EXU (ESHU) TIMELINE

1700s:  Records exist from the period of the importance of the cult of Legba (Eshu) considered a “great god” and protector of the kings of ancient Dahomey.

1741:  The oldest written reference to Exu or Legba was found in Brazil in the “Obra Nova de Língua Geral de Mina,” by Antonio da Costa Peixoto, written from the Ewe language spoken by enslaved Africans in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In this work, the term “Leba” (Legba) was translated as “Demon.”

1800s:  Yoruba-English Ewe-French dictionaries published in Europe translated “Exu/Legba” as “Demon.” Yoruba versions of the Bible and Quran followed this translation.

1869:  The Public Market of Porto Alegre (Brazil) where the oldest public settlement of Exu (Bará) in Brazil is located was founded; it was constructed by the Africans who built the Market.

1885:  The first source in French of a myth about Eshu and a drawing of an altar (image) of the divinity made by Father Baudin in West Africa was published.

1896:  The first ethnographic description of a settlement (altar) of Exu in Salvador, Brazil, by physician Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, was published.

1913:  The first text on Yoruba myths about the creation of the world in which Eshu takes part was published.

1934:  The first photographic record in Brazilian literature of a wooden statue of Exu with a kind of knife in his head and holding two ogós in his hands .

1946:  An initiate for Exu in Brazil with her ritual clothes was photographically recorded for the first time.

1960s-and 1970s: Neo-Pentecostal churches formed in Brazil that will start a violent movement of persecution of Afro-Brazilian religions, through the demonization of the Exus and Pombagiras.

2013:  The largest collection of photographs of Eshu statues of African and African American origin was published in Eshu, Divine Trickster.

2022:  Exu, An Afro-Atlantic God in Brazil, which analyzed the presence of Exu in Africa and the Americas and contained the largest collection of Exu/Legba myths of African, Cuban, and Brazilian origin was published.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Exu or Legba is a messenger god, according to the Fon-Yoruba of West Africa. He is the guarantor of fertility and dynamism, and he took part in the creation of the world and of mankind. He is the guardian of order and, because of his nature as a trickster, of disorder. He is feared, respected, and praised before all others. He is worshipped on a piece of rock (laterite), on a mound of earth shaped like a human head from which protrudes a large phallus (ogó) or an anthropomorphic statue covered in cowries. From the top of his head, he projects a braid or plait, shaped like a penis, or a knife, often culminating in a face. He holds a staff in his hand, also shaped like a penis, and he uses this to move about in time and space. He accepts blood offerings (goats, black cocks, dogs, and pigs) and libations of alcohol and palm oil. He likes to be remembered at crossroads and at thresholds (where boundaries are crossed) as well as in the marketplace (where exchanges take place).

With the arrival of Christianity in Africa at the start of the sixteenth century, Exu was labelled a “Black Priapus,” and his worship was perceived as a demonic act. The kinds of animals offered to him were associated with images used to depict the devil: anthropomorphic beings with ram horns, tails and pig or goat’s hooves, or a “black dog.” Indeed, the offerings Exu “ate” in Africa are comprised of the very same animals whose “bodies shaped the devil” in Europe. One of the results of this “vicious hermeneutic cycle” was the use of the term “Exu” to translate the word “Devil” in the Yoruba version of the Bible, and to substitute “Iblis” and “Shaitan” in the Yoruba version of the Qur’an (Dopamu 1990:20).

In the nineteenth Century, Exu continued to be condemned by modern critics who rejected the kind of magical thinking that prevailed in possession cults (of “animists”) which consecrated “god-objects” and exalted the sacred through music, dance, and the human body. Religions that had not undergone some form of secularization, bureaucratization and “de-mystification” were viewed as especially antagonistic to the development of modernity, even though science and religion were already autonomous spheres.

And so it is that Exu synthesizes an “ethical and moral crossroads” when viewed and interpreted by Western Europe. This goes back to Medieval Europe, which saw its own demons spread throughout the four corners of the globe, so that, by the nineteenth Century, it had come to distinguish rational thought from magical-religious thinking, expansionism from communitarianism, modernity from traditional thinking, and to define good and evil, science and faith in absolute terms.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

In Brazil, due to slavery and forced conversion of enslaved Africans to Catholicism, Exu took on a variety of different forms, including that of messenger god and “keeper of the order,” as well as trickster and engineer of social disorder.

In the first case, he was associated with Catholicism’s mediators, such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints, angels, and martyrs. In Cuba, he was associated with The Boy Jesus. In Brazil, this association stretched to St. Anthony (the martyr who leans on a staff), St. Gabriel (the messenger of the Annunciation), St. Benedict (a black saint who leads Catholic processions to impede rain) and St. Peter, (the gatekeeper who bears the keys to heaven). These Catholic saints share with Exu the arduous task of clearing paths that show humanity the road to God and to the Orishas (in Brazil, Orixás).

In the second case, Exu was associated with the devil and the spirits of the dead, called “apparitions” or “spirits,” which are believed to torment and trouble people and so must be vanquished (dispatched) in rituals of spiritual cleansing. When incorporated into Umbanda (the African-Brazilian religion with the largest number of followers in Brazil these Exus manifest in people and adopt the names of biblical demons such as Beelzebub [Image at right] and Lucifer.

Alternatively they give themselves nicknames borrowed from their dwelling spaces, such as 7 Crossroads-Exu, Gateway-Exu, Catacomb- Exu, Skull-Exu, Mud-Exu, Shadow-Exu, Cemetery-Exu. [Image at right] In their female guise, these Exus are called Pombagira, and in contemporary Brazil are depicted much as devils were depicted in medieval prints, and, throughout the twentieth century, in mystery and horror stories. Whereas in Candomblé there are fewer than a dozen avatars of Exu (Exu Tiriri, Exu Lonã, Exu Marabô etc…) in Umbanda there are many dozens.

According to the “theory of disguises” and “syncretism,” African gods had to conceal themselves “beneath the clothes of Catholic saints” to avoid persecution, and, with the passage of time, this created confusion between them. I argue that these “Demon-Exus” provide continuity with the African concept of Exu and differ from Christian concepts of the devil. Considering the active role played by African agency in this process of cultural contact, it seems to me that this “Demon-Exu” is much more African than he seems. First, because these “Demon-Exus” continue to act as mediators, just like an African Exu. Some of the names listed in these examples were extracted from the Bible, but the vast majority mention points of passage (crossroads, gateways), of intercession between the world of the living and of the dead (cemeteries, catacombs, skulls), intermediate states of matter (mud, shadow) and duality (a cape, black on one side and red on the other, like the two-colored cap that Exu wears).

Exu also mediates between specific mythical and social universes, as a sort of “dual being” that contains within itself its own mediated parts. [Image at right] When manifest as Xoroque, Exu-Ogum, he is half St. George (white) and half demon (black, or mixed-race). It is as if St. George (who represents good) can’t be perceived as a separate entity from the dragon (the evil/devil) that he vanquished: just as the slave-master couldn’t have built his colonial world without slave labor. The second image of Exu Two Heads shows that gender identity is defined through contrast: men and women can’t be defined other than in relation to each another. And lastly, the third image, Xoroque-Indian Spirit-Exu, shows miscegenation as the driving force behind Brazilian society: a mixed-race or black person depicts an Indian wearing a head-dress while a white or black person’s skin is tinted “red,” reminiscent of both Exu and the devil.

It’s worth remembering that the concept of Two-Faced Exu is no stranger to African cosmology. One of the mythical characteristics of Exu is his double-face, which he uses to look ahead and to look back.

Furthermore, these “Demon-Exus” can do both good (solving health, legal, employment and amorous problems) and bad (causing separations, leaving people destitute etc). They do what they are asked to do. As such, the Christian devil, from the perspective of Africa’s Exu, is seen less as absolute evil than as an angel before the fall from grace. In other words, Exu “is” not the devil, and the devil “is” not Exu; rather, both can establish relations with the other, expanding their original concept and generating new meanings. If, on the one hand, there has been a demonization of an African Exu, on the other, there has been an “Exuzation” of the biblical devil, pre-framing the Christian oversimplification of good and evil within African relativism.

Traditional leaders within Candomblé, some committed to the “re-africanization”and/or “decatholicising” of the religion (Silva 1995), have criticized this “Catholic vision” of Exu and promoted a “recovery” or “neo-orishazation” of the African-Brazilian pantheon within its Yoruba-Fon background. Essential to this process is the availability in Brazil of images and texts relating to orisha worship in West Africa as well as exchanges between Brazilian, Cuban, and African priests. As a result of this, what was once almost impossible (initiation to Exu) is now more commonplace [Image at right] And with this resurgence it is now possible to see Exu descend on an initiate and wear the traditional conical hat, as well as strips of red and black cloth encrusted with cowries around the waist, while brandishing the deity’s characteristic phallic staff; or even wearing rustic raffia clothing or luxurious white linen. [Image at right] Many of these clothes and insignia reproduce the outfits that African Exus wear and which have themselves become canonical images associated with orisha worship that are articulated with local religious practices in national and international context on both sides of the black Atlantic.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

In Brazil, Exu is worshipped at the entrance to temples at a collective shrine on the ground and in the open air, on which offerings are made. This is because no initiation can take place without singing his praise first and giving him his offering before all others. It is Exu’s job to protect temples against negative forces and to work in favor of the rituals that are about to take place in the temple that he watches over. His altars can take different shapes and express different concepts in accordance with the rite taking place.

In some temples, his altar is a ritually prepared mound of earth that grows in size in accordance with the volume of offerings it receives, which include animal blood, palm oil, foodstuffs and coins, etc. [Image at right] In other temples this altar may present anthropomorphic representations of Exu on whose phallus palm oil is poured.

As well as this collective shrine, Exu is also worshipped in individual shrines that are consecrated during a specific initiation and are kept inside a specific room set aside for Exu. Every initiate worships an individual Exu that protects him and helps maintain the dynamism and communication with his orisha.

The oldest images of Exu shrines date back at least to the 1930s, when the first ethnographic studies about the theme were published. Earlier descriptions focus on shrines made from a “cake” shaped with a mix of clay kneaded with the blood of birds, palm oil and an infusion of plants, giving rise to a head with eyes and a mouth made of cowries. These shrines gradually took on human shapes, and we can see the transformation of the phallic protuberance from Exu’s head into a pair of horns (as if the original phallus had been duplicated). This phallus can also be observed in Cuban heads made of sand and cement, where the Exus (that Cubans call Eleguás) exhibit a small, sharp knob (usually made with a nail) emanating from the forehead.

With the advent of wrought iron foundries, depictions of Exu with horns and a tale, holding a staff became extremely popular. In the image published in 1937, Exu’s sword has seven blades (signifying the seven paths) from which a handgun hangs. The presence of this firearm may indicate his role as a Keeper of order and of sacred spaces (a type of policeman) as well as a promoter of disorder, in tandem with life on the streets, with the criminal underworld, subversion and danger.

With the passage of time, Exu’s anthropomorphic body took on a cylindrical form, in a likely reference to the phallus and his staff, as well as a three-pronged fork (trident) for the male Exu, and two-pronged fork for the feminine version, called Pombagira. [Image at right] These statues proliferated in the temples and have become the best-known images of the deity, both inside and outside of temples.

For many, the fork is a direct echo of the diabolical trident. However, a horned-Exu was a common representation of the deity in West Africa, at least until the first half of the nineteenth Century (Maupoil 1943), being associated with power and fecundity. Statues of Exu with horns are also sold in Brazil by merchants from West Africa.

Not only is Exu worshipped in temples, but he is also worshipped in public spaces, such as in forests, cemeteries, stones, at crossroads, on the sand in beaches, at the foot of a tree, public markets, shop entrances etc, all of which are places of passage.

One of the places best known for Exu worship is set in the public area of Porto Alegre’s Municipal Market, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. [Image at right] Slaves built the market in the nineteenth Century, and, according to local legend, they buried a shrine to Bará (Exu) at the intersecting point between the market’s four paths. Nowadays it is where worshippers of African-Brazilian religions place coins in passing, as they visit the market to buy supplies and artifacts for their temples. It is also where neophytes are expected to go after their initiations to buy food from the sellers’ stands in order to ensure prosperity and abundance. According to myth, Exu eats everything that can fit in the mouth, which is why those who praise him will always have plenty to eat.

According to myth, Exu moves through time and space (towards the four cardinal points) with the aid of his staff. The crossroads, where all paths meet and cross, is one of his favored spaces, and it is where he receives most of his offerings. It is common in Umbanda temples to designate paths that meet in an “X” (4 points) to Exu, and those that meet in a “T” (three points) to Pombagira. 

Pombagira is a female Exu charged with challenging the patriarchal order of Brazilian society through her refusal to accept a woman’s subordination to traditional domestic roles such as wife and mother. A “lady of the streets,” as opposed to a “home-builder,” she reflects the stereotype of the prostitute that eschews family, maternity, and marriage to affirm herself as a woman and express her femininity. She stresses anatomical differences (between a penis and a vagina) associated with biological sex (male and female) and gender roles (masculine and feminine) to question and invert, in a highly provocative and licentious way, (as if she were a “trickster in a skirt”) the social structure that perpetuates male-dominant relations.

The mythical emphasis on the symbolism of the phallus and the vagina seems to have been re-elaborated in the various shapes of the trident and of the places where offerings are made, and which allude to the human body and its gender differences. I have chosen to depict these figures in abstract form, [Image at right] showing the forks (with two and three prongs) on the first line, and the crossroads (shaped like an “X” and a “T”) on the second line. Note that they are in alignment with variations of the male and female bodies in the third line.

Penis and horns, therefore, come to express not only Exu’s Catholic subjugation to the Devil, but the meeting point of these mythologies that use the language of body parts to produce myths that expose issues of power, the body, sexuality, and transformation.

The forks synthesize issues of transition, passage, and sexuality with such efficiency that they have become transnational symbols of the orishas and are also present in line drawings associated with the divinity.

These “drawn signs” are emblems elaborated by different Exus to identify themselves when they have taken possession of their initiates in Umbanda temples. Normally the Exus draw their signs and light candles over them to create a force field in which to carry out magical procedures.

The trident shape also supplies the standard for fabrication for Exu’s staffs, or tools. [Image at right]

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Among the symbols most celebrated by Brazilian culture, inside and outside the country, are samba, carnival, capoeira, Candomblé, a black bean stew called feijoada, caipirinha, mulatas and soccer. However, until the first decades of the twentieth century, samba was seen as lascivious, capoeira as a symbol of physical violence (expressive of “black criminal culture”) and Candomblé and Umbanda as witchcraft, charlatanism and “black magic.” Many of its practitioners were jailed. The black bean stew called feijoada, made up of cuts of meat rejected as not good enough for the slave-master’s table, was considered a “left-over.” The eventual acceptance of such ethnic symbols, with their black African roots, and their transformation into national symbols (glorified by the State and the people) underwent an array of conflicts and negotiations in various political, economic, and historical contexts. In terms of class, the sharing of these value systems between different ethnic groups was already prevalent in society, but it was only in the 1930s, during Getúlio Vargas’s presidency, when Rio de Janeiro was the country’s capital city, that many of these urban symbols were chosen and transformed to represent Brazil. During this period, the State transformed capoeira into a form of national gymnastics, sponsored carnival parades and elected samba the music of national integration. Outside Brazil, Carmem Miranda reinforced this image by singing samba songs in traditional clothes from Bahia that have, at their core, references to Candomblé priestess’s dress.

Walt Disney, when he was in Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s, was seduced by the images of a festive nation, given to the exotic and sensual, with its spicy food and vibrant colors. He created especially for Brazil, “José (Zé) Carioca,, a green and yellow parrot known for his cheery, gregarious nature, and laziness. [Image at right] In other words, an expert at the art of what Brazilians call the jeitinho, the “gift of gab,” along with a creative ability to survive without having to work, typifying the bon-vivant crooks of the era.

In Umbanda, the spirit of this crooked fellow (a Rio version of a bohemian dandy who walks the streets at night and is generally knifed to death or shot because of a woman or a gambling debt) is worshipped as Zé Pilintra. [Image at right] This spirit is considered by many an urban Exu, dwelling in ports and red-light districts, alongside his female counterpart, Pombagira. He wears a white suit with white shoes and a red tie and handkerchief folded into his breast pocket. His immaculate presentation is part of his ruse, as it conceals his impoverished and marginal condition, while drawing attention to a strict dress code that purposefully excludes itself from an already exclusive Brazilian social order. Zé Carioca is thus a comic personification of such a bohemian crook, common to the city of Rio and immortalized in spirit form in Umbanda.

Exu, due to his ambiguous nature, has served as a leimotiv for dilemmas facing Brazilian society, such as the incorporation of African values into society and the exclusion of blacks from society. In his classic novel Macunaíma (1922), author Mario de Andrade tells the story of a “characterless hero” who is born “the blackest dark-brown” to an Indian, and then becomes white. Macunaíma is the “African-Indigenous” trickster, an “Indian Exu.”

Jorge Amado, Brazil’s best-known author, chose the world of Candomblé as the source for many of his books, and elected Exu to guard over his oeuvre. A shrine for the deity stands at the front of the Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado, in Salvador’s Pelourinho district, on the same site where a sculpture of Exu by artist Tati Moreno stands.

Numerous artists have taken to depicting Exu in their sculptures, photographs, and prints. Many of these works are part of collections in museums, galleries and exhibited in public spaces.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Exu’s role as “anti-hero,” as the street spirit that undermines the established order, has made him the obvious choice for carnival’s Patron Saint. Indeed, many carnival groups make offerings to him before they parade. And many of the larger carnival groups have created the habit of representing him in the front guard, a committee of dancers that open the parade and protect the parade as a unit. [Image at right]

Exu is, therefore, the key to understanding this long-standing dialogue between African, American, and European cosmologies which have been merging ever since the sixteenth century. The demonization of Exu and the orishazation of the devil, or its mediations, express reciprocal readings of cultural universes that have come into contact.

Miscegenation does not only generate biological “hybrid” beings; it also generates cultural “hybrids.” Desire, repulsion, fascination with the exotic and fear of witchcraft are some of the feelings these “hybrid bodies” awaken in their dual capacity to perceive themselves on the margins of society (like Zé Pilintra and Pombagira) while recognizing themselves as agents of transformation, through a birth-right, or inherited ability to manipulate “sacred staffs.” Images of “half-and-half” beings, therefore, provide a metaphor of a society that perceives itself in light (and darkness) of a transatlantic trade in bodies and cultures that shaped a united and divided world, both unique and multi-faceted. It is through this capacity to interact and divide, to create consensus and disagreement, to merge opposites and split similars, to obey and subvert rules, that Exu, through his countless faces, exercises his power in Brazil.

IMAGES

Image #1: Beelzebub-Exu. Catalogue of the company “Gesso Bahia.” http://www.imagensbahia.com.br
Image #2: Cemetery-Exu. Catalogue of the company “Gesso Bahia.” http://www.imagensbahia.com.br
Image #3: Exu as Xoroque, Exu-Ogum, Exu Two Heads, and Xoroque-Indian Spirit-Exu.
Image #4: Initiation to Exu. Pai Leo’s Temple. São Paulo. Photo: Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, 2011.
Image #5: Exu, Pai Pérsio’s Temple, São Paulo. Photo: Roderick Steel.
Image #6: Shrine to Exu (barro) at the entrance to Mãe Sandra’s temple. The growth of its body due to the offerings represents its dynamic force. Photo: Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, São Paulo, 2011.
Image #7: Male and Female Exu. Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, University of São Paulo. Photo: Rita Amaral, 2001.
Image #8: Offerings to Exu (on the black cloth, right) and Pombagira (red cloth on the left). Access road to the Annual Umbanda Festival in Praia Grande, São Paulo. Photo: Vagner Gonçalves da Silva.
Image #9: Abstract presentation of the mythical emphasis on the symbolism of the phallus and the vagina.
Image #10: Ferramenta de Exu. Produtor: Santo Atelier. Foto: Fernanda Procópio e Luciano Alves. Coleção do autor.
Image#11: “José (Zé) Carioca,, a green and yellow parrot cartoon character created by Walt Disney.
Image #12: Mocidade Alegre carnival group’s Opening Committee, 2003. Photo: Vagner Gonçalves da Silva.

REFERENCES**
** Unless otherwise noted material in this profile is drawn from Silva, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2022).

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Amaral, Rita. 2001. “Coisas de Orixás – notas sobre o processo transformativo da cultura material dos cultos afro-brasileiros.” TAE – Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnologia – Revista inter e intradisciplinar de Ciências Sociais. Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia, 41:3-4.

Bastide, Roger. 1945. Imagens do Nordeste Místico em Branco e Preto. Rio de Janeiro: Edições O Cruzeiro.

Carneiro, Édison. 1937. Negros bantus. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.

CARYBÉ (Iconografia dos Deuses Africanos no Candomblé da Bahia). 1980. Aquarelas de Carybé. Textos de Carybé, Jorge Amado, Pierre Verger e Waldeloir Rego, edição de Emanoel Araujo – Salvador, Editora Raízes Artes Gráficas, Fundação Cultural da Bahia, Instituto Nacional do Livro e Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Dopaumu, P. Ade. 1990. Exu. O inimigo invisível do homem. São Paulo, Editora Oduduwa.

Engler, Steven. 2012. “Umbanda and Africa.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15:13-35.

Fernandes, Gonçalves. 1937. Xangôs do Nordeste. Rio de Janeiro. Civilização Brasileira.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mapoil, Bernard. 1988 [1943]. La géomancie à l`ancienne Cote dês Esclaves. Paris: Institut D´Ethnologie.

Ogundipe, Ayodele. 1978. Esu Elegbara. The Yoruba god of change and uncertainty. A study in Yoruba Mithology. Ph.D.Dissertation, Indiana University.

Pelton, Robert D. 1980. The trickster in West Africa. A study of mythic irony and sacred delight. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pemberton, John. 1975. Exu-Elegba: The Yoruba Trickster God. African Arts 9:20-27, 66-70, 90-92. Los Angeles: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center.

Ramos, Artur. 1940 [1934]. O negro brasileiro. São Paulo: Ed. Nacional.

Schmidet, Bettina E. and Steven Engler, eds. 2016. Handbook of Contemporary Religions in Brazil. Leiden: Brill.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2022. Exu, An Afro-Atlantic God in Brazil, São Paulo: Publisher of the University of São Paulo

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2015. Exu – O Guardião da Casa do Futuro. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Pallas.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2013. “Brazil’s Eshu: At the Crossroads of the Black Atlantic.” In Eshu: The Divine Trickster, edited by George Chemeche, New York: Antique Collectors’ Club.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2012. “Exu do Brasil: tropos de uma identidade afro-brasileira nos trópicos.” Revista de Antropologia, São Paulo, DA-FFLCH-USP. 55:2.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2007. Neo-Pentecostalism and Afro-Brazilian religions: explaining the attacks on symbols of the African religious heritage in contemporary Brazil. Translated by David Allan Rodgers. Mana 3.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 2005. Candomblé e umbanda: Caminhos da devoção brasileira. São Paulo: Ática.

Silva, Vagner Gonçalves da. 1995. Orixás da metrópole. Petrópolis: Vozes.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1993. Face of the Gods. Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas. New York. The Museum for African Art.

Thompson, Robert Farris. 1981. The four moments f the Sun. Kongo art in two worlds. Washington Nacional Gallery of Art.

Valente, Waldemar. 1955. Sincretismo Religioso Afro-Brasileiro. São Paulo: Editora Nacional.

Publication Date:
13 February 2022

JANE JAMES TIMELINE

1820s (Early):  Jane Elizabeth Manning was born in Wilton, Connecticut.

Ca. 1825:  Jane’s father Isaac Manning died; Jane went to work for the Fitches in New Canaan, Connecticut.

1839:  Jane’s son Sylvester was born, the first of eight children.

1841 (February 14):  Jane became a member of the New Canaan Congregational Church.

1841–1842 (Winter):  Jane was baptized and confirmed in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1843 (Fall):  Jane and her family left Wilton, Connecticut and traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois.

1843–1844:  Jane was employed by Joseph Smith, Jr. and his family as a domestic servant.

1844 (June 27):  Joseph Smith was killed.

Ca. 1845:  Jane Manning married Isaac James, a Black Mormon from New Jersey.

1846 (Spring):  About two-thirds of the Latter-day Saints, including Jane and Isaac James, left Nauvoo under Brigham Young’s direction.

1846–1847 (Winter):  The Latter-day Saints, including Jane and Isaac James and their family, camped at Winter Quarters, Indian Territory.

1847 (Summer):  Jane and her family were in one of the first companies of Latter-day Saints to reach the Great Salt Lake Valley.

1840s (Late) – 1850s:  Jane and Isaac James and their children worked for Brigham Young; they also established their own agricultural operation.

1870:  Jane and Isaac divorced.

1874:  Jane James married Frank Perkins, a Black Mormon and the father-in-law of her son Sylvester.

1875:  Jane and Frank, along with other Black Mormons, performed baptisms for the dead in the Salt Lake City Endowment House.

1876:  Jane’s marriage to Frank Perkins dissolved; she resumed using the surname James.

1885:  Jane’s son Sylvester was cut off from the LDS Church for “unchristianlike behavior.”

1888:  Jane was baptized for several female relatives in the Logan, Utah Temple.

1890:  Isaac James returned to Salt Lake City and took up residence with Jane.

1891 (November 19):  Isaac James died.

1892:  Jane’s brother Isaac Manning moved to Salt Lake City.

1894 (May 18):  Jane was sealed as a “servitor” to Joseph Smith in the Salt Lake Temple. A White woman stood as proxy for Jane because she was not permitted to participate in temple sealing ceremonies.

1894 (November):  Jane was baptized for her niece in the Salt Lake Temple.

1908 (April 16):  Jane Elizabeth Manning James died. She was survived by her brother, Isaac Manning, and two of her children, Sylvester James and Ellen Madora, as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

BIOGRAPHY

Jane Elizabeth Manning was born on a spring day in the early 1820s, most likely at her family’s home in Wilton, Connecticut. [Image at right] Her mother, Philes, was enslaved at birth, but had been free for at least a decade by the time of Jane’s birth. Philes’ mother, also called Philes, remained enslaved as she was too old to benefit from the gradual emancipation laws that the Connecticut legislature had passed in 1784. Little is known of Isaac Manning, Jane’s father, though a local historian claimed in the late 1930s that Manning had come from Newtown, Connecticut, about eighteen miles from Wilton. Isaac and Philes had at least five children together, including Jane, before Isaac died in about 1825.

Perhaps because of her father’s untimely death, Jane Manning went to work for the Fitches, a wealthy White couple in nearby New Canaan when she was six years old. She may have been indentured to the Fitch family, obligating them to pay her family and provide her with food, clothing, lodging, and possibly education in return for her labor over a fixed number of years.

Around 1839, in her late teens, Jane gave birth to a son, whom she named Sylvester. The identity of Sylvester’s father, and the circumstances of his conception, were questions on which Jane remained steadfastly silent throughout her life. Rumors circulated in her family (among her siblings and her descendants) that the father was a White man; her brother said the father was a White preacher. According to his granddaughter, Sylvester himself said his father was a French Canadian. But Sylvester’s phenotypical differences from his mother and her younger children (whose paternity was known), on which these assertions relied as evidence, are not reliable markers of racial identity. Since Jane herself apparently left no indication of the identity of Sylvester’s father, we cannot know with any certainty who he was.

Similarly, we cannot be sure of the circumstances under which Sylvester was conceived. It is possible that Jane had a consensual relationship with Sylvester’s father, even if it was not a legally documented marriage. However, her adamant silence on the matter may itself be evidence that Jane was raped, a trauma that was largely unspeakable for nineteenth-century women and especially for Black women like Jane, who had to be particularly vigilant in maintaining their reputations against the stereotyping of White society.

In 1841, Jane became a member of the New Canaan Congregational Church, where the family that employed her were also members. The Fitches may have been concerned about her moral scruples, given her recent unwed maternity, and church membership may have been a way to assuage their worries. It is also possible that Jane saw the structure of church discipline as a potential tool to use against an unruly employer or other townsperson; or, perhaps, she might simply have been convinced of the truth of the church’s message, or felt that this was the necessary next step in her journey into adulthood. Whatever the reason, she was received into membership on February 14, 1841. However, she later said, she “did not feel satisfied, it seemed to me there was something more I was looking for” (Newell 2019:144).

About a year later, in the winter of 1841–1842, Jane heard a Mormon missionary preach and she became convinced that she had found the “something more” she had been seeking. A week later, she was baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon, Church). Jane’s family (her mother, step-father, siblings, and siblings-in-law) appear to have been baptized and confirmed around the same time. Jane later said that “about three weeks after [her baptism and confirmation in the LDS Church] while kneeling at prayer the Gift of Tongues came upon me and frightened the whole family who were in the next room” (Newell 2019:144). This appears to have been Jane’s first experience of glossolalia, an experience she would continue to have throughout her life. For Jane, this experience served to confirm her sense that the Mormons offered that spiritual “something more” for which she had been searching.

After their baptisms, Jane and her family, along with the other LDS converts in southwestern Connecticut, began preparing to “gather,” to join other members of the church in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the church was based at the time. In September 1843, they sold their family home and departed, joining a group of Black and White LDS Church members for the trip west. Led by the missionary who baptized Jane, the group made its way southwest from Connecticut to New York City, and thence up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, which took them west to Buffalo and the shores of Lake Erie.

At Buffalo, or perhaps somewhat later in Ohio, the Black members of the group were separated from the group and denied further passage, quite possibly because of Ohio’s stringent Black Code, which required that free Black people entering the state post a bond of $500 and provide “free papers” proving their status. Some of the Black members of the group may have turned back toward Connecticut at this point, but Jane and her family determined to press on. Jane arranged for the group leader to take her trunk with him to Nauvoo, then she and the other Black people who had decided to continue set out to walk the rest of the way, a distance of over a thousand miles.

Jane and her family arrived in Nauvoo in the late fall of 1843. Initially, they stayed with the LDS prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–1844) [Image at right] and his wife Emma Hale Smith (1842–1844) until Jane’s family members gradually found employment and lodging elsewhere; only Jane and her son Sylvester remained in the Smith home. The Smiths employed Jane as a domestic servant, a role that afforded her privileged access to the prophet and his family. Jane’s charismatic experiences continued during this period. She later recalled that as she washed Joseph Smith’s temple robes (special clothing used for temple rituals that were being developed in Nauvoo), the Holy Spirit “made manifest to me that they pertained to the new name that is given the saints that the world knows not of,” a reference to the sacred temple ceremonies from which Jane would eventually be excluded because of her race (Newell 2019:146).

In later accounts of her time working for the Smiths, Jane recalled that Joseph Smith treated her like a member of the family. “He’d always smile, always just like he did to his children. He used to be just like I was his child,” she told one interviewer (Newell 2019:150). Jane also said that Joseph Smith offered to adopt her as a child, reinforcing her sense that she was treated like other members of the family. When Jane recounted this story, she and her audience both understood the offer of adoption to be a reference to a temple sealing ceremony, in which Jane would be spiritually bound to Joseph Smith as a child, and therefore connected to him as a family member in eternity. She repeated this story frequently, probably in hopes of convincing church leaders to carry out the ceremony that she had refused when it was first offered because, she said, she “did not understand or know what it meant” (Newell 2019:147).

At some point during her time in Nauvoo, Jane met and married Isaac James, another Black convert to Mormonism. Like Jane, Isaac was from the eastern United States. He arrived in Nauvoo from New Jersey. Isaac helped raise Jane’s son Sylvester, and he and Jane went on to have seven additional children between 1846 and 1859, five girls and three boys (one of whom was stillborn).

In 1844, Joseph Smith was killed by a mob, setting off a succession crisis in the LDS Church. Brigham Young (1801–1877) [Image at right] emerged as the leader accepted by approximately two-thirds of the church, and within about a year, church members left Nauvoo and headed west. They paused during the winter of 1846–1847 in what is now eastern Nebraska at a site called “Winter Quarters” (present-day Omaha), and continued in the spring, eventually arriving in the Great Salt Lake Valley. Jane and her husband Isaac were in one of the first companies to arrive in the valley in July 1847. Most of Jane’s birth family had stayed behind in the Midwest.

When they arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley, Jane and Isaac both worked for Brigham Young, but eventually they established their own agricultural operation. They did moderately well for themselves: tax records show that they owned as much as, or more than, many of their neighbors.

In 1870, though, Jane and Isaac divorced. The reasons for their split are not documented, though Isaac may have been disillusioned with the church to which Jane devoted so much time and energy. Isaac left Salt Lake City and Jane moved from the property the couple owned on the outskirts of the city to a more centrally located home downtown. As the 1870s wore on, Jane’s family structure unraveled further: her daughter Mary Ann died in 1871; her son Silas died in 1872; and her daughter Miriam died in 1874. Thus, half of her eight children had predeceased her by the middle of the decade. Meanwhile, her unmarried teenage daughter Ellen Madora had given birth to a baby in 1869. She left the child to be raised by Jane while she went to live in San Francisco, California, where she was convicted in 1879 of “keeping a house of ill repute” and fined $50 (Thiriot 2015).

Perhaps in an effort to reweave her family ties, Jane appears to have married again in 1874, this time joining her fortunes to those of a man named Frank Perkins, her son Sylvester’s father-in-law. There is no official record of this marriage, but Jane began signing her name as “Jane Perkins,” and since she was allowed to take part in various church activities during this time, we can conclude that church leaders saw the relationship as official. However, around 1876 this relationship also broke up. As with its formation, there is no documentation of its dissolution; the only clue is that Jane stopped signing her name as “Jane Perkins” and returned to “Jane James.”

By the mid-1880s, Jane was facing increasing challenges in holding her family together. After a stint in Nevada, Jane’s wayward daughter Ellen Madora moved back to Salt Lake. Perhaps in an effort to help Ellen Madora get back on her feet, Jane transferred the deed to her house to her daughter, who then took out a mortgage on the property. But a few years later, though, Ellen Madora could not make the mortgage payments and transferred the deed back to her mother, who took over the loan.  Meanwhile, Jane’s son Sylvester was cut off from the church in 1885 for “unchristianlike behavior” (Newell 2019:107).

Apparently unable to sustain a marriage relationship, having lost four children to death and perhaps feeling that she was losing Ellen Madora and Sylvester to the secular world, Jane seems to have turned her attention to eternity. In March of 1883 she paid a visit to John Taylor (1808–1887), the president of the LDS Church, to request permission to receive her endowments, the first of two temple rituals Latter-day Saints believed were necessary to attain the highest degree of glory after death. Taylor rebuffed her, telling her that he “did not think the time had yet come for [her] race to receive the benefits of the House of the Lord” (Newell 2019:106). Jane was nothing if not persistent, though. Over the next two decades, she continued to petition church leaders for permission to participate in the temple ceremonies that would allow her to reach the highest degree of glory in the afterlife and to spend eternity with her loved ones.

Jane’s first husband, Isaac James, returned to Salt Lake in 1890. He moved into Jane’s home, whether as a reconciled husband, as a lodger, or as a charity case, is not discernible in the historical record. Isaac was rebaptized and welcomed back into the LDS Church in July 1890, but whether Jane and Isaac could give themselves a fresh start as a couple was a different question entirely. As it turned out, their time together was short: Isaac died in November 1891 after an illness of six weeks. Jane was alone again.

The following year, Jane’s brother Isaac Lewis Manning (1815–1911) arrived in Salt Lake and moved in with Jane. [Image at right] Isaac had stayed in the Midwest when Brigham Young led the majority of the church to Utah. His wife had died the previous year, though, and as far as he knew, Jane was the only family he had left. He was received in the LDS Church by rebaptism in March 1892, and both Jane and he were active members of the community, attending worship services, going on excursions organized for “Old Folks Day,” and so on.

Jane’s continued petitions for temple ceremonies finally seemed to bear fruit in 1894. For more than a decade, Jane had been requesting permission to be sealed as a child to Joseph Smith. She said that Joseph himself had offered her this opportunity, through his wife Emma, and that she had declined the offer at the time because she did not understand it. However, she wanted very much to reverse her decision now. However, church leaders seem to have balked at giving their founding prophet a Black daughter for eternity. Instead, they agreed to seal Jane to Joseph Smith as a “servitor” in eternity. The ritual was performed in the Salt Lake temple on May 18, 1894, but Jane was not present (even though she was alive and well and living only a few blocks away) because she was Black. Instead, Jane was represented by a White woman who stood as a proxy for her.

The 1894 compromise did not satisfy Jane, nor did it satisfy church leaders. No evidence has been found that this ceremony was ever performed again, indicating that church leaders did not find it an effective way of structuring eternal relationships. Jane returned to requesting that she be sealed to Joseph Smith as a child. Minutes from a 1902 meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the highest governing body of the church) noted that “Aunt Jane was not satisfied with this [ceremony], and as a mark of her dissatisfaction she applied again after this for sealing blessings, but of course in vain” (Newell 2019:116).

Jane died in April 1908. She was survived by her brother Isaac Manning, and two children: Sylvester and Ellen Madora. Her death made headlines in the local papers, and her funeral was well attended. Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918), the president of the LDS Church at the time and the nephew of church founder Joseph Smith, spoke at the funeral.

TEACHINGS/DOCTRINES

As a Black woman, Jane did not occupy a position of authority in the LDS Church that would have allowed her to develop doctrine or promulgate her own teachings. She consistently articulated her acceptance of church leaders’ teachings. Nevertheless, she found ways to resist church doctrines that restricted her full participation in the tradition. For example, in an extended correspondence with President John Taylor regarding temple privileges, Jane pushed back against the LDS interpretation of the curse of Cain (Genesis 4:11–16) to mean that Black people, as descendants of Cain, could not participate in temple rituals. “My race,” she wrote, “was handed down through the flood & God promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blest & as this is the fullness of all dispensations is there no blessing for me?” (Newell 2019:105). Invoking scriptural promises of blessings to all of Abraham’s descendants and LDS millennial expectations, Jane sought to parry the popular racist interpretations of scripture that excluded her from the blessings she so deeply desired.

By challenging restrictions on her temple access, Jane inadvertently may have contributed to the development of the ideas that undergirded that exclusion. As scholars like historian W. Paul Reeve have shown, the priesthood and temple restrictions, which kept Jane and other Black Mormons from participating in crucial temple rituals and prevented most Black Mormon men from holding the priesthood (and thus from exercising leadership roles in the church or providing priesthood blessings to their families), crystallized slowly over the latter half of the nineteenth century (Reeve 2015:188–214). As church leaders made decisions about individual cases, they slowly accumulated a body of examples from which they ultimately deduced the broader priesthood and temple restrictions, which they justified with theological explanations of racial origins and curses. When she pressed her case for temple endowments and sealings, Jane spurred these discussions among church leaders, with the unintended consequence that in their conversations, church leaders clarified and justified the very restrictions she was attempting to cut through.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

When Jane joined the LDS Church, Mormonism included a variety of charismatic elements. Most prominent in Jane’s accounts of her life were speaking in tongues and communicating with the divine in trance, vision, or dream states. As mentioned above, Jane’s first recorded experience of glossolalia occurred shortly after her LDS baptism. In her autobiography, she also recounted a mystical experience of divine communication. Doing the laundry for the first time in Joseph Smith’s home in Nauvoo, she said,

Among the clothes I found brother Joseph’s robes. I looked at them and wondered. I had never seen any before, and I pondered over them and thought about them so earnestly that the spirit made manifest to me that they pertained to the new name that is given the saints that the world knows not of. I didn’t know when I washed them or when I put them out to dry (Newell 2019:146; spelling and punctuation modernized).

By the end of Jane’s life, these practices had largely fallen out of use among Latter-day Saints. Nevertheless, she found a willing audience (and occasionally an interpreter) for her glossolalia in women’s meetings. She also bore her testimony in these gatherings, and sometimes spoke about dreams and visions she experienced. Other women also spoke in tongues and recounted dreams and visions at these meetings, so Jane was not alone as a practitioner of an older, more “traditional” form of Mormonism.

In other ways, Jane was an exemplary practitioner of “typical” Mormonism throughout her life in the church. In moving to Nauvoo, and then to Utah, she conformed to the LDS doctrine of “the gathering,” which called members physically to “gather unto Zion,” or wherever the church was then located. This doctrine is no longer interpreted literally, but during the nineteenth century it resulted in the migration of thousands of Saints from around the world to the U.S. Midwest and, ultimately, to the Great Salt Lake Valley and surrounding Mountain West region.

The evidence is far from complete, but it seems to indicate that Jane also attended church meetings regularly and tithed a part of her income to the church. In the 1880s and 1890s, she regularly appears in the meeting records of women’s groups, the Relief Society and Retrenchment Society. She appears in her ward records as well, both as a contributor and a recipient of donations. And she occasionally gave to fundraising campaigns for specific causes, such as for the construction of the St. George, Utah temple.

Through temple rituals, Latter-day Saints believe they are able to effect specific, salvific changes for both living and dead people. There are three main categories of temple rituals: baptisms for the dead, endowments, and sealings. Jane was able to perform proxy baptisms for some of her dead. In this ritual, Latter-day Saints undergo the ritual of baptism in a baptismal pool at the lowest level of the temple “for and in behalf of” a person who has died. According to LDS belief, this ritual allows the deceased person to accept the gospel in the afterlife and thus be freed from “spirit prison,” if they choose to do so. (Baptisms for living people are performed outside temples in natural bodies of water or in purpose-built baptismal fonts.) Before the first temple was completed in Utah, this ritual was performed on a regular basis in a building known as the Endowment House. [Image at right] In September 1875, Brigham Young directed that the Endowment House be made available for Black members to perform baptisms for the dead, which Jane and a group of others did with the help of a handful of White priesthood-holders. Jane was also baptized for several of her female relatives in the Logan, Utah Temple in 1888; and for a niece in the Salt Lake Temple in 1894.

While baptisms for the dead are performed on the lowest level of LDS temples, endowments and sealings take place on the upper levels, moving believers physically higher as they progress through ritual stages that will allow them to reach a correspondingly higher level of exaltation in the afterlife. These rituals can be performed by living people on their own behalf, or on behalf of dead people, with the ritual participants acting as proxies for the deceased beneficiaries. Endowment and sealing rituals, which Latter-day Saints believe both assume and make available certain forms of priesthood, were closed to Jane because she was Black (Stapley 2018:17).

Endowments, for Latter-day Saints, are initiation rituals that guide participants through sacred history, teach them esoteric knowledge, and require that they make sacred vows. For present-day Latter-day Saints, they are rites of passage that move the initiate from childhood to adulthood, and they are often performed just before leaving for a church mission or getting married. Jane waged a years-long campaign to receive her endowments, writing letters to church leaders, meeting with them, and asking friends to write on her behalf. She was never allowed to participate in this ritual.

Sealings are temple ceremonies in which Latter-day Saints make human relationships eternal, ritualizing Jesus’ promise that “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). Technically, weddings performed in LDS temples are marriage sealings. Latter-day Saints believe that spouses joined in a sealing ritual will be married for eternity, and that any children they bear after being sealed to one another, by virtue of being “born in the covenant,” will automatically be sealed to their parents. Children born before their parents are sealed, and children adopted into the family, may be sealed to their parents to ensure that they are able to stay with their families forever. Near the end of her life, Jane James said that Joseph Smith had offered to adopt her as a child, and she requested permission to accept that offer by being sealed to him in the temple. Adoption sealings of the sort that Jane requested were not unusual at the time; many Latter-day Saints were requesting, and receiving, sealing to Joseph Smith and other church leaders, both deceased and still living. Nevertheless, uncomfortable with the prospect of sealing a Black woman to Joseph Smith, church leaders tried to compromise by creating a new ceremony to seal Jane to Joseph Smith as a “servitor.” This ceremony was performed in the Salt Lake Temple in 1894, using proxies for both Jane James and Joseph Smith. In this way, church leaders avoided opening the upper floors of the temple to Black people.

LEADERSHIP

Jane James has, perhaps, become more of a leader in death than she was ever able to be in life. Although she was largely forgotten by Latter-day Saints after her 1908 death, her story has been recuperated and put to use by both Latter-day Saints and anti-Mormons. While anti-Mormons have generally used Jane as an illustration of the LDS Church’s historical racism and hypocrisy, Latter-day Saint usage has been more varied. In this way, Jane James has come to resemble Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), whom historian Nell Irvin Painter points out has been adopted as a symbol for a range of political causes (1997:258–87).

For a range of Latter-day Saints, Jane James has become an important touchstone in thinking about the historical racial diversity of their church and the racial attitudes of the founder, Joseph Smith. [Image at right] The fact that Jane worked in Joseph Smith’s home and remembered him with admiration seems to support the notion that the first prophet held anti-racist views and the idea that the church was more accepting of racial diversity than its surrounding society in the mid-nineteenth century when Jane became a member. Thus, Jane’s story may be used as evidence that the LDS Church was always diverse. This is certainly how Jane’s story was employed in 2018 at LDS Church events commemorating the 1978 lifting of the priesthood restriction for Black men. Jane was also framed in these events, and in General Conference talks by members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as a “pioneer,” not just because she was among the first Mormons to move to the Salt Lake Valley, but because she was one of the early Black members of the church and thus “pioneered” the way for other Black people to follow.

The representation of Jane James as a pioneer often dovetails with praise of her perseverance in the face of great obstacles. While accounts of Jane’s persistence rarely compare her explicitly to the widow in Jesus’ parable of the unjust judge and the importunate widow (Luke 18:1–8), the reference seems to be implicitly invoked, valorizing Jane’s frequent requests for temple privileges as a persistent quest for justice, rather than as an annoying pestering of church authorities. The characterization of Jane James that links her with the importunate widow has allowed lay members of the church to point to her as an example of activism in the cause of proto-feminist and racial justice ideals.

Simultaneously, more conservative church members have portrayed Jane James as an idealized mother figure who “wore out her life in patient humble service to others” (Smith 2015). Her story has thus been recruited to serve causes across the ideological spectrum of Mormonism. The relative lack of documentation of her own words assists in this recruitment, since there is very little evidence to show that she might have supported or opposed any given position.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The main challenge in studying Jane James’ life is the relative dearth of primary sources. Jane produced few sources herself (she dictated a short autobiography and left a few letters), but whether she wrote any of these herself, we cannot be sure. Compared to many of her White contemporaries, who wrote voluminously about their own lives in diaries, letters, and published accounts, the source base for Jane James is distressingly small. Much of it exists in a form that historian Jon Sensbach has described as “documentary shrapnel”: a passing reference in someone’s diary; a half a sentence in a newspaper clipping; a fraction of a square millimeter in a historic photo (Sensbach 2015:25).

Moreover, many of the sources that do exist are inaccessible to researchers. The LDS Church History Library holds a number of sources and, because they have been deemed private, sacred, or confidential (or some combination thereof), they are not made available for research. These include the temple record showing Jane’s sealing as a servant to Joseph Smith. Researchers must therefore rely on versions of these sources published before access to them was restricted or obtain them through personal connections with others who, by virtue of family, religious, or professional identity, may have greater access. Still other documents are held by private collectors and may simply not be known to researchers.

Working with the documents that are accessible, the key challenge for researchers is to understand the forces that influenced the shaping of those documents. For example, Jane James dictated her autobiography to a White Englishwoman named Elizabeth Jefford Drake Roundy (1830–1916). Roundy did not know Joseph Smith personally as she did not arrive in the United States until after his death. In the late nineteenth century, however, she became the leading proponent of the celebration of Smith’s birthday by the Latter-day Saints, campaigning relentlessly for the observance of the date and working to gather reminiscences of Smith from those who had spent time in his presence. That effort likely motivated Roundy’s work to record Jane’s autobiography, and at least partially shaped the story that Jane told. But Jane James also had her own motives for dwelling on her time with Joseph Smith in that document: knowing that it would be shared with church leaders, she seems to have hoped to show that Smith embraced her as a member of his family. She may have hoped that if she could persuade church leaders of the warmth of her relationship with Smith, they would grant her request to be sealed to him as a child. Such hopes almost certainly shaped both what Jane included in her account and what she excluded. She did not talk about having a child out of wedlock, for example, or about her divorce from her first husband, while she dwelt extensively on her positive relationship with Joseph Smith and her conformity to LDS gender norms. Uncovering the range of factors that influenced the production of each of the sources that illuminates Jane James’ life is crucial to understanding all that each source can reveal.

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGIONS

For scholars today, Jane James’ historical significance lies in how her story allows us to question received narratives and expand our field of vision. Scholarship on race in the nineteenth-century LDS Church has long focused on the priesthood restriction. Women were never ordained to the LDS priesthood, so this restriction did not apply directly to Jane. However, examining her experience allows us to understand more fully the far-reaching consequences of the priesthood restriction. Jane’s husbands and sons were not allowed to hold the priesthood, which meant that, unlike her White co-religionists, she could never receive priesthood blessings from a member of her own family (White 1980–1981:44). Similarly, because of developing LDS theological understandings of the relationship between priesthood and temple rituals, Jane could not receive her endowment or be sealed to her family members in the temple. The priesthood restriction, then, had profound implications that extended far beyond the ordination of Black men and shaped the lives and religious experiences of Black women and children as well.

Thus, to understand race in the LDS Church, Jane James’ story teaches us to look beyond institutional policies and their development to the lived experiences of those in the pews and to consider not only the men who were often the default subjects of institutional dicta but also the women who were often a secondary consideration for patriarchal institutions. This is a lesson that applies to the study of other religious traditions as well, of course. Any study of a religious tradition that does not include serious consideration of women’s experiences is incomplete.

Jane James’ life also offers a model for piecing together the stories of historical figures on whom only fragmentary evidence is available. [Image at right] Especially in comparison to the White leaders of the LDS Church, the sources on Jane’s life are scarce. Nevertheless, the field of African American religious history has shown that these sources can be supplemented with contextual information in ways that allow us to hang flesh on the bony skeleton provided by the sources, eventually yielding a robust picture of the figure in question. An apparent lack of sources then, should be seen not as a roadblock, but as an invitation to take a more winding, scenic route.

IMAGES

Image #1: Studio of Edward Martin, Portrait of a woman believed to be Jane Manning James, Salt Lake City, 1865–1870. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #2: Joseph Smith, Jr. from a daguerreotype taken by Lucian Foster between 1840 to 1844. Third-generation copy of the daguerreotype edited by an artist. Donated to the Library of Congress in 1879 by Joseph Smith, Jr.’s son, Joseph Smith III. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #3: Brigham Young. Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Historical Photographs and Special Visual Collections Department, Fine Arts Library. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #4: Isaac Lewis Manning, possibly with Jane James. Photo added by Carl W. McBrayer. Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10505669/isaac-lewis-manning.
Image #5: Endowment House, Temple Block, Salt Lake, circa 1855. Albumen. L. Tom Perry Special Collections; MSS P 24. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #6: C. R. Savage, “Utah Pioneers of 1847,” 1905. Princeton University Library. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #7: Jane James, close-up, from C. R. Savage, “Utah Pioneers of 1847,” 1905. Princeton University Library.

REFERENCES

Newell, Quincy D. 2019. Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon. New York: Oxford University Press.

Painter, Nell Irvin. 1997. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton.

Reeve, W. Paul. 2015. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sensbach, Jon. 2015. “Born on the Sea from Guinea: Women’s Spiritual Middle Passages in the Early Black Atlantic.” Pp.  17–34 in Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, edited by Mia E. Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Smith, Becky Cardon. 2015. “Remembering Jane Manning James.” Meridian Magazine, May 4. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20100206222448/ on 3 February 2022.

Stapley, Jonathan A. 2018. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thiriot, Amy Tanner. 2015. “Mrs. Nellie Kidd, Courtesan.” Keepapitchinin, the Mormon History Blog (blog), January 6. Accessed from http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2015/01/06/mrs-nellie-kidd-courtesan/ on 3 February 2022.

White, O. Kendall. 1980–1981. “Boundary Maintenance, Blacks, and the Mormon Priesthood.” Journal of Religious Thought 37 (Fall/Winter): 30–44.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES 

Bringhurst, Newell. 1981. Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Bush, Lester E. 1973. “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8:11–68.

Newell, Quincy D. 2016. Narrating Jane: Telling the Story of an Early African American Mormon Woman. Logan: Utah State University Press.

Pryor, Elizabeth Stordeur. 2016. Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Reeve, W. Paul, gen. ed. n.d. A Century of Black Mormons. Accessed from https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/welcome on 3 February 2022.

Wolfinger, Henry J. 1975. “A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the Origins of the Utah Black Community.” Pp. 126–72 in Social Accommodation in Utah, edited by Clark S. Knowlton. Salt Lake City: University of Utah.

Publication Date:
6 February 2022

AGNI YOGA / LIVING ETHICS TIMELINE

1847:  Agni Yoga/Living Ethics founder Nicholas Roerich was born in St. Petersburg (Russia).

1893-1898:  Nicholas Roerich studied jurisprudence at St. Petersburg University and attended the Imperial Academy of Arts.

1899:  Nicholas Roerich met Helena Shaposhnikova, who became his wife and closest colleague.

1900-1901:  Nicholas Roerich established contacts with esoteric circles in Paris and began to participate in spiritualist séances.

1908:  The Russian Section of the Theosophical Society was founded.

1909:  Nicholas Roerich was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

1912:  The first contours of the image of the Mother of the World appeared in the fresco depicted by Nicholas Roerich in Talashkino, in Smolensk province.

1916-1921:  A collection of sixty-four poems Tsvety Morii (The Flowers of Morya) marked by a strong Theosophical subtext was written by Nicholas Roerich.

1918-1919:  The Roerichs moved to Finland and Sweden after having left the Bolshevik Russia.

1919:  The Roerichs moved to Great Britain and began to gather followers.

1920:  The Roerichs arrived in the U.S.

1921-1923:  The Roerichs built up the organizational structure of their movement by establishing four institutions in the U.S.: The International Society of Artists (Cor Ardens), the Master Institute of United Arts, the International Art Centre (Corona Mundi), and the Roerich Museum.

1923:  The first book of Agni Yoga, The Leaves of Morya’s Garden, was published in English in a translation by Louis L. Horch.

1923:  The Roerichs arrived in India and later settled in Darjeeling, located in the foothills of the Himalayas.

1925-1928: The Roerichs undertook the Central-Asian Expedition.

1947:  Nicholas Roerich passed away.

1955:  Helena Roerich passed away.

1957:  The Roerich’s son George (Yuri) Roerich (1902-1960) returned to Russia.

1987:  Svetoslav Roerich (1904-1993) met with the Secretary General of the USSR Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev.

1989:  Sovetskiy Fond Rerihov (the Soviet Foundation of the Roerichs) was established.

1991:  The International Centre of the Roerichs, which coordinates the majority of the Roerich groups in the post-Soviet nations, began its work in Moscow.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Theosophy has undergone numerous schisms and the creation of new branches. Agni Yoga/the Living Ethics, founded by the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1847-1947) and his wife Helena Roerich (1879-1955), is one of the most widespread branches of Theosophy. Based on ontology, cosmogony and anthropology developed by Helena Blavatsky, the Roerichs created new theosophical system enriched with elements of ethics and psychology. Nowadays, the Roerich’s teachings are consistently called the Living Ethics rather than Agni Yoga in the post-Soviet space. Nicholas and Helena Roerich used both names as synonyms. The Living Ethics concept was meant as a contrast to the ethics of the Christian Church which, according to them, had lost spirituality (Roerich, 1933:23).

From the very beginnings of the movement, the followers of Roerich have been characterized by respect towards the founder of the Agni Yoga Society, whose authority is based on a narration about the Roerich family’s special origin. Starting from the first publications dedicated to Roerich’s painting, and finishing with the latest monographs which analyze various aspects of the Roerichs’ activities, the legend created in the Roerich family itself about the family’s connection to the Vikings has been persistently repeated. In the early twentieth century, it was asserted that the name Roerich, Scandinavian in origin, means “rich in glory”: rö or ru (glory) and rich (rich) (Мантель 1912:3). The legend about the special family history reached its culmination in the assertion that the Roerich’s ancestors had been the descendants of the Viking Rurik, the founder of the first Russian state. The consolidation of this legend has been promoted by Aleksey Remizov (1877-1957), a friend of Roerich, obsessed with a love for northern Russia, who published a mythologically poetic tale about the origins of the Roerich family (Ремизов 1916).

The Scandinavian origins of the Roerichs is mentioned in nearly all publications dedicated to Nicholas Roerich in the early twentieth century, although there is also simultaneous discussion about his Russian roots (Ростиславов 1916:6). In the 1930s, the story about the Scandinavian origins of the Roerich family was so well known, that it was also repeated outside of Russia as a generally known fact (Duvernois 1933:7-8). In the 1970s and 1980s, when the communist regime within the USSR thawed and new books could be published about the emigrant painter N. Roerich, the same legend about the family’s origins was repeated (Беликов, Князева 1973; Полякова 1985). The authors in Western countries also spoke about the Scandinavian origins of the Roerich family in the 1970s and 1980s (Paelian 1974; Decter 1989).

Despite the tendency to repeat the legend about the origins of the Roerich family without delving more deeply, some authors have, however, mentioned Roerich’s connection with Latvia (Полякова 1985:3; Короткина 1985:6). Nowadays, the followers of Roerich in Riga do not deny Nicholas Roerich’s family’s connection with Latvia. The Roerichs arose from the Baltic-Germans (Silārs 2005:64), who entered Courland from Pomerania; nowadays, this is the western part of Poland and the eastern part of Germany, lying on the Baltic Sea. In the latest research, the origin of the surname Roerich from the male Scandinavian name Hroerikr has been rejected. The origins of the surname are more likely to have arisen from das Röhricht (reed) (Silārs 2005:64). Through detailed research of archival documents, Nicholas Roerich’s oldest ancestor was discovered, his great-great grandfather Johann Heinrich Röehrich (1763-1820), who was a shoemaker (Silārs 2005:70) and lived in Latvia, where the surname Roerich continues to be quite widespread in the western region.

Nicholas Roerich [Image at right] was born in St. Petersburg into the family of Konstantin and Maria Roerich. As a young boy he showed great interest in the history ancient Russia and literature: he wrote poems, stories, and plays on historical themes. The encounter with the realm of mysteries was caused primarily by his paternal grandfather, Friedrich (Fyodor) Roerich, who had a collection of mysterious Masonic symbols (Рерих 1990:24). He attended one of the best and most expensive private schools in St. Petersburg, the gymnasium of Karl von May. The artist Mikhail Mikeshin (1835–1896) first noticed Nicholas’ artistic talent and became his first art teacher. The father, who always dreamed that his son would study the law, permitted him to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts (1893) on condition that he simultaneously enroll in the law departments of St. Petersburg University. At the turn of the century, many Russian artists were concerned that increasing industrialization would rob life of its natural beauty. The revival of interest in folk arts and crafts started, as well as the drive to study, collect, and preserve the art and architecture of the past. The preservation of the cultural heritage became a cause to which Nicholas Roerich devoted much of his writing and paintings, and a good part of his life.

Nobody so vitally influenced Nicholas’ thought as did Helena Shaposhnikova [Image at right] whom he met in 1899. He deviated from historical subjects and started to paint in a much brighter and more colorful manner. In 1901, Nicholas and Helena got married, and Helena became his companion and inspiration for the rest of his life. In 1912, Nicholas began a series of “prophetic” paintings and employed details of Helena’s dreams in his paintings. His growing involvement in the philosophical and spiritual teachings of the East was most directly influenced by Helena who had a profound interest in Eastern religions and philosophy.

It has remained unknown from which sources Nicholas Roerichs had acquired the first information on Theosophy. He had become rather actively engaged in the salon life. From time to time, he attended sredy v bashne (Wednesdays in the tower) where the Russian symbolists were meeting regularly at the poet, philosopher and literary critic Vyacheslav Ivanov’s (1866-1949) apartment. “Wednesdays in the tower” became a school of Theosophy for many intellectuals, as Ivanov was often visited by one of the most active Russian theosophists, Anna Mintsolova (1865-1910?), who was trying to take after Blavatsky even in her looks. Nicholas Roerich was so strongly affected by Blavatsky’s works “The Stanzas of Dzyan” and “The Voice of the Silence” that his collection of sixty-four poems in blank verse “Cvety Morii” (The Flowers of Morya) written in large part between 1916 and 1921 were marked by a strong theosophical subtext.

Nicholas Roerich’s attitude towards the Russian Revolution of 1917 has been described in various ways, as the artist’s political orientation changed several times. During the period of the Tsarist Empire, Nicholas Roerich’s political views were distinctly monarchist, but after the Bolshevik uprising in Russia, he accepted an offer to work under the wing of the new power, whereas after the artist had immigrated to the West, he railed sharply against the Bolsheviks (Roerich 1919). In January 1918, the Roerichs left Russia for Finland; in 1919 they stayed in London; and in 1920 they came to New York.

The Agni Yoga Society developed in the U.S. in the mid-1920s (Melton 1988:757), when the first people who were interested in it began to gather to study the messages received by the Roerichs from the Mahatmas, published in The Leaves of Morya’s Garden (1923). The Roerichs had begun gathering followers in Western Europe around them even before the publication of the first Agni Yoga/Living Ethics book. The Roerichs believed in the ability of mediums to make contact with the dead, attending and later even holding spiritualist séances themselves, which were “minuted” (Рерих 2011:20); that is, the enunciations received during séances were recorded, so that they could be considered later (Roerich 1933:177). Helena’s life work began in recording the messages received during spiritualist séances. Other books followed the first Agni Yoga volume, and these seventeen books are studied by all groups of Roerich followers.

Initially, the movement’s organizational structure was based on four institutions established in the U.S.: the International Society of Artists (Cor Ardens) (1921), the Master Institute of United Arts (1921), the International Art Centre (Corona Mundi) (1922) and the Roerich Museum (1923). Several other societies were affiliated around these, the work of which was coordinated mainly by the Roerich Museum. The Roerich movement spread surprisingly rapidly; forty-five  societies in twenty countries were established from 1929 to 1930 (Roerich 1933:177). These groups usually formed after the successful participation of Roerich at exhibitions. In one decade, the Roerichs were able to create well-coordinated network of new theosophical groups.

The Roerich movement began in the so-called time of the second Theosophical generation, when the Theosophical Society was headed by Annie Besant (1847-1933) with her closest colleague Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934). The Roerichs attempted to collaborate with their group. In January 1925, Nicholas Roerich visited Adyar (India). Before his arrival in Adyar, Roerich published the article “The Star of the Mother of the World” (Roerich 1924) prophesying the coming of a new epoch of the Great Mother of the World. He bequeathed the painting The Messenger, dedicated to Blavatsky, hoping to create the Blavatsky Museum in Adyar (Roerich 1967:280). The visit had obviously not reached the expected goals: in Adyar he was respected just as an outstanding artist, and the message of the beginning of the new age had not been accepted by the Theosophical Society. Because collaboration did not develop the Roerichs rejected the claims of Besant and Leadbeater to have higher authority in the theosophical fold. As Helena had translated Blavatsky’s work The Secret Doctrine into Russian, the relationship of the Roerichs with the Russian Theosophical Society, which owned the translation rights for Blavatsky’s work, deteriorated. Disagreements also developed with other theosophical groups for the Roerichs: they rejected the Temple of People (1898) created in California by Francia La Due (1849-1922) and William Dower (1866-1937) and the Arcane School (1923) established by Alice A. Bailey (1880-1949). The Roerichs stood in a severe opposition to all theosophist groups claiming that they themselves “have the whole Ocean of Teaching, the works and foundations of H.P. Blavatsky, and all the treasures of the Wisdom of the East as well” (Roerich 1967:280).

The Roerichs published the Agni Yoga book series, which concluded in 1938 with Supermundane and maintained that Helena Roerich received messages from the Teacher Morya, who had earlier been in contact with Blavatsky. To highlight the service of Helena Roerich, she is called the Agni Yoga Mother, who has been given a redemptive function in the Roerichs’ theosophical system (Infinity 1956:186). In 1924, Roerich published an article The Star of the Mother of the World in The Theosophist magazine and announced that a new era was approaching, the Great Mother’s daughter’s era (Roerich 1985:154). Roerich discerned the beginning of the new era in a special sign: in 1924, Venus, namely, a star of the Mother of the World, had approached the Earth for a short time (Рерих 1931:50).

The spread of Agni Yoga/Living Ethics in the homeland of the Roerichs had the greatest hurdles due to historical political circumstances. Even though the Roerichs had supporters in the USSR as well, their teaching was not known by wider society after World War II. The situation changed after the death of Stalin. In 1957, their son George (Yuri) Roerich (1902-1960) returned to Russia. George promoted the father’s art in parallel with his own work at the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Oriental Studies. Exhibitions followed on, one after another, in various cities in the USSR after the first exhibition of paintings in Moscow (1958) by Nicholas Roerich. Even though theosophical literature was banned, the paintings by Roerich exhibited in the museums provided a great opportunity to popularize theosophical teaching, and art served as the door which led into the world of Agni Yoga/Living Ethics.

In the 1980s, Svetoslav Roerich (1904-1993) had a crucial role in the development of the movement. He met with M. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa (1987), who soon joined the Moscow group of Roerich followers. With the collapse of the Soviet ideological system, much broader opportunities opened for the spread of Agni Yoga/Living Ethics, and Roerich societies were set up in many places in the crumbling Soviet empire. [Image at right] Of these, the Moscow group operated most successfully. It established the N. Roerich Museum and the Soviet Foundation of the Roerichs (1989), which has continued its operations now as the International Centre of the Roerichs (1991). In 2017, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation seized the Lopoukhins’ Estate where the Museum was located. This has made it very difficult for the International Centre of the Roerichsto operate.

The legend about the Scandinavian origins of the Roerich family continues to circulate and is also intensively repeated in both the post-Soviet space, as well as in the western world. In the ranks of the Agni Yoga followers, the important role ascribed to the Roerich family in Russian history serves a specific aim ‑ to justify Nicholas Roerich’s special status: he has arisen from an important historical family and must undertake a mission equally important to that of his ancestors in history. Therefore the 21st century legend has been supplemented with a new and very important element: now, the aristocratic nature and importance of Helena Roerich’s ancestors in the history of Old Russia is also mentioned in parallel with the enunciation about Nicholas Roerich’s family. The continuation of such a legend is quite expected: in the first half of the 20th century, the most visible person in Agni Yoga was Nicholas Roerich, who included theosophical ideas in the images in his art and worked on the organizational issues of the movement. Whereas, after Roerich’s death, the members of the movement began to increasingly recognize the important contribution of Helena Roerich: she was specifically the one who wrote the Agni Yoga or Living Ethics books. In praising the accomplishments of the Roerich family, the contribution of Helena Roerich is being increasingly highlighted today, and icon’s style pictures dedicated to her have even been created in some groups.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The Roerichs positioned their version of Theosophy as yoga. Helena Roerich had been introduced into the world of yoga through the literature of American occultist William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932), known as Ramacharaka. Later her attitude to the works by Atkinson had changed, and promoting their system of Theosophy, the Roerichs juxtapose it to the one of the prominent proponents of the New Thought movement, Atkinson. Convinced by their readings of religious texts from various traditions that the symbol of fire is common to all religious systems of the world, the Roerichs came to a conclusion that in various religions the same deity is worshipped manifested for the human in fire (“agni” in Sanskrit ). In the Roerichs’ understanding fire was to be considered as energy, and eventually energy became the key notion of their new-fangled theosophical system. Though it may seem that by choosing the label of Agni Yoga the Roerichs were quite innovative, they were in fact devoted followers of Blavatsky. Helena Roerich referred to Blavatsky when she stated that “deity is an arcane, living (or moving) fire” (Roerich, 1954:489).

As in the Theosophy of Blavatsky, one of the main constitutive elements of Roerich’s teaching is the belief in Mahatmas or wise Himalayan Teachers. The teaching of Roerich has developed specifically under the influence of Blavatsky’s doctrine, and it is not only the basic ideas, but also the details of Roerich and Blavatsky which are identical. Respectively, in adopting Blavatsky’s concepts of Mahatmas, the Roerichs have even borrowed their manifestation scheme: both Helena Roerich and Helena Blavatsky had both experienced visions, even from childhood (Supermundane 1938:36) and accomplished certain phenomena (Roerich 1974:224); both of them had one and the same spiritual Teachers, and both Helenas had met with the same Teachers in one and the same places (Roerich 1998:312; Roerich 1998:365-66).

After the death of the Blavatsky, Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena Roerich claimed to be the channels of a new revelation and that they possessed supernatural powers: Mahatmas had demonstrated “the formulas for atomic energy” (Supermundane 1938:18) to Helena Roerich. She had the ability to sense “the magnetism of objects” (Supermundane 1938:143), to predict natural catastrophes and turning points in history (Supermundane 1938:117, 173, 163). She could heal and influence human evolution (Roerich 1974:244; Supermundane 1938:186). Paintings by Roerich also had the capacity to heal (Roerich 1954:167-68).

The Roerichs had given the Himalayas sacred significance, as the Mahatmas lived in some secret place in the Himalayas, from where they were looking after the evolution of the Earth. It was specifically due to this conviction that mountains, which symbolized the spiritual world that is separated from the daily world, but which is still reachable for those who strive for a Higher Reality, dominate in Roerich’s paintings. In responding to critics who have travelled around India and the Himalayas, and said that they have not noticed Mahatmas anywhere, the Roerichs engaged in disputes about the existence of Mahatmas and maintained, firstly, that in the folklore of all peoples, elements could be found which provide evidence about Mahatmas; secondly, Teachers do not require a physical presence (Roerich 1954:367), as they exist in astral bodies.

The role which Roerich allocated to his wife in ensuring the evolution of humankind, was closely associated with the idea about the special mission of women in the process of evolution. He emphasized that in every cycle of evolution, the critically necessary thing for the evolution of humanity is made known by one Teacher, who assumes responsibility for a certain cycle of evolution. The Roerichs maintained that the spirituality of  the twentieth century had slid to such a low level that, with fire energy approaching the Earth, there was a need for someone who could transform higher cosmic energies in a way that humanity would be able to receive them. This had been achieved by Helena Roerich, who in this way had saved the world (Infinity 1956:186). Being conscious of the fact that the new theosophical system requires some unifying symbol, the painter had offered the image of the Mother of the World, which he frequently reproduced in his paintings, and which can be considered Theosophical icons.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Even though the name of the movement is Agni Yoga, the followers of Roerich do not practice some new type of yoga, as the Roerichs did not develop a systematized method for how their yoga should be practiced. From the scattered references provided in the Agni Yoga books, we can conclude that three stages were foreseen in the Roerichs’ yoga: purification, the widening of consciousness and fiery transmutation (Stasulane 2017a).

Though Roerich’s followers call themselves worshippers of culture and give much space for cultural activities in their actions, their movement is characterized by ritualized behavior. [Image at right] As discovered in fieldwork undertaken in the Latvian Department of the International Centre of the Roerichs, the ritualized behavior is centered on three basic attributes: the Banner of Peace, fire and flowers.

The most important attribute is the Banner of Peace designed by Nicholas Roerich himself. It is meant to represent the protection of mankind’s cultural achievements, just as the red-cross stands for the protection of human life (Roerich 193:192). The design on the Banner of Peace is generally interpreted as symbolizing religion, art and science encompassed by the circle of culture, or as the past, present and future achievements of humanity, protected within the circle of eternity. However, it contains an esoteric meaning: the three red spheres within a white area, surrounded by a red circle, is a symbol of the Mahatmas (Stasulane 2013:208-09). [Image at right]

Fire is another ritual attribute of Roerich’s followers. Candles are placed outside the venue for event proceedings, e.g. in the yard, on the staircase, as well as within the venue. Nicholas Roerich established that most, if not all, religions worship the same divinity revealed in fire (Roerich 193:232). It comes as no surprise that the Roerichs preferred to call their own system of theosophy Agni Yoga or Yoga of Fire.

The third attribute, flowers, is strongly related to ritualized behavior. In carrying out field research over the years, there was an opportunity to observe the dynamic development of ritualized behavior: paying homage to the founders of the movement with flowers has become regular, but during the latest event with Roerich’s followers, it was obvious that the placing of flowers was turning into a ritualized action.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Nowadays, the followers of Roerich form a network of theosophical groups, which includes almost all of Europe and North America, as well as several South American and Asian countries. After the collapse of the communist regime, Moscow, where the International Centre of the Roerichs (ICR) operates, plays a special role and successfully competes with the movement’s oldest center in New York (U.S.). Disagreements between the centers in Moscow and New York came about firstly due to the issue of the rights to the literary legacy left by the Roerichs. As the Roerich’s youngest son Svyatoslav Roerich (1904-1993) handed over his parents’ archive to the Soviet Foundation of the Roerichs in 1990, the Moscow group maintains that the rights to publish Roerich’s works belong to them only.

Despite their varying geopolitical orientation, all groups of Roerich followers are characterized by firstly, strong belief in the messages that Roerich received from the Mahatmas; secondly, the shared iconography. Nicholas Roerich’s paintings, in which the artist has also interwoven details of his wife’s visions, in this way creating a new theosophical system of symbols. Further, the groups of Roerich followers have consolidated poorly organizationally. For example, in Latvia, there are three groups of Roerich followers: the Latvian Roerich Society, Latvian Department of the International Center of the Roerichs, and the Aivars Garda group or Latvian National Front. Each of these groups operates in their own area: cultural events are the main form of activity of the Latvian Roerich Society and the key word “culture” dominates in its social communications, as the Roerichs explained the concept of culture as a cult of light or, more precisely, as worship of the creative fire (Hierarchy 1977:100). The Latvian Department of the International Center of the Roerichs has been able to gain influence in the Latvian education system. It successfully popularizes the gumannaja pedagogika (humane pedagogy/education) developed by Shalva Amonashvili, which is based on the teachings of Roerich. Students are encouraged to acquire Roerich’ cultural heritage by, for example, redrawing his paintings. The activities of the Aivars Garda group, or the Latvian National Front, extends to politics (Stasulane 2017b). Similar divisions can be observed in other countries as well. Although theosophical groups are weakly consolidated, they are socially influential, as each of them covers its own area, in this way ensuring quite a dense presence of theosophical ideas in contemporary society.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Even though all the groups of Roerich followers usually present themselves as cultural organizations, their activities also include a political accent, which can be seen, not as a marginal expression of Theosophy, but rather as the movement founder’s tradition of historically based political aspirations. The opening of the USSR’s secret archives and the publication of several Theosophist diaries and letters, which were previously inaccessible, provide surprising evidence of Roerich’s spiritual geopolitics (McCannon 2002:166). Recent research into the Roerich movement’s history reveals the political goals of the Central-Asian expeditions organized by the artist (1925–1928; 1934–1935) (Росов 2002; Andreyev 2003; Andreyev 2014). Roerich tried to carry out the Great Plan. The Plan was to establish the New Country, which would stretch from Tibet to southern Siberia, including territories which were ruled by China, Mongolia, Tibet and the USSR. This New Country was planned as the Shambhala realm on Earth. Great significance was intended for the Altai in Nicholas Roerich’s planned realm, where, according to him, the wonderful Belovodie (the Land of White Waters) could be found. This is heralded in Russian folklore, as well as in the teachings of several new religious movements.

Nicholas Roerich tried to gain the support of various countries, including the political support of Soviet Russia, to create this new empire in the east. Roerich met several times in the West with representatives of Soviet Russia to gain the support of the Soviet regime for the creation of the New Country (Adreyev 2003:296-67), and in 1926, he arrived in Moscow with a letter from the Mahatmas and a painting in which the Buddha Maitreya was portrayed in a way that closely resembled Lenin. In the letter that was delivered to Moscow, the Mahatmas encouraged the spread of communism throughout the world, which would be a step forward in the process of evolution (Росов 2002:180). In the 1930s, when Stalin’s repressions began in Russia (including repressions against the followers of Roerich) and when the Soviet regime changed its Far East policy (Andreyev 2003), Roerich became convinced that the Bolsheviks would not provide the expected support for the Great Plan and recommenced seeking support from the U.S.

It may seem that the plans for founding the New Country have passed away along with Nicholas Roerich, but this idea is still topical in contemporary Roerich groups. Roerich followers regularly travel to the Altai, and they are well informed about the political aspirations of Nicholas Roerich, yet they treat him as an outstanding politician whose foresight was grounded in his prophetic insight. Ever more new academic research is coming out about how political esotericism is being expressed in contemporary Russia, but in which the theosophists oppose the expressed criticism, spiritualizing Roerich’s political goals.

The International Center of the Roerichs is striving to introduce the “cosmic thinking” into science through the so-called philosophy of cosmic reality that is usually explained as follows: in the course of the twentieth century, cosmic thinking has appeared as a qualitatively new synthetic way of thinking marked by the synthesis of the scientific, philosophical, and religious experience of humankind revealing new opportunities for diverse means of cognition including the extra-scientific ones.

Inclusion of theosophical ontology and cosmogony into contemporary science is the project of the United Scientific Center of Cosmic Thinking, formed in 2004 under the aegis of the International Center of the Roerichs, which is responsible for the cooperation with the Russian Academy of Science, the K. Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, the Russian Academy of Education, and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. The most active Russian physicists participating in the Roerich movement were the scholars investigating the so-called torsion fields, Anatoliy Akimov (1938-2007) and Gennadiy Shipov (b. 1938), who in the 1990s made lecture tours around the collapsing USSR. The researchers who have accepted the “cosmic thinking” successfully promote the Roerichs’ teaching and argue that recent developments of contemporary science prove the verity of the Living Ethics.

IMAGES

Image #1: Nicholas Roerich, the founder of Agni Yoga (1847-1947). Accessed from https://www.roerich.org/museum-archive-photographs.php.
Image #2: Helena Roerich. Accesse d from http://www.ecostudio.ru/eng/index.php.
Image #3: Exhibition dedicated to Nicholas Roerich at the International Baltic Academy in Riga, Latvia. (2009). Photo: Anita Stasulane.
Image #4: A sacred space created by Roerich followers at an event in the Latvian Academic Library (2009). Photo: Anita Stasulane.
Image #5: Nicholas Roerich. Madonna Oriflamma. (1932). Accessed from https://www.roerich.org/museum-paintings-catalogue.php.

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Stasulane, Anita. 2017a. “Interpretation of Yoga in Light of Western Esotericism: The Case of the Roerichs.” Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 8:107–21.

Stasulane, Anita. 2017b. “Female leaders in a radical right movement: the Latvian National Front.” Gender and Education 29:182–98.

Stasulane, Anita. 2013. “Theosophy of the Roerichs: Agni Yoga or Living Ethics.” Pp. 193–216 in Handbook of the Theosophical Current, edited by Olav Hammer and Michael Rothstein. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Supermundane: The Inner Life. Book One. 1938. New York: Agni Yoga Society.

Paelian, Garabed. 1974. Nicholas Roerich. Sedona, AZ: Aquarian Educational Group.

Publication Date
3 February 2022

THE WAY INTERNATIONAL TIMELINE

1916 (December 31):  Victor Paul Wierwille was born in New Knoxville, Ohio.

1937 (July 2):  Wierwille married Dorothea Kipp.

1942 (October 3):  Wierwille began the weekly radio program Vesper Chimes.

1945:  Wierwille’s first book, Victory Through Christ, was published.

1953:  Wierwille began teaching the precursor course to Power for Abundant Living.

1954:  Wierwille began publication of The Way Magazine.

1955:  Wierwille founded The Way, Incorporated.

1957:  Wierwille formally resigned as a pastor in the Evangelical and Reformed Church pastorate and began pursuing his ministry in The Way.

1970:  Wierwille founded The Way Corps and the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program.

1974:  The Way acquired The Way College of Emporia (Kansas) and The Way International Fine Arts and Historical Center (Sidney, Ohio).

1975:  The Way changed its name to The Way International.

1976:  The Way International acquired The Way Family Ranch (Gunnison, Colorado) and The Way College of Biblical Research (Rome City, Indiana).

1982:  Wierwille appointed L. Craig Martindale as president of The Way International.

1985:  Victor Paul Weirwille died.

2020 (March 10):  Vern Edwards was appointed the fifth President of The Way International.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Victor Paul Wierwille [Image at right] was born to Ernst and Emma Wierwille on December 31, 1916 and raised on a family farm that later became the headquarters of The Way International. As a youth he attended the Evangelical and Reformed Church (later the United Church of Christ). After receiving BA and BD degrees from Mission House College and Seminary (later Lakeland College), Wierwille went on to earn a Master of Theology degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1941 (Kyle 1993). Wierwille later received a doctoral degree from Pikes Peak Bible Seminary, an unaccredited correspondence school in 1948 (Melton 1986:205). Wiewille married Dorothea Kipp during college, and the couple had five children.

During his first pastoral position, in 1942, Wierwille reported that God spoke to him directly during a time when he felt uncertain about the message he was teaching. According to Wierwille, God said “he would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century if I would teach it to others.” Wierwille asked for a sign from God. He reported that “My eyes were tightly shut as I prayed. And then I opened them. The sky was so white and thick with snow, I couldn’t see the tanks at the filling station on the corner not 75 feet away” (Juedes and Morton 1984:8-9). Part of understanding the Word as it had never been known involved studying the Aramaic Bible, which was the language Wierwille believed that Christ spoke. Wiewille undertook this project in the mid-1950s.

In October of 1942 Wierwille began his radio broadcast “The Vesper Chimes,” which featured Bible teaching and Christian music provided by a youth chorus. He published his first book, Victory Through Christ, a compilation of his sermons, in 1945. Wierwille continued his pastoral positions within the Evangelical and Reformed Church until 1957.

During the 1950s Wierwille began building a number of the organizational  and doctrinal components that became central to The Way International. He formed The Way, Incorporated (1955). He began converting the farm on which he had been born into a headquarters for The Way and subsequently deeded the property to the movement (1957). He constructed the Biblical Research Center (1961) and held the first International Summer School program there (1962). He began organizing the Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class (1953), publication of The Way Magazine (1954), formation of The Way Corps (1970), establishment the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program (1970), acquisition of The Way College of Emporia in Kansas and The Way International Fine Arts and Historical Center in Sidney, Ohio (1974), and purchase of The Way Family Ranch in Gunnison, Colorado, as well as The Way College of Biblical Research in Rome City, Indiana (1976). A number of these organizations were educational and leadership training oriented. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) described its objective as intended to increase the meaning of life, promote a positive attitude, prosperity and health, as well as to teach faith and prayer.

The Way International experienced its most successful period of growth during the 1960s and 1970s, possibly reaching a peak membership of 35,000. The Way drew on the same pool of potential youthful converts as a number of Jesus People and other conservative Christian religious movements, such as The Children of God (later The Family International) and Calvary Chapel (Kyle 1993). In 1968, Wierwille visited and personally ministered in countercultural neighborhoods in San Francisco, which contributed to movement growth during this period (Eskridge 2018:108). Youthful converts were also attracted by The Way’s integration of rock music into its ministry through the Woodstock-style Rock of Ages annual music festivals. Movement membership declined with the end of the youthful counterculture, as was the case for many of the groups in that cohort.

The movement later experienced a number of challenges as external opposition mobilized against it, it was beset by internal division, and allegations of moral misconduct arose [See, Issues/Challenges].

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The Way International lists a ten-point summary of its doctrines (The Way International website 2022):

We believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were “given by inspiration of God” [theopneustos, “God-breathed”] (II Timothy 3:16) and perfect as originally given; that the God-breathed Word is of supreme, absolute, and final authority for believing and godliness.

We believe in one God, the Creator of the heavens and earth; in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, our lord and savior, whom God raised from the dead; and we believe in the workings of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that the virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; that God was in Christ; and that Jesus Christ is the “mediator between God and men” and is “the man Christ Jesus” (I Timothy 2:5).

We believe that Adam was created in the image of God, spiritually; that he sinned and thereby brought upon himself immediate spiritual death, which is separation from God, and physical death later, which is the consequence of sin; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature.

We believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitute for us, and that all who confess with their mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead are justified and made righteous, born again by the spirit of God, receiving eternal life on the grounds of His eternal redemption, and thereby are sons of God.

We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord Jesus Christ, his ascension into heaven, and his seating at the right hand of God.

We believe in the blessed hope of Christ’s return, the personal return of our living lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust.

We believe in the receiving of the fullness of the holy spirit, the power from on high, and the corresponding nine manifestations of the holy spirit for all born-again believers.

We believe it is available to receive all that God promises us in His Word according to our believing faith. We believe we are free in Christ Jesus to receive all that he accomplished for us by his substitution.

The Way’s doctrines are distinctive in several ways (Juedes and Morton 1984). One of the most central and controversial doctrines in The Way is its rejection of The Trinity: Christ is understood not as co-equal with God but rather a created being. The Holy Spirit is a manifestation of God and a gift from God, a gift that is manifests through speaking in tongues. The Way also reinterprets the doctrine of the virgin birth. The group teaches that it was actual sexual intercourse between Mary and the Holy Spirit that resulted in the birth of Jesus. When Joseph and Mary began a sexual relationship, Mary was already pregnant with Jesus. The Way also preaches and is organized around the concept of dispensationalism, which asserts that the relationship between God and humanity proceeded through seven “administrations.” The Way has added an administration, which is the relationship in which humanity currently resides and is bounded by the Pentecost and the second coming of Christ (ultra-dispensationalism). There are a number of other distinctive doctrines, such as the rejection of some books in the Old Testament and what it means to be born again.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

As in the case of doctrines, The Way has a number of distinctive ritual practices. The church does not hold worship services on Sundays; rather, there are fellowship meetings throughout the week. Members practice glossolalia, which is regarded as a manifestation of the holy spirit. Glossolalia replaces water baptism. Members are asked to financially support church through income tithing as the minimum, with encouragement of “abundant sharing” beyond tithing.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Membership in The Way requires completion of the twelve session Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) class. The class consists of the distinctive “lost knowledge” that Wierwille believed he had regained through his research and spiritual experiences. The Way organization emphasizes education, leadership and missionizing through organizational components such as The Way Corps (leadership training 1970) and the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program (missionizing 1970). Overall organization is intended to replicate what The Way understands to be the early Christian church’s “tree structure,” with roots, trunks, branches, and twigs. At the local level, both fellowship groups that meet in members’ homes (rather than church buildings) and individual members are referred to as “twigs” (Melton 1986). Local church leadership is exercised by ordained ministers who conduct rituals such as weddings, funerals and holy communion. The church organizes its Rock of Ages music festival annually.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Way International has experienced a number of major challenges through its history, most during its early years of development. Issues included opposition from anti-cult groups, internal conflicts that resulted in defections and schisms, and allegations of sexual abuse by Way leadership. There more minor issues as well. The Way had its charitable organization revoked in 1985 for alleged political activity violations, but its status was reinstated two years later after it successfully mounted a legal challenge (Tolbert 1988). For several years during the 1970s there was public concern over students at the Way College of Emporia (Kansas) receiving weapons training through a course offered by the state on hunting safety. However these concerns lessened as members received no military training and did not possess military weapons.     

The Way International formed prior to the emergence of the cohort of new religious movements that were labeled “cults” during the late 1960s and 1970s (Shupe and Bromley 1980). However, The Way flourished during the 1970s to a significant degree because it drew on the conservative but countercultural Jesus People Movement (Eskridge 2018l; Howard 1971). The cult/brainwashing interpretation of involvement in new religious groups led to deprogrammings from the groups (Lewis and Bromley), many of which were coercive during that era, litigation on legal control over adherents (Fisher 1991), and published accounts of movement careers by former members (Edge 2017a, 2017b). Deprogrammings from The Way International may have exceeded those from the Unification Church, which was a primary target, in the mid-1980s (Melton 1986:209; Bromley 1988).

The Way faced internal conflicts and defections during the 1980s that substantially weakened the movement. In 1983, Wierwille selected thirty-three year old Loy Craig Martindale, who had previously held a number of leadership positions within the movement, as his successor, although Wierwille continued to be a dominant influence within the group until his death in 1985. Almost immediately after Wiewille’s death, Christopher Geer, who was ordained by The Way, published “The Passing of the Patriarch,” which challenged Martindale’s leadership and advanced a claim to his own spiritual authority. The document ultimately was presented at a meeting of The Way Corps and circulated throughout the movement. Greer ultimately we dismissed from his leadership position and went on to form his own organization, Word Promotions, Ltd. Amid the challenges to his leadership, Martindale attempted to tighten his control over the organization by demanding personal allegiance and replacing leaders, which led to both leader and member resignations. The movement may have lost more than half of its membership during these years. By the 1990s, nearly a dozen schismatic groups had declared their independence from The Way, with many retaining very similar organization and doctrine (Tolbert 1988; Juedes 1997). 

Finally, there have been numerous allegations of sexual abuse (Eskridge 2018:109; Juedes 1999, 2009). Wierwille, who died before the outbreak of accusations, was personally accused of sexual exploitation, as were Craig Martindale and other Way leaders. The allegations involved the biblically sensitive accusation of adultery, since most of these men and women involved were married, as well as exploitation of single female adherents by men. The legitimating accounts provided to women were based on biblical interpretations provided by the leaders that emphasized women’s obligations to men as part of their “spiritual maturity” (Skedgelt 2008). Wierwille’s successor, Craig Martindale, was charged in a civil suit with a “pattern of corrupt activity” brought by Way members Paul and Frances Allen, which included “assault and rape.” Just before the case was to go to trial, a settlement was reached, records were sealed, and terms of the settlement were not disclosed (Laney 2000). Martindale resigned his leadership position in the wake of these legal proceedings.

Among the schismatic groups that formed during the tumultuous 1980s was River Road Fellowship, formed by Victor Barnard, with some early involvement by David Larsen (Brooks and Ross 2014; Backman 2014; L’Heureux  2016.). Barnard was enrolled in Hobart College in the state of New York when he was approached by a recruiter from The Way. He subsequently dropped out of college and began attending The Way College in Emporia Kansas. In 1983 he joined The Way Corps four-year leadership training program. Around 1990 Barnard and Larsen began planning their own retreat center, Shepherd’s Camp. Larsen has reported that he and Barnard were well aware of in sexual activities occurring in the Way and pledged to avoid such violations (Ross, Louwagie, and Brooks. 2014).  

We openly talked about it, addressed it, that it was wrong — that we would never go that route,” Larsen said, his eyes wide. “We even made a commitment, a personal commitment to each other that we would never allow that kind of thing.

What began as a temporary camp evolved into a hierarchically organized, isolated residential enclave that may have housed 150 residents at its peak. Simultaneously, Barnard’s charismatic status claims increased dramatically, and he presented himself as a representative of Jesus. In 2000, Barnard established “The Maidens,” a group of ten girls between twelve and twenty-four selected to live near Barnard, with their parents’ permission (Kahler 2016). The group of young women was presented as akin to a religious order for women. Barnard subsequently began having sexual relationships both with the married women in River Road and with adolescent Maidens. The young girls were reassured that his sexual advances were his way of demonstrating God’s love for them and that they would remain virgins because he was a “Man of God.” In 2008, Barnard publicly announced his adulterous relationships, and conflict ensued. Husband’s sought to press charges against him. In 2012, two of the young Maidens reported Barnard’s illicit relationships with them. In 2014, law enforcement filed multiple sexual assault charges against Barnard. He ultimately pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison (Clouse 2017).

The Way International has settled organizationally since the Wierwille-Martindale period; there is no mention of Wierwille’s checkered history on the organizations website (The Way International website 2022). There have been several smooth, conventional leadership changes. Rev. Vern Edwards was appointed as the Fifth President of The Way International in 2020, and The Way celebrated its 79th anniversary in 2021 (Speicher 2021).

IMAGE
Image #1: Victor Paul Wierwille.

REFERENCES

Backman, Kehla. 2014. “The More You Commit, the More the Leader Loves You.” Gawker, April 26. Acccessed from https://www.gawker.com/the-more-you-commit-the-more-the-leader-loves-you-15655767658.01K on 20 January 2022.

Bromley, David. 1988. “Deprogramming as a Mode of Exit from New Religious Movements: The Case of the Unificationist Movement.” Pp. 166-85 in Falling from the Faith: The Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications, 1988

Bromley, David G. and Anson Shupe. 1981. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press.

Brooks, Jennifer and Jenna Ross. 2014. “Friends recall rise and fall o Victor Barnard.” Star Tribune, August 13. Accessed from https://www.startribune.com/april-20-friends-recall-rise-and-fall-of-victor-barnard/255833281/?refresh=true on 20 January 2022.

Clouse, Thomas. 2017. “Sex crime victim from ‘maidens’ cult files lawsuit targeting River Road Fellowship elders who relocated to Spokane.” The Spokesman, January 25. Accessed from https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jan/25/sex-crime-victim-from-maidens-cult-files-lawsuit-t/ on 20 January 2022.

Edge, Charlene. 2017a. Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International. Newton, KS: Wings ePress.

Edge, Charlene. 2016. “Why I Had to Escape a Fundamentalist Cult.” ICSA Today 7:15- 17.

Eskridge, Larry. 2018. God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fisher, Barry. 1991. “Devotion, Damages and Deprogrammers: Strategies and Counterstrategies in the Cult Wars.” Journal of Law and Religion 9:151-77.

Howard, Jane. 1971.”The Groovy Christians of Rye, N.Y.” Life Magazine, May 1, 78-86.

Juedes, John. 2009. “The Way’s Theology of Sex: How Way Leaders Used the Bible to Promote Promiscuity and Adultery.” Accessed from http://www.empirenet.com/~messiah7/sut_sextheology.htm on 10 January 2022.

Juedes, John. 1999. “LAWSUITS AGAINST TWI And ALLEGATIONS Of SEXUAL MISCONDUCT.” About The Way International. Accessed from www.empirenet.com/~messiah7 on 10 January 2022.

John Juedes. 1997. Review of “The Passing of a Patriarch.” Accessed from http://www.empirenet.com/~messiah7/rvw_patriarch.htm on 1/1/2022.

Juedes, John and Douglas Morton. 1984. “From “Vesper Chimes’ to ‘The Way International’.” Milwaukee, WI: C.A.R.I.S.

Kahler, Karl. 2016. “Minnesota cult leader called the girls ‘brides of Christ’ – and he was ‘Christ’.” Pioneer Press, March 29. Accessed from https://www.twincities.com/2014/05/16/minnesota-cult-leader-called-the-girls-brides-of-christ-and-he-was-christ/ on 20 January 2022.

Kyle, Richard. 1993. The. Religious Fringe: A History of Alternative Religions in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Lalich, Janja and Karla McLaren. 2018. Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over. New York: Routledge.

Laney, William. 2000. “The Way International reaches settlement with couple.” Wapakoneta Daily News, November 7. Accessed from https://culteducation.com/group/1289-general-information/8318-the-way-international-reaches-settlement-with-couple.html on 1/10/2022.

L’Heureux, Catie. 2016. “Two Childhood Rape Survivors Just Ended a Cult Leader’s Terrifying Reign.” The Cut, October 28. Accessed from  https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/rape-victims-minnesota-cult-leader-victor-barnard-sexual-assault.html on 20 January 2022.

Lewis, James and David G. Bromley. 1987. “The Cult Withdrawal Syndrome: A Misattribution of Cause?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26:508-522.

Ross, Jenna, Pam Louwagie, and Jennifer Brooks. 2014. “Caught in a cult’s dark embrace.” Star Tribune, August 13. Accessed from https://www.startribune.com/april-27-caught-in-a-cult-s-dark-embrace/256845191/?refresh=true on 20 January 2022.

Shupe, Anson and David G. Bromley. 1980, The New Vigilantes. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Skedgelt, Kristin. 2008. Losing the Way: A Memoir of Spiritual Longing, Manipulation, Abuse, and Escape. Point Richmond, CA: Bay Tree Publishing.

Speicher, Melaine. 2021. “The Way celebrates 79th anniversary.” Sidney Daily News, October 6. Accessed from https://www.sidneydailynews.com/news/religion/208263/the-way-celebrates-79th-anniversary

The Way International website. 2022. “About the Founder.” Accessed from https://www.theway.org/about-us/about-the-founder/ on 1/5/2022.

The Way International website. 2022. “Statement of Beliefs,” Accessed from https://www.theway.org/about-us/statement-of-beliefs/ on 1/1/2022.

Tolbert, Keith. 1988. “Infighting Trims Branches of The Way International.” Christianity Today, February 19. Accessed from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1988/february-19/infighting-trims-branches-of-way-international.html on 1 January 2022.

Tucker, Ruth. 1989. Another Gospel: Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Wierwille, Victor. 1945. Victory Through Christ.  Van Wert, OH: Wilkinson Press

Publication Date:
23 January 2022

PEOPLES TEMPLE AND JONESTOWN ENCLAVES TIMELINE

1927 (January 8):  Marceline Mae Baldwin was born in Richmond, Indiana.

1931 (May 13):  James Warren Jones was born in Crete, Indiana.

1949 (June 12):  Marceline Baldwin married Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1954 (October) – 1955 (March):  Jim Jones led services at Laurel Street Tabernacle, a Latter Rain Pentecostal church in Indianapolis.

1955 (April 2):  The first announcement was made of a Peoples Temple meeting at 1502 N. New Jersey, Indianapolis, a building purchased by Jim Jones, Marceline Jones, and Lynetta Jones through the Wings of Deliverance corporation.

1957 (December 18):  The Peoples Temple congregation moved to a synagogue building at 975 N. Delaware, Indianapolis. This was larger than the facility at 15th and New Jersey.

1962 (February):  Jim and Marceline Jones moved to Belo Horizonte, Brazil with their five youngest children. They also visited British Guiana (pre-Independence name) that year.

1963:  The Jones family moved to Rio de Janeiro

1963 (December):  The Jones family returned to Indianapolis.

1965 (Summer):  The Jones family and 140 Indianapolis Temple members relocated to Redwood Valley, in the northern California wine country.

1969:  Construction of the Peoples Temple church facility in Redwood Valley was completed by volunteers.

1969:  Temple members held their first worship service at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in San Francisco.

1971 (February):  Temple members held their first service at Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles.

1972 (April):  Peoples Temple bought Happy Acres in Redwood Valley, a ranch and residential facility for mentally challenged young adults.

1972 (September 3–4):  Peoples Temple church at 1366 S. Alvarado Street in Los Angeles was dedicated and blessed. The building was purchased that year.

1972 (December):  Peoples Temple bought a former Scottish Rite temple at 1859 Geary Street, in the largely African American Fillmore District of San Francisco, and began weekly worship services there.

1973 (October 8):  The Peoples Temple Board of Directors adopted a resolution to establish a “branch church and agricultural mission” in Guyana.

1973 (December):  Peoples Temple members met with officials from the Government of Guyana to lease acreage for an agricultural project.

1974 (June):  The first pioneers went to Matthews Ridge, Guyana to begin construction on what would become Jonestown.

1976 (February 25):  The Government of Guyana and Peoples Temple signed lease for 3,852 acres in the Northwest District of Guyana, a territory disputed by Venezuela.

1976 (December 31):  Peoples Temple headquarters moved from Redwood Valley to San Francisco.

1977 (Spring): An oppositional group called Concerned Relatives formed to rescue friends and family from Peoples Temple by enlisting the aid of reporters and government officials.

1977 (Summer):  A tax audit by the Internal Revenue Service along with an exposé by New West Magazine prompted mass migration of more than 700 Temple members to Guyana.

1978 (Summer):  Residents of Jonestown studied the Russian language and political science in the hope of moving to the Soviet Union. Temple leaders in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city, made frequent visits to the embassies of Communist countries, including Hungary, North Korea, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

1978 (October):  The Soviet attaché to Guyana, Feodor Timofeyev, visited Jonestown.

1978 (November 17–18):  U.S. Congressman Leo J. Ryan visited Jonestown with reporters and members of the Concerned Relatives.

1978 (November 18):  Gunmen from Jonestown shot and killed Congressman Ryan and four others at the Port Kaituma airstrip, six miles from Jonestown. Residents of Jonestown murdered their children and then either were murdered or committed suicide themselves.

1978 (November 23–27):  918 Jonestown bodies were repatriated to the United States by the U.S. Air Force.

1979 (May):  408 unclaimed and unidentified bodies from Jonestown were buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California.

2011 (May 29):  A memorial to Jonestown dead was dedicated at Evergreen Cemetery.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Evolving residential patterns (individual, enclave, communal) marked the institutional organization of Peoples Temple over its twenty-five year history. The movement began in the 1950s as a Pentecostal church in the American Midwest, where members promoted racial equality in the highly segregated neighborhoods of Indianapolis. It migrated to rural northern California in the 1960s where it began to function as an economic and residential enclave, before expanding to the urban cores of San Francisco [Image at right] and Los Angeles. It terminated as a communal experiment in the jungles of Guyana in South America in the 1970s. These different locations enabled the group to change its ideology, program, and practices over time, moving from a fundamentalist Christian orientation to a Social Gospel-style message, and finally, a militant form of Marxist socialism. As Hall notes, “Despite the collapse in apparently irrational murder and mass suicide, Peoples Temple developed innovative forms of social organization based on its economic organization” (Hall 1988:65S).

Peoples Temple was founded in Indianapolis by Jim Jones, his wife Marceline Mae Baldwin, and his mother Lynetta Jones in 1955, when they incorporated as Wings of Deliverance. Jim Jones played an active role in the “Healing Revival” movement of the 1950s (Collins 2019). Even before founding his own church, he was a popular evangelist on the revival circuit, and briefly led the congregation at Laurel Tabernacle in Indianapolis, a church in the Latter Rain tradition of Pentecostalism.

A number of White members of Laurel Tabernacle followed Jones to the newly-established Peoples Temple in 1955. A racially mixed congregation met at a church at the corner of 15th Street and New Jersey Avenue, which was purchased by Wings of Deliverance. [Image at right] Advertisements in local newspapers proclaimed the Temple’s commitment to brotherhood and equality. In 1957 the congregation moved to a larger building, a former synagogue at 975 N. Delaware, also purchased by the corporation. Marceline Jones, a registered nurse, successfully opened several nursing homes, which helped to support the family of five (adopted daughter Stephanie dies in a car accident). The homes also provided housing for elderly church members and jobs for capable ones. The Temple acquired additional nursing homes, which were managed by Marceline’s father Walter Baldwin. Most of the congregation lived in either owner-occupied or rental housing, and had employment outside and apart from the Temple. Given the segregated neighborhoods in Indianapolis at the time, Whites resided apart from Blacks. At that point in its existence, Peoples Temple operated as a traditional church.

Reputedly prompted by an article in Esquire Magazine, which identified Belo Horizonte, Brazil as one of the safest places to live in case of nuclear attack, Jones moved his family to Brazil in 1961. Given the subsequent history of the Temple and its geographic instability, however, Jones was probably scouting a location for a future Temple abroad, since his itinerary included British Guiana (the country’s name before independence in 1966). The family returned to Indianapolis in late 1963, where they found a greatly reduced Peoples Temple congregation.

A few families relocated to northern California and encouraged Jones to move the Temple there. In 1965, an integrated caravan of 140 people made the journey and settled in Redwood Valley, a rural enclave located about 115 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 101. “Jones chose an ideal area for building a closed community,” according to Tim Reiterman (Reiterman with Jacobs 1982:102). The migrants lived scattered throughout the valley, which had vineyards, orchards, and a lumber mill. Initially they convened jointly with members of Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule in nearby Willits, until there was a falling out. They met for a time in a garage, before a new church building opened in 1969, constructed with volunteer labor.

At first, individual members scraped together whatever jobs they could find: working in the local Masonite factory, serving as school teachers and health aids, or becoming part of the social services system in Mendocino County. The church raised money through petty revenue-generating ventures: a food truck, bake sales, clothing drives, offerings. But when the Temple began to buy property in the area, such as a small shopping center with Temple offices upstairs and a laundromat and small businesses on the ground floor, a more cohesive enclave developed. The center of action was the church complex, with members living within a few miles of the hub. Communal living commenced, but only on a small scale, with members simply sharing housing with each other or taking in children under guardianships and foster care.

At this same time, a “home care care franchise system” started, according to Hall. “Dealing with the clients of the welfare state became a central business of Peoples Temple” (Hall 1988:67S). In 1972, the Temple acquired Happy Acres, a ranch and residential facility for mentally challenged young adults. [Image at right] Marceline Jones and others worked in the area’s health and welfare systems; eventually Temple members purchased houses they converted into care facilities to shelter the elderly, disabled, and mentally challenged. While at least nine such homes were officially licensed, additional Temple accommodations undoubtedly housed people under informal church auspices.

While members tended to keep to themselves, leaders adopted a more visible profile. Jim Jones served as Chair of the Mendocino County Grand Jury, while Temple attorney Tim Stoen was a deputy district attorney for the county. According to an exposé written in 1977, Jones became “a political force” in the county, able to control about 16 percent of the vote. One county supervisor claimed that “I could show anybody the tallies by precinct and pick out the Jones vote” (Kilduff and Tracy 1977). In short, Redwood Valley presents a type of enclave in which Peoples Temple drew boundaries against the wider community, but, at the same time, attempted to influence that community.

Nevertheless, Temple members found it difficult living in largely White Redwood Valley. African American members stood out. Racial incidents occurred in schools and in the Masonite factory. They therefore began to missionize in San Francisco and in 1969 held their first worship service at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School, 1430 Scott Street in the predominantly African American Fillmore District of the city. They conduct their first service in Los Angeles in 1971 at the Embassy Auditorium, the corner of 9th and Grand.

These forays into urban areas, populated with large numbers of African Americans and progressive White liberals, persuaded the leadership to purchase church buildings in Los Angeles [Image at right] and San Francisco.While the LA Temple provided large financial support through offerings from its members, the SF Temple served as the locus for developing a political presence in city and county government. Communal living intensified, with close to 400 individuals living in 32 different residences in San Francisco (Moore 2022). These were generally apartments, some of which the Temple owned, and some owned by Temple members. In addition, at least one hundred members in the Bay Area “go communal,” which meant they donated their paycheck, if they worked outside jobs, or worked for the Temple itself. Either way, room, board, and expenses comprised their remuneration.

Despite living in close proximity to each other in San Francisco (though much less so in Los Angeles, despite the purchase of the Terrace Apartments located directly next to the church), Temple members had difficulty developing an enclave in these large and diffuse urban areas. Indeed, being in the Fillmore District of San Francisco brought the congregation into more contact, rather than less, with other progressives committed to the cause of racial justice. They thus found themselves part of a larger enclave (or ghetto) of African Americans living in the Fillmore. The Temple tried to get redevelopment grants to acquire properties near its main building on Geary Boulevard, but the project, “which may have been an attempt to create a ‘mission’ in San Francisco to house all the members in one place,” was abandoned (Hollis 2004:90). Nevertheless, the Temple established its own welfare system for members, taking the form of a bureaucracy “loosely coupled to a wide range of social service organizations” (Hall 2004:94). This explains its popularity with those accessing its services as well as its unpopularity with competing public and nonprofit agencies.

The repressive political situation in the United States ostensibly prompted the Temple Board of Directors in October 1973 to decide to launch a branch church and agricultural project in Guyana. The inability to create a true enclave in either rural or urban areas, however, may have been yet another reason for looking abroad. Mass emigration was a complicated process (Shearer 2018), especially the acquisition of land, a place to settle. In 1973 the government of Guyana proposed a 20,000 to 25,000-acre leasehold to Temple negotiators. A lease for 3,852 acres, with 3,000 acres to be cultivated, was eventually signed in 1976 (Beck 2020). During the intervening years, a group of Temple pioneers began clearing the jungle in the Northwest District of Guyana, an area located near a contested border with Venezuela.

The agricultural project, eventually named Jonestown, was constructed from the ground up, and was designed to model socialist organization. [Image at right] It was hardly an enclave, given its geographical isolation, but rather a utopian communal experiment. Its dependence on the goodwill of Guyana officials, coupled with its need to retain friendly relations with U.S. Embassy officials, created a sense of vulnerability among the residents, despite their distance from day-to-day oversight.

Early settlers expressed satisfaction with their work, and enthusiastic hope pervaded the encampment (Blakey 2018). The Jonestown pioneers cleared the land for cultivating crops, constructed barns and outbuildings for livestock, and erected central service structures, including a laundry, kitchen, school, community center, library, workshops, garage, health clinic, and most importantly, housing. Infrastructure projects, such as water, electricity, sanitation, roads and walkways, dominated the thoughts of those involved in construction. Jonestown, therefore, was an independent village with a socialist, or communal, economy that would eventually grow to a thousand people escaping the “Babylon” of the United States.

Despite these impressive efforts, the settlement was not ready to meet the needs of 700 new arrivals in 1977. That year also marked the arrival of Jim Jones, whose drug addiction and megalomania seemed to interfere with the smooth operation of the community. Overcrowding compounded problems not yet resolved by the early settlers. Yet Jonestown was truly communal: no one was paid a wage for their labor, but no one paid anything for food, housing, clothing, medicine, and so on. Panic over an invasion by real and imagined enemies replaced ordinary anxieties about paying the rent or putting food on the table. An oppositional group called the Concerned Relatives, who feared for the safety of family members in Jonestown, encouraged journalists and government officials to mount investigations into conditions at the agricultural project. This in turn heightened Jonestown residents’ apprehension about conspiracies against the group. Security tightened in the community, dissidents were silenced or punished, and residents practiced suicide drills to prepare them for the inevitable deaths they believed they would face when an invasion came.

At the same time, however, residents prepared for yet another migration, this one to the Soviet Union. They practiced Russian language, studied international politics, and talked with Soviet visitors to the project. As early as March 1978, residents stated that the Soviet Union was its spiritual home (“Temple Declares Soviet Union is its Motherland” 1978). In October, Temple representatives met on an almost daily basis with a Soviet Embassy official regarding both visiting and immigrating to the U.S.S.R. (“Peoples Temple Meetings with the Soviet Embassy” 1978). That same month, three Jonestown leaders compiled a list of possible places to move in the Soviet Union that weren’t too cold, given the fact that the majority of Jonestown residents were comfortable in the tropical climate of Guyana (Chaikin, Grubbs, and Tropp 1978). They speculated that the Soviets would prefer to locate the group in an unpopulated area, however, which meant a colder, more forbidding climate. Finally, during the last hours of life in Jonestown, one resident asked the assembly if it was too late for Russia, in the full expectation that the group was planning to move there (FBI Audiotape Q042 1978).

On November 1, Leo J. Ryan, a Congressman from the San Francisco Peninsula, informed Jim Jones that he planned to visit Jonestown. On November 5, the residents told the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown that Ryan was not welcome. State Department officials both in Washington, D.C. and in Guyana repeatedly warned Ryan that he had no authority as a U.S. government legislator, and that as a private citizen he had no special rights in Guyana. The people in Jonestown were not obligated to open their community to him. Yet, at the urging of Marceline Jones, the group allowed Ryan and his small entourage of reporters and relatives, to come into Jonestown on November 17. The party returned the next day, where they received a cool welcome. About fifteen people said they want to leave with the congressman. They departed shortly after Ryan scuffled with a knife-wielding attacker. Gunmen from the community killed the congressman and four others at a jungle airstrip in Port Kaituma, six miles away from Jonestown. Nine others were wounded, some quite seriously. Back in Jonestown, a vat of cyanide-laced fruit drink was brought out. Jones exhorted the residents to take the poison calmly while children were dosed by parents and medical staff. And, just as they had lived together in Jonestown, the residents died together.

The U.S. Army Graves Registration team recovered the bodies, which were airlifted to Dover Air Force Base. There the unclaimed and unidentified languished for six months, until a group of interfaith leaders in San Francisco obtained funding from the Peoples Temple Receiver to transport the bodies to California. They had a difficult time finding a cemetery willing to bury the 408 bodies. Evergreen Cemetery, in Oakland, California agreed to excavate a hillside, [Image at right] and stacked the coffins into a mass grave before recontouring the hill. In 2011, after many delays, four granite plaques were inlaid on the hillside, listing the names of all who died on November 18, 1978. The journey of Peoples Temple members was finally over.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Just as each location dictated the ways in which Peoples Temple members lived, so too each site shaped beliefs and teachings (Moore 2022). In Indianapolis, the Temple began as a Pentecostal church, emphasizing the gifts of prophecy, healing, and speaking tongues. The church also expressed a clear commitment to integration in all its publicity. An ad from 1956 bore the headline: “Peoples Temple. Interracial-Interdenominational.” To make sure the message was clear, the tag line at the bottom stated: “We Teach and Practice complete integration in the family, church and vocational fields” (“Peoples Temple Ad” 1956). Indianapolis in the 1950s had a relatively large population of African Americans due to the Great Migration of the early twentieth century and the post-war economic boom after 1945 (Thornbrough 2000). Both de facto and de jure segregation existed in the capital city, however, and housing stock was low for many African Americans, even those with middle class status and income. Peoples Temple concentrated on programs in the tradition of the Christian Social Gospel: integration of neighborhoods and businesses, including restaurants, barber shops, and hospitals. In addition, human service programs such as a food pantry and free restaurant met the needs of poor people. The focus was strictly local.

With the move to California, the Christian aspects of the Temple seemed to mask a socialist ideology. In sermons from Redwood Valley, Jones declared that “Socialism is God,” that is, perfect love. In San Francisco, members and pastor adopted a more militant and public position regarding social issues. Under the guise of liberal Protestantism, Peoples Temple supported many worthy causes: from protesting the eviction of low income tenants, to picketing for freedom of the press. Jones and his leadership team courted Democratic politicians and played a significant role in the close mayoral election of 1975. It was not that the Temple had that many voters, but rather its ability to produce votes (by leafletting neighborhoods, transporting voters to the polls, hosting rallies, and showing up at campaign events) that made it important in party politics.

The Temple also began to adopt an internationalist perspective in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It hosted speakers from African nations seeking liberation, Chilean refugees from the 1974 coup, and radicals like Communist Party member and professor Angela Davis and American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks. The Temple co-sponsored an event in Los Angeles with the Nation of Islam, at which W. Deen Mohammed spoke.

The internationalization process was complete with the move to the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, which had a mixed economy but was turning toward socialism in the 1970s. Temple leaders meeting with Guyanese officials explicitly stated their support of socialism. They removed religious symbolism from the Temple letterhead for documents going to Communist countries. Planning meetings for community development—health, agriculture, manufacturing—replaced religious services in Jonestown. In what may be a revisionist autobiography, Jim Jones declared that he had always been a Communist, and asserted that he was an atheist as well. By the end, atheistic humanism seemed to be the dominant ideology in the community.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

During the 1950s and 1960s, Peoples Temple functioned in all respects as an independent church that followed “the model of the emotionally expressive Pentecostal tradition” (Harrison 2004:129). [Image at right] Although Jim Jones was White, he adopted a Spirit-filled worship style that appealed to African Americans and working class Whites. Following the revivalist model, services included music, multiple appeals for money, a call-and-response style of sermonizing, and (what everyone waited for) healings.

Jones retained the Pentecostal style in California, even as the internal doctrine was shifting from the Christian God to Divine Socialism. Healings remained part of the ministry, but they had become sacred theater in which assistants provided “proof” that cancers had been excreted or vomited by those being healed. The healings were necessary, argued members, in order to attract followers and to demonstrate the truth of the message. In Jonestown, however, healings disappeared, although members in the United States were told that Jones restored a severed hand to someone who supposedly lost it in a construction accident.

The practice of public confession started in Indianapolis, but became “Deeper Life Catharsis” in Redwood Valley. Writing in 1970, Patricia Cartmell described the process. “Each member of the body was encouraged to stand and get off his chest everything that was in any way a hindrance to fellowship between himself and another member or between himself and the group, or the leader even” (Cartmell 2005:23). Some confessions seem honest, like reading the newspaper during worship or stealing a pack of gum. Other confessions, which occurred with eerie and increasing regularity, included admissions of being a child molester, desiring Jim Jones sexually, and having homosexual impulses.

Catharsis became more abusive among leaders of the elite Planning Commission in San Francisco. There the group took turns excoriating an individual who was “on the floor,” meaning the one who was targeted for criticism that evening. Members found fault with every little thing (clothing, speech, attitude, appearance) and stripped bare (sometimes literally) the person under the microscope.

A time for praise and punishment occurred on a weekly basis among the most committed church members in Redwood Valley and San Francisco. Children, as well as adults, were brought on the floor for offenses like discourtesy, sexism, bullying, lying, stealing, skipping school, and irresponsibility. Punishments might be the assignment of chores, such as soliciting donations to the Temple on street corners; paddlings with a board; beatings; and boxing matches. With the congregation’s approval, for instance, three women hit a young man because he was two-timing his girlfriend, and slap his new partner for helping the original girlfriend get an abortion (Roller 1976).

Praise and punishment continued in Jonestown. The entire community participated. Children, adults, and seniors were rewarded with words of praise or special privileges; they were punished with the assignment of extra chores on the Learning Crew. Those who were particularly obstinate or disobedient might be sentenced to “the box,” a small isolation container in which the miscreant was sent for a day or two (on at least one occasion, a week) of solitary confinement. The box was not introduced until February 1978. The most recalcitrant dissidents or troublemakers might end up in the Extended Care Unit, where they received heavy doses of tranquilizers. It appears that only a handful received this treatment.

A final ritual of note was the suicide rehearsal. Sometimes called White Nights (which were frequent civil defense alerts) suicide drills seemed to have occurred about six times in Jonestown. A number of individuals declared their willingness to die at these ritualistically organized community meetings. More significantly, they expressed their desire to ensure that the children are not tortured, and thus parents stated their commitment to “take care of the children” by killing them first. Those assembled then lined up and took what was purportedly poison. Thus, the rhetoric of sacrificial death was rehearsed, and on Jonestown’s final day, people knew what to say and what to do.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Peoples Temple was hierarchically structured, and can be characterized as either a social pyramid (Moore 2018) or a series of concentric circles (Hall 2004). Jim Jones was the top, or central, figure surrounded by a cadre of mostly White women, who carried out his orders. The further from Jones, the less responsibility a member had. On the bottom, or periphery, were the rank-and-file, who knew little about the inner decision-making process.

In Jonestown, a level of middle managers, called Assistant Chief Administrative Officers (ACAOs) oversaw daily operations. They administered food procurement, preparation, service, and clean-up. Other managers oversaw various agricultural departments that handled livestock, insecticides, irrigation, tools and equipment, seeds, and much more. The ACAOs kept a sharp eye on the workers, and reported good and bad attitudes at the weekly Peoples Rallies and Forum, the body that governed Jonestown comprised of all residents, including children. Jim Jones remained at the top of the organizational chart, however, and ultimately made all decisions, regardless of what the people decided.

Given their “geographic” location in the hierarchy, surviving Temple members had very different accounts of their experiences in the group. The closer to Jones, the more abuse a member received, especially sexual abuse, at least in the United States. In Jonestown, however, where the community was small enough that everyone participated, physical and emotional abuse were routinely dispensed to anyone called up on the floor.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Two key issues remain to challenge our understanding Jonestown. The first is that of race in the Temple, a topic generally neglected until the twenty-first century. A White preacher, who relied on a White cohort of associates, led a predominantly Black congregation to their deaths. The irony of the Temple’s commitment to racial equality in light of this is overwhelming. In the aftermath, the racial imbalance continues, with White apostates dominating media coverage. The absence of Black voices, let alone those of the citizens of Guyana, means that the story of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is incomplete.

This imbalance is slowly being corrected with the publication of memoirs (Wagner-Wilson 2008; Smith 2021), literary works (Gillespie 2011; Hutchinson 2015; scott 2022), religious and political analyses (Moore, Pinn, and Sawyer 2004; Kwayana 2016), and interviews of Guyanese eyewitnesses (Johnson 2019; James 2020). Given the fact that seventy percent of those who died in Jonestown were African American, and forty-six percent of those who lived in Jonestown were Black females, more scholarly investigation is needed.

The second challenge concerns the geographical isolation of Jonestown, perhaps the most important factor contributing to the tragedy. The village of Port Kaituma was six miles away from Jonestown, but the capital city of Georgetown (home to Guyanese officials and American Embassy personnel) was 125 miles away, with nothing but jungle in between. [Image at right] Those emigrating from California took a twenty-four hour journey by boat along the north coast of Guyana and up the Kaituma River. The Temple did maintain a house in Georgetown in a neighborhood called Lamaha Gardens, where members stayed when they first arrived, when they needed medical appointments, or when special events were planned. A few people lived there more or less permanently, and maintained frequent contact with government officials.

Jonestown was thus an independent, self-contained communal enterprise, rather than an enclave. Its residents were responsible for the survival not only of themselves and their families, but for the entire community. Guyana was a hospitable place for the community: the national language is English, people of color, especially of African descent, make up the population, and though life is difficult it is sunny and warm, both in climate and temperament. With Jonestown’s survival imperiled by the Concerned Relatives, however, residents looked to the Soviet Union as a place where they might live out their socialist ideals in peace. A move to Russia, though (with its foreign language, its White demographic majority, and its harsh climate) would mean a return to enclave status as a minority group.

The remoteness of Jonestown seems to indicate that group encapsulation might play a very significant role in predicting religious violence (see e.g., the summary in Dawson 1998:148–52). As long as members of Peoples Temple could physically walk away from the group, and retained the possibility of direct contact with friends, relatives, law enforcement officials, and others (as they would in the United States),  the ultimate catastrophe remained out of reach. Abuses occurred, but there were limits due to the proximity of neighbors. The move to Redwood Valley allowed Jones and the leadership cadre to begin a process of self-isolation, living as an enclave in a rural area. Enclave status was undermined in San Francisco and Los Angeles, however, where Peoples Temple was just one more religious group within the larger enclave of African American urbanites. Moreover, members were in contact with outsiders on a daily basis. With the migration to the jungles of South America, and the establishment of a utopian, socialist commune, complete geographical isolation was possible. When that seclusion was violated, tragedy followed.

IMAGES

Image # 1: Peoples Temple building at 1859 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco in the 1970s. The building was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Image # 2: Peoples Temple’s first church building, located at 1502 N. New Jersey Street, Indianapolis. Photo taken in 2012.
Image # 3: Happy Acres, a ranch purchased in Redwood Valley by Peoples Temple in 1972. Claire Janaro shown in overgrown vineyard, 1975.
Image # 4: Los Angeles branch of Peoples Temple at 1366 S. Alvarado Street. The church currently houses a Latino Seventh-day Adventist congregation. Photo taken in twenty-first century.
Image # 5: Lester Matheson and David Betts (Pop) Jackson pose in front of road recently carved out of the jungle, 1974.
Image # 6: Monument at Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, California listing names of all who died on November 18, 1978. The plaques were installed in 2011, and the site was refurbished in 2018, when photo was taken.
Image # 7: Spirit-filled woman at the Los Angeles temple, date unknown.
Image # 8: Aerial view of part of Jonestown, showing extent of construction and cultivation completed by 1978.

REFERENCES

Beck, Don. 2020. “Maps of Proposed Leasehold.” Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=94022 on 15 January 2022.

Blakey, Phil. 2018. “Snapshots from a Jonestown Life.” the jonestown report 20 (October). Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=81310 on 15 January 2022.

Cartmell, Patricia. 2005. “No Haloes Please.” Pp. 23-24 in Dear People: Remembering Jonestown, edited by Denice Stephenson. San Francisco: California Historical Society Press and Berkeley: Heyday Books.

Chaikin, Eugene, Tom Grubbs, and Richard Tropp. 1978. “Possible Resettlement Locations in USSR.” Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=13123 on 15 January 2022.

Collins, John. 2019. “The ‘Full Gospel’ Origins of Peoples Temple.” the jonestown report 21 (October). Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=92702  on 15 January 2022.

Dawson, Lorne L. 1998. Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements. New York: Oxford University Press.

FBI Audiotape Q042. 1978. Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29079 on 15 January 2022.

Gillespie, Carmen. 2011. Jonestown: A Vexation. Detroit, MI: Lotus Press.

Hall, John R. 1988. “Collective Welfare as Resource Mobilization in Peoples Temple: A Case Study of a Poor People’s Religious Social Movement.” Sociological Analysis 49 Supplement (December): 64S–77S.

Hall, John R. 2004. Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

Harrison, Milmon F. 2004. “Jim Jones and Black Worship Traditions.” Pp. 123-38 in Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America, edited by Rebecca Moore, Anthony B. Pinn, and Mary R. Sawyer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Hollis, Tanya M. 2004. “Peoples Temple and Housing Politics in San Francisco.” Pp. 81-102 in  Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America, edited by  Rebecca Moore, Anthony B. Pinn, and Mary R. Sawyer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Hutchinson, Sikivu. 2015. White Nights, Black Paradise. Los Angeles, CA: Infidel Books.

James, Clifton. 2020. “Interview with Preston Jones.” Military Response to Jonestown, Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCPAeyIhgFo on 15 January 2022.

Johnson, Major Randy. 2019. “Interview with Preston Jones.” Military Responses to Jonestown, Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9zKk3RhFGc on 15 January 2022.

Kilduff, Marshall and Phil Tracy. 1977. “Inside Peoples Temple.” New West Magazine. Available on Alternative Considerations. https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14025.

Kwayana, Eusi, ed. 2016. A New Look at Jonestown: Dimensions from a Guyanese Perspective. Los Angeles: Carib House.

Moore, Rebecca. 2022. Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Moore, Rebecca. 2018. Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Westport, CT: Praeger Publisher.

Moore, Rebecca, Anthony B. Pinn, and Mary R. Sawyer, eds. 2004. Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

“Peoples Temple Ad.” 1956. The Indianapolis Recorder, June 2.  Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/47337437072/in/album-72157706000175671/ on 15 January 2022.

“Peoples Temple Meetings with the Soviet Embassy.” 1978. Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=112381 on 15 January 2022.

Reiterman, Tim, with John Jacobs. 1982. Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People. New York: E. P. Dutton.

Roller, Edith. 1976. “Edith Roller Journals,” December. Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=35685 on 15 January 2022.

scott, darlene anita. 2022. Marrow. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

Shearer, Heather. 2018. “‘Verbal Orders Don’t Go—Write It!’: Building and Maintaining the Promised Land.” Nova Religio 22:65–92.

Smith, Eugene. 2021. Back to the World: A Life After Jonestown. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University.

“Temple Declares Soviet Union is its Motherland.” 1978. Alternative Considerations. Accessed from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=112395 on 15 January 2022.

Thornbrough, Emma Lou. 2000. Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Edited and with a final chapter by Lana Ruegamer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. 2008. Slavery of Faith. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

The Alternative Considerations of Peoples Temple and Jonestown (shortened to Alternative Considerations), contains a wealth of primary source documents, digitized audiotapes and transcripts, and articles and analyses at https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/.

The Peoples Temple/Jonestown Gallery on Flickr houses hundreds of photographs, many available in the public domain, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/albums.

Aerial views of Jonestown, from 1974 to 1978, are available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/peoplestemple/albums/72157714106792153/with/4732670705/.

Maps and schematics of Jonestown are available at https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=35892.

Publication Date:
18 January 2022

FERAFERIA TIMELINE

1928 (November 2):  Frederick “Fred” McLaren Adams was born.

1935:  Svetlana Butyrin was born.

1956:  Enrolled as a graduate student at Los Angeles State College, Fred experienced a mystical revelation that instilled in him the lasting belief that God is principally feminine.

1957:  Fred and a group of friends founded the Hesperian Fellowship. Fred wrote “Hesperian Life and the Mother Way” (later published as “Hesperian Life and The Maiden Way”).

1967 (August 2):  Feraferia was incorporated as a 501(c)3 church in California. The earliest issues of Feraferia’s newsletter, Korythalia, were published. Fred published Nine Royal Passions of the Year.

1989:  Jo Carson began filming interviews and traveling to sacred sites with Fred for the project that became Dancing With Gaia.

1990s:  Fred and Svetlana relocated to Nevada City, California to be near Svetlana’s adult children.

1998:  Peter “Phaedrus” Tromp befriended Fred and started a Feraferia group in Amsterdam, making Feraferia ritual scripts available in Dutch.

2008:  Upon his death, Fred was honored with a Feraferia Whole Earth Initiation (a funerary ritual that Fred himself had authored during his lifetime).

2009:  Jo Carson’s Dancing With Gaia premiered at the Fairfax Documentary Film Festival.

2010 (May 6):  Svetlana died after relapsing from pneumonia.

2011:  Jo Carson accepted the position of President of the Board and High Priestess of Feraferia. She and her husband, John Reed, created a website repository for Feraferia lore.

2012:  A Feraferia Facebook page was launched that has remained an active site for information and announcements.

2014:  Jo Carson published Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Feraferia tradition of Neo-Paganism was founded in the 1960s by Frederick “Fred” McLaren Adams (1928–2008), with significant input from his partner Svetlana “Lady Svetlana” Butyrin (1935–2010). Its members say its name means “celebration of wildness” from the Latin fera (wild) and feria (festival).

Fred was a lifelong student who studied mythology and esoterism since his youth and, in his adulthood, pursued degrees in psychiatry, cinematography, anthropology, and art. He was a graduate student at Los Angeles State College, studying anthropology and fine arts, when he had an ecstatic experience and realization that God is female, which led him to the founding of Feraferia in his late twenties. In 1957, Fred and a group of friends founded the Hesperian Fellowship. Fred wrote “Hesperian Life and the Mother Way” (later published as “Hesperian Life and The Maiden Way”). The tradition evolved into Feraferia and was incorporated as a 501(c)3 church in California in 1967. The organization produced a newsletter, titled Korythalia, several issues of which are preserved in the Graduate Theological Union’s New Religious Movements collection.

Fred and Svetlana met in the mid-1960s and had tremendous chemistry. [Image at right] They were life partners as well as becoming the pillars of the developing Feraferia tradition. Together, they wrote the majority of its rituals.

Fred and Svetlana felt like soulmates, but each did have other partners at times during the 1980s and 1990s. Then they were back  together until Fred passed away from skin cancer (August 9, 2008), and Svetlana died only two years later after relapsing from a severe case of pneumonia (Carson 2009b; n.d.). Fred was memorialized in a Feraferia Whole Earth Initiation, a ceremony written by Fred himself that “magically dedicates the body systems of the beloved dead to related parts of the greater Earth body” (Carson 2009b) in September 2008 (Poke, 60).

Feraferia reached a peak in the 1970s. Although Feraferia was never a large group, the tradition inspired many and has been included in several scholarly discussions of contemporary Paganism, demonstrating its significance at least to historians (Adler 2006; Ellwood 1971; Clifton 2006). Fred has been compared to William Blake, sometimes being dubbed “the American William Blake” (C.f. P. Runyon 2011, 59). Describing the elegance that has defined Feraferia, Margot Adler writes: “Considered by its small following to be the aristocrat of Neo-Paganism, it has all the advantages and disadvantages that the word ‘aristocrat’ implies” (Adler 2006, 247). Feraferia’s alleged aristocratic aesthetics and belief system were its blessing and its curse; it appealed to some and deterred others. Receiving criticism for its seeming elitism, Feraferia responded:

Several readers [of Feraferia’s newsletter Korythalia] have raised objections to “difficult” and “obscure” terminology of the sort that crops out…fairly often. Unless you have read somewhat in ancient history and in the esoteric and occult, these terms will stop you—but only momentarily, we hope. In most cases there simply are no other terms that mean ‘the same.’ Maybe we eventually can coin some satisfactory substitutes. Till then, keep a dictionary at hand. We aren’t forgetting about the objections; but for the present, a glossary is beyond our resources of time and energy. (Anyone want to volunteer to work on one?) (RJS [Richard J. Stanewick], in Feraferia 1970:4)

A contributor to the movement, Stanewick defended its more obscure terminology (for “there simply are no other terms”) yet conveyed a sentiment of openness to change and, especially, openness to assistance. Contemporaneously, Ellwood observed (1971:137):

Adams’s exercise of the leadership role has illustrated the problems inherent in this vocation. The vision is preeminently his, and he has himself done most of the writing, created most of the art, and devised most of the rites. In some ways he approaches religious genius, and undoubtedly without his labors the movement would not exist…. Yet there are those who feel that his personality stifles the creativity of others in the evolution of Feraferia…. Some feel his vision is so personal and intricate it does not communicate as easily as it should.

Ellwood reports that some “left [Feraferia] to establish their own henges and forms of neopaganism,” and we might presume that the obscurity of the Feraferia tradition was one motivating factor behind the offshoots.

Although Feraferia’s “pulse” was strongest during Fred and Svetlana’s lifetimes, Fred’s original rituals are preserved by a few committed disciples, such as Peter “Phaedrus” Tromp, who brought Feraferia to Amsterdam and translated the seasonal festivals into Dutch; Lady Selena, a professional belly dancer operating out of New Mexico, who integrated Feraferia principles and aesthetics within her inspired dance performances; and filmmaker Jo Carson in Northern California. In the late 1980s, driven by their mutual interest in preserving Fred’s ideas and teachings and the reality of his ailing health, Jo and Fred began filming interviews with active participants in the Feraferia tradition and with Pagan leaders outside of Feraferia. Included in their filming was also location footage from ancient sacred sites. Jo developed the footage into the documentary Dancing With Gaia (Carson 2009a). Interviewees included Fred Adams, Francesca DeGrandis, Monica Sjoo, Joan Marler, and Kathy Jones, among other influential Pagan/Goddess movement leaders. The documentary premiered at the Fairfax Documentary Film Festival in 2009. Jo was appointed President of the Board and High Priestess of Feraferia in 2011. Today, Jo and her husband John Reed lead rituals and foster community from their Fairfax, California henge and temple. They also manage a web presence for Feraferia.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Michael Strmiska (2005) describes two poles as defining most contemporary Paganism: reconstructionism and eclecticism. Reconstructionist groups, such as those from Asatru, Druidry, Hellenism, and Khemeticism, typically adhere to the reconstruction of one specific pre-Christian pagan, polytheistic and/or shamanistic, cultural belief system, including its rituals. Representative of the eclectic pole of contemporary Paganism, Wicca, in contrast, is an amalgamation of belief systems and ritual practices predominantly from Europe, but it is not the recreation of any one particular ethnic pagan culture. Feraferia is unique within this range, landing somewhere between the poles of reconstructionist and eclectic.

Feraferia is clearly aligned with Greek/Hellenic paganism. Its deity names consistently derived from Greek gods and goddesses, and its seasonal festivals aligned with ancient Greek mystery traditions. Yet, its founders from the beginning embraced creation and new inspiration in shaping Feraferia’s tradition and practice. Fred read widely, particularly from the Greco-Roman classics of antiquity. He envisioned the Eleusinian Mysteries from ancient Greece to be the “rootstock” of Feraferia (Carson n.d.). He considered Carl Kerenyi’s Eleusis: Archetypical Image of Mother and Daughter to be the most authoritative resource on the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries and placed much weight on Kerenyi’s interpretations.

Fred was clearly influenced by Wicca and other forms of Neo-Paganism developing around him in California as well, especially evidenced in Feraferia’s festivals matching the Wiccan Sabbats. Fred collaborated with Tim “Oberon” Zell (also known as Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), who founded the Church of All Worlds, and Feraferia’s newsletter Korythalia frequently pointed to the Church of All Worlds’ magazine The Green Egg as an additional resource. Fred was deeply invested in worldwide faerie lore. Jo Carson believes that Fred influenced Max Freedom Long on the importance of the Goddess. Long, in turn, was highly influential on Victor Anderson (a co-founder of Feri Tradition).

Feraferia shares much with mid-twentieth-century Gardnerian Wicca, but with a particularly Hellenistic aesthetic to its mythology and ritual traditions. The tradition emphasizes unity in masculine-feminine partnerships, with an underlying primacy of the feminine divine principle. That is, Goddess has primacy within the tradition, yet the dynamics between female and male are emphasized in the seasonal festivals. In this regard, Feraferia is similar to Gerald Gardner’s Wicca and Janet and Stewart Farrar’s (Alexandrian) Wicca (Gardner 1954:19; Farrar and Farrar 1987; see also Adler 2006:258–62); yet Feraferia has its own unique style and aesthetics independent of Wicca.

In addition to Feraferia’s juxtaposition between reconstructionism and eclecticism, Feraferia’s theology is bordered between hard polytheism and monism. Monism refers to a belief system that is polytheistic on the surface but ultimately embraces the ideal of unity among the deities as “manifestations” of the great divine. Contemporary Pagans have used the terms “hard polytheism” and “soft polytheism” to discuss the patterns of radical polytheism and a form of monism among their traditions (see also Lewis 1999:123). A popular quote from esotericist Dion Fortune, “All the goddesses are one goddess” (Fortune 1938:291), is a key example for the construct of “soft polytheism,” or what scholars might call a form of monism, in contemporary Paganism. To this discussion, Jo Carson adds: “Feraferia does not consider all goddesses to be aspects of one Goddess…. At a certain point we have to admit that we don’t know exactly what the relationship is between the Gods; it is part of the Mystery” (Carson personal communicaation).

Each Feraferia festival is informed by (often involving the reenactment of) a Greek myth about a female deity and a male deity. The emphasis on these distinct deities receiving worship each year suggests a degree of hard polytheism. Yet, the overarching pattern of one goddess and one god receiving worship at each seasonal festival (the Goddess receiving worship at Repose) suggests instead a soft polytheism, wherein each goddess-and-god pair represents a universal balance.

In alignment with Fred’s emphasis on the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Goddess Kore is at the center of all things Feraferia. [Image at right] In ancient Greek paganism, Kore (translated “maiden”) was a name of the goddess Persephone. The Eleusinian Mysteries were the festival mysteries associated with worship of Demeter, which occurred at Eleusis in ancient Greece. The rites are believed to have revolved around the mythic narratives of mother and daughter goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. Kore (Persephone) is also known as the Queen of the Underworld, with respect to her role as Hades’s bride, according to the same general myth. The underworld romance of Persephone and Hades is ritualized in Feraferia’s Samhain ritual.

The Feraferia aesthetic is utopian and paradisiacal. Fred and Svetlana were vegetarians, and they advocated wild food and foraging over complex agricultural systems. Jo Carson explains that, “in keeping [with the original intent] of promoting paradisal sanctuaries that are also bowers of edenic plenty,” the group is now promoting horticulture and aboriculture “because the fruit and nut trees provide excellent sustenance with relatively little ‘work’” (Carson personal communication).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The Feraferia calendar is predominantly aligned with the Wiccan Wheel of the Year, with a few exceptions. In Feraferia, there are nine festivals, in contrast with the eight Wiccan Sabbats. To the standard eight, Feraferia adds a ninth festival: Repose and Cosmos (or simply, “Repose”), which is the seven-week period between Samhain and Yule and which unites the others (its rites observed at the midpoint between Samhain and Yule). The addition to the standard Wiccan Sabbats, Repose is conceptualized as the Center of the Wheel of the Year.

Symmetry and balance shape the Feraferia ritual calendar.  [Image at right] After Repose, each festival is associated with a cardinal direction (Fred Adams n.d.). Again with the exception of Repose, each festival centers around a goddess-and-god pair. Some of the pairings are well established in common knowledge of Greek mythology (e.g. Hera and Zeus, Psyche and Eros, and Aphrodite and Adonis); other pairings, such as Artemis and Dionysos at Pomona, are less known but are found in ancient texts as well as in modern interpretations of Greek mythology. Yule, associated with North, centers around Hera and Zeus. Oimelc, associated with Northeast, centers around Amphitrite and Poseidon. Ostara, associated with East, centers around Hebe and Ganymede. Beltane, associated with Southeast, centers around Psyche and Eros. Hymenaea (which corresponds with Wiccan Litha), associated with South, centers around Selene and Helios. Lugnasad or Lammas, associated with Southwest, centers around Aphrodite and Adonis. Pomona (which corresponds with Wiccan Mabon), associated with West, centers around Artemis and Dionysos. (Pomona is the name of a Roman goddess associated with fruit trees and orchards, who has no known direct Greek counterpart.) Samhain, associated with Northwest, centers around Persephone and Aidoneus (Hades). Repose, however, is devoted to Kore as Arretos Koura (“Nameless Maiden” [(Frederick Adams 1970)]), “the creatrix of universe and divinities” (Fred Adams n.d.) (Image at right). Though dyadic female-male pairs characterize the seasonal festivals, Feraferia envisions the feminine as the dominant face of the divine. The goddess’s name appears before the god’s in Feraferia’s descriptions of the festivals, and Repose, the core of the liturgical year, emphasizes the feminine divine almost exclusively. Fred’s 1956 epiphany of God as female remains persistent within the tradition. Fred’s interpretations of the nine festivals are memorialized visually in his published collection of paintings, Nine Royal Passions of the Year.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Like some other groups founded by charismatic leaders, Feraferia is nearly synonymous with its founder Fred Adams. Close insiders report that Fred and Svetlana led the organization together, and many of the rituals were written by Svetlana.

Regarding the organization and leadership of seasonal rituals, “Priestess” and “Priest” are liturgical roles. Emblematic of the primacy of the Goddess (Kore) in Feraferia, Priestesses are required far more than are Priests, at least according to the ritual scripts published in Phaedrus’s online collection (Frederick Adams, Butyrin, and Phaedrus n.d.). Priests are called for only occasionally (“The Evocation of Zenith, Nadir and Centre” of Lugnasad), and non-gender-specific Celebrants and a Priest/ess are included in the Pomona script. Yet, every ritual in the collection requires a Priestess.

As with many other contemporary Pagan traditions, initiation exists in Feraferia. Ellwood described four components of the Feraferia initiation ritual (which was still in the process of being developed at the time of Ellwood’s observance) the evocation of twenty-two “biomes of earth” including “archetypal landscapes” (e.g. “forest, arctic, swamps”) and “the principle astronomical bodies”; the invocation of these same elements “to the center of the henge, where they mystically form the body of the Magic Maiden”; the initiand’s mapping of one’s own body onto the same elements; and ecstatic dancing and an optional pledge to Kore (Ellwood 1971:136).

Feraferia’s influence has been great, but its numbers rather small. In 1971, Robert Ellwood reported a membership of about twenty (Ellwood 1971:137).) Today, there are small pockets of organized Feraferia activity, under independent leadership of a few students of Fred’s, most especially Jo Carson.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

As indicated by its history, the greatest challenge facing Feraferia has been its own survival. The group was active in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s and re-emerged in Nevada City, California (just outside the Tahoe National Forest) in the 1990s when Svetlana and Fred moved there to be near Svetlana’sk grown children (Carson, n.d.; 2009b).

Feraferia is what we might call an “endangered” Neo-Pagan tradition. New religious movements that are reliant on particular charismatic leaders and that do not reach a certain membership level during the leader’s lifetime are likely to reach endangerment and/or extinction. Robert Ellwood predicted this outcome back in 1971: “It [Feraferia] is essentially a circle around a charismatic leader and has no real structure otherwise. It is not clear whether at this point it has any potential to survive him as a sociological entity” (Ellwood 1971:137). As a contrasting example, the Church of All Worlds (CAW) is virtually inseparable from its founder Oberon Zell, yet CAW’s membership reached several hundred in the 1990s and exists today in the United States, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Though Zell, now seventy-nine years old, is still the chief influencer for CAW, there are by far enough members, leaders, and nests to continue CAW for at least another generation going forward. The difference, it seems, lies in the expansion of the movement during the founder’s lifetime and the fostering of the movement’s foundation to exist independently of the founder.

Despite challenges to Feraferia’s growth over recent decades, current leadership is optimistic and believes Feraferia is on an upswing. Jo and other members believe that the message of Feraferia may be more important now than it was in Fred’s lifetime, clearly disagreeing with Ellwood’s 1971 prediction for Feraferia. Instead, members’ current belief is in keeping with Fred’s predictions, for he was known to say that “he doesn’t think the vision will even begin to be realized until after his lifetime” (Adler 2006:251). Prioritizing outreach, Jo led both workshops about Feraferia’s history and Feraferia rituals at PantheaCon frequently from around 2012. (PantheaCon announced 2020 as its final conference.) She [Image at right] and her husband John also manage a large website (feraferia website 2022) and a Feraferia Facebook Page, keeping community connected as well as reaching potential new members and initiates. Jo published Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path in 2014, and she is currently working on creating The Tarot of Feraferia, based on Fred’s art and the Enneasphere, Feraferia’s “psycho-cosmic-tuning system.” Jo and others also see the continuation of Feraferia through their infusion of Feraferian ideas and techniques into other Pagan traditions that they practice.

IMAGES

Image #1: Frederick “Fred” McLaren Adams and Svetlana Butyrin by Harold Moss from https://wildhunt.org/2010/05/pagan-passages-barbara-stacy-and-lady-svetlana.html.
Image #2: The Goddess Kore. Copyright by Jo Carson.
Image #3: Feraferia ritual calendar. Copyright by Jo Carson.
Image #4: “Repose.” Copyright by Jo Carson.
Image #5: Jo Carson. Copyright by Jo Carson.

REFERENCES

Adams, Fred. n.d. “Feraferia Seasonal Festivals.” Accessed from http://www.phaedrus.dds.nl/fera2.htm on 9 February 2021.

Adams, Frederick. 1970. “Eco-Psychic Mandala for Feraferia.” Feraferia. Graduate Theological Union’s New Religious Movements Organizations: Vertical Files Collection.

Adams, Frederick, Svetlana Butyrin, and Phaedrus. n.d. “Feraferia Seasonal Rituals.” Accessed from http://www.phaedrus.dds.nl/fera2.htm on 18 February 2021.

Adler, Margot. 2006. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America. Revised and Updated with a new resource guide. New York: Penguin Books.

Carson, Jo. 2012. Feraferia’s Facebook Page. Accessed from https://www.facebook.com/Feraferia/?ref=page_internal on 18 December 2021.

Carson, Jo. 2009a. Dancing With Gaia: A Jo Carson Documentary. Natural Motion Pictures.

Carson, Jo. 2009b. “Fred Adams and Feraferia.” Accessed from http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87:fred-adams-his-life-and-work&catid=65:founders&Itemid=104 on 18 December 2021.

Carson, Jo. n.d. Roots of Feraferia. Accessed from http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63:roots-of-feraferia&catid=67:early-feraferia&Itemid=69 on 16 July 2021.

Carson, Jo. n.d. “Svetlana Butyrin, Lady Svetlana of Feraferia.” Accessed from http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:svetlana-butyrin-lady-svetlana-of-feraferia&catid=65:founders&Itemid=104 on 18 December 2021.

Clifton, Chas S. 2006. Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Boulder: AltaMira Press.

Ellwood, Robert S. 1971. “Notes on a Neopagan Religious Group in America.” History of Religions 11:125–39.

Farrar, Janet, and Stewart Farrar. 1987. The Witches’ Goddess: The Feminine Principle. Blaine, WA: Phoenix. Files Collection.

Feraferia website. 2022. Accessed from http://feraferia.org/joomla//   on 5 January 2022.

Fortune, Dion. 1938. The Sea Priestess. London: Society of the Inner Light.

Gardner, Gerald B. 1954. Witchcraft Today. London: Rider & Company.

Lewis, James R. 1999. Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan Traditions. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Runyon, Poke. 2011. “Frederick Adams: The American William Blake.” Pp. 59-60 in The Seventh Ray, Book Three, “The Green Ray,” by The Church of the Hermetic Sciences and Ordo Templi Astartes, edited by Caroll “Poke” Runyon. Silverado, CA: The Church of the Hermetic Sciences, Inc.

Strmiska, Michael F. 2005. “Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives.” Pp. 1-53 in Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Michael F. Strmiska. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Publication Date:
5 January 2022

AUROVILLE TIMELINE

1872:  Aurobindo was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India.

1878:  Mirra Alfassa’s was born in Paris, France.

1910:  Aurobindo was exiled to Pondicherry, France.

1920:  Mirra Alfassa settled in Pondicherry.

1947:  India achieved independence.

1950:  Sri Aurobindo died.

1954:  Pondicherry was returned to India by France.

1961:  The Sri Aurobindo Society (S.A.S) was founded to finance the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville.

1966:  The organizing concept of Auroville was adopted by UNESCO.

1968:  Auroville was founded; its charter was adopted on February 28.

1968:  The reforestation of Auroville’s land began.

1970:  Auroville received a new endorsement from UNESCO.

1972:  Construction of the Matrimandir began.

1973:  Mirra Alfassa, the Mother, died.

1973-1980:  Auroville’s succession war took place.

1976:  Eight Aurovilians were temporarily imprisoned after a complaint by the SriAurobindo Society.

1976:  The Court of Justice of Calcutta removed S.A.S.’s financial control of Auroville.

1978-1982:  The Mother’s Agenda was published.

1980:  The Indian State assumed full control of Auroville.

1983:  Auroville received a new endorsement from UNESCO.

1988:  Auroville was institutionalized as a trust under the supervision of the Indian State.

1989:  The “Auroville Act” was passed unanimously by the Indian Parliament.

2008:  Construction on the Matrimandir building was completed.

2012:  The Auroville Sadhana Forest Project received the Humanitarian Water and Food Award in Copenhagen, Denmark.

2016:  The Auroville Earth Institute received 1st International COP22 Low Carbon Award.

2018:  The Auroville Golden Jubilee was held; Prime Minister Narendra  Modi visited Auroville.

2020:  A lockdown was put in place in response to the Covid19 pandemic.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Mirra Alfassa was born on February 21, 1878 in Paris. [Image at right] She was the daughter of an Egyptian mother, Mathilde and a Turkish father, a banker named Maurice Moïse Alfassa, both non-observant Jews. Mirra studied Arts at Julian Academy and specialized in painting. Her artwork was exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (1903-1905). She married the painter Henri Morisset. They had a son together and were divorced in 1908.

Mirra Alfassa had also a tremendous interest in the esoteric and the occult path. In 1911 she married diplomat Paul Richard, and they traveled together to Pondicherry in 1914. There she met Aurobindo Ghose who recognized her spiritual awareness. Mirra and Paul Richard went back to France because of the war and traveled to Japan in 1916. They returned to Pondicherry in 1920 and settled down near Sri Aurobindo. Eventually, her husband became upset, left their home, and asked her for a divorce in 1922.

Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo became spiritual partners, with the goal of emancipating mankind from its suffering condition. Apparently, they had no sexual union, and they both recommended that their disciples avoid sexual relationships. On his side, Sri Aurobindo had practiced brahmacharya since his involvement into politics.

Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose, named Aurobindo Ghose after 1902 and Sri Aurobindo after 1920, [Image at right] was first a brilliant student in England where he got awards in Literature, Latin, and Greek translation. He also studied European languages such as Italian, German, and French. He went back to India in 1893 with the revolutionary project to free India from the British. He became one of the national revolutionary leaders in 1905 in Calcutta as redactor of Bande Mataram, one of the first nationalist newspapers in which they claimed independence for India. In 1907, police caught him, his brother Barin and his companions and put them in jail at Alipore. His brother Barin had tried to bomb an English citizen but failed and was under arrest. During the one year Aurobindo Ghose spent in prison, he practiced yoga and meditation and learned another view of mankind’s limitations. Prison was the occasion for him to get free from ordinary consciousness, to join the Moksha and to awake from the usual narrow human mind. He received freedom as a result of work by a brilliant Indian lawyer one year later and ran away from Calcutta, heading first to Chandernagor and then to Pondicherry, the colonial French counters. He stayed secretly in Pondicherry under French secret services control, studying Vedas and yoga in a house. His meeting with Paul Richard and Mirra Alfassa gave him first the occasion to have part of his work published and the possibility to speak loudly, because Paul Richard was an official diplomat and had been a French congressman candidate. But his yogic retreat was well-known by his disciples as was his status as a Indian for the independence, and so he received the honorific name of Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo renamed Mirra Alfassa the Mother in 1926 and gave her the responsibility to lead his Ashram and his disciples. Meanwhile, he retreated to his room to meditate and write until the end of his life in 1950. Therefore, the Mother had already been leading the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and his disciples for twenty-four years when he died.

The number of disciples had increased since the Word War II because many Indians had run away from the North of India, which was under the military threat of Japan. Entire families kept arriving at Pondicherry so the Mother necessarily had to change her mind about having only brahmacharyin disciples. Instead, she welcomed Gujuratis and Bengalis in the Ashram (Beldio 2018). She founded the school of the Ashram and started to give public talks to children and their parents. But her aspiration was to found another type of society, more like Charles Fourier’s in the lineage of the XIX social utopia, as scholar Leela Gandhi highlighted.

The Mother’s was well connected to the political elite of New Delhi, including Indira Gandhi and Prime Minister Nehru. She was more strongly linked to Indira Gandhi since she had facilitated the attachment of Pondicherry to India. She had also recommended Maurice Schuman, for example,  and was even able to convince Delhi to let the Sri Aurobindo Society buy a piece of dry Land in Tamil Nadu, ten kilometers away from Pondicherry in order to found Auroville. The Sri Aurobindo Society was founded in 1961 by the Mother and supported by affluent Indians (Kapur 2021:145).

Auroville was founded on February 28, 1968, in Tamil Nadu by Mirra Blanche Alfassa, the Indian president and 124 National Representatives of the World with the support of UNESCO. The official purpose of the Indian Government for the Auroville’s project was defined as founding a “cultural international city” (Minor 1999:91) whereas the Mother aimed to found a “spiritual city” corresponding to Sri Aurobindo’s ideals (Heehs 2016). She wrote the Auroville Charter in 1968 (The Mother 1991:27). While Sri Aurobindo represents the etymological origin and the cornerstone of Auroville, Mirra Alfassa, the Mother, inspired the consciousness of Aurovilians and was the one who realized Aurobindo’s spiritual vision by founding and building Auroville.

The early settlement took place in Forecomer, Certitude, Auro-orchad, Hope and the Aspiration and Promesse communities (Southeast from the actual Auroville center), which are closer to Pondicherry. The Mother and the Sri Aurobindo Society were able to buy territories, especially between 1964 and 1976, and this process has not yet been finished. The acquisition process is detailed by Dayanand (2007), Dayanand, one of the Mother’s disciples, was in charge of buying the land (Dayanand 2007). He discussed with every owner why the community wanted to purchase the land and obtained agreement from neighbors in order to set the land’s official limits. However, even in 2006 nearly a quarter of the urban area (280 acres) and two-thirds of the greenbelt (2,000 acres) didn’t belong to Auroville but rather to the villages. A further complication has been that when land is not occupied, local people have the right to occupy it. And it eventually becomes their property. In addition, while the construction of Auroville started with the support by UNESCO (1966, 1970 and 1983) and the Federal State of India, approval of the Local Plan by Chennai had not been granted. An exemption was granted (Ospina-Rodriguez 2014:31) in this case.

Auroville is organized around the Matrimandir at the centre, [Image at right] which literally means the temple of the Mother, and consists of a thirty-six Mt. diameter geode covered by a layer of fine gold. It is surrounded by gardens and located close to the banyan tree which represents the historical centre of Auroville. It was the only big tree in the neighborhood in 1968. There is a meditation room  on the top floor, with a 70 cm. diameter crystal globe ceiling receiving sunlight and reflects its luminance.

After the death of the Mother in 1973 and before the Matrimandir was built, the Sri Aurobindo Society, owner of Auroville’s territories, tried to repossess the entire project and brought that case to the High Court of Calcutta. Aurovilians awaited a verdict for years. Their first victory occurred in 1976 when The Court of Justice of Calcutta removed S.A.S.’s financial control of Auroville. In a second victory, in 1980, the Auroville Foundation regained control over territories from SAS Auroville. The community then was placed partially under the Indian State’s control.

These outcomes were attributable in part to Indira Gandhi, who had supported the Auroville project in many ways. First, she appointed a committee to investigate the Sri Aurobindo Society in 1976 (Breme 2016:306), which  led Auroville being allowed to open a bank account. Second, she created the Auroville Foundation Act 1980, which established community status for Auroville. This was extended until the Auroville Foundation law was passed in 1988 under Indira Gandhi’s successor, Rajiv Gandhi (Breme 2016:298).

Auroville’s members have been working since 1988 to demonstrate their ability to live a sustainable, spiritual and ecological life. This charts a course between both the mainstream western and the  traditional Indian way of life. Major projects in developing the Aurovillian mission include:

The community has reforested the dry land of Auroville with 3,000,000  trees of different species since 1968.

Construction of the Matrimandir was completed in 2008, with the labor from neighboring villagers.

Auroville has created private enterprises and collective services to the surrounding community, such as schools and a solar kitchen that serves dinners.

The community has developed specific ecotechnology and agroforestry programs that have furthered India’s development, especially the wind electrical production in Tamil Nadu.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Auroville was originally conceived as “an international city of the future” where all people would live in peace and unity. However, the understanding of this initial goal implied (according to the Mother) leaving all doctrines and beliefs from the past behind. In this sense, Auroville has been futuristic, and this future is actually plural. Further, the Mother’s long speech could be interpreted in many different ways, and one of her core values was that one action contains more meaning than a text or a thought, so that the future will reveal itself through innovative actions. Overall the Mother’s Agenda [[Image at right] may be the best guide to Auroville’s core values because of its reverence for the Mother’s speech and her status as the community’s founder and spiritual guide. There is, of course, some paradox about the reverence in which the Mother is held as beliefs and doctrines are considered remains from a past that is expected to disappear the practice of any religion within the community is prohibited. Although the Mother’s Agenda has been rejected by the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, the Auroville community was built around the Matrimandir (literally the temple of the Mother), and it has adopted the vision of the Mother rather than that of the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo.

There are other influential texts on Auroville authored by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo that have been published by the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Further, Mother’s Agenda has been published in France by Satprem, a nom de plume used by Bernard Enginger that was given by the Mother. Enginger was one of her favourite spiritual sons, and the Mother had been in conversation with him for thirteen years. Mother’s Agenda is the compilation of these conversations, which he recorded and transcribed. This book is especially important for Aurovilians who arrived after the Mother passed away in 1973 because it offers deeper insight of her vision. Satprem also was “overtly supportive of the rebellion” by Aurovilians against the Sri Aurobindo Society, which sought to take over Auroville in 1975 (Kapur 2021:148).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The main practice of any follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is integral yoga (Heehs 2016) (also named purna-yoga), which might include karma yoga (yoga of work described in the Bhagavad Gita), jnana-yoga (yoga of knowledge and consciousness), bhakti yoga (yoga of love and devotion), and the yoga of self-perfection. The yoga of self-perfection contains three steps: it begins with the transformation of  the ordinary consciousness by realizing the psychic being. It continues with the realization of a spiritual consciousness (also called enlightenment) that is the goal of Buddhism and Vedanta teaching. It ends with the supramentalization (or “deification”) of mind, heart and the body’s cells. Aurovilians are generally more dedicated to the karma yoga, but practise the integral yoga as  individuals, according to their specific aspirations.

Even though rituals and religious practices originally were banned from Auroville, there are two main rituals that take place each year in Auroville near the Matrimandir [Image at right] in a huge amphitheater: a bonfire commemorating the birth of Auroville on February 28, and another one celebrating Sri Aurobindo’s birthday on August 15.

As Horassius (2018:50) described the February 28 ritual:

The bonfires consist of morning meetings (4 a.m.) for a silent meditation. Sitting in the amphitheatre near the Matrimandir, a large fire is lit before sunrise (about 5 a.m.) After this silent meditation, the recorded voice of the Mother spreads the message of the Charter and a text from the Mother or Sri Aurobindo is read.

Apart from these two annual rituals, the Matrimandir itself contains a meditation room where Aurovilians are invited to spend their free time concentrating on the divine. It was built between 1972 and 2008, and it is generally considered the spiritual heart of Auroville. It represents the collective meaning of participation and is a major symbol for the community

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Auroville was originally constructed to support as many as 50,000 residents, but it has never approached that population size. Over the first few decades the population was only a few hundred. Most of the early residents were from India, Germany, and France. The population later grew to over 2,000 adult members from almost sixty nations.The first Aurovilians were 1970s era young adults whose envisioning was closer to a libertarian thought than to a religious discipline. And Mother had suggested that Auroville should be a kind of “divine anarchy.” As a result, the community resembled what David Graeber refers to as a zone of democratic improvisation (Graeber 2014:105–06):

…spaces composed of a motley amalgam of people, most of whom have historically experienced methods of democratic self-government, and placed outside the immediate control of the state (…) that they may find themselves at the confluence of global influences. On the one hand, these communities are absorbing ideas from all over the world, and their example is having an important impact on social movements around the world.

The community charter reflected this spiritual idealism:

Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

Auroville will be the place of an unending education, constant progress, and a youth that never ages.

Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without, and from within. Auroville will boldly spring towards future realizations.

Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual research for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.

Auroville’s organizational structure gone through three phases. Until 1973, the community functioned under the charismatic authority of the Mother. Between 1973 and 1988, charismatic authority resided in the community itself as it sought to demonstrate that it could survive as a community. Beginning in 1989, the Master Plan Development phase began under the control of the Indian State.

As Marie Horassius has described the early days (2021):

In the early days of Auroville, it was the Mother who was called upon to make decisions and harmonize coexistence. During the meetings known as “meetings in aspiration” (the settlements), she elaborated some guidelines. She had been explaining, since 1972, that the superior principle would be a “Divine Anarchy”: to try to have as few rules as possible and to observe the individual constancy on one’s practice. The Yoga discipline applied to guarantee the equanimity of the being and the temperance of the spirit. She had previously mentioned the idea that if Auroville achieved its goal (of hosting a spiritualized community), a group of seven to eight people with “intuitive intelligence” could then form a committee from which the residents would request decisions for the community. In the meantime, prior to 1973, the residents had followed the principle of charismatic authority of the mother managing their lives, the community’s economy, the property management and the construction.

Upon the Mother’s death in 1973 the community faced a new challenge without its charismatic leader and with a split between the Sri Aurobindo Society and the community. The community governance system proved unwieldy as it sought to incorporate its archaic ideal, bureaucratic realities, and the need for transparency. Finally, the Central Government of India enacted the Auroville Foundation Act in 1988, giving the community a status and the possibility to organize itself. In this act, Aurovilians were asked to build a clear structure.

According to this structure, the whole property is managed by the Indian Government.“The “Assembly of Residents” where all decisions are made selects a working committee to manage some things to be done in cooperation with the Governing board and the Foundation. There also are two external oversight groups: the Governing Board (GB) and the International Advisory Council (IAC). Finally, below the Assembly of Residents there are two other subgroups both responsible for external and internal community affairs: the Working Committee and the Auroville Advisory Council.

Wishing to break with the spontaneous participation that has eventually led to conflicts of interest, Aurovilians subsequently set up new selection systems. Several multi-person tables select, among their peers, the people considered the most “likely to become good decision makers,” and these proposals are pooled and deliberated upon until a harmonious decision emerges. This “new model of selection” remains very common in Auroville. It is similar to what has existed before, but with an increased focus on the “meritocratic” judgment of peers among themselves, linked to the reputation and distinction within the collective.

Even though Auroville was initially conceived as an international city, it has been slowly reframing its identity into a spiritual ecovillage that fits the global ecology paradigm. In this regard, Auroville Earth Institute has been specializing in eco-house research (Fricot 2021:38) since 1989, which led to its winning a COP22 Low carbon Award in 2016. Also, Sadhana Forest is a recent community specialized in sustainable development in dry land and reforestation.

Auroville’s complete territory is estimated between 20km2 and 25km2 (Horassius 2021: 237), a one-kilometre circle’s diameter for the center divided into four areas around the Matrimandir: the cultural, the industrial, the international and the residential area. Beyond these four zones there is the Greenbelt, where organic farms and forests are settled. [Image at right]

Auroville has become a kind of healthy green paradise and it is a current attraction for investments and tourism. However, the process of becoming a member is not easy. It requires time and goodwill (The goodwill is a core value of Auroville as the Chart of Auroville reminds it: “one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness”). Further, the aurovilian community defends its main aim, especially when there are several other tendencies such as conceiving it as an international city, a place for a lifestyle closer to nature, the yogic vision of mankind or even the socioeconomic and technological view, among others.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Wealthy Indians from the Sri Aurobindo Society, owner of Auroville before 1988, were probably closer to nationalistic Hinduism than the Congress and Indira Gandhi, who had just established the Emergency State (Breme 2016:309). At that time, The Sri Aurobindo Society sought the surrender of Auroville’s legal trust and the elimination of the “hippies’ lifestyle” in the area. The tension between Auroville and The Sri Aurobindo Society  is suggested by rumors that villages were paid to fight with Aurovilians and, on one occasion, the Society convinced the police to temporarily jail eight Aurovilians (Kapur 2021:155; Heehs 2016). However, Satprem intervened, called the foreign embassies in New-Delhi and used “his connections to help Auroville” (Kapur 2021:155). A week later, foreigner prisoners were released and, on that occasion, the Auroville’s project became of a great Indian public concern (Heehs 2016). After Auroville’s takeover by the Indian Central State in 1988, Auroville addressed its first challenge by becoming more stable step by step and by being recognized by the rural neighborhood.

Auroville has experienced a number of other challenges. Joukhi and Horassius have reported that the most recurrent conflicts in Auroville are about the buying and selling of land (Joukhi 2006:100; Horassius 2021:226; Jukka Joukhi 2006). This issue was partly mitigated due to the Aurovilian’s need for labour and Tamil’s need for jobs and income. Further, Aurovilian volunteers contributed energy to open schools for villagers, provide drinkable water, build health centres, etc.

Jessica Namakal (2012) has offered a broader critique of Auroville: that western culture often takes advantage of other civilizations by establishing colonial-like systems. In this case, Auroville employs more than 5,000 Tamoul villagers every day, which implies an economical and hierarchical relation between Auroville’s wealthy members and impoverished villagers. So, Auroville is not an anti-capitalist paradise as some Aurovilians might have dreamed. However, it might also be argued that Auroville remains preferable to the pure capitalist market in which young Indian and Bangladeshi children work every day producing cheap clothes for the West while risking their own lives. Auroville enforces some unemployment rules, and so most villagers, especially women, prefer to look for jobs in Auroville because of these better working conditions.

Several women have commented on this situation: Usha, working more than 12 years by Wellpaper in Auroville, stated that:

The government is not doing anything for people in these villages. They only come during the elections and offer bribes in exchange for votes! That is why Auroville has a good reputation. Working here is like working in a government job. It provides us with many benefits and conveniences. Will our government be willing to offer us this kind of job opportunities? I do not think so (Gürkaya, 2018:35).

Lakshimi, working more than 20 years by “Naturellement” in Auroville, stated that:

That’s why Auroville jobs are beneficial for women in these villages. The jobs outside are more difficult and have less benefits. That is why I will always prefer here than elsewhere! Even if they pay me more, I would not change it for the world (Gürkaya, 2018:36).

Auroville is not a wealthy community overall. Most of Aurovilians’ foreigners are highly educated, but not necessarily wealthy, and Auroville depends as a whole on foreign donations. The community does offer support to members in need as some poor Aurovilians completely depend on “maintenance,” an amount of money given to everyone in Auroville.

As the community continues to evolve, some Aurovilians are becoming native and some Tamoul villagers are turning into businessmen with others Aurovilians. Therefore, a neo-colonial domination couldn’t be described only with categories of ethnicity, gender, and class. Instead, categories of deep-ecology followers versus urban builders and planners need to be considered. As the New York Times (Schmall 2022) described this division during a recent conflict over the direction of development, “The divide between those Aurovilians who want to follow the Mother’s urban development plans — known as constructivists — and those who want to let the community continue developing on its own — organicists — has long existed.” There is also currently a common fight between some Aurovilians linked to certain villagers against other Aurovilians linked to other villagers. Auroville’s project was meant to be the international city of peace and truth. However it is clear that this goal is elusive and will involve continuing struggle.

IMAGES

Image #1: Mirra Alfassa.
Image #2: Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose).
Image #3: Arial view of the schema of Auroville’s sectors. Accessed from https://auroville.org/contents/691 on 15 October 2021.
Image #4: Cover of Mother’s Agenda. Accessed from https://auroville.org/contents/527 on 15 October 2021.
Image #5: The Matrimandir.
Image #6: Auroville’s territory, with the a one-kilometre circle divided into four areas around the Matrimandir.

REFERENCES

Auroville Foundation Act. 1988. Accessed from https://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1988-54.pdf on 2 September 2021

Auroville Organization & Governance. Accessed from https://auroville.org/categories/13 on 1 September 2021

Beldio, Patrick. 2018. The Mother Profile, Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2018/10/13/the-mother-nee-mirra-blanche-rachel-alfassa/

Bey, Hakim. 2011. T. A. Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Autonomedia Anti-copyright.

Brême, David. 2018. La figure de la Mère, Mirra alfassa (1878 — 1973). Une analyse des hybridations culturelles de ses représentations. Thesis in Religious Studies, Uqam. Accessed from https://archipel.uqam.ca/11515/ on 28 November 2021.

Brême, David. 2016. “L’État indien et le statut “spirituelˮ d’Auroville.” Religiologique, Intersection du Droit, de l’État et du religieux n^o 34. Accesed from www.religiologique.uqam.ca on 28 November 2021.

Dayanand. 2007. Premiers pas sur la terre d’Auroville. Accessed from https://www.auroville-france.org/index.php/acres-for-auroville on 28 November 2021.

Fortin, Andrée. 1985. “Du collectif utopique à l’utopie collective.” Anthropologie et Sociétés 9:53–64.

Fricot, Pauline. 2021. “Auroville, l’utopie fait de la résistance.” Géo 506:28-41.

Graeber, David. 2014. Des fins du capitalisme. Possibilités I – hiérarchie, rébellion, désir. Translated by Maxime Rovere and Matin Rueff. Paris: Payot.

Gürkaya, Cansu. 2018. L’Empowerment des femmes villageoises au sein des unités de travail à Auroville. Les cas de Wellpaper et de Naturellement, Mémoire de sociologie, Master Genre, Politique et Sexualité, Dir. Pruvost Geneviève, EHESS, Paris.

Heehs, Peter. 2016. Integral yoga. World Religions and Spirituality Project. Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/integral-yoga-aurobindo/ on 28 November 2021.

Horassius, Marie. 2021. Ethnographie d’une utopie, Auroville cite international en Inde du sud. Thèse non publiée.

Horassius, Marie. 2018.  “Rituels et foi au coeur d’une utopie : oscillations et négociations autour des pratiques croyantes à Auroville.” Religioscope. Accessed from www.religioscope.org/cahiers/15.pdf on 28 November 2021.

Horassius, Marie. 2012. Aire de recherche, ère de la quête du sens. Ethnographie d’une utopie : l’exemple de la communauté internationale d’Auroville. Mémoire de maitrise. Paris: École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Joukhi, Jukka. 2006. Imagining the other: Orientalism and Occidentalism in Tamil-European Relations in South India. Thesis of Ethnology, University of Jyvaskyla.

Kapur, Akash. 2021. Better to have gone. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Larroquette, Jean. Auroville, un aller simple ? Paris: éditions Chemins de tr@verse

Minor, Robert N. 1999. The Religious, the Spiritual and the Secular: Auroville and Secular India. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Mother, the (Mirra Alfassa). 1991. La Mère parle d’Auroville. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department.

Mother, the (Mirra Alfassa) & Satprem (Bernard Enginger). 1979-1982. Mother’s Agenda. Thirteen volumes. New York: Institute for Evolutionary Research.

Namakkal, Jessica. 2012. “European Dreams, Tamil Land. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 6:59-88.

Ospina-Rodriguez V. 2014. AV Bio-Region. Integration territoriale d’Auroville dans sa bio-region. Master thesis, (dir.) Foucher-Dufoix Valérie, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville.

Patenaude, Monique. 2005. Made in Auroville. Montréal: Édition tryptique.

Schmall, Emily. 2022. “Build a New City or New Humans? A Utopia in India Fights Over Future.” New York Times, March 5. Accessed from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/world/asia/auroville-india.html?searchResultPosition=1 on 10 March 2022.

Publication Date:
30 November 2021

CHILDREN OF SATAN TIMELINE

1963:  Marco Dimitri was born.

1975:  Dimitri attended the meetings of the association Fratellanza Cosmica.

1982:  Marco Dimitri founded the association Bambini di Satana.

1984-1989:  Dimitri worked as a private security guard.

1992:  After infiltrating the association, the Carabinieri raided a ritual in Savignano sul Rubicone.

1996 (January):  Dimitri, vice president Piergiorgio Bonora, and director Gennaro Luongo were incarcerated over accusations of sexual violence. Dimitri attempted suicide. The accusation proved inconsistent and unfounded.

1996 (June):  Dimitri was accused of child sex abuse during satanic rites.

1997:  Dimitri was acquitted unconditionally.

1998:  Dimitri launched the website Bambini di Satana.

2004:  Dimitri was awarded compensation for unjust detention.

2012:  Dimitri ran for the Chamber of Deputies for the party Democrazia Atea.

2021:  Dimitri died in his apartment in Bologna.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Born in Bologna on February 13, 1963, Marco Dimitri was the second son of a middle-class family. [Image at right] His father worked as a policeman and his mother as a housewife (Beccaria 2006:11-12; Paolinelli 2007:43). Dimitri grew up in Croce di Casalecchio, on the outskirts of Bologna (Beccaria 2006:9). [For an extended version of this profile, see Bigliardi 2021]

In 1975, at the age of twelve, following a UFO sighting while he was spending a holiday by the sea, Dimitri reached out to Roberto Negrini’s (1958) group, Fratellanza Cosmica (Cosmic Brotherhood), in Bologna (Beccaria 2006:24-27; Dimitri and Lai 2006:20-21). Fratellanza Cosmica was the offshoot of a group based in Sicily, the Centro Studi Fratellanza Cosmica, which gathered around contactee Eugenio Siragusa (1919-2006). Siragusa claimed that he had encountered, on the slopes of Mt. Etna, two extraterrestrials who introduced themselves as divine messengers, and that he was receiving messages from Holy Mary and Jesus. After Negrini’s falling-out with Siragusa in 1978, the organisation in Bologna was renamed Ordine Solare (Solar Order) and claimed contacts with extraterrestrial and supernatural entities. Negrini later founded the O.T.O. – Fraternitas Hermetica Luciferiana; at that time, however, Dimitri no longer had ties with him (see CESNUR 2021a; Zoccatelli 1999).

When Dimitri was fourteen, his mother fell gravely ill, causing him to frequently stay at relatives’ or friends’ houses before her untimely passing (Beccaria 2006:12; Dimitri and Lai 2006:21-24). Eventually, Dimitri’s father remarried. This decision led them to drift away from each other. Dimitri’s father died in 1986 (Beccaria 2006:11; Dimitri and Lai 2006:25).

After middle school, Dimitri enrolled at ITIS (Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale – State Technical Industrial Institute), but he dropped out after a year to sign up for ECAP (Ente Cooperativo per l’Apprendimento [literally: Cooperative Institution for Learning]), a private school from which he graduated with a diploma in telecommunications (Paolinelli 2007:44; Dimitri and Lai 2006:28). In 1981, at the age of eighteen, Dimitri completed mandatory military service at a base in Udine (Caserma Cavarzerani).

The following year he founded the association Bambini di Satana (Satan’s Children). Dimitri then began receiving considerable media attention. Although he emphasised that he subscribed to a cultural version of Satanism, the media suggested that he and his affiliates worshipped a personal Satan. On this basis he was invited to major TV shows, like the immensely popular Maurizio Costanzo Show (Beccaria 2006:43; Dimitri and Lai 2006:33; Paolinelli 2007:54). He was even invited to a debate on national public television (RAI) with monsignor Emmanuel Milingo (b. 1930), a Zambian catholic archbishop known as a healer and exorcist (Beccaria 2006:43; Dimitri and Lai 2006:42-43). In 2012, Dimitri ran unsuccessfully in the national elections for the minor political party Democrazia Atea (Atheist Democracy).

Between 1992 and 1997 Dimitri faced a string of raids and trials based on authorities’ accusations of sexual violence and sexual abuse. He was ultimately vindicated on all these charges, but at one point he attempted suicide. After the trials, Dimitri continued to reside in Bologna and supported himself as a web designer and web master, although these jobs did not provide him with a stable income (Beccaria 2006:165). On February 13, 2021, his birthday, Dimitri died of a heart attack at his house in Bologna.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Dimitri’s Satanism was initially influenced by Aleister Crowely (1875-1947); he claimed that he didn’t hold Anton La Vey (1930-1997) in high esteem (Dimitri and Lai 2006:144,146; Beccaria 2006:27). Rather, Dimitri’s Satanism conveyed a countercultural message: “what we propose is individual self-awareness: that men and women become self-aware and break away from external deities” (Dimitri and Lai 2006:14). As Dimitri put the matter:

A famous occultist of the past, Aleister Crowley, scandalised the politically correct world with his statement ‘Do What Thou Wilt’: this statement is a foundation of Satanist philosophy and its meaning is very deep. This sentence, that so much scandalised moralists and boring minds, does not mean do whatever crosses your mind, in a frantic and chaotic way and under transgressive stress, but execute (DO) what is your will. The meaning of this sentence is the true law of magic: transform reality (DO) based on your will….Every intelligent person has the right to be what they are, to cultivate their impulses instead of repressing them, the right to lead them towards a goal that one elected. Therefore, the person has a duty towards themselves, by instinct, to realise what they really will; everyone can only live their existence according to their own nature, and only those who fully live their ‘essence’ are happy (Dimitri Cos’è la magia, undated).

For Dimitri, Bambini di Satana was a “cultural association originating in paganism that considers man and woman as the thinking center of the universe and who can express, through rituals, a self-awareness that harmonises with the ego” (Dimitri and Lai 2006:32).

Dimitri was a skeptic about such phenomena as religion, spirits, afterlife, and possession from an early age. For example, he recalled that at the age of fourteen he was exorcised, but with no results; in fact, he was harassed by the priest (Beccaria 2006:15; Dimitri and Lai 2006:26-27). He stated that he did not believe in the hereafter; he did report on having witnessed “quite strange phenomena. Levitation, ‘raps’ on walls, on séance tables, on human bodies. I even recorded voices through experiments in psychophony.” However, he also specified that such experiences “were just the results of experiments, not really a demonstration of the existence of spirits, because, as it is well known, our brain has amazing potential” (Dimitri and Lai 2006:26). Dimitri was also skeptical about demonic possessions (Dimitri and Lai 2006:48), asking for instance “why Satan does not possess a head of State; then a world war would be for him a child’s play” (Dimitri and Lai 2006:27, italics in the original).

The philosophy of Bambini di Satana extolled vice, art, spirit, wealth, as well as science, praised as “one of religion’s main enemies” (Introvigne 2010:400). In a later phase, the visitors of the website Bambini di Satana (whose name is written in gothic font) were welcomed by the following message:

RATIONALIST group, not based on a creed. We emphasise that we do NOT believe in spirits, in ‘god’ or the ‘devil.’ We only use ‘Satan’ as a synonym of ‘opposition.’ From time immemorial, such emancipatory opposition is exerted through SCIENCE, the only tool that can tear apart obscurantism, whatever its origin is. The light that illuminates the darkness is rationality. Our activities: promotion of science as a tool of emancipation. Monitoring religious and/or pseudoscientific abuse” (Bambini di Satana website n.d.).

This guiding philosophy translated directly into Dimitri’s formulation of the association’s mission:

Dissemination of a mindset receptive towards the idea that humans evolve. Promotion of official science as a tool of evolution in opposition to obscurantism. Promotion of state secularism. Promotion of basic human rights. Promotion of artistic values. Monitoring superstition-based religious abuses. Monitoring pseudoscience-based obscurantism. Dissemination of online material related to all the aforementioned points. Keeping a database of Italian pedophilic priests – a database created by the association, detailing the names of the priests involved in cases of sexual abuse of children. Keeping an international database (handled by a third party). De-baptism related procedures, paperwork, free legal support. Dissemination of general-public scientific and cultural information, in defense of secularism, basic human rights, and human self-development. Debunking pseudoscientific hoaxes and theories. Collaboration with international networks in defense of children. Collaboration with international networks in defense of human dignity, including but not limited to LGBT individuals” (Dimitri, personal communication, December 28, 2018).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

For Dimitri, ritual is simply an enactment of individual will:

What is a ritual, then? It is a set of actions that, from a point of the will  [sic – Italian “da un punto di volontà”] lead to the goal one wills. In each and every moment of our life we perform rituals: in order to get to point ‘B’ starting from point ‘A’ we need to follow a certain path, only that one, because alternative paths would upset our will, we would find ourselves at point ‘C’ or point ‘D.’ Therefore, there are specific actions we take to go from ‘A’ to ‘B,’ and only those specific actions. The set of actions taken is called ritual…. On the energetic plane, things are not different. In order to obtain a specific thing, one needs the help of a specific demon, the demon is conjured with the most appropriate ritual, that is, a set of words and actions that conjure the energy that one wants. Once we have obtained the energetic presence, once we have tuned in with it, we will use the will as a to achieve our goal. This is what a ritual is all about, there are neither horrible corpses, nor human bones, nor sacrifices: all this is only based on an iron will.

Participating in the oath of allegiance is the initial ritual, which marks one’s entry into the group:

I swear fidelity to the Work of Satan’s Children and to Satan himself, that is, to myself, erect in my nature, in my divine ego. I swear loyalty in my actions following my initiation. By sealing my signature with a drop of blood I proclaim myself Satan.

The initiation is celebrated by tracing the number 666 with Dimitri’s blood on the novice’s forehead, as the novice stood naked in front of the congregation (CESNUR 2021b). Bambini di Satana has offered a vast array of wedding ceremonies (including for couples, throuples, and even relatives), baptism rejection, divorce, damnation, and possession. Rituals performed in Bologna take place in a temple, which in fact is a room located in Dimitri’s apartment. The room contains an altar, effigies of the devil, a wand, a bell, a sword, a chalice, pentacles, and dressed in cowls (Dimitri and Lai 2006:52-53).

Sex was also one of the elements of the earliest period of the Bambini di Satana. It was present both in their language and in their rituals, at least on paper. Half of the Infernal Gospel, a handbook of sorts authored by Dimitri is, according to Introvigne, “a description of sexual intercourse of all sorts and kinds in a style reminiscent of pornographic publications” (Introvigne 2010:400).  Dimitri explained that “there were experiments in tantrism (Crowley’s “red magic”) but certainly not tons of sex” (Dimitri, personal communication, December 28, 2018).

One of the vice-presidents, Alessandro Chalambalakis, who joined during a later phase remembered that at the time of his participation the rituals were performed weekly, or bi-weekly, that they hardly involved more than five participants, and that sex was not a main component. They were rather a form of “demonic meditation,” aimed at exploring one’s subconscious and empowering one’s creative instinct (Chalambalakis, personal communication, August 4, 2021).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The Bambini di Satana Corporation was founded in 1982 and was legally registered at the Bologna courts as a non-profit cultural association. Affiliation was free, and the fee was simply required for the membership card, which expired annually and gave access to special rituals (CESNUR 2021b). The symbol of the organization was a goat’s head inscribed in a five-pointed pentacle [Image at right]

Dimitri styled himself “La Grande Bestia 666” (The Great Beast 666) (Dimitri 1998) and publicly expressed his ambition to become the reference point for Satanists the world over (CESNUR 2021b). He served as president of the association, which was led by a Council composed of five members serving three-year terms. Affiliates formed “monothematic groups” that pursued member interests in certain areas of study. These groups were subject to the Council’s approval, and they were led by one “responsabile.” Affiliates were not allowed to use the name Bambini di Satana outside the association and its initiatives (Dimitri and Lai 2006:49-50).

The organization’s founding principles included democracy and the rejection of racism and any form of violence and racism. In order to obtain membership, one was required to be at least age eighteen, provide personal data for organizational records, pay a membership fee, and sign with their blood an oath of allegiance to Satan. Membership was a two-stage process. One first joined an entry group, perusing Bambini’s material under an affiliate’s supervision. Later, one formally expressed interest in completing the membership process, underwent an examination on a topic of interest, and, upon the group’s Council approval, received a personal magic name. Disaffiliation required a formal request. Membership could be revoked in case of illegal conduct or behavior inconsistent with group statutes. Non-participatory membership through voluntary donations was also permissible.

Members were quite diverse. According to Chalambalakis, members were a mixture of esotericism enthusiasts, rationalists, anti-Christians, atheists, agnostics, heavy-metal fans, and others who were simply captivated by Dimitri’s charisma (Chalambalakis, personal communication, August 4, 2021). Membership numbers are difficult to estimate, with most estimates being in the range of a few hundred, particularly in online and financial supporters are not included (Paolinelli 2007:54, 65; Beccaria 2006:45, 53, 167; Dimitri, personal communication, December 28, 2018).

Around 1997-1998 Dimitri and Chalambalakis created the first Bambini di Satana webpage, and designed and produced the magazine Kaffeina. The later website was designed and managed by Dimitri. The site included articles that criticised conspiracy theories, fake news, and pseudosciences, but also contained a “pedophilic priests database” and a page for sbattezzo (literally: de-baptism), a form to be sent to one’s parish requesting that their name be struck from the record of baptised children. The website also hosted multiple interviews with Dimitri.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Beginning in the late 1980s, Dimitri and some of his administrative associates experienced a series of sexual abuse claims, similar to those that were circulating in both Europe and the United States as a central feature of what became known as the “Satanism scare” (Introvigne 2016; Zanin 2004). In all of these cases Dimitri and his associates were legally cleared of wrongdoing.

The first charges were brought in 1989 when a carabiniere who infiltrated the group claimed that, every Friday, Dimitri celebrated orgiastic rites including sexual abuse of virgins. However, no supporting evidence was presented and the case was dropped (Beccaria 2006:40-41; Dimitri and Lai 2006:66). A second incident took place in 1992 in Savignano sul Rubicone (Rimini) where one of the group’s ceremonies was raided based on a suspicion was that the group was engaging in prostitution. However, no supporting evidence was presented and the case was shelved (Beccaria 2006:44). Dimitri, however, lost his job as a security guard and started to financially support himself by selling his services as a fortune teller (Dimitri and Lai 2006:101; Beccaria 2006:45). In January 1996, Dimitri, the vice-president Piergiorgio Bonora, and the director Gennaro Luongo were jailed over the accusation of having sexually assaulted a girl who entertained a relationship with Luongo and had signed up for membership but never participated in rituals (Beccaria 2006:48-51). While the case was being litigated, Dimitri attempted suicide in jail (Beccaria 2006:59-60). The girl’s claims, however, proved inconsistent on several counts, and the case was dismissed. Dimitri was released from prison, and found his apartment had been turned upside down during a raid (Beccaria 2006:68; Dimitri and Lai 2006:81). In 1996, the same accuser renewed her accusations, this time with support from the Gruppo di Ricerca e Informazione sulle Sette (Group for Research and Information on Sects) (Beccaria 2006:72). For a time the trial received wide exposure throughout regional and national media. Speculations emerged as to the existence of a network of Satanists all over the country and of socially respectable people above Dimitri manipulating him (Beccaria 2006:81,84). Local and national press fueled the panic and Dimitri’s “satanic aura.” During the trial, however, major inconsistencies and absence of supporting evidence emerged. Due to the lack of evidence and inconsistent testimonies, the trial ended on June 20, 1997 with Dimitri’s (and the other defendants’) acquittal: there was no case to answer (Italian: “il fatto non sussiste”). The only offense detected was a minor tax violation (Beccaria 2006:134-135; Dimitri and Lai 2006:132). The acquittal was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in January 2000 (Beccaria 2006:162). In July 2004 the Court of Appeal in Bologna ordered a compensation of 100,000 Euros to Dimitri for having unjustly served thirteen months in jail (Beccaria 2006:165). [Image at right] Finally, in 1999 two additional sets of charges involving sexual violence were brought against Dimitri. Again, in both cases the testimonies were inconsistent, and the accusations were ruled to have no merit (Beccaria 2006:159-60).

The most significant challenge to Bambini di Satana is the death of Marco Dimitri in 2021. No immediate leadership figure has been identified, and the future of the small group therefore remains very much in doubt.

IMAGES
Image #1: Marco Dimitri.
Image #2: Bambini di Satana organization logo.
Image #3: Marco Dimitri being arrested and escorted by two carabinieri.

REFERENCES

Affaritaliani.it. 2013. “Lazio2, metti in lista il satanista. Spunta Dimitri, ‘bambini di Satana’” [“Electoral District Latium 2. A Satanist is Running. There is also ‘Bambini di Satana’’s Dimitri”], February 4. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20130206231615/http://affaritaliani.libero.it/roma/lazio2-metti-in-lista-il-satanista-spunta-dimitri-bambini-di-satana-04022013.html on 28 October 2021.

Andreotti, Antonio. 2021. “Dimitri, cordoglio social per il «Charles Manson italiano»” [“Dimitri, Mourning across Social Media for the ‘Italian Charles Manson’”] Corriere della Sera – Corriere di Bologna, February 15. Accessed from https://corrieredibologna.corriere.it/bologna/cronaca/21_febbraio_15/dimitri-cordoglio-social-il-charles-mansons-italiano-63b6784e-6f59-11eb-8d89-3e2fa4a52315.shtml on 28 October 2021.

Beccaria, Antonella. 2006. Bambini di Satana. Rome: Stampa Alternativa.

Bigliardi, Stefano. 2021. “Bambini di Satana (Children of Satan).” [Extended Profile]. Accessed from https://tinyurl.com/mbn7enyw on 29 October 2021.

Campello, Bernardino. 1997. “Pedofilia attenti agli isterismi. Il nuovo Luther Blissett” [“Pedophilia, Beware of Hysteria. The New Book by Luther Blissett”], La Repubblica, December 1. Accessed from http://www.lutherblissett.net/archive/331_it.html on 18 August 2021.

Dimitri, Marco. 1998. Il chiodo nel chiodo. Come ti inchiodo il cristiano. Edizione Internet. Accessed from https://home666.tripod.com/chiodo1.html on 18 August 2021.

Dimitri, Marco. Undated. Cos’è la magia [What is Magic]. Accessed from https://home666.tripod.com/magia.html on 18 August 2021.

Dimitri, Marco and Isabella Lai. 2006. Dietro lo specchio nero. Magenta: Iris 4 Edizioni.

Enciclopedia CICAP. 2003. “Margherita Hack,” August 14. Accessed from https://www.cicap.org/n/articolo.php?id=101248 on 18 August 2021.

Gazzetta di Modena. 1998. “Accuse ai ‘Ribelli luciferiani’ Sette demoniache una contro l’altra. I ‘Bambini di satana’ insorgono” [“Accusations to the ‘Luciferian Rebels’. Demonic Sects Against Each Other. Bambini di Satana Outraged”], December 6. Accessed from https://ricerca.gelocal.it/gazzettadimodena/archivio/gazzettadimodena/1998/12/06/DA713.html on 28 October 2021.

Gulotta, Carlo. 2003. “Emanuele, da satanista pentito a cacciatore di balordi nei parchi” [“Emanuele, from Repentant Satanist to Hobo Hunter in the Parks”] La Repubblica, March 7. Accessed from https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2003/03/07/emanuele-da-satanista-pentito-cacciatore-di-balordi.html on 18 August 2021.

Il Fatto Quotidiano. 2013. “Bambino di Satana candidato con la Hack: ‘Stato e Chiesa rimangano distinti’” [“Satan’s Child Running with Margherita Hack: ‘State and Church Should Remain Separate’”], February 6. Accessed from https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2013/02/06/bambino-di-satana-candidato-con-la-hack-stato-e-chiesa-rimangano-distinti/491305/ on 18 August 2021.

Il Resto del Carlino. 1996. “Dimitri in libertà: ‘Sono innocente’” [“Dimitri Is Free: ‘I Am Innocent’”], February 13, p. 8.

Introvigne, Massimo. 2016. Satanism: A Social History. Leiden: Brill.

Introvigne, Massimo. 2010. I satanisti. Storia, riti e miti del satanismo. Milano: SugarCo.

Introvigne, Massimo and PierLuigi Zoccatelli. 2021a. “Giorgio Bongiovanni e Nonsiamosoli” CESNUR. Accessed from https://cesnur.com/i-movimenti-dei-dischi-volanti/giorgio-bongiovanni-e-nonsiamosoli/ on 18 August 2021.

CESNUR. 2021a. “Giorgio Bongiovanni e Nonsiamosoli.” In Le religioni in Italia, edited by Massimo Introvigne and PierLuigi Zoccatelli. Accessed from https://cesnur.com/i-movimenti-dei-dischi-volanti/giorgio-bongiovanni-e-nonsiamosoli on 18 August 2021.

CESNUR. 2021b. “I bambini di Satana.” In Le religioni in Italia, edited by Massimo Introvigne and PierLuigi Zoccatelli. Accessed from https://cesnur.com/il-satanismo/i-bambini-di-satana/  on 18 August 2021.

CESNUR. 2021c. “Le bestie di Satana.” InLe religioni in Italia, edited by Massimo Introvigne and PierLuigi Zoccatelli. Accessed from  https://cesnur.com/il-satanismo/le-bestie-di-satana/ on 18 August 2021.

MarcoHMCF. [YouTube channel]. 2011a. “Intervista a Marco Dimitri – Parte 1” [Informal interview with Marco Dimitri and vice-president Andrea Pasciuta, Bologna, 16 February 2011]. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhuzGdBAcVM&t=108s on 18 August 2021.

MarcoHMCF. [YouTube channel]. 2011b. “Intervista a Marco Dimitri – Parte 2”. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhWZ6NHYtWQ on 18 August 2021.

MarcoHMCF. [YouTube channel]. 2011c. “Intervista a Marco Dimitri – Parte 3”. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq174AarDQo&t=9s on 18 August 2021.

MarcoHMCF. [YouTube channel]. 2011d. “Intervista a Marco Dimitri – Parte 4”. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pkW1yLNcEo on 18 August 2021.

Paolinelli, Patrizio. 2007. “Esoterismo, sicurezza e comunicazione. Il caso dei Bambini di Satana” La critica sociologica 161 (primavera 2007):38-85.

Pitrelli, Stefano. 2013. “Satanisti in politica, il candidato Marco Dimitri nella lista di Democrazia Atea alla Camera in Lazio” [“Satanists Doing Politics. Candidate Marco Dimitri Running in Latium for the Chamber of Deputies in Democrazia Atea’s List”], The Huffington Post, February 6. Accessed from https://www.huffingtonpost.it/2013/02/06/satanisti-in-politica-il-candidato-lazio_n_2631720.html on 18 August 2021.

Smargiassi, Michele. 2004. “Sesso, sangue e strani riti. Così decisi di lasciare Satana” [“Sex, Blood, and Strange Rituals. How I Decided to Leave Satan”] La Repubblica, June 14. Accessed from  https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2004/06/14/sesso-sangue-strani-riti-cosi-decisi-di.html on 18 August 2021.

Somajni, Chiara. 1998. “Luther Blissett, un nome per tutti” [“Luther Blissett, a Name for Everyone”], Il Sole 24 Ore, January 25. Accessed from http://www.lutherblissett.net/archive/344_it.html on 18 August 2021.

Spezia, Luigi. 2002. “Le pene dei Luciferiani” [“The Luciferians’ Sentences”] La Repubblica, February 26. Accessed from https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2002/02/26/le-pene-dei-luciferiani.html on 18 August 2021.

Super User [Nickname]. 2011. “Intervista doppia Marco Dimitri vs. Gabriele Amorth” [“Double Interview, Marco Dimitri vs. Gabriele Amorth”], Bambini di Satana website, March 27. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20110724235956/https://www.bambinidisatana.com/index.php/interv/health-news13977345/interviewsit/465-amdi on 18 August 2021.

UAAR website. 2021. “I Presidenti onorari dell’UAAR”. Accessed from  https://www.uaar.it/uaar/presidenti_onorari/ on 18 August 2021.

Zanin, Simone. 2004. Rappresentazione e amplificazione della devianza nel caso dei Bambini di Satana. [Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Bologna: Faculty of Law, University of Bologna].

Zoccatelli, PierLuigi. 1999. “Notes on the Ordo Templi Orientis in Italy”. Theosophical History. A Quarterly Journal of Research VII: 279-94.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Bambini di Satana’s earliest website: https://home666.tripod.com/index.html

Bambini di Satana’s website in the second phase: http://www.bambinidisatana.com/

bonoir07 [YouTube channel]. 2007. “I bambini di Satana. Il caso di Marco Dimitri” [Interview with Marco Dimitri]. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8VHmaxP74 on 18 August 2021.

Dimitri, Marco. 1992. Liber legis. Accessed from https://home666.tripod.com/legge.html on 18 August 2021.

Dimitri, Marco. Undated. Re Bled. Racconto surreale. [King Bled. Surreal Tale.]

Dimitri, Marco, Stefano Lanzi and Susi Medusa Gottardi. Undated.  I Bambini di Satana – Vangelo Infernale.

Grilli, Andrea, ed. 2000. Luther Blissett. Il burattinaio della notizia. Bologna: PuntoZero.

Luther Blissett. 1997. Lasciate che i bimbi. Pedofilia: un pretesto per la caccia alle streghe. Rome: Castelvecchi.

Luther Blissett. 2001. Back Pages, Storia di un libro maledetto: “Lasciate che i bimbi” di Luther Blissett.

Marco Dimitri’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/marcodimitri1/featured

Mortis120. [YouTube channel]. 2009. “Dibattito Marco Dimitri e Funari Parte 1” [Dimitri’s participation in a popular TV show in the 1990s]. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvsbQv6UTI on 18 August 2021.

Mortis120. [YouTube channel]. 2009. “Dibattito Marco Dimitri e Funari Parte 2”. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CzYqNpvTc on 18 August 2021.

Publication Date:
28 October 2021

GLOBAL VISION BIBLE CHURCH TIMELINE

1971 (April 24):  Melissa Kay Biggers was born.

1976 (May 18):  Gregory Duane Locke was born in Nashville, Tennessee.

1992:  Locke converted to evangelical Christianity.

1995:  Locke and Melissa Biggers became engaged and married a year later. The couple had four children.

1996:  Locke founded Global Vision Baptist Church in Mt. Juliet. The church later changed its name to Global Vision Bible Church.

1996-2006:  Locke worked as an independent evangelist.

1998:  Locke graduated with a degree in Theology from Ambassador Baptist College, Lattimore, North Carolina.

2000:  Locke received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Baptist Theological School New England, Pascoag, Rhode Island, 2000.

2001:  Locke received a Master’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Baptist Theological School New England, Pascoag, Rhode Island.

2004:  Locke received a Doctor of Divinity Degree from Baptist Theological School New England, Pascoag, Rhode Island.

2006:  Locke founded the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet.

2016 (April 26): Locke posted a video on Facebook challenging Target’s policy of allowing customers to choose the restroom and fitting room appropriate to their gender.

2017:  Locke divorced his first wife, Melissa.

2018:  Greg Locke and Taisha Cowan McGee were married.

2020:  Locke founded LockeMedia, a conservative media outlet.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Gregory Duane Locke [Image at right] was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 18, 1976. His early life was tumultuous. As he has described his teenage years: “I moved away, [from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee] and I was actually in state’s custody. I was arrested six times. On probation five times. I was just a wayward teenager. My father was in the Tennessee State Penitentiary for about ten years, and I hated my stepdad … so, I was actually shipped off to a boy’s home, and I became a Christian ten days after I got there.” (Famous People Staff 2022)

At age fifteen, after five arrests, he was placed in the Good Shepherd Children’s Home in Murfreesboro. At sixteen he converted to evangelical Christianity. His personal conversion story was later featured in 2004 on Unshackled (“Unshackled” 2021), a popular radio drama series produced in Chicago by Pacific Garden Mission. It was also at the Good Shepherd Children’s home where he met his first wife, Melissa Biggers, who was on staff at the facility.

He was only nineteen when in 1995 he became engaged to Melissa Biggers. Within a year the couple was married and eventually had four children. The following year he founded Global Vision Baptist Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. Locke later found the independent Baptist tradition overly confining and changed the name of the church he founded to Global Vision Bible Church. Bible churches present themselves as adopting the Bible as their standard for doctrine and practice and profess the inerrancy of the Bible text.

Between 1996 and 2006 Locke worked as an independent evangelist. He also pursued a series of academic and pastoral credentials. In1998, Locke graduated with a degree in Theology from Ambassador Baptist College in Lattimore, North Carolina. In 2000, Locke received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies from Baptist Theological School New England in Pascoag, Rhode Island. The following year he received a Masters Degree from the same institution, and he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity Degree in 2004. Locke then founded the Global Vision Bible Church in Nashville in 2006. In addition to his pastoral career, Locke has pursued commercial interests, developing a casual clothing line and a line of drink shakers.

Locke’s rise in national visibility began in 2015 when he posted a video decrying the Tennessee governor’s veto of a bill mandating the Bible as the state book of Tennessee. He followed that video up with another alleging that the local county school curriculum was indoctrinating students with Islamic beliefs. However, his rise to national internet prominence occurred in 2016. In a Facebook video post he opposed the Target store chain’s policy announcement that customers could choose bathrooms and fitting rooms based on their gender identity (Humbles 2016). In his video, Locke stated that

Your political correctness has caused you to do something extraordinarily stupid,” Locke says in the video. “… Because you’re not targeting and being inclusive to transgender people by doing this. They make up 0.3 percent of the population. What you are targeting are perverts, pedophiles, people who are going to hurt our children.

The post received more than 10,000,000 views I just a few days. His subsequent internet posts increased his national visibility as he became a prominent voice in the anti-vaccine movement.

Marital issues resulted in Melissa and Greg Locke divorcing in 2017. The following year he married Taisha (Tai) Cowan McGee who was a member of the church congregation. [Image at right] The divorce and remarriage became a major issue within the conservative Bible Church Movement.

DOCTRINES/RITUALS

The Global Vision Bible Church website (2021) describes the church as a place where “Where Broken People Find New Meaning To Life.“ The church mission statement goes on to state that

We endeavor to reach out to those who are hurting, marginalized, broken and in need of restoration. We have found that when we go after the people that nobody wants, the Lord sends us the people that everybody wants. Our entire congregation is known for being accepting, loving, gracious and forgiving Bible church.

The church prominently displays the doctrinal precepts of a Bible church (Global Vision Bible Church website 2021):

We believe the Bible is the perfect Word of God.
We believe that salvation is provided by Jesus Christ and Him alone.
We believe in the eternal salvation of all believers.
We believe in the Bible doctrine of the Trinity.
We believe that the local New Testament Church is God’s ordained institution.
We believe that Baptism is a fundamental step of obedience in our walk with Christ.

For example, in explaining the second doctrinal precept, Locke asserted that

If you believe that there are multiple ways to Heaven then you are not a Bible believer, because the very essence of the Gospel — the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ — is not that Jesus is a way to Heaven, He is the one and only way to Heaven… (Blair 2017a).

In addition to the church’s organizational principles, Greg Locke has published several books in which he connects religious doctrines with a conservative political agenda. Locke has published two recent conservative call to action books: This Means War: We Will Not Surrender Through Silence (2020) [Image at right] and Weapons of Our Warfare: Unleashing the Power of the Armor of God (2021). Locke also distributes his ideas through a weekly radio broadcast, “The Windows Of Heaven.”

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

From the founding of Global Vision Bible Church, Greg Locke has served as Lead Pastor. For a time, Jarrod Almond served as Executive Pastor, but he was dismissed from his position around 2018 (Dunn 2018). Through the history of the church, therefore, Locke has largely administered the church without the participation of elders, deacons, or formal congregational input. His wives both have served as administrative assistants.

The church building, which is located in Mt. Juliet, which has a population of about 40,000. [Image at right] Through its history it has grown to several hundred, primarily through adding services within the existing facility (Humbles 2016). The church has purchased additional land for church expansion. The church also accepts what it refers to as “internet members” who participate in the church through the internet (Dunn 2019). Indeed, Locke’s public prominence is primarily the product of his substantial internet presence. In 2021, he reportedly had 2,200,000 Facebook followers, 195,000 followers on Instagram, and 102,700 followers on Twitter (VoleNath 2021). He also has videos posted on YouTube and a podcast (On Point). The following year Locke claimed 4,000,000 followers across his media platforms and a weekly church attendance of over 1,000 (Gowen 2022). Locke acknowledges that he has lost church members as a result of his controversial social and political positions but vigorously asserts his commitment to the course he has charted

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Locke has staked out a strongly conservative position on a variety of contemporary religious and political issues and has used his internet presence to give voice to those positions. The result has been that he has attracted both support and opposition from a variety of religious and secular groups. His marital situation, his opposition to vaccination for Covid-19, and his  rejection of LGBT rights have been major flash points (Duke 2021).

Given their doctrinal emphasis of the sanctity and permanence of marriage, it is not surprising that numerous conservative Christian leaders have excoriated Locke over his divorce and remarriage. For example, an article in Pulpit and Pen asserted that “It is a reproach to Christ’s church that a man like Locke masquerades as a man of God when really and truly, he is an adulterous internet religion huckster” (Dunn 2019). Another leader called for his resignation as pastor (Blair 2018):

If your marriage fails, then you have failed as a leader in the most fundamental way. Now you can sit there and make all the excuses. Of course everyone who gets divorced always tells you how it’s 100 percent the other person’s fault. Even if that were true, even if it was 100 percent her fault and we don’t know the details, he still must step down as pastor.

While Locke did announce his divorce and remarriage to his church congregation, he rejected the label of adulterer and asserted that he planned “to keep living for God” (Blair 2018). Nonetheless, he has continued to face opposition within his faith tradition for what is regarded as violation of a foundational precept. Internal divisions within the church may have been the impetus for his charges that there were “full-blown, spell-casting” witches within the congregation. He went on to threaten that “You so much as cough wrong and I’ll expose in front of everybody under this tent, you stinking spell-casting, pharmakeia devil worshipping and mongrel,”…“You were sent to destroy this church” (Smietana 2022).

Locke hgas been an equally staunch opponent of transgender rights, and has referred to transgender parishioners as “the sodomite crowd infiltrating the church” (Bolinger 2020). Indeed, it was his opposition to Target’s policy of allowing staff and customers to select restrooms and fitting rooms consistent with their gender identity that initially fueled his internet celebrity (Blair 2017a). He has based his opposition on the assertion that

Transgenderism is not a civil right. It’s not normal, it’s anti-biblical. And I’m sorry, just because I have morals and values that does not make me a discriminatory bigot. I’m sick of the day and age in which we live when people call good evil and evil they call good…”

Locke’s Facebook post was temporarily removed by Facebook; he was later able to repost the message. His position has, of course, been met with determined resistance from more liberal Christian groups pursuing policies of greater inclusiveness as well as LGBTQ advocacy groups (Smith 2019; Bollinger 2020).

His controversiality notwithstanding, Locke has continued to build his following by connecting with three interrelated groups: supporters of former president Donald Trump, QAnon participants, and Anti-Vaccine activists. Locke has thereby clearly merged religion and politics. He has repeatedly identified himself as a Trump supporter, [Image at right] appeared publicly with Trump allies (Roger Stone, Mike Lindell, and members of the Proud Boys) and referred to opponents as “Godless Democrats.” In his support of former President Trump, he asserted that the election was “crooked” and supported the Capitol insurrection on Twitter just prior to January 6 (“If you don’t have convictions worth dying for, you’ve never learned what living is” (Pidcock 2021).  He was personally present at the Capital on January 6 (Gowen 2022). He often wears Trump-themed clothing accents. Locke has also repeated the central tenet of QAnon ideology that a satanic underground group of Washington politicians and Hollywood celebrities is abusing young children (Bromley and Richardson 2022; Crump 2021). For example, he has referred to President Joe Biden as  a fraud and “a sex trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel (Peiser 2021).

Drawing on the intense conflict surrounding vaccination and related issues during the Covid-19 pandemic, Locke’s greatest public impact to date has grown out of his opposition to vaccination and mask-wearing . With respect to the pandemic, he asserted that the pandemic has been a “hoax,” the death reports are “manipulated,” the vaccines were dangerous (“This evil vaccine will cause remarkably more deaths and problems than the virus itself.”), and the vaccines contain “aborted fetal tissue.” During one church service Locke stated that

If you’ve had the covid-19 shot, I’m telling you you’ve got poison in your veins,” Locke thundered. “We call out the covid-19 vaccine out right now. Keep that demonic spirit out of you right now in the name of Jesus! (Gowen 2022)

He has repeatedly stated that his church would continue to meet as an “essential service” despite mask and gathering regulations (“No masks, no temperature checks, no social distancing and no apology”) (Pidcock 2021).

Locke has been provocative in his approach. For example, concerning social distancing in church, he asserted that “We have a 2nd Amendment right to worship. If that’s impeded upon, we will invoke our 2nd Amendment right and meet you at the door” (Pidcock 2021). Most notably, he has threatened to expel anyone wearing a mask to a Global Vision service [Image at right] (Breslow 2021):

If they go through round two and you start showing up in all these masks and all this nonsense, I’ll ask you to leave. I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church. If you want to social distance, go to First Baptist Church, but don’t come to this one. As a result of his inflammatory rhetoric, Locke has been banned from Twitter, first temporarily and later permanently (Lund 2021).

What the future holds for Global Vision Bible Church is less clear. The church and its charismatic leader have rapidly emerged from relative obscurity to a prominent place among conservative religious groups promoting a radically conservative agenda on a specific set of social and political issues. In the moment, given the intensity of conflict and polarization, the most extreme position prevails. Still, Global Vision’s success depends largely on Greg Locke’s personal appeal, a continued high level of societal contestation, and an ability to maintain a high level of involvement simply through religiously themed internet postings. Focal political issues will shift, the pandemic will ultimately subside, and there will be winners and losers in the struggle for political advantage. There is no heir apparent to Lock, and there is no assurance that when new focal issues emerge the positions offered by Global Vision will resonate sufficiently to maintain the size and degree of involvement it now engenders. In this sense, Global Vision faces the same kind of challenge as have many emerging religious movements headed by a charismatic figure (Reeve, Guff and Russell 2021).

IMAGES
Image #1: Greg Locke.
Image #2: Taisha (Tai) Cowan McGee and Greg Locke.
Image #3: Book cover to Greg Locke’s book, This Means War: We Will Not Surrender Through Silence.
Image #4: The Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet.
Image #5: Greg Locke wearing a Trump-Pence cap.
Image #6: Billboard outside the church meeting tent instructing parishioners not to wear masks inside.

REFERENCES

Alund, Natalie. 2021. “Tennessee pastor Greg Locke accused of spreading false info about COVID banned from Twitter.” Nashville Tennessean, September 14. Accessed from https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2021/09/14/tennessee-pastor-greg-locke-banned-twitter-accused-covid-misinformation/8341396002/ on 5 October 2021.

Blair, Leonardo. 2018. “Tearful Pastor Greg Locke Admits He Is Now Divorced, but Insists ‘I Am Not an Adulterer’.” Christian Post Reporter, January 12. Accessed from https://www.christianpost.com/news/tearful-pastor-greg-locke-admits-he-is-now-divorced-but-insists-i-am-not-an-adulterer-213572/ on 3 October 2021.

Blair, Leonardo. 2017a. “Greg Locke Denounces Transgenderism, Declares It Mental Illness in Video Once Banned by Facebook.” Christian Post, September 20. Accessed from https://www.christianpost.com/news/greg-locke-denounces-transgenderism-declares-mental-illness-in-video-once-banned-by-facebook.html on 5 October 2021.

Blair, Leonardo. 2017b. “Pastor Greg Locke Slams Evangelicals Who Believe There Are Multiple Ways to Heaven.” Christian Post Reporter, December 20. Accessed from https://www.christianpost.com/news/christianity-is-not-the-only-way-to-heaven-prominent-presbyterian-pastor-says.html on 1 October 2021.

Breslow, Josh. 2021. “‘Stop it!’: Tennessee pastor threatens to oust members wearing masks.” Nexstar Media Wire, July 27. Accessed from https://wgntv.com/news/stop-it-tennessee-pastor-threatens-to-oust-members-wearing-masks/ on 5 October 2021.

Bromley, David G. and James T. Richardson. 2022. “The QAnon Conspiracy Narrative: Understanding the Social Construction of Danger.” In The Social Science of QAnon, edited by Monica Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crump, James. 2021. “Pastor Greg Locke’s Speech Against ‘Pedophiles in Hollywood’ Viewed Over 1.5M Times.” Newsweek, June 28. Accessed from https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-greg-locke-pedophiles-washington-dc-tom-hanks-oprah-1604725 on 5 October 2021.

Duke, Barry. 2021. “The Tide is Turning against COVID-Denying Pastor Greg Locke.” Patheos, August 17. Accessed from https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethinker/2021/08/the-tide-is-turning-against-covid-denying-pastor-greg-locke/ on 5 August 2021.

Dunn, Seth. 2019. “Pastor Greg Locke: Deadbeat Dad.” Pulpit and Pen, January 6. Accessed from https://pulpitandpen.org/2019/01/06/pastor-greg-locke-deadbeat-dad/ on 1 October 2021.

Humbles, Andy. 2016. “Mt. Juliet pastor’s video blasting Target goes viral.” The Tennessean, April 25. Accessed from https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/wilson/mt-juliet/2016/04/25/mt-juliet-pastors-video-blasting-target-goes-viral/83499222/ on 5 October 2021.

Famous People Staff. 2022. “Greg Locke Net Worth | Wife & Biography.” Famous People. Accessed from https://famouspeopletoday.com/greg-locke/ on 4 April 2022.

Global Vision Bible Church. 2021. “About Us.” Accessed from https://globalvisionbc.com/ on 1 October 2021.on October 2021.

Gowen, Annie. 2022. “A Jan. 6 pastor divides his Tennessee community with increasingly extremist views.” Washington Post, April 4. Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/31/tennessee-pastor-extremist-politics/ on 5 April 2022.

Locke, Greg. 2021. Weapons of Our Warfare: Unleashing the Power of the Armor of God. ‎Locke Media Publishing.

Locke, Greg. 2020. This Means War: We Will Not Surrender Through Silence. Locke Media Publishing.

Peiser, Jaclyn. 2021. “Evangelical pastor demands churchgoers ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense’.” Washington Post, July 27. Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/27/tennessee-pastor-greg-locke-masks/ on 5 October 2021.

Reeve, Elle, Samantha Guff, and Lacey Russell. 2021. “How a pastor’s spread of Covid misinformation divided one Tennessee family.” CNN, May 28. Accessed from https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/us/pastor-greg-locke-tennessee-family-covid-19/index.html on 5 October 2021.

Smietana, Bob. 2022. “Tennessee preacher Greg Locke says demons told him names of witches in his church.” Religion News, February 15. Accessed from https://religionnews.com/2022/02/15/tennessee-preacher-greg-locke-says-demons-told-him-names-of-witches-in-his-church/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=7ece5a5c11-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_02_16_02_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-7ece5a5c11-399904145 on 16 February 2022.

Smith, Reiss. 2019. “Right-wing pastor claims LGBT people are looking for ‘domination’.” Pink News, September 2. Accessed from https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/02/pastor-greg-locke-boston-straight-pride-domination/ on 5 October 2021.

“Unshackled.” 2021. Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Accessed from https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/559881 on 1 October 2021.

VoleNath. 2021. “Pastor Greg Locke Wikipedia: His Net Worth, Wife, and Bio Facts.” Famous Celebrities. Accessed from https://famous-celebrities.com/pastor-greg-locke-wikipedia/ on 5 October 2021.

Publication Date:
11 October 2011