by Carlotte Hardman and Graham Harvey. London: Thorsons.

Thornley, Kerry Wendell. 1991. Zenarchy. lllumiNet Press. Accessed from http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/hambone/zenarchy.html on 19 August 2009.

Thornley, Kerry Wendell. 2007. The Dreadlock Recollections. Portland: Self-Published. Accessed from www.ibiblio.org/ovo127/media/OVO017.pdf on 19 August 2009.

Wagner, Eric. 2004. An Insider’s Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications.

Wilson, Robert Anton. 2003. “The Monster in the Labyrinth.” Pp. 8-16 in The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How he Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, by Adam Gorightly. New York: ParaView Press.

Post Date:
May 20, 2013

DISCORDIANISM VIDEO CONNECTIONS

EAST BAY MEDITATION CENTER TIMELINE

2001:  A group incorporated as a religious nonprofit organization under the name of “East Bay Dharma Center.”

2005:  The group officially changed their name to the “East Bay Meditation Center.”

2006:  A new board renamed as the Leadership Sangha assumed the leadership of the organization and adopted a new mission statement, declaring that EBMC was “founded in a celebration of diversity.”

2006 (October):  The first program of meditation for People of Color was held.

2006 (December):  The first sitting group for Communities of Color was held.

2007 (January):  The East Bay Meditation Center officially opened its doors with an Opening Celebration event on January 20, a date that deliberately coincided with the national celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2007:  EBMC invited the East Bay LGBT group to sit at the center.

2012 (October):  EBMC moved to its current location in downtown Oakland.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Since the late 1990s, a number of teachers and participants, predominantly from the American Insight Community, had begun to discuss the need to create a meditation center for the East Bay, the Eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The East Bay consists of a number of cities of which Oakland is the largest, and, in general, is a more diverse, working-class and affordable area to live in than San Francisco. This center would be tailored specifically for the diverse and multicultural populations of the East Bay and would provide an alternative to the predominantly white, middle-class convert sitting groups that characterized the Insight and Zen communities of the Bay Area in Northern California (Gleig 2014).

In 2001, the group incorporated as a nonprofit organization under the name of the “East Bay Dharma Center” and would undergo several shifts in membership before summer, 2006 when there were only four people left on the committee: Charlie Johnson, Larry Yang, Spring Washam and David Foecke. Charlie Johnson is an Insight and Yoga teacher who has served on the board of directors at both Spirit Rock Meditation Center and EBMC. Larry Yang is an Insight teacher who has made a significant contribution to bringing diversity and multicultural awareness and training to the Insight community. Spring Washam is an Insight teacher who is well known for bringing mindfulness to minority populations. David Foecke is an Insight practitioner who was instrumental in developing EBMC’s generosity-based economics (gift economics system). In March, 2007, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, a Zen-trained Buddhist teacher and diversity facilitator, and Kitsy Schoen, an Insight teacher, joined the founding members. These six figures were known as the original “core teachers” at EBMC (Gleig 2014 and East Bay Meditation Center n.d.).

According to Yang, the fact that three of the four founding members (Johnson, Washam and himself) were people of color made a significant difference in creating a center that did not merely reproduce the same race and class dynamics of the overwhelmingly white, middle-class Insight groups of the Bay area. Rather than impose a structure on the community, they asked local communities what they wanted from the center and in response held their first Person of Color meditation class in October, 2006. After finding a suitable location in a storefront in downtown Oakland, they held their first sitting group for Communities of Color in December of the same year (Gleig 2014).

EBMC officially opened its doors with an opening celebration event that included a blessing ceremony and community welcome onJanuary 20, 2007. Shortly afterward, they invited the pre-existing East Bay LGBTQI group to sit at the center. EBMC has since added a number of population specific sitting and mindful movement groups. These include an EBMC teenage sangha, an “Every Body Every Mind” group for people with chronic illness and disabilities, a People of Color yoga group, and a recovery and dharma sangha. In addition to this, the EBMC has developed a robust calendar of events that include such things as family practice classes and workshops on nonviolent conflict reconciliation. The attendance at these events grew rapidly, with often a fifty to sixty percent waiting list for daylong programs. In order to accommodate such high demand, in 2012, EBMC relocated to a much larger space in downtown Oakland.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

EBMC states its mission as “to foster liberation, personal and interpersonal healing, social action, and inclusive community building.” This points to its equal commitment to Buddhist teachings, particularly drawn from the Western mindfulness lineage that has developed from Theravada Buddhism, and also to liberatory social justice teachings inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Audre Lorde, Grace Lee Boggs, and socially-engaged Buddhist teachings of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. In terms of its Buddhist influences, most of the teachers and the founding members of EBMC have been trained in the American Insight or Vipassana movement. This is a form of Buddhism modernism that further modernized the initial reformation of Theravada Buddhism that occurred in the nineteenth century under both Western and Asian modernizers during colonialism. The Insight tradition privileges the practices of vipassana and metta, loving-kindness meditation, and draws mostly on the early teachings of the Buddha as recorded in the Pali Canon. However, it is also a nonsectarian and generally pluralistic stream of Buddhism that draws on certain Mahayana teachings, particularly those on compassion. EBMC also has other Buddhist and spiritual influences through teachers from different lineages. Mushim Patricia Ikeda, for example, is the only core teacher at EBMC who was primarily trained in the Korean Zen Buddhist sect, thus emphasizing the Path of the Bodhisattva, which is prominently featured in the Mahayana lineage. Other teachers have training in yoga and other spiritual lineages and bring these influences to the center. In addition, EBMC teachers often draw on the literature of popular Western Buddhist teachers, such as Jack Kornfield and Pema Chödrön .

EBMC is firmly committed to social justice and radical inclusion. It shares many of the aims of socially engaged Buddhism, which seeks to apply Buddhist principles and practices to end suffering that is due to unjust social conditions and it has strong ties with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. In terms of how this is expressed in beliefs and actions, EBMC is marked by an investigation of how foundational Buddhist teachings and practices can be applied to contemporary issues of diversity, inclusion and social justice. For instance, EBMC has embraced the concept of universal access and has worked toward disability consciousness and accommodations across its organizational structure to the extent that resources allow (Ikeda 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2014d).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

EBMC holds weekly sitting meditation groups, which are predominantly focused on Vipassana meditation. It also holds mindful movement weekly groups such as “ABC (All Bodies Centering) Yoga,” Yoga for People of Color, and “Qi Gong for People” a group that practices the Chinese contemplative exercise of Qi Gong. Each group is distinct but to get an idea of a typical group format, a glance at the structure of the Alphabet Sangha, the LGBTQI group, is useful. The Alphabet Sangha is a drop-in group, which meets once a week, every Tuesday evening, for an hour and a half. It begins with an icebreaker and community-building activity in which attendees are invited to discuss a dharma related question in small groups. This is followed by a forty-minute meditation, usually but not exclusively vipassana, and then there is a short tea break and chance to chat with fellow practitioners. The evening concludes with a dharma talk given by the teacher of the group, which might be part of a longer series of talks or might be a stand-alone talk specifically tailored to the evening. These dharma talks tend to address foundational teachings, such as a component of the Eightfold Path. Teachers must be LGBTQI-identified or must co-teach with an LGBTQI-identified teacher. The sangha has a number of regular teachers who are located in the Bay Area such as Joan Doyle, Shahara Godfrey, and Anushka Fernandopulle and also invites visiting teachers such as Arinna Weisman. The evening ends with sangha announcements and a dana talk by one of the many volunteers who come early to set the group space up. It consists of a mix of regular attendees and also a constant influx of new members (Gleig 2012).

Alongside the weekly drop-in sitting groups, EBMC runs many other daylong retreats and workshops and evening classes requiring registration. Mention should be made of the long-term one-year programs designed to meet the needs of and support the development of more experienced practitioners. Larry Yang has run several “Commit2Dharma” (C2D) programs and Mushim Patricia Ikeda has led several Practice in Transformative Action programs. These longer programs offer more in-depth trainings and include aspects such as the study of primary Buddhist literature in the case of C2D, and training in secular mindfulness for social justice activists and change agents. Beginning in January 2015, EBMC will offer a six-month training for white allies, White Allies Active and Awakening (WAAA). WAA is designed to build the awareness and skills of white Dharma practitioners toward the creation of a truly inclusive sangha at EBMC. Finally, mention should also be made of the peer run “Deep Refuge” groups that center around shared issues and identity and aim to build up stronger sanghas within the wider EBMC sangha.

In addition to the various Buddhist and meditation rituals and practices offered at EBMC, attention should also be drawn to its list of diversity practices. These are detailed on its website and are considered as foundational as its Buddhist practices. In fact, when EBMC opened, members placed an LGBTQI rainbow flag up on the wall before assembling the altar. This was to symbolize its commitment to diversity at the onset rather than merely attending to it retrospectively as a type of “tick off the diversity checklist” or “foods and festivals” addition. This commitment to diversity and inclusion has led to the interpretation, extension and innovation of classical Buddhist practices to apply to situations of racism, classism, homophobia and other forms of social oppression. For example, Larry Yang has developed a specific list of diversity mind trainings, which draw on the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh to apply practices of mindfulness to specific incidents of discrimination and injustice (Yang 2004). In addition, at community-building events, participants are invited to state preferred pronouns for themselves, along with their names, on name tags in order to facilitate respectful interactions and to raise consciousness around a non-binary gender model.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The EBMC has created an organization and leadership structure that fully reflects its commitment to diversity and radical inclusion, an intentional commitment to include people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. As stated on its website, EBMC operates with “transparent democratic governance, generosity-based economics, and environmental sustainability.” In terms of its transparent democratic governance, it has a board of directors called the Leadership Sangha committee (presently consisting of seven members) that is collectively approved and reflects a diverse population of teachers and practitioners. A core requirement of all EBMC teachers is that they have a sufficient understanding of and commitment to diversity. EBMC collaborates with other local and national centers, but it has no formal ties with any other organizations. There are strong links, however, between individual teachers and centers in the Bay Area. For example, Larry Yang and Spring Washam are members of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and Mushim Patricia Ikeda has served as a visiting teacher and diversity consultant for the San Francisco Zen Center. She also is a former board member of both San Francisco Zen Center and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Charlie Johnson, one of EBMC’s founding teachers, has served on the board of Spirit Rock.

Furthermore, in keeping with its commitment to diversity and inclusion, the EBMC has developed a list of diversity practices such as tracking, reserving space for and advertising events to specific underrepresented communities (particularly People of Color, who have been historically marginalized in U.S. Buddhist convert communities). Input from the wider EBMC Sangha is regularly invited through evaluation forms, community meetings, and interactive social media. Anyone can propose to teach a class or workshop at EBMC, through an application process that asks applicants to demonstrate how what they plan to present will be made relevant to the interests and needs of a diverse, multicultural audience (Personal communication with Patricia Mushim Ikeda, 2014) .

EBMC operates on a “gift economics” basis, and all programs and events (except fundraising programs) are offered free of charge on a donation basis in order to make the Center accessible to people of all income levels. In Buddhism, gift economics is traditionally known as the practice of dana, a Pali word for the practice of generous giving or offering, which forms one of the parami s or paramita s or perfections (virtue/trainings) in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. Participants are invited to make donations at individual events, giving to the Center in one collection box and separately to the teachers in a second box. They are also encouraged to become “Friends of EBMC” and make monthly donations to support the Center. There are currently five part-time staff members and several hundred volunteers who keep EBMC running on a day to day basis.

Finally, EBMC is fully committed to environmental sustainability. This is visible in a range of practices from composting all of the recycled paper hand towels used in the bathrooms, and purchasing compostable eating utensils for events at which foods is served, to using only biodegradable, fragrance free and non-toxic cleaning supplies.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

EBMC has faced a number of internal and external challenges since its inception. An ongoing pragmatic challenge for EBMC is maintaining financial health and viability. Operating via gift economics, in which all of the teachings and events at EBMC are offered on a donation basis, can make it difficult for the Center to cover its monthly costs such as rent, insurance, and staff payroll. Most of the people who attend events at EBMC tend to be lower income. EBMC has attempted to meet this challenge by encouraging its community members to become regular monthly donors through the Friends of EBMC program, or by accepting a monthly bill payment system (such as for insurance or Internet service). Other fundraising events include an annual Dharma-thon, a twelve-hour event of continuous dharma practice in Oakland. Participants raise sponsorship funds and organized benefit events with well-known teachers and figures in U.S. Buddhism.

One internal challenge that EBMC has faced is finding teachers who are sufficiently qualified in both Buddhist training and diversity awareness and cultural sensitivity. Historically, the Insight and Zen Buddhist communities have not adopted culturally sensitive training modalities, and this has resulted in both a general lack of awareness in white teachers as well as a lack of participation of minority groups in teaching and leadership roles. Mainly due to the outreach efforts of individual teachers, such as Larry Yang, however, changes are slowly occurring. For example, due to Yang’s efforts, in 2012 the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center had a forty percent participation of People of Color and/or LGBTQI identified compared to eight percent the previous training. This is evidence of the wider impact and unique contribution that EBMC is making towards the wider U.S. Buddhist convert communit (Yang 2011, 2012a, 2012b, Ikeda, 2014a).

Another internal challenge for EBMC is that of “diversity tension” situations in which different cultural needs clash or are in direct opposition. An example of this is EBMC’s policy to keep the space fragrance-free to make the center accessible to those suffering from multiple chemical sensitivities and chemical injury. The tension here is that for some practitioners, using fragranced personal products and incense are important aspects of cultural identity and expression. In general, these challenges are seen as further practice opportunities, and an optimistic hermeneutic rooted in secular models (such as restorative justice, conflict resolution) and Buddhist models (such as wise speech) is employed to meet them (Gleig 2012).

An external challenge that EBMC and EBMC teachers have faced is resistance from the wider U.S. Buddhist convert community to support for identity-based groups and to fully engage with issues of diversity. This has resulted in some centers cancelling or refusing to start population-specific retreats or sitting groups. EBMC teachers think this occurs because teachers without diversity awareness believe that honoring cultural difference is at odds with foundational Buddhist teachings, such as the philosophy of anatta (nonself, or no separate and unchanging self) and threatens the unity of the Buddhist sangha. Larry Yang has attributed some of this resistance to an idealistic and conflict-avoidant framing of the spiritual life as “pleasant, peaceful and sublime,” as well as ignorance of the structural suffering generated by race, class and gender inequalities. In response, Yang has developed a hermeneutic of diversity in which he interprets the traditional three refuges or jewels of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) through the lens of multiculturalism and diversity. Yang, in other words, reads diversity as inherent and complementary to foundational Buddhist teachings and history. All of EBMC’s teachers are strong advocates for “Dharma and diversity” as well as a socially-engaged understanding of Dharma practice and study (Gleig 2012; Yang 2011, 2012a, 2012b).

It should be noted, however, that alongside resistance from certain segments of the wider U.S. Buddhist convert population, EBMC has drawn the support of a number of well-known teachers and figures, such as Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Alice Walker. EBMC’s January, 2015 benefit fundraiser featured a dialogue between noted activist and author, Angela Davis, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction. The EBMC community also has strong links with and support from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and a number of participants have commitments to both communities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Patricia Mushim Ikeda in gathering and interpreting information on East Bay Meditation Center for this profile.

REFERENCES

East Bay Meditation Center. n.d. Accessed from http://www.eastbaymeditation.org on 7 December 2014.

Gleig, Ann. 2014. “Dharma Diversity and Deep Inclusivity at the East Bay Meditation Center: From Buddhist Modernism to Buddhist Postmodernism?” Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15:312-31.

Gleig, Ann. 2012. “Queering Buddhism or Buddhist De-Queering? Reflecting on Differences amongst Western LGBTQI Buddhists and the Limitations of Liberal Convert Buddhism.” Journal of Theology and Sexuality 18:198-214.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014a. “How We Show Up: Storytelling, Movement Building and the First Noble Truth,” Buddhist Peace Fellowship, March 11. Accessed from http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/tss-2014/1-mushim/ on 7 December 2014.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014b. “What We Ignore Makes Us Ignorant: Storytelling, Movement Building and the Second Noble Truth,” Buddhist Peace Fellowship April 8. Accessed from http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/tss-2014/2-mushim/ on 7 December 2014.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014c. “Memory Is Political: Storytelling, Movement Building and the Third Noble Truth,” Buddhist Peace Fellowship August 4. Accessed from http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/memory-is-political-storytelling-movement-building-and-the-third-noble-truth/ on 7 December 2014.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014d. “A New Story of Us: Storytelling, Movement Building and the Fourth Noble Truth,” Buddhist Peace Fellowship October 28. Accessed from http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/a-new-story-of-us-storytelling-movement-building-the-4th-noble-truth/ on 7 December 2014.

Yang, Larry. 2011. “Buddha is Culture.” Huffington Post, June 19. Accessed from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-yang/buddha-culture_b_1192398.html on 7 December 2014.

Yang, Larry. 2012a. “Dharma is Culture.” Huffington Post, June 27. Accessed from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-yang/dharma-culture_b_1599969.html on 7 December 2014.

Yang, Larry. 2012b. “Sangha is Culture.” Huffington Post, October 7. Accessed from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-yang/sangha-culture_b_1600095.html on 7 December 2014.

Yang, Larry. 2004. “Directing the Mind Towards Practices in Diversity” Accessed from http://www.larryyang.org/images/training_the_mind.3.pdf . on 7 December 2014.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Adams, Sheridan, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, Jeff Kitzes, Margarita Loinaz, Choyin Rangdrol, Jessica Tan and Larry Yang. n.d. Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, Third Edition. Accessed from
http://insightpv.squarespace.com/storage/MTIV%203rd%20ed.pdf on 7 December 2014.

Buddhadharma. 2012. “I Vow To Be Political: Buddhism, Social Change and Skillful Means.” Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time, February 11. Accessed from http://www.lionsroar.com/i-vow-to-be-political-buddhism-social-change-and-skillful-means/ on 7 December 2014.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014. “Real Refuge: Building Inclusive and Welcoming Sanghas.” Tricycle online retreat. Accessed from http://www.tricycle.com/online-retreats/real-refuge-building-inclusive-and-welcoming-sanghas on 7 December 2014.

Ikeda, Patricia Mushim. 2014. Episode #4: Building Diversity-Mature Sanghas, (podcast) “Off the Cushion with Danny Fisher,” October 12. Accessed from http://dannyfisher.org/2014/10/12/episode-4-building-diversity-mature-sanghas/ on 7 December 2014.

Yang, Larry et al. 2011. “Why Is American Buddhism So White?” Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, November 10. Accessed from
http://www.lionsroar.com/forum-why-is-american-buddhism-so-white/ on 7 December 2014.

Post Date:
9 December 2014

EAST BAY MEDITATION CENTER VIDEO CONNECTIONS

Eckankar, The Religion of Light and Sound

Founder: Paul Twitchell.

Date of Birth: Twitchell’s date of birth has been recorded as 1908, 1910, 1912, 1920 and 1922. Died: 1971.

Birth Place: Paducah , Kentucky .

Year Founded: 1965.

Sacred or Revered Texts: The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmand is the major sacred text but many other books written by Paul Twitchell, Harold Klemp, as well as other Eckankar leaders are recomended to followers of Eckankar. Twitchell’s books include Eckankar: The Key to Secret Worlds and An Introduction to Eckankar . Some of Klemp’s books are The Art of Spiritual Dreaming .

Size of Group: According to the official Eckankar homepage, there are approximately 50,000 members in over one hundred countries.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
Eckankar emerged during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s during a time in which the youth counter-culture promoted ideals of ancient eastern wisdom. Eckankar has strong ancient roots and the founder, Paul Twitchell, merely helped introduce these teachings to the modern world. Scholars claim that Eckankar repackages ancient beliefs and practices of the Radhasoami tradition with new “Eck” vocabulary. This interesting mixture of ancient wisdom and new terminology invites comparison of Eckankar to Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy .

As a result of variant accounts from friends, family and admirers as well as from what seems to be Twitchell’s deliberate attempt to obscure the details of his personal life, details of Paul Twitchell’s life prove to be a mystery to Eckankar followers and scholars alike. Even the present leader of Eckankar, Harold Klemp, acknowledges Twitchell’s attempt to mislead those who studied his life in saying, “Paul loved his privacy. Early in his youth he was involved in a variety of activities but he made it a point to obscure any facts associated with his life. In so doing he left a trail so clouded that it’s going to take our historians years to piece it together.” Much of the confusion revolves around specifics of the time, place, and nature of Twitchell’s birth as well as specifics concerning his early life.

In 1942, Twitchell enlisted in the navy and married Camille Ballowe. During his time in the navy, Twitchell began his prolific career as a journalist, writing for numerous periodicals under various pen names. It was at this time that Twitchell began exploring different religious groups. In 1950 he and his wife joined the Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism in Washington, D.C. (a subgroup of the Self-Realization Fellowship ). This group was led by Swami Premananda also referred to as Sudar Singh in Twitchell’s later writings. Following his departure from the Self-Revelation compound in 1955, Paul Twitchell and his wife separated. He then joined up with Kirpal Singh, the founder of the Ruhani Satsang, a branch of the Radhasoami tradition.

While maintaining his discipleship of Kirpal Singh, Twitchell also became influenced by L. Ron Hubbard, joined Scientology movement and achieved the status of “clear.” Subsequently, Twitchell severed ties with Kirpal Singh’s Ruhani Satsang order as a result of a dispute over Twitchell’s manuscripts for his book The Tiger’s Fang.

Shortly after breaking ties with Kirpal Singh, Twitchell began giving seminars in San Diego, California on the art of bilocation or what he would later call Soul Travel. Through his writings in a variety of periodicals, and his letters to people such as his second wife, Gail Atkinson, Twitchell introduced Eckankar to the world and declared himself to be the 971 st Eckmaster. He claimed to have received teachings from the Vairagi ECK masters including a mysterious Tibetan monk named Rebazar Tarz. Eckankar was officially founded on October 22, 1965 in San Diego, California as a non-profit religious organization.

In 1971 Paul Twitchell died and was succeeded by Darwin Gross, the 972 nd Eckmaster. Before his death, Twitchell had authored over sixty books and recruited many people into the following of Eckankar.

Although Gross was selected by the board of Eckankar as well as Twitchell’s widow, he brought controversy to Eckankar because many followers felt he was an unworthy successor to the former Eckmaster. Ultimately, Gross lost all of the powers and responsibilities associated with the title of Living Eckmaster and was succeeded by Harold Klemp, the 973rd and present living Eckmaster. Gross and Eckankar became involved with a number of lawsuits disputing Gross’s use of copyrighted Eckankar terminology.

Harold Klemp has brought many changes to Eckankar by emphasizing Western ideology rather than the eastern Radhasoami tradition. This change has allowed for a bridge between Eckist and American culture. He has called for followers of Eckankar to perform community service in order to become good co-workers with God.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

According to Eckists or chelas, Eckankar means co-worker with God or Sugmand who is neither male nor female.15 It is believed that Sugmand connects to the soul or Tuza of each individual through light or sound, hence the alternative name of Eckankar, the Religion of Light and Sound. This connection is known as the Eck or Eck current. “Over the centuries it has been given many names. The Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, Logos, the Word, Divine Spirit, the Bani, and the Vadan are a few of these names. Eckists are also known to refer to Eck as the Audible Life Stream.

The major goal of the chela is to achieve Self-Realization and ultimately God- Realization. 17 When God-Realization is achieved, the chela will be a true co-worker with God while maintaining individual identity. This belief is contrasted with the Hindu and Buddhist belief in which the ultimate goal is becoming one with God through a complete dissolution into God and losing all individual identity.

Both Self-Realization and God-Realization can be achieved through bilocation or what is now referred to by Eckist’s as Soul Travel. In his book, Eckankar: The Key to Secret Worlds , Twitchell describes soul travel as “the separation of the spirit from the body.” Soul Travel is distinguished from astral projection which merely involves spiritual exploration of the astral plane. Soul Travel involves the exploration of any one of the God Worlds. 19 There are twelve known planes.
Eckankar is considered to be a living religion that changes constantly. These constant changes require Eckists to rely heavily on their religious leader. This leader is known as the Eckmaster or the Living Mahanta. There is always a living Eckmaster who comes from a long line of other Eckmasters collectively known as the Vairagi Order. Members of the Vairagi Order reside in the Temples of Golden Wisdom which are located on the various planes. The objective of the Mahanta is to guide the souls of chelas back to God. The Mahanta often serves as a dream master appearing as a blue point of light. In this role, the Mahanta is both omnipresent and omniscient. The living Eckmaster is highly revered but not worshipped.
Similar to Buddhists and Hindus, Eckists believe in karma or the idea of past spiritual debt. The goal of each individual is to work off the debt of karma from past lives and become one with God. Once you have achieved Self-Realization through good behavior, you have worked off the debt of past lives but you must continue to live out the rest of this life without accuring more debt. If this is achieved when you leave this life, you will not have to return to this world.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

There are more than one hundred different spiritual exercises in Eckankar which may include singing “HU” which is believed to be an ancient name of God. Other exercises consist in focusing on light and sound or what is known as the spiritual form of the Mahanta. Harold Klemp lists many different spiritual exercises regarding dreams in his book, The Art of Spiritual Dreaming. Dreams have become increasingly important in Eckankar practice under Harold Klemp. The serious chela is also expected to go through initiation which currently consists of fourteen stages.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The controversy surrounding Eckankar began in the early 1970’s shortly before Twitchell’s death. Some individuals questioned the source of his teachings and he claimed that others had threatened his life due to their disagreement with his doctrines. “Twitchell claimed that he did not borrow ideas from any human source but experienced his own `God-realization’ in 1956 and was initiated by a group of Spiritual masters called `The Order of Vairagi Masters’ as the Living Eck Master in 1965.” This however did not end the controversy.

The controversy continued following Twitchell’s death in 1971 with the new Living Eckmaster Darwin Gross. After an intense struggle for power within Eckankar between 1981 and 1983, Gross was stripped of all his authority and succeeded by Harold Klemp. Gross began his group, The Ancient Teachings of the Masters (ATOM) and claimed he was not starting a new teaching but was merely continuing to spread the teachings of Paul Twitchell. Eckankar banned his use of any trademarked Eckankar terminology 26 Gross is still considered the 972 nd Eckmaster, but his picture is not posted in the Temple of Eck and he is not mentioned in discussion of previous masters.

Meanwhile, John-Roger Hinkins, a former Eckankar member had begun his efforts to form the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Awareness (MSIA) in 1971. A group that heavily resembled Eckankar in terms of organization beliefs as well as practice.

The controversy reached its peak when David C. Lane, a religious studies professor, accused Paul Twitchell of plagarizing his former teachers and fabricating the entire religious history of Eckankar. He essentially devoted his life to proving that Eckankar and MSIA are nothing more than a mere theft of the Radhasoami tradition. Much of Lane’s efforts can be viewed on his page, The Neural Surfer . Other comparisons between the three religions can be viewed on the page entitled The Genealogical Connection .

REFERENCES

Cramer, Tod & Doug Munson. 1998. Eckankar: Ancient Wisdom for Today . Minneapolis, MN: Quality Books Inc.

Klemp, Harold. 1998. A Modern Prophet Answers Your Key Questions About Life . Minneapolis, MN: Eckankar.

Klemp, Harold. 1999. The Art of Spiritual Dreaming . Minneapolis, MN: Eckankar.

Lane, David. 1978. The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell & Eckankar . Del Mar, CA: Del Mar Publishing.

Melton, Gordon. 1999. Encyclopedia of American Religions. 6th Edition . Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co.

Melton, Gordon. 1996. Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology . Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc.

Olson, Roger E. 1995. “Eckankar: From Ancient Science of Soul Travel to New Age Religion,”in Timothy Miller, Editor, America‘s Alternative Religions . Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 363-370.

Twitchell, Paul. 1969. Eckankar: The Key to Secret Worlds . New York: Lancer Books.

Twitchell, Paul. 1973. Letters to Gail. Crystal , MN : Illuminated Way Publishing, Inc.

ECKANKAR VIDEO CONNECTIONS

ÉLAN VITAL TIMELINE

1957 (December10):  Prem Rawat was born in the small village of Kankal on the opposite bank of the Ganga River to the sacred Hindu pilgrimage center of Haridwar in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India.

1960:  Divine Light Mission (DLM) (Divya Sandesh Parishad) was founded as an organization to assist Shri Hans Ji Maharaj in promoting his message in India.

1966 (July 19):  Shri Hans Ji Maharaj died in Alwar, North India.

1966 (July 31):  Prem Rawat, the youngest son, announced that he was the successor to his father.

1971 (June 17):  Prem Rawat arrived in London at the age of thirteen.

1971:  Divine Light Mission was established in England.

1971 (November):  A Boeing 747 was hired from Air India to transport European and North American followers to India.

1972 (November):  Seven Boeing 747s were hired from Air India to transport European and North American followers to India.

1973 (November 8–10):  The Millenium 1973 Festival was held at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas by the Divine Light Mission.

1974 (May 20):  Prem Rawat married Marolyn Johnson, a Californian devotee.

1983:  Elan Vital was created as a new vehicle to promote Prem Rawat’s teachings globally.

2003:  The Prem Rawat Foundation was established.

2008:  Words of Peace Global was established.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Elan Vital existed from 1983 until 2010 as one of a number of organizations created to transmit the message of Prem Pal Singh Rawat, formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji, and who continues to be addressed as “Maharaji” by his worldwide students. Prem Rawat, as he prefers to be known today, was born on December, 1958 in the small village of Kankal. The village is located on the opposite bank of the Ganga river from the sacred Hindu pilgrimage centre of Haridwar in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. While he was still a small child, the family moved to Dehradun, where he remained until invited to visit the West in 1971. Prem Rawat was the youngest of four sons born to Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, a well-known North Indian guru (Cagan 2007).

Only in recent years has Prem Rawat become known as “Maharaji’ to his students, or used his family name as a means of being known to the public. In his childhood, he was affectionately known as “Sant J” by his father’s followers; Balyogeshwar (born lord of Yogis) by the Indian public, on account of his young age and perceived precocious spirituality; and, after his father’s death, as “Guru Maharaj Ji” by his students. The name changes can be dated back to the 1980s, when wishing to divest himself of the identity of “guru,” he simply became known around the world as “Maharaji” or later still, Prem Rawat (Geaves 2006a).

Prem Rawat’s life was never going to be like that of other children. His father, Shri Hans Ji Maharaji was a renowned North Indiantrue teacher (satguru). Divine Light Mission, the organization founded to promote his father’s message, first came into existence in the early 1960s, when a group of followers of Shri Hans Ji Maharaj requested their teacher found a formal organization to develop and structure his growing activities across India. By this time, Shri Maharaji, as he was known to his followers, had been teaching for nearly thirty years without any formal organization, supporting the general contention that he had resisted the idea but finally had given in to growing pressures from a number of active disciples (Geaves 2013).

Behind the hagiography attached to the young Prem Rawat, it would appear that a deep mutual bond existed between father andson. Prem Rawat clearly loved his father deeply and felt the impact of his father’s charisma and teachings. From his infancy, he attended his father’s events in North India, sleeping on the stage, and he first spoke in public to amazed crowds at the age of four or five years. Prem Rawat considers these experiences to be defining moments in his life, times when he served his father by attracting to the events a public curious to hear a small child speak. At the age of six, the relationship of master/student with his father was formalised when he accepted Shri Hans Ji Maharaj’s invitation to be initiated along with his three elder brothers.

In 1966, his father died at the age of sixty, leaving a young family and tens of thousands of followers bereft. The question of Prem Rawat’s succession to his father’s position of satguru is controversial and now disputed by his eldest brother, but at the time the family accepted the decision. According to Maharaji’s own account, supported by some close followers of his father who remain alive and the movement’s history of the succession, Shri Hans Ji Maharaj had clearly indicated to senior disciples and his family that he wanted his youngest son to continue his life work. In addition, Shri Hans Ji Maharaj on numerous occasions indicated the special spiritual bond that existed between himself and his youngest son. However, Maharaj Ji’s mother and other senior

followers had reservations about this transition in leadership. His mother considered Prem Rawat to be too young for such responsibility and favored her eldest son. However, the matter was taken out of their hands after the incident in which the young Prem Rawat sat in his father’s empty seat (gaddi) and began to address the assembled gathering of grief-stricken disciples. While the family debated leadership succession with senior disciples, the crowd acknowledged the eight-year-old Prem Rawat as their new master.

Thus began a period in Prem Rawat’s life during which he attended school at St. Joseph’s Academy in Dehradun during the academic year, while touring Northern India and addressing large audiences during school holidays. The family assisted him in his efforts, his mother acting as legal controller of her husband’s assets and patron of Divine Light Mission. This situation lasted until Guru Maharaj Ji, as he was now known, reached the age of eleven. In 1969, he attracted the attention of four English travellers to India, all of whom were involved in the 1960’s counter-culture and seeking “enlightenment” in the East. Excited by his teachings, they invited him to Great Britain, an offer he responded to by sending a trusted follower, Mahatma Gurucharanand, to London in late 1969. From 1969 to 1971, North American visitors to India discovered the young guru and became his students. Meanwhile, a small group of around one hundred young men and women were initiated in London, gathering around the daily discourses of Gurucharanand in a small apartment in West Kensington and later in a house in Golders Green.

On June 17, 1971, the thirteen-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji accepted the invitation of his growing band of Western followers and came to London. His arrival at the age of thirteen attracted considerable media attention, mostly focused on the young guru’s age. In addition, the success of the movement founded in the West, then known as Divine Light Mission, attracted scholarly attention in the 1970s and, to a lesser degree, the 1980s (Geaves 2004). By the 1990s, both scholarly and media attention had moved on, and the general assumption was that the movement was in decline if not completely extinct. The story of young Prem Rawat’s early years is well documented in both visual and print media published by various organizations that have supported his activities, but the most significant event would undoubtedly be his arrival in London on June 17, 1971 and his subsequent travels in the United States in July and August of that year. The response from the counter-cultural youth of both Britain and the United States was phenomenal, and by the early 1970s large rallies had been organized in both nations. Centers of activity, focused around ashrams consisting of highly committed celibate followers, appeared in most large population centers in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and even South America. Foss and Larkin were intrigued by the contradiction offered by the manner in which large numbers of counter-cultural young people, including “political radicals, communards, street people, rock musicians, acid-head ‘freaks,’ cultural radicals, [and] drop-outs” were participating in Divine Light Mission (Foss and Larkin 1978). Approximate estimates indicate that there were around 8,000 members in the United Kingdom and up to 50,000 in North America by 1973.

In spite of the apparent decline in appeal to counterculture milieu, Prem Rawat has continued to teach, and today his message has a truly global reach, extending into Russia, China and some parts of the Islamic world (Geaves 2006b). It would be tempting toplace Prem Rawat in the context of global Hinduism and the arrival of Indian gurus in the West, but this would be far too simplistic. The reality of the transformation of the organizational forms used to promote the message reveals a complex interweaving and opposition between charisma, globalization, innovation and tradition that needs to carefully assessed. Certainly Prem Rawat is very aware of the “global village”(McLuhan 1968) and utilizes technology extremely efficiently. The small boy who used to watch jet aircraft fly high above his house in Dehradun and yearn to fly, and who traveled alone on Air India to Britain in 1971, accompanied by one family retainer, now pilots a leased private jet traveling around a quarter of a million miles every year to speak at events around the world . This is, perhaps, as claimed by Elan Vital, the only effective way of reaching out to over eighty nations where his teachings are now promoted. However, the message goes out by satellite and cable TV, websites, video distribution and printed materials. It is still possible to find traditional methods of communication in remote parts of India, Nepal or sub-Saharan Africa. Prem Rawat undoubtedly could be described as a citizen of the “global village,” and certainly the successful communication of his message has drawn upon such globalized features of spirituality as the easternization of western spirituality and the movement of Indians throughout the world providing centers of interest in the Far East and the Pacific bowl. It would, however, be a mistake to understand the phenomenon as an extension of Indian spirituality into global centers of the Indian diaspora. Prem Rawat has a global following able to transcend ethnicity, nationality and religion of origin.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Prem Rawat has, on a number of occasions, publicly stated that he is not creating a new religion, and that his teachings cannot be defined as “spiritual.” The focus is on the inner experience achieved through the four techniques, known as “Knowledge,” which enable the student to access their own inner peace. Prem Rawat teaches that this peace is not created but is self-existent within in all human beings and only requires a certain kind of teacher who is able to show the way to enter within. Over the years, Prem Rawat has gone to great lengths to remove any outer trappings of religion that might obscure the universality of the message. He teaches that Knowledge can be practised by those who have a religion and those who have none. Over the last forty years, Prem Rawat’s imperative has been to resist institutionalisation and to avoid the processes whereby an institutionalised religion dependent on a chain of memory or ritual elements would be established around his message (Geaves 2008). Throughout the 1980s, concerted efforts were made by Prem Rawat to remove the outer trappings of Indian culture and doctrine that had accompanied the arrival of the teachings from their place of origin in North India. Prem Rawat does not see himself as bound by conventional beliefs or practices of any institutionalized religion or tradition-honored worldview. He is essentially an iconoclast who plots his route by pragmatic decisions to meet the demands and challenges that occur in his public career as a teacher striving to convince people of the value of self-knowledge. It is hard to ascertain exactly where the lines of strategic adaptation and continuation are drawn, except that they seem to lie somewhere around the inviolacy of the teacher/student relationship and Prem Rawat’s own trust in the efficacy of the techniques he teaches to provide individuals with an inner awareness of what is permanent and unchanging within human beings. Although Prem Rawat does not see himself as part of a tradition or as having to conform to the behavior of any predecessor, Geaves has argued that the best way to place him is to identify him with Vaudeville’s definition of the sant. Vaudeville (1987:36-37) describes a sant as:

a holy man of a rather special type, who cannot be accommodated in the traditional categories of Indian holy men ¾ and he may just as well be a woman. The sant is not a renunciate…. He is neither a yogi nor a siddha, practices no asanas, boasts of no secret bhij mantras and has no claim to magical powers. The true sant wears no special dress or insignia, having eschewed the social consideration and material benefits which in India attach to the profession of asceticism…. The sant ideal of sanctity is a lay ideal, open to all; it is an ideal that transcends both sectarian and caste barriers.

Individual sant-founders in Vaudeville’s terms are generally not concerned with organizational forms or institutionalized religion and display considerable iconoclasm in regard to ritual and doctrinal dimensions. Prem Rawat fits most aspects of the sant categorization by Vaudeville, even though he does not use this category as a self-definition. If being a sant implies an iconoclasm that breaks the bounds of tradition while maintaining an emphasis on the inner experiential dimension, then Prem Rawat would conform to that definition. In the Indian context, both Prem Rawat and his father denied the possibility of the use of rituals or outer forms of religion to access the inner divine. In addition they initiated people from all castes and backgrounds, generally dismissive of the conventions of Hinduism. In this respect they can both be compared with the medieval sants, Kabir (1380-1460) and Nanak (1469-1539). However, Prem Rawat is insistent that he should not be categorized into any traditional definition, including that of sant.

A contemporary student of Prem Rawat would be shown the four techniques of Knowledge and requested to make a serious commitment to practice one hour a day. Prem Rawat’s discourses are available in a number of media outlets, including downloads of virtually all live events as he travels the world. The websites of The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) begun in 2003 and Words of Peace Global (WOPG) founded in 2010 are the main repositories for Prem Rawat’s discourses and other resources promoting theteachings. It is not so simple as to argue that each organization replaces the other chronologically as sometimes both have functioned at the same period, and with different purposes. However, it can be argued that each organization has been simultaneously a response to new situations while at the same time being an attempt to maintain the integrity of Prem Rawat’s vision. Although it would be tempting to argue that globalization factors, especially related to technology and the impact of Prem Rawat’s teachings reaching over eighty nations, have most influenced organizational transformation, it has been argued that the dynamic tension between innovation and tradition in the context of this particular kind of charisma has had a far more significant impact (Geaves 2006b).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

It is tempting to go along with the teachings of Prem Rawat and argue that no ritual is involved. In the early days of Divine Light Mission, there was considerable ritual behavior arising from the movement’s origins in India. In addition to the highly ritualized initiation into the practice of the four techniques of meditation which functioned as a ceremony of “entry’ into the movement, membership and discipleship, premies (lovers) as they were known would also have found themselves attending discourses of mahatmas (male and female renunciates, senior disciples, Guru Maharaj Ji and his family). These took place on a nightly basis and usually ended with the singing of arati to the Guru’s photograph installed on a stage or makeshift altar. Live meetings with Guru Maharaj Ji would also often incorporate darshan (ritual prostration of disciples before their Guru). The daily practice of meditation (communal or individual) took place in the early morning and at night before sleep. Each session was advised to be one hour long.

As the years passed, these ritual events became increasingly under scrutiny as a relic of the teachings’ origins in Hindu-dominated India. Today, the practices of the four techniques of meditation are recommended once a day for an hour a day whenever possible. A major change has taken place in the old initiatory style of learning the techniques. Today students are prepared for learning the techniques at their own pace via a distance learning course (The Keys) comprising mainly of recorded sessions with Prem Rawat (Guru Maharaj Ji). The learning of the techniques has also been “desacralised,” and the focus is on teaching the students correct practice. The old face-to-face satsang has largely been replaced through download technology of Prem Rawat’s live tours. Students would be unlikely to find themselves singing arati or participating in darshan unless they were to visit India where such cultural practices remain. Today it is in the main only older followers from the 1970 and 1980s who approach the teachings ritualistically and with an observable sense of the sacred charisma associated with Prem Rawat as Guru Maharaj Ji.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Initially, the early followers of Prem Rawat’s teachings in the UK established Divine Light Mission in 1971, shortly after his first arrival in the West at the age of thirteen. However, Divine Light Mission was an extension of the Indian organization first founded by the followers of Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, the father of Prem Rawat in 1960. No consideration was given to creating a new structure or a new name to promote the teachings in the West. There had been a presence in the UK since 1969, located in a basement flat in West Kensington and then in a semi-detached house in Golders Green, North London. This had come about as a result of four young British members of the counter-culture. They took the “hippy trail” to India in 1968, discovering the young Prem Rawat and his teachings and requesting that a “mahatma” be sent to London who could promote the message and show interested individuals the four techniques known as “knowledge.” Interest in the teachings had spread slowly by word of mouth through the counter-culture’s informal networks of communication. However, it was only with the arrival of Prem Rawat and his subsequent appearance at the first Glastonbury festival that the teachings caught on and spread like a forest fire through the milieu of the disenchanted counter-culture of Britain and the U.S. in the early 1970s. Divine Light Mission was also established in the United States and by 1972 had its international office in Denver, Colorado.

Although Divine Light Mission was established as an organizational vehicle for promoting Prem Rawat’s teachings, it rapidly developed into a vigorous new religious movement with its own distinctive appearance. It combined the typical characteristics of a contemporary North Indian sant panth in which nirguna bhakti was combined with intense reverence for the living satguru and millennial expectations of the western counter-culture. Many of the characteristics of the Indian movement founded by Prem Rawat’s father, who had died only in 1966, were imported wholesale into the western environment. Ashrams were established with a lifetime commitment of celibacy expected from those who joined. Members were expected to forswear drugs, alcohol and adopt a strict vegetarian diet. The teachings were primarily given by saffron-robed mahatmas who came from India and toured the West. The teachings were essentially Hindu in origin, embracing a worldview that accepted transmigration of souls, karma, human avatars and were embedded in an interpretation of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. However, a discerning listener would have recognized the more iconoclastic and antinomian voice of the North Indian nirguna sants, especially Nanak and Kabir, exemplified in the message of universalism, equality and the focus on inwardness rather than the outer forms of Hinduism.

By 1974, the movement had experienced a number of crises resulting from the marriage of Prem Rawat to Marolyn Johnson, a Californian follower; the financial crisis created by the failure to fill the Houston Astrodome for Millennium 1973; and the disillusionment of American followers. The Americans’ millennialism had always been stronger than in Europe or Britain, and they became disillusioned when their expectations of a messianic event were not fulfilled. The marriage was to prove more significant, as it caused a deep rift in Prem Rawat’s family, angered that he had not followed Indian custom and the loss of many trusted followers inherited from the time of Prem Rawat’s father. However, there was another more hidden agenda in the crisis. As Prem Rawat developed from a thirteen year-old to an adolescent, about to be married and raise his own family, he was no longer prepared to be a figurehead while others dictated the direction and management of the movement established on the basis of his teachings. Increasingly, Prem Rawat was developing his own ideas of how that vision should manifest. From 1974 to 1982 a number of new organizational forms were experimented with, including Divine United Organisation, an epithet that remained only in India where Divine Light Mission was lost to Prem Rawat’s elder brother and mother, who had been the legal guardian of the older organization on her husband’s death (Geaves 2004, 2006b).

The new organizational forms all demonstrated an embryonic vision that did not come to fruition until the 1980s with the creation of Elan Vital. As early as 1975, the ashrams were disbanded and the inherited Indian worldview was seriously challenged by a number of workshops originating in the U.S. The majority of the mahatmas returned to India and western initiators, later to be known as instructors, were appointed. There were conscious attempts to deconstruct the myth of enlightenment that had surrounded the Indian mahatmas. The new western appointments were conceived as much more functional. This first attempt by Prem Rawat to create an organization of his own failed, probably because the rapid transformation of the movement to an organizational form and the resulting loss of the Indian meta-narrative was too abrupt for many committed followers of the teachings. The period from 1977 to 1982 was marked by a re-opening of the ashrams and a series of international events. Prem Rawat inspired personal loyalty and devotion from the already committed through a number of highly charismatic appearances in which he would often dance on stage.

In 1982, the ashrams were finally closed, Divine Light Mission was deactivated throughout the world, and a series of national organizations under the umbrella title of Elan Vital were created. Each organization established itself according to local custom, laws, and culture. For example, in Britain, Elan Vital functioned as an educational charity which existed to promote the teachings of Prem Rawat. The important point to note is that strenuous efforts were undertaken to ensure that Elan Vital remained an administrative tool rather than developing into a religious movement as Divine Light Mission had undoubtedly done. There was no membership, but a small number of paid and unpaid volunteers attended to organizational matters such as Prem Rawat’s tours, finance, legal affairs, public relations, and communication.

The closing of the ashrams took away the possibility of a committed work-force and instead Prem Rawat’s activities to promote his teachings became more dependent on part-time volunteer assistance from individuals who were now raising families and creating careers for themselves. Elan Vital displayed few of the characteristics of a new religion found in Divine Light Mission. Prem Rawat increasingly used its organizational neutrality as a vehicle to promote his message of inner peace and fulfillment with a marked decrease in the trappings of the Indian heritage. Although occasionally drawing upon Indian anecdotes to use as examples for his teachings and referring to Kabir and Nanak, there was little in his revised idiom that could be linked to Hinduism. On the contrary, he openly challenged transmigration and the law of karma as belief systems that cannot be verified as fact.

However, Elan Vital itself was to grow immensely in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Although, unlike Divine Light Mission, it never displayed the characteristics of a religious movement, it had its own problems of institutionalization, lack of spontaneity and inflexibility common to bureaucratic structures. In the first years of the twentieth-first century, Prem Rawat once again began a process of deconstruction, dismantling the over-hierarchical structures of the organization, leaving it toothless except as a vehicle for dealing with official bodies on matters such as hiring of halls, legal frameworks, health and safety issues, rights of volunteers, and the financial management of donations to support the promotion of the teachings. It eventually dwindled away with the advent of WOPG and TPRF in the first decade of the new millennium.

The emphasis returned to the promotion of the message, combining in Prem Rawat’s words “the enthusiasm of the 70s with the consciousness of the 1990s.” However, the organization was not responsible for this task, which was handed over to individuals around the world who felt personally committed to organize events and publicity, even down to inviting Prem Rawat to speak in their towns and cities. A new organization was created by Prem Rawat in 2003, and named The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF). The Foundation has provided a range of publicity materials and seeks opportunities for Prem Rawat to speak at public engagements, such as university departments, NGOs, national government agencies and business conventions. The Foundation website states that: “The Prem Rawat Foundation is dedicated to promoting and disseminating the speeches, writings, music, art and public forums of Prem Rawat” (The Prem Rawat Foundation n.d.). In these contexts the emphasis is on Prem Rawat as an envoy of peace. In addition, The Prem Rawat Foundation strives to address fundamental human needs so that people everywhere can live their lives with “dignity, peace, and prosperity.” TPRF works to extend the outreach of Prem Rawat’s message of peace throughout the world and runs a successful program called “Food For People,” providing nutritious food and clean water to people in need by building sustainable programs within communities. It also runs eye clinics, provides disaster relief, and sponsors other humanitarian aid efforts.

In 2008, Words of Peace Global (WOPG) was incorporated as an international charitable foundation, registered in the Netherlands. It is funded by donations from sponsors and the sale of materials. Through this organzation t he work of promoting Prem Rawat’s message to the wider public is maintained globally. The organisation is composed largely of volunteers around the world who have experienced the peace and fulfillment of Prem Rawat’s message and want to help others do the same. WOPG’s only function is to make Prem Rawat’s message widely available through live events, online audio-visual materials, and written media. It also assists people to pursue the teachings further via “The Keys” (Exploring the Keys n.d.), and provide everyone with the materials and assistance they may need. WOPG hosts events with Prem Rawat ranging from small, intimate talks to international tours. It also hosts television programs on a wide range of channels across the world, and puts out regular LiveStream broadcasts and webcasts of Prem Rawat’s talks.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The succession of Prem Rawat at the age of eight was always going to be controversial. However, it did not erupt until the early 1970s when Prem Rawat married Marolyn Johnson and provoked a split in the family, with his mother and two elder brothers denouncing his claim to be Guru and accepting the eldest son. New narratives had to be established for the eldest son’s legitimacy as all the family had appeared to accept Prem Rawat from 1966 to 1974. These narratives resolved around the impact of the West on Prem Rawat’s behavior and the notion that the family had not initially accepted the young Guru but had gone along with it at the time so as not to divide the movement at a vulnerable period. It is clear that both Prem Rawat’s mother and his eldest brother preferred to maintain the teachings within a traditional Hindu framework, in some ways similar to the organization of the Radhasoami movement (Geaves 2007). Prem Rawat’s contact with the West had led him to consider a more radical break with the worldview of Hinduism and to establish structures that would enable a universalizing of the message suitable for a global outreach.

The grand narrative used in India for the shared authority of the “holy family” fell apart. This was challenging to some of the early Western students who felt that the undermining of such a significant belief in the spiritual authority of the family also challenged the authenticity of Prem Rawat. This early schism in the movement was also influenced by the apparent lack of success to fill the Huston Astrodome in 1973. Some commentators have pointed to the financial losses incurred by the group as a major setback to a movement, but it is more likely that damage was to the done to the credibility of some followers by the message as the Astrodome event was “hyped” by some of Prem Rawat’s senior followers as apocalyptic and millennial.

Other major challenges are threefold. The first resolves around claims to divinity; the second concerns Prem Rawat’s finances and lifestyle; and the third might be described as media and dissatisfied ex-members’ attribution of “cult” status to Prem Rawat’s activities. Prem Rawat’s young age and perceived status as a spiritual prodigy, allied to the Hindu propensity to endow a guru with divinity, established a narrative of the “God-child.” In India, these could be always accommodated within a worldview that has traditionally venerated the Guru as divine incarnation. This doctrine is firmly established in the Sant narratives of the Satguru and the debates concerning the humanity or divinity of a Satguru have divided Indian devotional traditions (Gold 1987). However, the Hindu derived doctrine found a heady reception among the counterculture youth of the 1970s who grafted onto it Christian expectations of a messianic return and their own fears of an impending apocalyptic event. Contemporary detractors have returned to early discourses to demonstrate that Prem Rawat had initially accepted his divinity and argue that his more recent attempts to assure his humanity only arise as a strategy for dealing with accusations of cult status. Allied to this debate are arguments concerning the exclusivity of Knowledge as a path to self-knowledge. As stated on the detractor’s website a “major part of the myth upon which Maharaji’s cult has been built is based in the following claims: Maharaji (Prempal Rawat) is the one and only “Master” or “Satguru” on the planet today; The legitimacy of Maharaji’s claim to be the only “Master” is unquestionable; ‘Knowledge’ is the ultimate Truth, and its techniques can be revealed by Maharaji only (“The Indian Background…” n.d.).

It is indisputable that when Prem Rawat first began to teach in the West, these claims were made by his followers. However, such claims are not made today, and the exclusion of them has been at Prem Rawat’s request. Loyal followers would claim that this is part and parcel of his attempt to remove the original Indian worldview from the message. Opponents declare that the motives are more calculated.

Prem Rawat has always attracted criticism over his lifestyle. There is no doubt that those seeking a traditional ascetic figure would be disappointed. Prem Rawat has been successful, wealthy and married with four children. He is a licensed pilot, expert with technology and more likely to be dressed in a business suit than a monk’s robe. His lifestyle is likely to be defended on the grounds that peace is required by the affluent as well as the poor. Supporters will point to his charity work, his exceptional work load, traveling endlessly around the world to promote peace, free entry to events worldwide, the lack of a fee to receive Knowledge and the fact that no criminal charges have been brought against him or his organizations for financial irregularities. Detractors will argue that he benefits personally from the donations given by millions of followers and point to the various evidences of personal wealth.

The notoriety of certain new religious movements, especially those that led to death or exploitation of followers and the rise of “cult” discourse from the media and the “anti-cult” organizations has provided a framework of critique for Prem Rawat’s detractors. Some ex-followers, disenchanted by some of the above criticisms or personal experiences of living in the intense environment of the ashrams in the 1960s and 1970s, have attempted to undermine the work of Prem Rawat through a campaign of exposing his activities as those of a cult leader (Finch 2009; “Welcome” n.d.). Their numbers are relatively small and to date Prem Rawat has been able to continue his work successfully throughout the world for six decades, gradually increasing his public profile as a peacemaker with a number of governments, NGOs and international bodies including the European Parliament and the UN.

REFERENCES

 Cagan, Andrea. 2007 Peace Is Possible: The Life and Message of Prem Rawat. Bertrams.

“Exploring the Keys.” n.d. Accessed from http://www.wopg.org/en/exploring-the-keys-intro on 3 February 2013.

Finch, Michael. 2009. Without the Guru. Charleston: Booksurge Publishing.

Foss, Daniel and Ralph Larkin. 1978. “Worshipping the Absurd: The Negation of Social Causality Among the Followers of Guru Maharaji.” Sociological Analysis 39:157-64.

Geaves Ron A. 2013. “Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (1900-1966) and Divya Sandesh Parishad.” In Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen . Leiden: Brill.

Geaves, Ron A. 2008. “Forget Transmitted Memory: The De-traditionalized ‘Religion’ of Prem Rawat.’’ Journal of Contemporary Religion Vol.24:1 January. 19-33

Geaves, Ron A. 2007. “From Totapuri to Maharaji: Reflections on a (lineage) Parampara.” Pp. 265-91 in Indian Religions: Renaissance and Revival, edited by Anna King. London: Equinox.

Geaves, Ron A. 2006a. ” From Guru Maharaj Ji to Prem Rawat: Paradigm Shifts over the Period of Forty Years as a ‘Master’ (1966-2006).” Pp. 63-85 in New and Alternative Religions in the US , Vol:4 Asian Traditions, edited by Eugene Gallagher and William Michael Ashcroft. Westport: Greenwood Publishing.

Geaves, Ron A. 2006b. “Globalisation, Charisma, Innovation, and Tradition: An Exploration of the Transformations in the Organisational Vehicles for the Transmission of the Teachings of Maharaji.” Journal of Alternative Spirituality and New Age Studies 2: 44-63

Geaves, Ron. 2004. “From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital and Beyond: An Exploration of Change and Adaptation.” Nova Religio :7:45-62.

Gold, Daniel. 1987. The Lord as Guru: Hindu Sants in the Northern Indian Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McLuhan, Marshall and Q. Fiore. 1968. War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Bantam.

“The Indian Background of Divine Light Mission, Elan Vital,The Prem Rawat Foundation,
a.k.a. Self-Knowledge, Knowledge.” Accessed from http://www.ex-premie.org/papers/indian.htm on 3 February 2013.

The Prem Rawat Foundation. n.d. Accessed from http://www.tprf.org/ on 3 February 2013.

Vaudeville, Charlotte. 1987. “Sant Mat: Santism as the Universal Path to Sanctity.” Pp. 36-37 in The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India, edited by Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

“Welcome.” n.d. Accessed from http://www.ex-premie.org/ on 3 February 2013.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Cameron, Charles, ed. 1978. Who is Guru Maharaj Ji? London: Bantam Books.

Collier, Sophie. 1975. Soul Rush: An Odyssey of a Young Woman in the 70s. New York: William Morrow.

Downton, James. 1979. Sacred Journeys: The Conversion of Young Americans to Divine Light Mission. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Pilarzyk, Thomas. 1978. ‘The Origin, Development, and Decline of a Youth Culture Religion: An Application of Sectarianization Theory.” Review of Religious Research 20:23-43.

Price, Maeve. 1979. “Divine Light Mission as a Social Organization.” Sociological Review. 27:278-95.

Rawat, Prem. 2012. The Greatest Truth of All: You Are Alive! CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform .

Post Date:
17 February 2013