Eileen Barker

Eileen Barker (b. 1938)

Eileen Barker was born in Edinburgh, UK in 1938. Her first academic education was in the field of Drama, and prior to her academic career she pursued an acting career, playing a variety of roles in England and abroad. Her career path shifted as she earned a First Class Honors degree in Sociology and a PhD, both from the London School of Economics (LSE). After receiving after receiving her BSc(Soc) that she assumed a position in sociology that she retained through her career as a Professor of Sociology, with special reference to religion. She subsequently continued her career as an emerita at LSE following her retirement in 2003. In addition to her academic work and teaching, Barker held a number of administrative posts, both at the departmental and university levels. Over the course of her career, she has produced a remarkable record of scholarship, several hundred publications in several dozen languages, hundreds of professional lectures and presentations at professional meetings in over seventy nations. Barker has received numerous academic honors in her home country, including election as a Fellow of the British Academy (1998) and as an Officer of the British Empire (2000). Internationally, she is one of the major founding scholars in the study of emerging and alternative religions.

Barker has made major contributions to the study of emerging and alternative religions in several ways. Her accomplishments begin with her own scholarship in this area. Her first book, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?, which grew out of her dissertation work, has become a classic, directly addressing the “cult/brainwashing” controversy that dominated much of the study of new religions in the 1960s and 1970s. Her book won the Outstanding Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1985. The importance of her legacy is demonstrated by the publication of two volumes celebrating her career and scholarship. Barker developed a special interest in the formation of new religious groups in Eastern and Central Europe. She was a founding member of the International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association and contributed to scholarship developing that area of study.

Second, Barker has served as an important representative of new religions studies to the broader study area of religion and sociology. She was elected to serve as president of two of the most important academic societies in the study of religion in the U.S.: President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1991 and as President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 2001. In Europe, she was elected as Chair of the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion Study Group in 1985 and of the London Society for the Study of Religion in 1994.

Third, Barker has been a primary ambassador to organized opponents of new religious groups, “cult watching groups.” She regularly participated in and gave presentations at the annual conferences of organizations such as the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). She served Cultic Studies Review editorial board. She earned a reputation among her colleagues for evenhandedly explaining the dynamics of both new religious groups, oppositional groups, and the dynamics of the conflict between them.

Barker has consistently engaged in public education through her career. In 1988, she founded INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements) and became the Chair of its Board of Governors. In 2019, the future of INFORM was assured when its headquarters moved to King’s College, London. Its mission of providing accurate, scientifically-based information about “minority religions and sects” remains unchanged. Barker served on the Board of Governors until 2022. The year after the founding of INFORM, Barker published New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction (1989). The volume has been reissued five times and translated into at least a dozen languages. Like INFORM, this book seeks to offer thoughtful, basic, evidence-based information that can be used by government officials, church leaders, media representatives, and the general public. It was for her combination of scholarly work and public education that in 2000 Barker received the Martin E. Marty Award for Contributions to the Public Understanding of Religion.

Selected Publications:

Barker, Eileen. 1984. The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Oxford: Blackwell.

Barker, Eileen. 1989. New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. London: HMSO.

Beckford, James and James Richardson, eds. 2004. Challenging Religion: Essays in Honour of Eileen Barker. London: Routledge.

Borowik, Irena, ed. 2006. Religions, Churches and Religiosity in Post-Communist Europe. Krakow: Nomos.

Share

Molokans

MOLOKANS TIMELINE

1765:  The first mention of the Molokans was in a report to the Synod of the Tambov consistory.

1805:  The Molokans received relief under Alexander I, as they were granted permission to move to Molochnye Vody.

1830s:  The Molokans were classified as a “most dangerous sect” under Nicholas I; the group was persecuted by the state, and exiled to Transcaucasia.

1830-1840:  There was a mass migration of Molokans to Transcaucasia.

19th century (mid-years):  There was an emergence and active spread of Molokans Jumpers in the Transcaucasia.

1905 (April 17):  Tsar Nicholas II issued a decree of religious liberty.

1905:  The All-Russian Congress of Molokans in Vorontsovka was devoted to the centenary of granting religious freedom to the Molokans in Russia.

1901-1911:  There was a migration of Molokans to California, U.S.

1921:  A proclamation was issued To the sectarians and Old Believers living in Russia and abroad, which cancelled all restrictions on non-Orthodox believers. The Union of Spiritual Christians Molokans was re-established.

1929:  In the Soviet Union, “sectarians” were forbidden to form their own economic and production associations and cooperatives.

1950s: About 700 Molokans moved from Iran to California.

1961:  Molokans from Turkey relocated to the Stavropol Region of the USSR.

1964:  Migration of Molokans from the United States to Australia began after a prophecy.

1980s-1990s:  There was a mass exodus of the Molokans from Transcaucasia to Russia, U.S., and Australia.

1991:  The Union of Spiritual Christians of Molokans of Russia was re-created.

2000s:  There was a significant decrease in the number of Molokans in the Transcaucasia region.

2005:  The World Congress of Spiritual Christians of Molokans was “dedicated to the 200th anniversary of granting the Molokans freedom of religion” in the village Kochubeevskoe of the Stavropol Region.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Traditionally in historiography, Molokan Spiritual Christianity refers to the old Russian sectarianism along with Dukhobors, Subbotniks (Sabbatarians), Khlysts, Skoptsy, and some other movements. There are several versions of the origin of the name “Molokan” (“milk drinkers”). Most likely, the official authorities used that term because they did not adhere to the church fasts and consumed on fasting days meat and milk. The Molokans themselves explain it by quoting from the Bible: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation” (1 Peter 2:2). According to another version, the name was finally assigned to them in the early nineteenth century in connection with their mass resettlement to the Molochnye Vody River in the Taurida Governorate. Another folk version states that this is how the local administration told them: “malo kanuli” (“few of you have disappeared”).

The exact time and place of origin of the Molokan religion are unknown. [Image at right] It is usually thought that it appeared in Central Russia in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1765, the word “molokaniya” is used for the first time in the reports to the Synod of the Tambov consistory about dissenters (Bonch-Bruevich 1973:247). The founder is considered to be the tailor Semen Matveevich Uklein (1727-1809), a resident of the village of Uvarovo, Tambov Province. He was married to the daughter of the Dukhobor leader Illarion Pobirokhin and was himself a member of the Dukhobor movement (Doukhobor). He later developed his doctrine within the framework of spiritual Christianity. In Dukhobor doctrine, Uklein rejected the idea of a “living Christ” embodied in the leaders of the doctrine and regarded all men as sons of God, equal among themselves. The true Church, according to Uklein, is based only on the Bible. From Tambov Province, the movement spread to the neighbouring provinces of Saratov, Voronezh, Astrakhan, and others.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the movement split into different currents: Molokans of the Don Persuasion (molokane donskogo tolka), the Molokan Subbotniks, the Jumpers (pryguny), the Communalists (obshchie), and etc. None of them was leading or predominant. After the separation of the Molokan groups and especially the Jumper movement, the remaining part of the Molokans was called Constant Molokans (postoyannye) (Klibanov 1965:146).

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Molokans had become a notable phenomenon in the Tambov, Voronezh, and Saratov Provinces. According to Molokan legends and manuscripts, in 1805, Alexander I (1801–1825) issued an imperial decree that granted the Molokans limited recognition and religious freedom. In 1905, 1955, and 2005, Molokan congresses celebrated the centennial, sesquicentennial, and bicentennial anniversaries of this decree (Clay 2012). Under the relatively tolerant reign of Alexander I, the government organized the relocation of “sectarians” to the outskirts of the empire to limit their influence. Dukhobors and Molokans were allowed to move to Taurida Governorate, and a significant number of Tambov Molokans moved to Molochnye Vody.

Under Nicholas I in the 1830s, the movement (along with the Dukhobors and Subbotniks) was categorized as the “most dangerous sect”. The Molokans not only were forbidden to disseminate their teachings, but also prohibited from worship, performing rituals, holding public positions, and having Orthodox workers. The government also subjected them to severe economic sanctions. They recommended sending the “sectarians” enlisting for military service to the Transcaucasian Corps.

Beginning in the 1830s, Molokans began resettling in the territory of current Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey. Initially the Karabakh province was the place of settlement of Russian sectarians in the Caucasus, where Dukhobors from the Don and Molokans from the Tambov Province were exiled. After 1833, the Minister of Internal Affairs permitted settlement in other regions of Transcaucasia (Dolzhenko 1985:23). The state sought, on the one hand, to isolate the Orthodox population from the “sectarian contagion” and, on the other hand, to repopulate the new outskirts of the empire (Breyfogle 2005). In particular, the introduction of relaxing laws concerning immigrants and the religious freedom led many sectarians to come there voluntarily (Dolzhenko 1985:21-24). Since the annexation of new territories in the Far East in the second half of the nineteenth century, the government started resettling many Molokans to the Amur Region (Buyanov 2013).

In the mid-1830s, prophets appeared in the Molokan villages of Samara, Saratov, Astrakhan, and Taurida Provinces, proclaiming the imminent end of the world and the advent of the millennial kingdom of the righteous. Lukyan Sokolov of Tambov announced doomsday in 1836, prophesying the need to move to Ararat, where it is possible to build a New Jerusalem among the chosen people. In Taurida and Saratov Provinces, Fyodor Bulgakov (David Evseevich) preached about the millennial kingdom of the righteous. These prophecies led to mass migrations of Molokans to Transcaucasia (Klibanov 1965:130-31).

In the Volga region, Mikhail Popov and Evstigney Galyaev composed the Charter of the Common Trust and became the founders of the Communalist (obshchie) Molokans. The work proposed a blueprint for organizing life based on the community of property and the obligation to work. They reported on the nearness of doomsday, anticipated a millennial kingdom, and called for purification from filth (Klibanov 1965:136-37). In the 1940s, they were exiled to Transcaucasia.

By the mid-19th century, under the influence of another influential prophet, Maksim Gavrilovich Rudometkin, spiritual Christians-Jumpers (pryguny) stood out in the Caucasus. They were called so for “walking in the spirit,” which accompanied ecstatic bouncing during prayer. They expected the millennial kingdom to come soon. Rudometkin declared himself a spiritual king (vozhd’ dukhovnogo naroda) and crowned himself, forbidding his followers to submit to other authorities. The Jumpers were notable for their special strictness of morals, zeal in prayer and fasting, and stricter prohibitions. Uttered prophecies, speaking in tongues, and leaping were considered manifestations of the action of the holy spirit in man (Klibanov 1965:135). Rudometkin broke with other Molokans by rejecting the Christian holidays that they shared with the Russian Orthodox Church, instead insisting that his followers observe the Old Testament feasts, including Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets (Pamyat’ Trub), Judgement Day, and Tabernacles (Kuschi) (Clay 2012).

In the late 1860s, German Baptists began attracting many Molokan converts to their faith. In particular, the first Russian convert to the Baptist faith was the Molokan preceptor Nikita Isaevich Voronin. One of the founders of the Baptist Union in 1884, Dei Mazaev, was from a wealthy Molokan family in Crimea (Clay 2012).

On April  17, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II issued a decree of religious liberty. Molokans could legally publish their journals, hold congresses, develop national denominational structures, and create organizations.

In 1905, an All-Russian Congress of Molokans took place in Vorontsovka of Tiflis Province, devoted to the centennial anniversary of religious freedom for Molokans in Russia. One of the leaders of the movement, Nikolai Kudinov, proposed unifying the Molokan movement: establishing rituals and dogmatics common to all Molokans, publishing a catechism of Molokan teaching and a “spiritual and moral magazine,” streamlining the election of hierarchs, and convening annual congresses of Molokans (Klibanov 1965:179). His initiatives, however, were not very successful.

The question of Russian statistics in the pre-revolutionary years is difficult to answer. In 1913, Nikolay Kudinov wrote that there were over 1,000,000 Molokans in Russia. According to official statistics, there were up to 200,000 Molokans of various persuasions in the first decade of the twentieth century. Alexander Klibanov states that these figures are probably understated but closer to reality than Molokan data (Klibanov 1965:181). Most Russian Molokans then lived in Transcaucasia (including Kars, which since 1918 was part of Turkey) and the North Caucasus.

Referring to the prophecies, the Jumpers, beginning in the 1900s, sought permission to leave the country. During 1901–1911 over 3,500 Jumpers from the Kars Province, Erivan Province, and Transcaspian Province emigrated to California (Klibanov 1965:145). The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 hastened the exodus of the Molokan Jumpers from Transcaucasia (Clay 2011:124). By 1911, the emigrated Jumpers had settled in Los Angeles, while Constant Molokans chose San Francisco. Most Molokans remained in the Russian Empire (Hardwick 1993:353). By the mid-1920s, small groups of Molokans scattered across the American West in search of a suitable place for a rural community. Some went to Hawaii; the others tried farming near Glendale, Arizona. In 1906, a large group of Molokans bought land in Mexico, Baja California. They established the Guadalupe Russian Colony, and about 120 families lived there by 1915 (Mohoff 1993:62). Other American Molokan families went to the Central Valley in California and Oregon (Hardwick 1993:135-36).

By 1937, the Mexican Molokans were faced with a cultural and economic crisis and started relocating to the U.S. (Mohoff 1993:60-61). Later, the Molokans who remained in Mexico had recurring problems with the locals who tried to seize their land. In October 1962, the last Russians left the Valley. The village was renamed Francisco Zarco (Mohoff 1993:187). By the 1930s, over 6,000 Molokans lived in Los Angeles (Nitoburg 2005:306). In 1940, there were already 13,500 Molokans in California (Nitoburg 2005:310). In the 1950s, about 700 Molokans migrated from Iran to California; they had managed to move from Armenia to Iran during the collectivization period in the 1930s (Nitoburg 2005:312).

At the beginning of the 1920s, amidst the persecution of the Orthodox clergy, non-traditional religious groups experienced an upsurge. On October 5, 1921, the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture published a proclamation To the sectarians and Old Believers living in Russia and abroad. According to the proclamation, they could “find themselves quite at ease and know firmly that for their teachings nobody ever will be persecuted” (Batchenko 2019:191). In 1921, the Molokans reconstituted the Union of Spiritual Christians Molokans. In 1924, they were permitted to hold the Second All-Union Congress of Molokans in Samara, where Nikolay Kudinov became the chairman of the Central Council. In 1925, a monthly magazine, Vestnik of Spiritual Christians Molokans, began publication (Batchenko 2019:193). The authorities saw the Spiritual Christians as their allies and allowed them to settle on free land and form collective farms. As a result, at the Third All-Union Congress of the Molokans in 1926, the goals of the Soviet state were recognized as “quite consistent with the worldview of spiritual Christianity” (Danilova 2018:68).

In 1926, state policy toward sectarians shifted, and they were identified as the most dangerous religious associations because of the growth in the number of their communities. In 1927, a secret circular was issued restricting sectarian activity. Printed publications and houses of worship were closed, Molokan conventions did not convene, and the leadership of the Union was repressed (Batchenko 2019:195-96). The 1929 decree forbade sectarians to create their own economic and production associations and cooperatives (Danilova 2018:77).

The Soviet policy of religious persecution and prohibition led to a gradual decline in the number of Molokans. The Molokan Jumpers communities continued to operate, refusing to register, but under the scrutiny of the security authorities. At the end of 1961, Molokans from Turkey (more than 1,500 people) returned to the Soviet Union and were settled in the Stavropol and Astrakhan Regions (Samarina 2004:111-12).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for economic, political, and ethnic reasons, most of the Molokans of Transcaucasia left for Russia, the United States, and other countries. The only remaining villages in Armenia and Azerbaijan compactly settled and attempted to preserve their traditional ways of life, while almost all the residents of Georgia have left. In particular, in Yerevan, there are five Jumper communities and one community of Constant Molokans. In Georgia and Azerbaijan, one can find only a small number of Constant Molokans. Molokan communities exist today in Australia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, the United States, and Ukraine.

In June 1991, a Molokan Congress was held in Moscow. The congress proclaimed the revival of the Union of Spiritual Christians-Molokans, elected a Council of 9 members, and adopted the Union’s Charter. The printed organ is the magazine Spiritual Christian. The Union was supposed to link disparate communities, but in reality, only Constant Molokans became members (Inikova 1998:88-89). In the same year the Committee for Assistance to Resettled Molokans was established. In 1994, the Union of Spiritual Christian Molokan Communities of Russia was created and registered by the Ministry of Justice. The center is in the village of Kochubeevskoe, Stavropol Region. In the Russian Federation eighteen Molokan organizations are registered (Rossiya v tsifrakh 2019:179). Molokans live mainly in the southern part of the country: Krasnodar, Stavropol, and Rostov Regions.

In the 1990 Directory, more than four thousand people in the American West continue to identify as Molokans. Hardwick suggests that there are even more because Berokoff in the 1960s numbered between 15,000 and 20,000 Molokans (Hardwick 1993: 137-139).

The migration of Molokans from the United States to Australia began in 1964 after the prophecy of salvation spread there (Dunn 1978:354). In the 2000s, there were approximately 125 families in South and Western Australia (Slivkoff 2006:19).

In 2005, the World Congress of Spiritual Christians of Molokans took place in the village of Kochubeevskoe, Stavropol Region. It was “dedicated to the 200th anniversary of granting the Molokans freedom of religion.” Molokans from different regions of Russia, as well as from Australia, Canada, and the United States, took part. They discussed the questions of educating young people in the traditions of Molokan teaching and the allocation of land for building prayer houses and a cultural center. However, the Molokan community could not agree on the allotment of land with the administration, and the building for the meeting in Moscow still has not been built.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS                                                    

Like many other Russian sectarian groups, the Molokans did not develop a unified doctrinal system. It has been characterized by decentralization and rejection of hierarchy. Molokan beliefs divided into groups. The only two remaining branches are the “Constant” (postoyannye) and the “Jumpers” (pryguny), or simply Spiritual Molokans.

All currents of Molokanism have been based on their conception of God and the Bible, although the theological views were not well developed and prescribed. For Molokans, the Bible has authority as the only God-inspired source of faith, and knowledge of Scripture serves as evidence of the religious perfection of believers (Klibanov 1965:123). The notion of the Trinity varies. In the ritual book of the first half of the nineteenth century, God is understood as “Spirit in three persons.” In contrast the Exposition of the Uklein Doctrine states that “God the Son and the Holy Spirit, though of one essence with the Father, are not equal to him in a deity” (Buyanov 2013:17).

According to Molokan teachings, no one should understand the Bible literally and formally follow its prescriptions. It is more proper to interpret it allegorically and to have many interpretations of the passages (Bonch-Bruevich 1973:248-49). In addition to the Bible, Molokans have many handwritten Charters and Rites. The Jumpers also use a book, Spirit and Life. The Book of Sun, that was compiled from the writings of Molokan prophets, the most famous of whom is Maxim Gavrilovich Rudometkin. He is considered “the King of Spirits and the leader of the Zion people,” and for extreme Maximist Jumpers, even the incarnation of the Holy Spirit on earth (Nikitina 2013:164). The book Spirit and Life was written over several decades in the nineteenth century and was first published in America in 1915. The second edition was published in Los Angeles in 1928 and was repeatedly reprinted (Nikitina 1998:222). It outlines the history and main points of the Jumpers’ teaching.

All Molokans do not recognize church symbolism: the priesthood, sacred tradition, icons and saints, temples, and liturgical luxuries. They refuse to revere the cross or to make the sign of the cross. They reject all Orthodox sacraments, interpreting them as spiritual acts. They teach that “the worship of God must be in the spirit of truth.” In particular, the Orthodox Eucharist is mere bread and wine and offers no salvation. They believe in Holy Spirit baptism, not water baptism (Clay 2012).

The Molokan Jumpers anticipate the second coming of Christ and the coming of the millennial kingdom. They have developed the concept of the pokhod (hike). “The pokhod is an exodus from places where faith and way of life are under threat of destruction. It is a movement to where there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where the seventh day of creation will be realized” and the millennial kingdom of the elected believers will come. The idea of the pokhod is closely linked with the institution of prophecy: the Holy Spirit shows where and when to move (Nikitina 1998:228-29).

Molokans emphasize “good works” in matters of salvation. Diligence, discipline, persistence in achieving their goal, and practicality are characteristics of Molokan work ethics. Molokans believe that personal salvation directly depends on honesty and conscientious work.

Constant Molokans celebrate the major Orthodox holidays, while Jumpers have only five Old Testament holidays: the Jewish calendar Passover and Pentecost, the Remembrance of the Trumpets (Pamyat’ trub), Judgment Day, and Tabernacles.

Molokans adhere to some Old Testament food prohibitions, among which the most enduring is the injunction not to eat pork. One of the key Molokan slogans is “an icon is not God; pork is not meat.” They also do not eat hare meat, fish without scales, hybrids of fruits and vegetables. Sometimes they may not eat meat cut by others; they try to buy meat only from other believers (Dolzhenko 1992:23). They have a ban on smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The spiritual center of the Molokans is the meeting of believers (sobranie). In their ritual cult, Molokans tried to imitate the apostolic church: they reject censers, lamps, candles, and temples but allow liturgical meetings with the reading of Scripture and the singing of psalms (Buyanov 2013:18). Most current communities have their own prayer houses, or they gather at the home of one of the believers. In a worship house, [Image at right] there is a table on the right side of the door, covered with a white tablecloth, with the Old and New Testaments; Jumpers also have the Book of Spirit and Life. There are benches covered with rugs and embroidered towels on the walls. People are seated according to seniority. Meetings are usually held on Sundays. The Armenian Jumpers attend at least three times a week: Saturday evening, Saturday morning, and Sunday evening.

The prayer meeting consists of readings and explanations of texts from the Bible, followed periodically by psalms. Psalms are texts for singing in worship from the various books of the Bible. The singers uniquely sing them, after the narrator reads each line (Nikitina 2013:43). Each syllable is sung for a very long time and drawn out. The Jumpers also use texts from the Songbook of Zion (Sionskiy pesennik), first published in 1930. The authors of the songs have varied and include the chief Molokan prophet, Maxim Rudometkin. Now regularly reprinted, supplemented, and used during prayer meetings, the collection includes pre-revolutionary hymns and Protestant songs. The motifs of the spiritual songs are the singing of the power of the almighty God, uncomplaining obedience to a harsh fate, the struggle between good and evil, etc. The Molokans sing spiritual songs during family rites, festive celebrations, and gatherings (Samarina 2004:138-39).

After psalms, the presbyter and elders hold conversations (besedy), which are essentially sermons. A characteristic feature of the Jumpers is the presence of prophets within the meeting. The community can have one prophet or even several. Sometimes the prophecies can come down on any believer present at the meeting. In the gatherings of the Jumpers, the psalms are more rhythmic. Some believers, falling into religious ecstasy, come into contact with the holy spirit and try to convey the “thoughts of God” to all believers (Samarina 2004:141). The service ends with communal prayer and kneeling. In some communities, the “holy kiss” is also preserved (at the end of the meeting, all praying believers approach several elders and kiss them).

The Molokans perform the rites of passage in their meetings, usually on weekends and holidays. These rites include christenings (kstiny), weddings, funerals, and memorial services. The elders read certain psalms and chapters from the Bible. All religious festivals and rituals accompany a joint meal (delo) that is a sacrifice dedicated to some rite of the life cycle, feast, or event.

Molokan christening (kstiny) is very simple, spiritual act. Usually, it takes place after the traditional Sunday gatherings. The parents bring their child to the presbyter to be blessed and recorded in the Book of Life. The presbyter [Image at right] reads prayers over the infant (Dolzhenko 1974:93). The usual meal (delo) then takes place. From this point on, the child is under the blessing of the Lord (Samarina 2004:160).

The marriage ceremony includes a blessing by the parents, a sermon from the presbyter, and the bride and groom’s consent to the audience. Then the presbyter reads the duties of the spouses to each other and ritually passes the bride to the groom. Reading passages from the Bible is interspersed with the singing of psalms and spiritual songs (Dolzhenko 1992:15-16). Marriage for Molokans is considered irrevocable; divorce has remained unacceptable.

The entire community to which the deceased belonged attends a funeral. It takes place on the third or fourth day, and the relatives come out in a circle and ask to pray for the well-being of the deceased in the other world. The presbyter concludes by reciting a prayer. After burial in the cemetery, [Image at right] the relatives invite everyone to remember the departed. A commemoration meeting (pominy) is also held on the fortieth day and the anniversary of the death. At the gathering, relatives ask for forgiveness for their sins and the sins of the dead, and after the worship service, they share a meal (Dolzhenko 1974:94).

On feast days, Molokans hold prayer meetings at which the presbyter and the elders preach sermons on the Gospel themes that form the basis of the feast. The singers perform relevant psalms. The service ends with general prayers (Samarina 2004:142). Unlike the Jews, the Molokans do not celebrate the Sabbath. For them, Sunday is a special day of the week. Like the first Christians, they honor each Sunday as the day of Christ’s Resurrection. On this day, as with the Orthodox, all work is forbidden. In the morning, dressed festively, everyone goes to the meeting (sobranie), then they socialize together (Samarina 2004:143). Usually, they keep fasts on the eve of feasts and in the spring and fall, before the beginning and end of agricultural work. The fast lasts one to three days and consists of total abstinence from food (Dolzhenko 1992:23).

The strictest Jumpers do not take pictures, do not watch TV, and do not celebrate birthdays or secular holidays. Religious doctrine forbids all entertainment and idleness, including dancing, playing musical instruments, and playing games. They celebrate religious holidays only in the meetings (sobranie) by reading the Bible, talking about divine matters, and singing psalms and songs.

One of the outward signs of belonging to the Molokan faith is their clothing. Many men wear beards, some wear kosovorotki (a shirt with skewed collar) and kartuz (peaked cap), and in meetings they wear belts with tassels. The women wear long skirts, long-sleeved blouses and shawls, and aprons for meetings. The Molokans have preserved the custom of bowing and kissing each other upon meeting.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Spiritual Christian Molokans organize into congregations headed by presbyters. The presbyter is usually an older Molokan who knows the Scriptures and has earned a good reputation among the believers. Formally he is not considered superior or more important than the other members, but his status allows him to give advice, guidance, and counsel to other believers. The presbyter is chosen for life by the community members or by the spirit through the prophet (Dolzhenko 2004:88). Together with his liturgical duties, he takes care of the congregational needs. He is not entitled to receive money for his work.

The helper of the presbyter and the elders sit together with the presbyter at the head of the table. Nearby are the singers,  usually young people, and the skazateli, middle-aged men who call out scriptural passages during the service. The most honorable members of the congregation are seated closer to the front corner. [Image at right] Prophets play a meaningful role with the Jumpers, and there are both men and women among them. They are ordinary believers upon whom the Holy Spirit descends, conveying a message from God to the congregation or foretelling events. When the prophet speaks in the spirit, the Lord speaks through their mouths (Dolzhenko 1992:9). Each congregation may have different numbers of prophets, ranging from no prophets at all to a few. The besedniki, experts in the Bible who can interpret the Scripture passages, have great authority. Singers are revered in the community as well. All these functions have not been  hereditary, they have been self-taught or self-worth, and as a rule, only men have performed them.

At various times, the Molokans (primarily Constant) have tried to create unifying institutions and developed unified liturgical rites. For example, in the early twentieth century the Molokan preacher Nikolay Kudinov attempted to centralize the movement and create “progressive Molokanism” (Buyanov 2013:300). Later in 1923, he organized the All-Russian Union of Religious Communities of Spiritual Christians Molokans (which existed until 1929) where he was the chairman of the council (Buyanov 2013:309). A Molokan magazine, Vestnik of Spiritual Christians Molokans, beginning publication in 1925, constantly promoted the idea of strengthening the Molokan organization. In 1991, the Union of Spiritual Christian Molokan Communities was recreated, which included only a portion of the Constant Molokan communities (Inikova 1998:88-89). All attempts at centralization have not been very successful. As they survived for only a short time and always combined only one part of the Molokans.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The main challenge for researchers on the Molokan tradition is that there is no single set of Molokan teachings. At different times there have been leaders who have formed new interpretations of the old doctrine (or doctrines), creating their own communities of followers. Accordingly, theological interpretations also varied.

Each community has established its own rules and order of service, interpreted biblical texts in its own way, and, on that basis, observed food, marriage, occupational, and civil prohibitions to varying degrees. Again, intermittent contact between communities in different countries has led to significant differences in ritual and everyday behavior. For example, the Molokans in Armenia know little about their Georgian co-religionists. At the same time, after the fall of the Soviet Union, contacts developed between American and post-Soviet Molokans. In particular, American Jumpers have repeatedly provided financial assistance for the construction of worship houses in Armenia and Russia and have also come in search of marriage partners.

The relationship of Molokans with the government has developed differently: in the same period, various branches of Molokanism demonstrated both respectful and extremely critical attitudes toward the authorities. Refusal or consent to serve in the army, register communities, and participate in secular events varied in different periods of Molokanism’s existence. As a rule, the most loyal to secular authority were the congregations of the permanent, and the individual communities of jumpers were the most strictly observant and isolated from secular society.

IMAGES

Image #1: A group of Molokan men.
Image #2: A Molokan worship house.
Image #3: A Molokan presbyter.
Image #4: A Molokan cemetery.
Image #5: A Molokan holy corner.

REFERENCES

Batchenko, Viktoriya. 2019. “Vserossiyskie i vsesoyuznye s’ezdy dukhovnykh khristian-molokan v 1921–1929 gody.” Rossiyskaya istoriya 1:191-96.

Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir. 1973. Sektantstvo i staroobryadchestvo v pervoy polovine XIX veka. Pp. 214-63 in V. D. Bonch-Bruevich. Izbrannye ateisticheskie proizvedeniya. Moscow: Mysl’.

Breyfogle, Nicholas. 2005. Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Buyanov, Evgeniy. 2013. Dukhovnye khristiane molokane v Amurskoy oblasti vo vtoroy polovine XIX – pervoy treti XX veka. Blagoveshchensk: Amurskiy gosudarstvennyi universitet.

Clay, Eugene. 2012. Russian Molokans: Their Roots and Current Status. The East-West Church & Ministry Report, vol. 20, no. 2. https://www.eastwestreport.org/43-english/e-20-2/340-russian-molokans-their-roots-and-current-status

Clay, Eugene. 2011. “The Woman Clothed in the Sun: Pacifism and Apocalyptic Discourse among Russian Spiritual Christian Molokan­Jumpers.” Church History 80:109­38.

Danilova, Elena. 2018. “Vyrazhaem polnuyu gotovnost’ pomogat’ Sovetskoy vlasti…» Nedolgiy opyt integratsii dukhovnykh khristian v sovetskuyu ekonomiku 1920-kh godov.” Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 3:60–80.

Dolzhenko, Irina. 2004. “Sovremennoe molokanstvo Armenii: struktura religioznoy organizatsii.” Pp. 88-91 in Nauchnye Trudy Tsentra armenovedcheskikh issledovaniy Shiraka.” 7. Gyumri.

Dolzhenko, Irina. 1992. Religioznyy i kul’turno-bytovoy uklad russkikh krest’yan-sektantov Vostochnoy Armenii (XIX — nachalo XX veka). Pp. 7-25 in Dukhobortsy i molokane v Zakavkaz’ye. Moscow: IEA RAN.

Dolzhenko, Irina. 1985. Khozyaystvennyy i obshchestvennyy byt russkikh krest’yan Vostochnoy Armenii (konets XIX — nachala XX vekov). Yerevan: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk ArmSSR.

Dolzhenko, Irina. 1974. “Semeynaya obryadnost’ russkogo naseleniya Armenii.” Lraber Hasarakakan Gitutʻyunneri 7:87-96.

Dunn, Ethel and Stephen Dunn. 1978. “The Molokans in America.” Dialectical Anthropology 3:349-60.

Hardwick, Susan. 1993. “Religion and Migration: The Molokan Experience.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 55:127-41.

Inikova, Svetlana. 1998. “Problemy etnokonfessional’nykh grupp dukhobortsev i molokan.” Pp. 84-103 in Faktor etnokonfessional’noy samobytnosti v postsovetskom obshchestve, edited by M.B. Olkott and A.V. Malashenko. Moscow: Moskovskiy tsentr Karnegi.

Klibanov, Alexander. 1965. Istoriya religioznogo sektantstva v Rossii (60-e gody XIX veka – 1917 god). Moscow: Nauka.

Mohoff, George. 1993. The Russian Colony of Guadalupe Molokans in Mexico. U.SA. [s.n.].

Nikitina, Serafima. 1998. “Sotvorenie mira i kontsept iskhoda/pokhoda v kul’ture molokan-prygunov.” Pp. 220-230 in Ot bytiya k iskhodu. Otrazhenie bibleyskikh syuzhetov v slavyanskoy i evreyskoy narodnoy kul’ture. Sbornik statey. Volume 2. Moscow: GEOS.

Nikitina, Serafima. 2013. Konfessional’nye kul’tury v ikh territorial’nykh variantakh (problemy sinkhronnogo opisaniia). Moscow: Institut naslediya D.S. Likhacheva.

Nitoburg, Eduard. 2005. Russkie v SSHA: istoriya i sud’by, 1870-1970: etno-istoricheskiy ocherk. Moscow: Nauka.

Rossiya v tsifrakh. 2019. Moscow: Rosstat.

Samarina, Olga. 2004. Obshchiny molokan na Kavkaze: istoriya, kul’tura, byt, khozyaystvennaya deyatel’nost’. Dissertatsiya na soiskaniye uchenoy stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk. Stavropol’.

Slivkoff, Paulina. 2006. The Formation and Contestation of Molokan Identities and Communities: The Australian Experience. MA Thesis, Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Australia.

Publication Date:
30 October 2022

 

 

 

 

Share

SHEkinah Journal Issues

INTRODUCTION

Lois Roden (1916-1986) was the second prophet of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist community at Mount Carmel Center outside Waco, Texas, founded by her husband Ben Roden (1902-1978) in 1959. She succeeded her husband as the prophet of the community in 1977, as Ben’s health was declining and Lois received a vision of an angel from which she discerned that the Holy Spirit is feminine. From that point on, the Branch Davidians, including those who by 1984 had begun following Vernon Howell/David Koresh (1959-1993) as a prophet and Christ, believed that God consists of a Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. The manifestation of the Daughter will occur during the Endtime events.

Lois Roden’s authority as a Branch Davidian prophet, who was believed by followers to be divinely inspired to interpret the Bible’s prophecies about the Endtime, was contested by her son, George Roden (1938-1998). Possibility as a means to shore up the legitimacy of her charismatic leadership of the Branch Davidian community, Lois Roden was interested in reading and disseminating biblical and early Christianity scholarly publications about women leaders in the early Christian movement and feminist theology publications that include a divine feminine in the Godhead in addition to the usual God the Father in Christianity. From 1980 through 1983, Lois Roden as editor-in-chief and Clive Doyle (1941-2022) as editor reprinted scholarly and popular articles on these topics in a non-sectarian, non-profit free publication titled SHEkinah (see February 1981 issue), which Doyle printed at Mount Carmel Center. Publication of SHEkinah ended in 1983 as the long-time Branch Davidians, including Doyle, concluded that the “Spirit of Prophecy” had moved from Lois Roden to Vernon Howell.

On Lois Roden’s prophetic leadership career see the article by William L. Pitts, Jr., “SHEkinah: Lois Roden’s Quest for Gender Equality,” Nova Religio 17, no. 4 (May 2014): 37-60; and Bill Pitts, “Lois Roden,” Women in the World’s Religions and Spirituality Project, July 11, 2016.

JOURNAL ISSUES

Shekinah
December 1980

Shekinah
February 1981

Shekinah
April 1981

Shekinah
June 1981

Shekinah
August 1981

Shekinah
October 1981

Shekinah
December 1981

Shekinah
January 1982

Shekinah
April 1982

Shekinah
July 1982

Shekinah
October 1982

Shekinah
January 1983

Shekinah
June 1983

Shekinah
Second Anniversary Edition

 

 

Share

The State Museum of the History of Religion

STATE MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION TIMELINE:

1918:  The Decree on the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church was issued.

1922:  The Church Valuables Campaign took place.

1925:  The League of the Godless (after 1929 the League of the Militant Godless) was founded.

1929:  The Law on Religious Associations was passed.

1932:  The Museum of the History of Religion of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was founded in Leningrad in the former Kazan Cathedral, with Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz as Director.

1937:  Iurii Pavlovich Frantsev was appointed museum director.

1946:  Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich was appointed as museum director.

1951:  The Manuscript Division (later Archive) opened.

1954:  The museum was renamed The Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism

1956:  Sergei Ivanovich Kovalev was appointed museum Director.

1959-1964:  Nikita Khrushchev organized antireligious campaigns.

1961:  The museum was transferred from the Academy of Sciences to the Ministry of Culture of the USSR.

1961:  Nikolai Petrovich Krasikov was appointed museum Director.

1968:  Vladislav Nikolaevich Sherdakov was appointed museum Director.

1977:  Iakov Ia. Kozhurin was appointed museum Director.

1985-1986:  Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and launched glasnost’ and perestroika policies.

1987:  Stanislav Kuchinskii was appointed museum Director.

1988:  The Millenium of the Christianization of Rus’ was celebrated with official permission.

1990:  The museum was renamed the State Museum of the History of Religion.

1991:  A joint use agreement was reached with Russian Orthodox Church for use of the Kazan Cathedral; regular religious services resumed.

1991 (December 25):  The USSR collapsed.

2001:  A new building and permanent exhibit were opened.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The State Museum of the History of Religion (Gosudarstvennyi muzei istorii religii – GMIR) is one of very few museums in the world devoted to the interdisciplinary study of religion as a cultural-historical phenomenon. Its holdings include approximately 200,000 items from all over the world and across time. In addition, GMIR is home to a library of 192,000 items, including scholarly books on all religions and topics in the history of religion and atheism, as well as major collections of religious books and books on religious themes published from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First century. Finally, its archive contains 25,000 files and items, including the materials of state and public organizations connected to religion, numerous personal fonds, archival collections of various religious groups (especially smaller Russian Christian groups, such as the Dukhobors, Baptists, Old Believers, Skoptsy and others), and a collection of manuscript books in Church Slavonic, Latin, Polish, and Arabic (GMIR website 2016).

The museum was founded in 1932 as the Museum of the History of Religion of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Its founder and first director was Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz (pseudonym N. A. Tan) (1865-1936). [Image at right] Bogoraz was an internationally renowned ethnographer and linguist. He specialized in the indigenous peoples of Siberia, in particular the Chukchi, having developed his expertise during a decade of exile in northeastern Siberia in the 1890s as a revolutionary. Since 1918, he had worked at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad and had played a major role in the flowering of Soviet ethnography in the 1920s, as well as founding the Institute of the Peoples of the North in 1930 (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:23-24).

Not long after coming to power in late 1917, the Bolsheviks launched a multi-pronged campaign against religion. As Marxists, they regarded religion as a remnant of capitalist power structures and sought to inculcate a materialist world view in the population. On the one hand, they attacked religious institutions: the January 1918 Decree on the Separation of Church and State nationalized religious property and secularized state life and education, and the 1918 Constitution disenfranchised members of the clergy. (Thereafter, local groups of lay believers, rather than denominational institutions, could lease buildings and ritual objects for their use). In the face of famine, in 1922 the regime inaugurated a confrontational policy of seizing church valuables, ostensibly to raise funds to feed the hungry. Meanwhile, the Soviet secret police worked to break religious organizations from within and to force religious leaders to declare loyalty to the new regime. The 1929 Law on Religious Associations forbade religious organizations to engage in any activity besides the strictly liturgical, including the teaching of religion to children. That same year, the Bolsheviks removed the right to “religious propaganda” from the Soviet constitution. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks sought to foster a cultural revolution that would produce a new Soviet person with a Communist, scientific, and secular world view. In late 1922, a popular weekly newspaper, The Godless (Bezbozhnik), was launched and the League of the Godless was founded in 1925 to co-ordinate antireligious propaganda; from 1926 to 1941, it also published a journal of antireligious methods, The Antireligious Activist (Antireligioznik). [Image at right] In 1929, the League renamed itself the League of the Militant Godless.

These policies had important implications for scholarship on religion in the USSR. The antireligious campaigns provided both the justification and the framework for religious studies. Moreover, the secularization of religious buildings and the seizure of church valuables brought substantial collections into state hands. In the years after the revolution, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR sought to preserve the national cultural and religious heritage amidst the process of nationalizing and repurposing religious buildings. Its library and museums acquired religious objects, manuscripts, and artwork, as well as the archives and libraries of various monasteries and religious academies (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:21-23).

The prehistory of the GMIR began in 1923 when Bogoraz, together with L. Ia. Shternberg, his fellow ethnographer at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and the first scholar to teach Religious Studies at St. Petersburg University in 1907, proposed to curate an antireligious exhibit based on the collections of the Museum (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:13-14, 24). The exhibition opened in April 1930 at the famous Hermitage Museum (in the former Winter Palace) in honour of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the League of the Godless. Bogoraz and his colleagues aimed to provide a comparative and evolutionary account of the development of religion as a phenomenon in human history. Many of the artifacts on display at this very popular exhibit eventually made their way into the collections of the GMIR (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:24-26).

In September 1930, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences considered an appeal from the League of the Godless to transform the exhibit into a permanent “Antireligious Museum of the Academy of Sciences.” This coincided with the ambitions of Bogoraz, Shternberg (before his death in 1927), and the active community of scholars of religion in Leningrad at the time. In October 1931, the Presidium approved the founding of a “Museum of the History of Religion” and appointed Bogoraz as its director. The Museum opened its doors a year later, in November 1932 in the former Kazan Cathedral (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:26-27). The Kazan Cathedral, located on Nevskii Prospect (the great avenue of downtown Leningrad) had been closed a year earlier by the Leningrad Party and city authorities, who accused the impoverished congregation of inadequately maintaining this important historic site.

The GMIR was founded amidst an antireligious museum building boom, spurred by the League of the Militant Godless in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was the period when Joseph Stalin ascended to the leadership of the Communist Party and launched the First Five-Year Plan to rapidly industrialize the country and collectivize its agriculture. The First Five-Year Plan was accompanied by a militant Cultural Revolution, which sought once and for all to build a proletarian, socialist, and antireligious culture. Young activists in the League threw themselves into this project and hundreds of museums, big and small, were established across the country in this period. The most prominent included the Central Antireligious Museum in the former Strastnoi Monastery in Moscow (1928) and the State Antireligious Museum in St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Leningrad (complete with a Foucault pendulum installed in 1932, which remained there through the early 1990s). By the late 1930s, the League ran out of steam and most of these museums were closed. However, the GMIR avoided this fate and, indeed, acquired many of the collections of Moscow’s Central Antireligious Museum after its permanent closure in 1946. In 2022, it celebrated its ninetieth anniversary.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Throughout its history, the Museum’s work has been shaped by the changing ideology and policy with respect to religion of the Soviet and later Russian Federation governments. As Marxists, the Bolsheviks regarded religion as part of the ideological superstructure that maintained oppressive power and unjust economic relations in societies. It was the “opiate of the people,” diverting individuals from seeing their true interests, and the former state church, the Russian Orthodox Church, had been an instrument of the autocratic political system. They sought to destroy the institutional, symbolic, and social functions of religion, and to spread a rational, materialist world view. The ultimate goal was not merely a secular but an atheist society.

Antireligious policy shifted in intensity and emphasis throughout the Soviet period. In the 1920s, the regime focused on attacking religious institutions, but to a great extent left local religious life alone. The decade from 1929 to 1939, by contrast, saw a full-scale assault on religious practice, with the closing of almost all houses of worship and the mass arrest of clergy. Following the Nazi invasion in 1941, however, Stalin shifted strategies, allowing the Orthodox Church to be reconstituted so that the state could use it to mobilize support for the war effort. Similar deals with other religions followed. The party-state rolled back its antireligious campaigns and formed instead a bureaucratic structure for managing the affairs of the various confessions. Although the party did not renounce atheism as a goal, even after victory in 1945 it did not reinvest either financial or ideological resources in promoting it (Smolkin 2018:46-47, 50-52, 55). However, following Stalin’s death in 1953, atheism returned to the party’s agenda, culminating in a major new wave of antireligious campaigns launched in 1958 under Nikita Khrushchev. The Khrushchev era witnessed renewed state attempts to break religious denominations from within and to close places of worship, but it also saw a new focus on breathing positive content into Soviet atheism, on developing scientific atheism as a scholarly field, and on building institutions to promote atheist world views. The “Knowledge Society” developed a whole program of atheist clubs, exhibits, theatre, lecture series, libraries, films, and the popular magazine Science and Religion (Nauka i religiia); meanwhile, an Institute of Scientific Atheism within the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, formed in 1964, co-ordinated all scholarly atheist work in the country and trained professional atheists. After Khrushchev’s forced retirement in 1964, the regime returned to an emphasis on the bureaucratic management of religious life rather than openly aggressive antireligious measures; at the same time, the atheist infrastructure remained in place and continued to work to form a population of convinced atheists (Smolkin 2018:chapters 2-5).

Throughout the Soviet period, the Museum stood on the blurred line between being a scholarly institution and part of the communist regime’s ideological apparatus. Bogoraz aimed to bring together antireligious propaganda and scientific enlightenment in the Museum’s work. Historians Marianna Shakhnovich and Tatiana Chumakova conclusively demonstrate Bogoraz’s successful insistence that the Museum be fundamentally a scholarly research institute dedicated to the study of religion as a complex social and historical phenomenon. The Museum’s Statute, approved by the Academy of Sciences in 1931, thus presented its purpose as the study of religion in historical development, from its emergence up to its current condition. It was this scholarly emphasis that differentiated GMIR from the many antireligious museums of its founding era. Bogoraz and Shternberg had excellent revolutionary credentials but were not Marxists; they and their ethnographic school were committed to deep empirical and comparative study of cultural evolution, and there remained room for such people in the Academy of Sciences, even in 1932. As Shakhnovich and Chumakova point out, however, throughout the Soviet period, much scholarly work, especially on ideologically fraught topics such as religion or contemporary Western art and music, had to be justified and cloaked in Party slogans (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:15, 23; Slezkine 1994:160-63, 248).

An early GMIR poster reveals this combination of the scholarly and the mobilizational: it announced that the new museum’s goal was to “[show] the historical development of religions from the most ancient times to our days, and religious organizations, to [reveal] the class role of religion and religious organizations, the development of antireligious ideas and the mass godless movement” (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:34). In the 1930s and 1940s, the Museum’s staff produced substantial scholarly publications, organized major expeditions to gather artefacts, and set up permanent exhibits. They also participated in the antireligious education of the population, conducting tours for 70,000 visitors per year, [Image at right] and mounting various temporary exhibitions on explicitly political themes including “Karl Marx as a Militant Atheist,” “The Church in the Service of Autocracy,” religion and Japanese imperialism, religion and Spanish fascism, as well as seasonal anti-Christmas and anti-Easter displays (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:136-37, 417). Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, director from 1946-1955, wrote in 1949 that citations from “Lenin, as well as Stalin, Marx and Engels should everywhere accompany the visitor” (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:79).

Bonch-Bruevich, a close associate of Lenin, was both a scholar of sectarian religious movements and a fervent atheist and Party stalwart. He oversaw vast expansion in the scholarly activity of the museum and a renewal of its exhibits, all the while working to restore atheism to the Party’s political priorities and to build it into the Academy of Sciences’ scholarly agenda. In 1954, the Museum of the History of Religion became the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, and in 1955 the Academy of Sciences adopted measures to organize “scholarly-atheist propaganda” in its various institutions (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:77-78; Smolkin 2018:63-65). Between 1954 and 1956, the museum hosted a million visitors and curators gave 40,000 tours; in these years it also published a series of brochures to popularize scholarly research on antireligious topics (GMIR website 2016; Muzei istorii religii i ateizma 1981).

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Museum played a central role in the Soviet regime’s atheist propaganda program. Under pressure from the Leningrad provincial Party leadership, the Museum partly transformed itself into a “scholarly-methodological centre.” Curators began to organize symposia and lectures for antireligious activists and to travel around the country with exhibitions and to give lectures (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:419). From 1978 through 1989, the Museum published an annual series of books on museums and their function in atheist propaganda, as well as collected volumes on topics such as “Social-Philosophical Aspects of the Criticism of Religion,” “Current Problems in the Study of Religion and Atheism,” and “Social-Psychological Aspects of the Criticism of Religious Morality.”

The last years of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Communist Party under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev launched the policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost’ (openness), posed a major challenge to the Museum and its mission. The loosening of censorship and political controls had religious effects that the regime had not anticipated: religious groups expanded their public activities, previously repressed denominations emerged from underground, imprisoned prisoners of conscience were released, and the press wrote more freely about history and religion. The key turning point came in 1988, when the Orthodox Church celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the Christianization of Rus’ with the sanction of the state and in the presence of numerous foreign guests. As the state’s relationship with religion was transformed in these years, the atheist propaganda apparatus found itself in a state of crisis. As the head of the scholarly-methodological department at GMIR wrote in 1989, “Our atheism has suffered a defeat similar to that which religion experienced in the period of the October Revolution…” (Filippova 1989:149). Indeed, that same year, the Orthodox Church was permitted to hold a service in Kazan Cathedral for the first time in six decades. In 1990, the words “and Atheism” were dropped from the Museum’s name, and in 1991, the decision was made to return the Kazan Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church and to move to a new building on Pochtamtskaia Street. A joint-use agreement was signed and regular religious services resumed.

In the post-Soviet era, and especially as the Museum redeveloped its permanent exhibition after moving in 2000, the antireligious and anticlerical aspects disappeared. The Museum now sought to offer a secular but balanced presentation of religious history and practice, although it preserved its collections of Soviet atheist artifacts and publications. (Kouchinsky 2005:155). Beginning in 2008, staff launched a long-term project titled “The State Museum of the History of Religion as a Space for Dialogue.” The focus was on strengthening a culture of tolerance and understanding within the multiethnic and multiconfessional society of St. Petersburg and the Russian Federation more generally. Through guided tours of the exhibits, but also lectures, concerts, workshops, and temporary exhibitions, the program aims to foster knowledge about the beliefs and cultural traditions of the many ethnic and religious communities living in St. Petersburg and the Northwest Region. The museum also offers training for school teachers on teaching world religions and children’s tours aimed at helping children understand religion as a phenomenon of human cultures. [Image at right] In 2011, the museum opened a special children’s department, “The Very Beginning,” “dedicated to the religious beliefs of humankind regarding the genesis of the universe” (Teryukova 2012:541-42).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The First All-Russian Museum Congress in 1930, with the slogan “Replace the Museum of Things with the Museum of Ideas,” had called on Soviet museums to shift from a “custodial to an educational role,” one that would “foster understanding and action” (Kelly 2016:123). Indeed, most Soviet antireligious museums were just that: often, they featured relatively few original objects and their displays focused on criticizing religion and contrasting (backward) religious worldviews with modern, progressive science (Polianski 2016:256-60; Teryukova 2014:255; Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:14-15). By contrast, and despite the fact that the Museum of Religion too was certainly intended to play a key role in antireligious propaganda, from its inception the Museum was dedicated to the gathering, study, and display of things and amassed large collections of literary and material religious culture. In addition to the many artifacts, manuscripts, and books acquired from the collections of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, the State Hermitage, the library of the Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Museum (often due to the nationalization and seizure of religious buildings and valuables), Museum staff in the 1930s organized expeditions all over the Soviet Union to collect materials on the religious life of the national minorities in Buriatiia on the Mongolian border, in Uzbekistan, in the far north, across Siberia, in the Volga region, the Caucasus, and the northwest. They collaborated with N. M. Matorin’s ethnographic research group at Leningrad State University, which conducted expeditions that sought to describe and map “religious syncretism” and everyday religiosity throughout the Russian Republic of the USSR (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:38-39; Teryukova 2020:122). Such expeditions to gather documents and material culture from religious communities have continued up to this day. Under the leadership of Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich in the 1950s, the well-connected director used his influence to acquire substantial archival fonds, including the personal collections of prominent scholars and extensive materials belonging to various religious movements and individuals found in the Ministry of Internal Affairs archives. Many of these had been seized by the political police in the early 1930s if the reader is to judge from official stamps on the materials (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:88-89; personal observations).

In the 1930s, curators laid down the basic principles of the museum’s exhibit: an evolutionary and comparative approach based on a Marxist historical periodization, with religious and anticlerical phenomena for each period presented in parallel. A 1933 report described the following sections: 1) History of the Kazan Cathedral 2) Religion in pre-class society 3) Religion of the feudal East (the centerpiece of which was the Sukhavati Paradise, the only example of a Buddhist paradise sculptural composition to be found in a museum at the time) 4) Religion in feudal society in the West and East (including a display of instruments of torture from the Inquisition) 5) Religion in capitalist society 6) Religion and atheism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and 7) Religion in the slave-holding societies of Greece and Rome (also including a section on the origins of Christianity). Within these chronological sections, displays on the history of different religious traditions developed a comparative and functional perspective [Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:136-37, 78, 417]. By the late 1930s, museum curators had begun constructing various dioramas, including of an alchemist’s workshop and of “chambers of the Inquisition.” [Image at right] Mounting these would be an important feature of their work from the 1940s through the 1960s.

After a period of uncertainty following the Second World War, as the building required major renovations following damage and neglect during the war and the fate of the Museum was being decided, the 1950s was a period of major expansion and development of the museum’s activity. New displays were added, the scholarly library was systematically and greatly expanded, and the archive was founded in 1951. Museum researchers published major monographs on a range of topics in the history of religion and freethinking. From 1957 to 1963, the Yearbook of the Museum of Religion and Atheism published important research by many of the major scholars working in the field in the USSR. The Museum also trained graduate students.

A major reorganization of the exhibit in response to new political challenges and shifts in the Party’s approach saw the development of seven major sections: “Religion in Primitive Soiety,” “Religion and Freethinking in the Ancient World,” “The Origins of Christianity,” “Main Stages in the History of Atheism,” Islam and Freethinking among the Peoples of the East,” “Christian Sectarianism in the USSR,” and “Russian Orthodoxy and Atheism in the USSR.” A 1981 guidebook description of the Islam section provides some insight into the approach adopted: “The section displays materials that familiarize [the viewer] with the history of the emergence of Islam, its beliefs, practices, the development of ideas of freethinking and atheism among the peoples of the East, as well as the evolution of Islam in our country and the process of overcoming it in Soviet society” (Muzei istorii religii i ateizma 1981).

During the 1990s, Museum and Church co-existed in a mutually suspicious manner in the Kazan Cathedral building. The Museum retained its library, archives, storage, and offices in various parts of the building. On the main floor, the sanctuary and part of the nave served as a religious space, cordoned off from the rest of the church, where the museum continued to function. Meanwhile, the Museum awaited the completion of extensive renovations of the building that had been designated for it. The Museum moved in 2000, and in 2001 the new exposition opened to the public.

At present, the Museum’s permanent exhibit includes the following sections: 1. Archaic beliefs and rites, 2. Religions of the Ancient World, 3. Judaism and the Rise of Monotheism, 4. Rise of Christianity, 5. Orthodoxy, 6. Catholicism, 7. Protestantism, 8. Religions of the East, 9. Islam.  The history of each group is presented, together with its beliefs and practices. The comparative principle remains strong. [Image at right] For example, the “Archaic Beliefs and Rites” section includes displays on the traditional beliefs and rituals of the peoples of Siberia, North American shamanism, religions of the peoples of west sub-Saharan Africa, the cult of ancestors among the peoples of Melanesia, and “ideas about the soul and the afterlife” (GMIR website 2016).

The Museum continues to develop its library and archive. It also holds major collections of Russian and Western European art, of textiles, items made of precious metals, stamps, rare books, recordings, and photographs. Its staff publishes a series “Works of the GMIR.” The Museum also runs programs to train schoolteachers in the teaching of world religions, various museology- and religion-related professional development mini-courses, and lecture and seminar series, as well as providing mentorship for young religious studies researchers(GMIR website 2016).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The Museum entered a period of turmoil beginning in 1936 with the death of its founding director, Bogoraz (Tan). The following year, the dragnet of Stalin’s great purges scooped up many members of the Leningrad religious studies community, including Matorin. Then in 1941, the Nazi invasion of the USSR brought four years of war and the lengthy siege of Leningrad. The new director, Iurii P. Frantsev, the author of major works on fetishism, nevertheless oversaw an active period of scholarly work. However, from 1942 onwards, he was reassigned to Party work. The Museum remained open during the war, although it suffered damage and was in part used as a storage depot. After victory in 1945, major questions were raised about the future of the museum. The Kazan Cathedral was in dire need of major and expensive renovations; Frantsev was completely preoccupied with his other duties; and the regime’s changed relationship to religious organizations and the re-opening of churches during the war put the Museum’s ideological position in question. Finally, in Moscow, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich was actively promoting the opening of a central museum of the history of religion in the capital, which would bring together the collections of the former Central Antireligious Museum and the GMIR. In the end, however, Bonch-Bruevich was appointed director of the GMIR in 1946 and the following year the collections of the defunct Moscow museum were sent to Leningrad.

Bonch-Bruevich [Image at right] died in 1955 and his successor was Sergei I. Kovalev, a leading historian of the social history of Ancient Greece and Rome, with a particular interest in the origins of Christianity. His short tenure (he passed away in 1960) saw continual interference by the Party and accusations that the museum was too focused on religion itself, rather than on battling the remnants of religion in contemporary Soviet society. Indeed, a Party commission was formed to investigate the work of the GMIR. Kovalev was unable to mount a successful resistance, and in 1960 a number of long-time researchers left the Museum (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014: 87).

A new era in the life of the GMIR opened in November 1961, when the Museum was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences to that of the Ministry of Culture. In the context of the intense antireligious campaigns of the era and a series of Party resolutions on the expansion of atheist education and propaganda, the Museum shifted its focus in this direction. Symptomatic of this shift was the expertise of the directors of the Museum from the 1960s to the 1980s. Whereas earlier directors had been historians and ethnographers, now the Museum was led by philosophers, starting with Nikolai P. Krasikov, who served from 1961-1968. His successors, Vladislav N. Sherdakov (1968-1977) and Iakov Ia. Kozhurin (1977-1987), were professional atheists, who had received their doctorates from the Institute of Scientific Atheism of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an academy established in 1962 for the theoretical training of senior party functionaries. Under their watch, the Museum continued its active collection and research activities but also added its “scholarly-methodological” program devoted to developing materials to support atheist propaganda.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the Museum has been under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, except for a brief period from 2005-2008 when it was under the Federal Agency on Culture and Cinematography. Stanislav A. Kuchinskii, director from 1987 to 2007, oversaw the complex transition, in times of financial collapse, from Soviet atheistic institution lodged in the Kazan Cathedral to a re-imagined State Museum of the History of Religion in its own specially renovated building.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

As a secular or, (for much of its history) atheist museum devoted to religious history, GMIR has had to tread a careful path. In the late 1950s, for example, the local Party branch launched a review of the Museum’s activities, accusing its staff of excessive attention to religious history (!) and of failing to combat the remnants of religion in Soviet life. It demanded that they re-focus their attention on contemporary materials and set up an exhibit devoted to the overcoming of religion in the USSR. A number of long-time employees resigned in protest (Shakhnovich and Chumakova 2014:87).

This episode hinted at a larger problem that the GMIR (and curators at other Soviet museums lodged in former churches and/or displaying religious artifacts): the cognitive dissonance between the items on display and the secular or antireligious purpose of the exhibit. Museum staff often saw themselves as custodians of church buildings and their contents (for example, the large icon screens that separate the altar from the nave in Orthodox churches), now redefined as “heritage.” Yet, they also found that visitors were more drawn to these colourful, three-dimensional, emotionally charged components than to the formal exhibits. Desacralizing objects and spaces was no easy task: throughout the Soviet period, curators reported that believers would bless themselves and pray before icons on display, for example. Ekaterina Teryukova suggests, indeed, that GMIR staff’s turn to building dioramas in the late 1930s was in part a response to the need to display items in a manner that would convey “the sense, functions, and circumstances in which the object existed“ (Teryukova 2014:257). Indeed, curators themselves were susceptible to the “double-edged” character of “musealized objects of the cult” (in the 1981 words of a senior GMIR researcher): after the collapse of communism, former director Vladislav Sherdakov confessed that he had become a devout Christian many years earlier, the result, he said, of having spent his workdays in the former Kazan Cathedral surrounded by sacred objects and their spiritual influence (Polianski 2016:268-69).

The major task of the post-Soviet period was to redefine GMIR’s relationship with religion: both in terms of rethinking its exhibits and in defining its relationship with the great variety of religious groups in St. Petersburg (and the Russian Federation more generally). Through the permanent exhibition, Museum staff aimed to present the results of scholarly research into the history of religion and religious phenomena in an ideologically neutral fashion. At the same time, they began to establish links with various religious organizations and, in an effort to both build bridges and to provide visitors with more access to the emotionally charged context of religious objects in use, to organize temporary exhibitions jointly with such groups. However, curators also make no promises of immediate display to a religious organization when it donates items to the permanent collection. The Museum thus strives to remain a secular institution devoted to promoting respect and knowledge of various religious traditions (Koutchinsky 2005:156-57).

IMAGES

Image #1: Vladimir G. Bogoraz (Tan), 1865-1936. Accessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bogoraz#/media/File:%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7.jpg p on 20 October 2022.
Image #2: Antireligious Literature 1920s-1930s. Accessed from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Overcoming_%282012_exhibition%2C_Museum_of_modern_history%29_18.jpg/640px-Overcoming_%282012_exhibition%2C_Museum_of_modern_history%29_18.jpg on 20 October 2022.
Image #3: Kazan Cathedral with Stalinist Propaganda, 1930s. Accessed from https://www.sobaka.ru/city/city/81866 on 20 October 2022.
Image #4: Children’s Department Permanent Display, “The Very Beginning.” Accessed from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BB._%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BB_1..jpg on 20 October 2022.
Image 5: Shoe Factory Workers’ Excursion to the Museum, 1934. Accessed from https://panevin.ru/calendar/v_kazanskom_sobore_v_leningrade_otkrivaetsya.html on 20 October 2022.
Image 6: Sukhavati Paradise. Accessed fromhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museum_of_Religion_-_panoramio.jpg
on 20 October 2022.
Image 7: Vladimir D. Bonch-Bruevich (1873-1955). Accessed from https://dic.academic.ru/pictures/enc_biography/m_29066.jpg on 20 October 2022.

REFERENCES

Filippova, F. 1989. “Opyt provedeniia nauchno-prakticheskikh  seminarov na baze GMIRiA,” in Problemy religiovedenia i ateizma v muzeiakh. [The Experience of Giving Scholarly-Practical Seminars on the Basis of GMIRA]. In Problems of Religious Studies and and Atheism in Museums. Leningrad: Izdanie GMIRiA.

 Kelly, Catriona. 2016. Socialist Churches:  Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918-1988. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

Koutchinsky, Stanislav. 2005. “St. Peterstburg’s Museum of the History of Religion in the New Millennium” Material Religion 1:154-57.

Muzei istorii religii i ateizma [Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism]. 1981. Leningrad: Lenizdat. Accessed from http://historik.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000066/st002.shtml on 20 October 2022.

Polianski, Igor J. 2016. “The Antireligious Museum: Soviet Heterotopia between Transcending and Remembering Religious Heritage.” Pp. 253-73 in Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe, edited by. Paul Betts and Stephen A. Smith. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Shaknovich, Marianna and Tatiana V. Chumakova. 2014. Muzei istorii religii akademii nauk SSSR i rossiiskoe religiovedenia (1932-1961) [The Museum of the History of Religion of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and Russian Religious Studies]. St. Petersburg: Nauka.

Slezkine, Yuri. 1994. Arctic Mirrors:  Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Smolkin, Victoria. 2018. A Sacred Place is Never Empty:  A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

State Museum of the History of Religion website. 2016. Accessed from http://gmir.ru/eng/ on 20 October 2022.

Teryukova,  Ekaterina. 2020. “G. P. Snesarev as a Collector and Researcher of Central Asian Religious Beliefs (on the Materials of the Collection of the State Museum of the History of Religion, St. Petersburg, Russia).” Religiovedenie [Study of Religion] 2:121-26.

Teryukova, Ekaterina. 2014. “Display of Religious Objects in a Museum Space: Russian Museum Experience in the 1920s and 1930s.” Material Religion 10:255-58.

Teryukova,  Ekaterina. 2012. “The State Museum of the History of Religion, St. Petersburg,” Material Religion 8:541-43.

Publication Date:
26 October 2022

Share

herchurch

 FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

1882:  Ebenezer Lutheran Church was established in San Francisco to serve Swedish immigrants.

1956:  The current church building was erected, but membership declined as the Swedish immigrant population aged.

1958:  Stacy Boorn was born.

1987:  Stacy Boorn graduated from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, and was ordained by the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

1988:  Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) formed, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches became a part of this group.

1990:  The Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries formed to provide financial support for calls to LGBTQIA+ pastors.

1993:  The Extraordinary Candidacy Project formed to provide a credentialing process for publicly-identified LGBTQIA+ people called to Lutheran ministry.

1998 (November):  Stacy Boorn becomes full-time interim mission-assessor pastor at Ebenezer Lutheran Church.

1999:  Pastor Boorn, with the parents’ permission, baptized a child “in the name of God who is our Mother and our Father and in the name of Jesus, who is the child of God.”

2002:  The congregation began using the name herchurch after erecting the banner, “Everybody welcome at the table. Sunday morning worship at 10:30 a.m. God loves all Her children!”, on the church exterior.

2003:  herchurch began using female imagery in its liturgies.

2006 (November 16):  Megan Rohrer, the ELCA’s first transgender pastor, was ordained in a joint call from herchurch (Ebenezer Lutheran), Christ Church Lutheran, St. Francis Lutheran and Sts. Mary and Martha Lutheran.

2007:  The Extraordinary Candidacy Project and Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministires merged to form Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries to support ministry opportunities for LGBTQIA+ Lutherans.

2007 (November):  The first herchurch Faith and Feminism conference held, titled “Wisdom’s Urgent Cry: A Faith and Feminism/Womanist/Mujerista Conference.”

2008 (June-November):  herchurch officiated seven same-sex marriages for members during the period when same-sex marriage was legal in California.

2010 (July):  The ELCA welcomed its first seven openly gay pastors, who had been previously ordained extraordinarily by the ELM.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Like other mainstream Protestant denominations the Lutherans have been experiencing conservative-progressive divisions for several decades, and most recently over sex and gender identity issues.  While the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod components of the denomination have maintained more conservative positions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has gradually adopted more progressive positions, particularly on the ordination of LGBTQIA+ pastors.

San Francisco, of course, historically has been a major center of a variety of countercultural  groups and activities, including religion. In addition to the Lutheran Church advocacy of LGBTQIA+ initiatives, there are a number of other religious and spiritual groups with parallel agendas. For example, the Metropolitan Community Church, which has planted churches across the country, was established here. The sizable Methodist affiliated Glide Memorial Church officiated the first same-sex union ever held in a United Methodist Church (Kane 2015). The San Francisco Buddhist Center hosts both the Gay Buddhist Fellowship and the San Francisco LGBT Sangha. And, of course, San Francisco is home to the highly visible Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Challenges to established mainstream positions have taken two primary forms, acceptance of LGBTQIA+ ordination and assertion of feminist spirituality. Not surprisingly, the ordination challenge began with two San Francisco Lutheran churches, St. Francis Lutheran Church and First United Lutheran Church.  These two congregations extended “calls” to already open gay and lesbian pastors, even though this was in violation of ELCA policy. In 1990, this movement became the Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries; in 1993, the Extraordinary Candidacy Project; and in 2007, the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM). ELM took a more aggressive approach to gay and lesbian ordination by creating a credentialing process for already publicly identified gays and lesbians called to the Lutheran ministry. The ELCA formed a task force in 2001 to study the ordination issue (Goodstein 2010). When ELCA policy was slow to change, particularly after the 2005 national gathering, individual Lutheran congregations began extending calls to LGBTQIA+ pastors despite potential disciplinary action. There were ten extraordinary ordinations between 2006 and 2009. Subsequently the number of  LGBTQIA+ rostered leaders (seminarians and candidates) has grown to over 350 (ELM). In 2009, ELCA reversed its longstanding ordination policy by approving the ordination of monogamous noncelibate gay pastors. Seven self-identified gay pastors in 2010 (who had already been ordained and were serving at churches or outreach ministries without being included  on the official clergy roster) were accepted in a ceremony at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco officiated by ELM (Goodstein 2010). One of those was Megan Roher, who is transgender and later became the first ELCA bishop (Eg1s0Zh1 2021). This policy shift made ELCA the largest Protestant church in the United States to permit noncelibate gay ministers to serve in the ranks of its clergy. At the same time, there also was  organized opposition. to the changes.  A group of conservative  Lutheran churches, Lutheran Core, announced its intention to create a new denomination, the North American Lutheran Church (Goodstein 2010).

Ebenezer Lutheran Church chose a second path that also challenged traditional Lutheran organization and practice. What became known as herchurch developed as its mission the incorporation of the divine feminine into doctrine and practice so as to counterbalance patriarchal dominance in Lutheranism specifically, and Christianity more generally. herchurch has been open to LGBTQIA+ordination, but has not made ordination policy its primary mission. For example, it joined with several other ELCA churches in the ordination of the denomination’s first transgender pastor (Green 2010). The church congregation also includes a number of LGBTQIA+ members. During the brief period in 2008 when same-sex marriage was permitted under California law, her church performed several marriage ceremonies (Ursic 2014). Since Stacy Boorn assumed the role of pastor at Ebenezer, the church has steadily increased the integrality of the divine feminine in its doctrines, rituals and organization. The prominence of the divine feminine has also been heightened by the opposition it has aroused in the more conservative elements of ELCA.

While Ebenezer Lutheran Church traces its history to its founding in San Francisco in 1882, during California’s gold rush days, as a church serving Swedish immigrants. However, its current history begins with the arrival of Pastor Stacy Boorn in 1998. Boorn grew up in the Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination, which does not ordain women as pastors (Aldredge-Clanton 2011). She reports having strong religious interests from a young age: “As a little girl, I loved the Lutheran hymns. I would take my hymnal into the bath and sing my heart out!” (Ursic 2014)

When she was only nine years old, Stacy Boorn announced, “I want to be a pastor. God wants me to do this.” Even though she was growing up in a church that was part of the Missouri Synod Lutheran denomination, that still doesn’t ordain women, she didn’t realize then that women were prohibited from being pastors (Aldredge-Clanton 2011). She participated in confirmation classes at Trinity Lutheran Church in Schenectady, New York, and by the time she was in college had self-declared as a pre-seminarian at Concordia Bronxville, a Missouri Synod college (Aldredge-Clanton 2011; Ursic 2014). After graduating from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1987 and being ordained by the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (which joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America the following year), Boorn  accepted a position of pastor at the small Grace Lutheran Church in Richmond, California, with a predominantly Laotian immigrant congregation, in 1989 (Aldredge-Clanton 2011). She held that position until 1998 when she accepted the pastor position at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco. She followed a pastor who had led the church for twenty-four years (Ursic 2014).

When Boorn arrived at Ebenezer Lutheran, [Image at right] there had been a reduced flow in immigration from Sweden and earlier immigration cohorts had distanced from their ethnic histories (Ursic 2014). Further, the younger age cohorts were suburbanizing. Ebenezer was not unique in this respect as most of the ten churches in the San Francisco Conference of the ELCA faced similar pressure (Ursic 2014).

Boorn began a broad based campaign to change the church culture. Some aspects of her leadership, like creating more openness, were received positively. At the same time other initiatives, such as welcoming LGBTQIA+ community members reflected were less well received, as was the case within the ELCA at that time.

It was during this period that Boorn discovered feminist theology and began thinking about how to incorporate a “more inclusive understanding of the divine”  into the church (Mantle 2010). She was influenced by feminist authors such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, author of Sexism and God-Talk. Her exploration led to a baptism “in the name of God who is our Mother and  our Father and in the name of Jesus, who is the child of God” (Aldredge-Clanton 2011; Ursic 2014). This was followed in 2002 by the placement of a banner across the front face of the church stating that “Everybody welcome at the table. Sunday morning worship at 10:30 a.m. God loves all Her children!” (Aldredge-Clanton 2011). It was when the church then launched a website that the name herchurch was coined (herchurch is never capitalized in order to emphasize the church’s radical egalitarianism (Ursic 2014)). It thus became Ebenezer/herchurch Lutheran Church. The striking purple and periwinkle exterior of the church added an exclamation point to their mission of promoting the feminine divine. [Image at right]

The turmoil over Boorn’s initiatives, particularly the issue of the feminine divine, continued and ultimately led to a vote by the congregation over her continuation as pastor. It was a pivotal moment in the church’s history, with sacralization of the feminine as the symbolic point of contestation. She survived that challenge, which led all but five of the original congregation members to withdraw from the congregation (Kane 2015). Boorn and her supporters then moved ahead with their agenda by creating more inclusive language in hymns and prayers (“Mother-Father God,” “God/dess,” “Christ-Sophia,” and Holy Other) displaying more female imagery in the sanctuary, emphasizing social justice issues concerning women, and creating a lending library of Christian feminist authors in the church. herchurch thus describes itself as a “Lutheran feminist movement that exists to celebrate feminine dimensions of the sacred as expressed in worship, learning, mutual care, and acts of justice” (Ursic 2014).

We strive to be an open and affirming community. All persons are welcome and loved in the love of Christ-Sophia and the Great Mother of us All.  This an exciting time. Even though we have been in God/dess’ service in the City since 1882, we are birthing a new congregation. We are always becoming a community of hospitality, which expresses inclusivity through word/wisdom and worship, deed and ministry programming.
All expressions of gender identity are a blessing! (herchurch website 2022)

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Ebenezer Lutheran had been “very much a traditional Lutheran congregation,” with a shrinking membership base, prior to Stacy Boorn’s arrival (Mantle 2010). Boorn articulated a new church mission, one that advanced a more prophetic mission for the pastor:

Our mission is to embody and voice the prophetic wisdom and word of the Divine Feminine, to uplift the values of compassion, creativity and care for the earth and one another (herchurch website 2022).

Ultimately this would challenge the patriarchal church structure:

The mission of Ebenezer/herchurch Lutheran is to be a prophetic voice within the patriarchal church. Inclusion of the Divine Feminine will change the whole structure of the church. Eventually the clergy structure will be dismantled. The inclusion of the Sacred Feminine empowers women and men to look at alternative structures, to change power structures that leave people out or belittle them or give a person power over others. Exclusively masculine language for Deity supports those structures. Egalitarian language for the Holy Other supports egalitarian communities” (Aldredge-Clanton 2011).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

herchurch developed, adopted, or adapted a number of rituals that emphasized its prophetic, feminist orientation. [Image at right] The Sunday service is titled “The Liturgy of the Divine Feminine.”  There is a Goddess Rosary, which Boorn had discovered at a meeting with feminist Lutheran pastors (Ursic 2014). The Goddess Rosary includes prayers that are intended to be liberating and empowering: “Our Mother Who is Within Us,” by Mariam Teresa Winters, a Roman Catholic Feminist, and “Hail Goddess Full of Grace,” by Carol Christ, a Goddess Feminist (herchurch website 2022; Ursic 2014).

Our Mother (by Miriam Therese Winter)

Our Mother who is within us, we celebrate your many names.
Your wisdom come, your will be done, unfolding from the
depths within us. Each day you give us all that we need. You
remind us of our limits and we let go. You support us in our
power and we act with courage. For you are the dwelling place
within us, the empowerment around us, and the celebration
among us. Now and forever. Amen.

Hail Goddess (adapted from Carol Christ)

Hail Goddess, full of grace, Blessed are You and blessed is
the fruit of your womb. For you are the mother of us all.
Hear/ Heal us now and in all our needs/ dreams. O blessed
be, O blessed be, Amen.

There is also a croning ceremony to honor older women that is borrowed from the Goddess movement.

The church altar clearly features feminist spiritual themes. Most of the artwork in the church and on its website depict the Goddess/divine feminine over common masculine depictions of God (Ursic 2014). herchurch also developed a ChristSophia Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent, which is intended to balance the masculine and feminine. Masses in the preceding three weeks are performed honor the return of and returning to the Ancient Mother (Advent 1), the Black Madonna (Advent 2) and the Guadalupe (Advent 3). There is a distinctive quality to the ChristSophia Mass:

It is not a feminization of the traditional Christmas or a New-Age-Goddess-take on the Solstice. Advent at herchurch is about returning. The season and word itself is about coming, hope, and the anticipation of re/birthing the divine in her world. It is also a season of darkness in which we often retreat into ourselves or the darkness of the unconscious. This darkness is both holy and safe. It is the darkness of the Divine Womb (herchurch website 2022).

Outside of the more formal church activities, the church organized a number of “circles” that reflected divine feminine themes: Goddess/Holy Woman Icon Making, Tactile Spirituality, Full Moon Drum Circle, Soul Collage. Each November the church has sponsored  an annual Faith and Feminism, Womanist, Mujerista Conference (feast) onsite. (herchurch website 2022).

In 2008, California briefly legalized same-sex marriage until passage of the Proposition 8 constitutional initiative prohibited same-sex marriage. During this period herchurch organized marriage rituals and officiated seven same-sex marriages for church members (Ursic 2014).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The strong feminist flavor of Ebenezer/herchurch is evidenced in the titles of leadership: Pastor and Priestess of Ritual; Sister of Song, Art Womb, SoulCollage; Resident Witch; Healing Circle, Artist; gender expansive ministry/Thea-logian; spiritual director, Goddexx enthusiast (herchurch website 2022). herchurch also displays artwork with a feminist perspective, some of it produced by Boorn. [Image at right]

Boorn’s vision for herchurch clearly has both political and religious dimensions. In response to a query about her “wishes” for the church, she listed three:

A true equality and divinity for all sentient beings.
The spiritual community I’m involved with (herchurch) will expand and engage more creative and peace-seeking folks. Open invitation: Sundays at 10:30 am.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

herchurch has remained a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; however, it has consciously remained at the edge of that denominational tradition. As a result of its tradition-challenging agenda it has continued to face difficulty in increasing its membership base, resistance to gaining more prominent status within the church hierarchy, and generated ongoing vocal opposition to its feminist orientation.

When Stacy Boorn arrived at Ebenezer Lutheran Church as pastor, the historic church was in decline. Her assertion of a new direction for the church led to additional defections even as it became known as herchurch and gained increased visibility and publicity. The ECLA (2022) reported 200 baptized members, 188 confirmed members, with twenty onsite attendees and  sixty-five online attendees on average (ECLA 2022). Regular church membership thus has remained well under 100 in a building constructed for a much larger congregation. Only a few members from the pre-herchurch days remain. Rather, herchurch has created a unique identity that has attracted a small band of predominantly female, white, enthusiastic feminist Lutherans and has seamlessly included gays and transgenders, but the church’s membership growth initiatives have yet to attract more mainstream Lutherans in significant numbers (Kane 2015; Aldredge-Clanton 2015; Rice 2022; Ursic 2014).

herchurch’s identity has left it in a somewhat awkward position within the denomination organizationally. While the church has supported the Extraordinary Lutheran Mission in certain ways, it has not made LGBTQIA+ issues its primary focus, which remains feminist spirituality. Since the church’s mission is so closely associated with Boorn’s leadership, this has translated into status issues for Boorn. For example, she was interested in serving on the regional synod council, but her candidacy was not successful beyond the local level. As Boorn noted, “I learned that I am not electable to those kinds of things because I’m too out there for some people, pushing for feminism to be heard within the church” (Goodstein 2010).

Finally, herchurch has met vocal opposition from more conservative elements within ELCA. The central issue has continued to be the church’s emphasis on the divine feminine. For example, herchurch has substituted “Our Mother” for “Our Father” at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. One critic responded that “This prayer is not suitable for use in true Christian worship; avoid it entirely. Choose a standard translation of the Lord’s Prayer instead, in order to truly pray the prayer that Jesus taught us” (Dennis 2022). A former pastor, Tom Brock, who withdrew his congregation from ELCA in response to liberalized denominational policies, referred to herchurch’s assertion of a divine feminine as “arrogant.” He stated that “Jesus taught us ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ For us to change the Lord’s prayer is arrogant” (Garday 2019).

Other critiques have been more harsh, asserting that herchurch could not be considered Lutheran (Ursic 2014):

Please do not claim to be Lutheran. You mock all things of our faith!!! This is an abomination. There is nothing Christian about ignoring God’s Word and creating a pagan goddess worship religion. You are not Lutheran and it is offensive that you claim you are. Nothing in Scripture or our Confessions supports what you are doing. This is paganism. Ms Boorn I call you to repentance. To the Congregation at HerChurch, repent and leave now Romans 16:17.

The most persistent condemnation has come from the web-based Exposing the ECLA. The site regularly excoriates Boorn and the ECLA for a variety of deviations from traditional Lutheran doctrinal positions (Exposing the ECLA website 2021).

The drumbeat of criticism of herchurch has not produced denominational condemnation or sanctions. As one representative asserted, “We have no authority to intervene or override” decisions “made locally” because “congregations are separately incorporated and self-governing” (Gardey 2019). Given the continuing liberalization of ECLA and the withdrawal of several hundred conservative ECLA congregations, herchurch finds itself in a much less vulnerable position than it had occupied when Pastor Boorn introduced worship of the divine feminine.

IMAGES

Image #1: Stacy Boorn.
Image #2: herchurch.
Image #3: Ritual at herchurch.
Image #4: Stacy Boorn’s The Tree Goddess.
Image #5: The altar in herchurch.

REFERENCES

Aldredge-Clanton, Jann. 2011. “Changing Church: Rev. Stacy Boorn, Pastor, Ebenzer/herchurch Lutheran San Francisco, California.” Jann Aldredge-Clanton, November 18. Accessed from https://jannaldredgeclanton.com/changing-church-rev-stacy-boorn-pastor-ebenezerherchurch-lutheran-san-francisco-california-2/ on 1 October 2022.

Aldredge-Clanton, Jann. 2015. “V-Day, One Billion Rising, at Ebenezer/herchurch Lutheran.” Jann Aldredge-Clanton, February 18. Accessed from https://jannaldredgeclanton.com/v-day-one-billion-rising-at-ebenezerherchurch-lutheran/ on 19 September 2022.

Eg1s0Zh1. 2021. “Lutheran Church Installs 1st Transgender Bishop. A “They”.” Believers Portal, September 12. Accessed from https://believersportal.com/lutheran-church-installs-1st-transgender-bishop-a-they/ on 10 November 2022.

ELCA. 2022.  “Ebenezer Lutheran Church.” search.ecla.org, October 27. Accessed from https://search.elca.org/Pages/Location.aspx?LocationID=de3ed871-0836-446a-85b5-20b55cf37276&LocationType=Congregation on 6 November 2022.

Gardey, Ellie. 2019. “Official Lutheran Church Practices Goddess Worship: Shamanic Journeying, Crystals, and A Sacred Dance to Ishtar.” The Daily Caller, July 2. Accessed from https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/02/lutheran-church-god-woman-goddess-worship/ on 6 October 2022.

Goodstein, Laurie. 2010. “Lutherans Offer Warm Welcome to Gay Pastors.” The New York Times, July 25. Accessed from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/us/26lutheran.html on 1 October 2022.

Green, Sharei. 2012. “Herconference: Faith & Feminism, Womanist and Mujerista Conference.” ELM.org, October 25. Accessed from https://www.elm.org/2012/10/25/herconferencefaith-feminism-womanist-and-mujerista-conference/ on 12 October 2022.

Green, Sharei. 2010. “The Rev. Megan Rohrer.” ELM.org, July 5. Accessed from https://www.elm.org/2010/07/05/megan-rohrer/ on 17 October 2022.

Kane, Peter Lawrence. 2015. “Unorthodox: S.F.’s Counterculture Churches Offer a Road to Redemption.” SF Weekly, March 18. Accessed from https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/peter-lawrence-kane-unorthodox-churches-herchurch-metropolitan-community-church-glide-memorial/Content?oid=3481421 on 3 November 2022.

Kennedy, Kit. 2022. “Pastor Stacy Boorn of herchurch Shares Her Art and Creative Wisdom.” San Francisco Bay Times, November 13. Accessed from https://sfbaytimes.com/pastor-stacy-boorn-herchurch-shares-art-creative-wisdom/ on 10 November 2022.

Mantle, Jennifer A. 2010. “Circling the Goddess: Reclaiming the rosary in Her name.” Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, June 2. Accessed from https://www.proquest.com/docview/861918291?pq-origsite=primo on October 5, 2022.

Rice, Ayslin. 2021. “Divine Feminine.” herchurch.org, October 15. Accessed from https://www.herchurch.org/about/divine-feminine on 13 October 2022.

Rice, Ayslin. 2021. “ChristSophia Mass.” herchurch.org, October 23. Accessed from https://www.herchurch.org/about/christsophia-mass on 13 October 2022.

Rice, Ayslin. 2021. “Our Purpose.” herchurch.org, October 18. Accessed from https://www.herchurch.org/about/our-purpose on 13 October 2022.

Rice, Ayslin. 2021. “Goddess mural: paint us into being.” herchurch.org, October 15. Accessed from https://www.herchurch.org/about/goddess-mural on 13 October 2022.

Skogen, Dan. 2010. “Making Idols of Canaanite goddess, Is that Still Okay, ELCA Leadership?” Exposing the ELCA,  November 4. Accessed from https://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/elca-and-false-god on 10 October 2022.

“ELM History.” 2022.Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries: Queer Seminarians & Rostered Leaders in the Lutheran Church, October 16. Accessed from https://www.elm.org/history/ on 16 October 2022.

Ursic, Elizabeth. 2014. “The Resource of Evangelization: Lutheran herchurch.” SUNY Press. Women, Ritual, and Power, September 30.

Nelson, Dennis. 2022. “The Lord’s Prayer at herchurch.” CORE: Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, January 18. Accessed from https://www.lutherancore.website/2022/01/18/the-lords-prayer-at-herchurch/ on 27 September 2022.

“Priestexx: we are She.” 2022. herchurch.org, October 10. Accessed from https://www.herchurch.org/priestexx on 12 October 2022.

Publication Date:
15 November 2022

Share

Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Saint Mother Teresa)

MOTHER TERESA TIMELINE

1910 (August 26):  Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu was born to Nikollë/Kolë and Drana Bojaxhiu in the Ottoman Empire (today’s Skopje, North Macedonia), and baptized the next day.

1916 (November 26):  Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu was confirmed in the Christian faith at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Skopje.

1919 (August 1):  Nikollë/Kolë Bojaxhiu died at the age of forty-five under suspicious circumstances.

1922 (August 15):  Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu felt the first calling to a religious vocation at the age of twelve, in front of the statue of Madonna and Child at the Black Madonna of Letnicë/a in Kosovë/a.

1922–1928:  Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu discerned her religious vocation under the spiritual guidance of the Croatian Fr. Franjo Jambrenković, S.J.

1928 (October 12):  Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu arrived at the Loreto Abbey of Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland, where she received the name of Sister Mary Teresa of the Child Jesus after St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

1929 (January 7):  Sister Mary Teresa arrived at the Loreto Sisters Novitiate in Darjeeling, India.

1931 (May 25):  Sister Mary Teresa made her Temporary Profession, or First Vows. She was assigned to teach at St. Mary’s High School for girls in Kolkata.

1937 (May 24):  Sister Mary Teresa took her Final Vows, with Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J., presiding. She changed her name to Mother Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux of the Child Jesus, in her ongoing devotion to this saint.

1942:  Mother Teresa made a vow not to deny God anything that was asked.

1943:  The Great Famine occurred in Bengal, the result of administrative failures by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, rather than drought or climatic conditions.

1946 (September 10):  During a retreat, Mother Teresa had an encounter with Christ, experiencing specific revelations or locutions from what she referred to as The Voice, which was the origin of the Missionaries of Charity.

1947 (end of the year):  Mother Teresa’s unusually long mystical journey of interior darkness and suffering began, lasting for five decades.

1948 (December 21):  Mother Teresa began her work as a Missionary of Charity.

1950 (October 7):  Archbishop Ferdinand Périer officially established the Society of the Missionaries of Charity in the Archdiocese of Kolkata, upon permission from the Holy See.

1951 (December 14):  Mother Teresa became an Indian citizen.

1961 (October):  At the first general chapter, Mother Teresa was elected Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity.

1963 (March 25):  The Missionaries of Charity Brothers began, the first male branch of the Missionaries of Charity congregation.

1965 (February 10):  Pope Paul VI recognized the Order of the Missionaries of Charity as a congregation of pontifical right. The congregation was placed directly under the pope’s authority instead of the diocesan bishop’s authority.

1969:  Malcolm Muggeridge’s BBC film Something Beautiful for God brought worldwide recognition and attention to the Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa.

1969 (March 29):  Foundation of the (lay) International Association of Co-workers of Mother Teresa.

1972:  Drana Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa’s mother) died in Tirana, Albania. A few months later, her sister, Age Bojaxhiu, died in Tirana, Albania.

1976 (June 25):  The (female) contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity Sisters was founded.

1979 (March 19):  The (male) contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity Brothers and Priests was founded.

1981 (July 2):  Lazër Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa’s brother) died in Palermo, Italy.

1984 (October 30):  Mother Teresa, with Fr. Joseph Langford, founded the Missionary Fathers of Charity.

1995:  Christopher Hitchens published a critical account of Mother Teresa titled The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

1996 (November 17):  Mother Teresa became an honorary U.S. citizen.

1997 (September 5):  Mother Teresa died in Kolkata and was given a state funeral on September 13.

1999:  Pope John Paul II opened the cause for beatification of Mother Teresa, putting her on the fast track toward sainthood.

2003 (October 19):  Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II, becoming Blessed Mother Teresa after a first miracle, curing an Indian woman’s tumor in 2002, was attributed to her.

2005:  The Archdiocese of Kolkata opened the process of canonization.

2016 (September 4):  Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis and became a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

BIOGRAPHY

“By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus” (“Mother Teresa of Calcutta” n.d.). This is how Mother Teresa defined herself. [Image at right] Gonxhe (“Rosebud” in Albanian) Agnes Bojaxhiu was born to Nikollë/Kolë and Drana Bojaxhiu in the Ottoman Empire (today’s Skopje, North Macedonia), their third child after Age (sister), born in 1905, and Lazër (brother), born in 1908. She was baptized Gonxhe-Agnes on August 27, 1910 (a day after she was born), received her first communion at the age of five and a half, and was confirmed on November 26, 1916, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Skopje. Her father’s sudden and suspicious death when Gonxhe was about nine years old left the Bojaxhiu family in financial turmoil. Nonetheless, Drana managed to raise her family virtuously and lovingly; she served as a role model for her children and encouraged the development of Gonxhe’s character and religious vocation. Drana was the “domestic church” (John Paul II 1981) for Gonxhe, and Sacred Heart Cathedral in Skopje provided the extended and vibrant Catholic community which formed the future Mother Teresa.

On the feast of the Assumption (August 15) in 1922, at the tender age of twelve, Gonxhe felt a strong calling to religious life to help the poor. Over the next decade, she discerned her religious vocation under the spiritual guidance of the Croatian Fr. Franjo Jambrenković, S. J. Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu attended the Congregation or Sodality of Mary, [Image at right] founded by Fr. Jambrenković in 1925, which fostered her lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary.

At the age of eighteen, Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu left Skopje for Ireland to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, otherwise known as the Sisters of Loreto. This is what she wrote in a “Farewell” poem she later composed, which speaks about her pain of leaving everything behind to start a new life of mission in India:

I’m leaving my dear house
And my beloved land
To steamy Bengal go I
To a distant shore.
I’m leaving my old friends
Forsaking family and home
My heart draws me onward
To serve my Christ (Mother Teresa 2007:Kindle).

Accompanied by her mother, Drana, and sister, Age, she took the train for Zagreb, Croatia. She had to travel by train through Austria, Switzerland, and France, and then by sea toward London to reach Dublin, journeying more than 1,000 miles. The first stop was Paris, at the convent of Auteuil, for an interview with Mother Eugene McAvin, the mother superior in charge of the Loreto sisters in France. Mother McAvin gave a letter of recommendation to Gonxhe to bring to Mother Raphael Deasy in Ireland. On October 12, 1928, Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu reached the Loreto Abbey of Rathfarnham, Dublin, where she received the name of Sister Mary Teresa of the Child Jesus, after St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897). Known as the little flower and Co-Patron Saint of Missions, Thérèse of Lisieux left an enduring mark on the life and mission of the future Mother Teresa.

After her tenure and training as a novice at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, where she also learned English, she was granted permission to travel to India, her dream of becoming a missionary became a reality. Just three months after her arrival in Ireland, Sister Mary Teresa; her co-national from Skopje, Anastasia Mëhilli; and three Franciscan missionary sisters embarked on the long journey to India on the ship Marcha. On the feast of Epiphany, 1929, Sister Mary Teresa and other missionaries left the sea and took a new route via the Ganges River, arriving in Kolkata. The very next day, she reached the Loreto Sisters novitiate in Darjeeling, where she began her two-year novitiate under the spiritual guidance of the Mistress of Novices, Mother Baptista Murphy. After making her Temporary Profession, or First Vows, in 1931, Sister Mary Teresa became a teacher at St. Mary’s High School for girls in Kolkata, and in 1937 she became the school’s headmistress, that is, principal. That same year, she took her Final Vows, changing her name to Mother Teresa. In doing so, she followed the Loreto tradition, in which upon profession of Final Vows, a sister’s designation would change to “Mother,” and she could take a new name.

By 1942, World War II had literally entered the Loreto monastery, when the convent was transformed into a British hospital. Students and sisters were moved to another temporary location in the village of Morapai, where every evening Mother Teresa visited the houses of the poor. In 1944, Mother Teresa became the principal of St. Mary’s Bengali High School for girls and the superior of the Daughters of St. Anne, the Bengali branch of Loreto.

The Great Famine of 1943, which was related to WWII but also due to British administrative failures, was disastrous for residents of Kolkata; people were starving and dying on the streets. The poverty Mother Teresa found there made a deep impression, prompting her to discern innovative ways to start an Indian-tailored mission to the poorest of the poor. Cholera and malaria epidemics struck the population, causing more than two million people to perish. Mother Teresa lived the horror that was unfolding beyond the walls of the convent. Witnessing the Great Famine inspired her to take an additional personal vow, that she kept secret in her heart: “I made a vow to God, binding under [pain of] mortal sin, to give to God anything that He may ask, ‘Not to refuse Him anything’” (Mother Teresa 2007).

In 1946 Mother Teresa took the train for her annual spiritual retreat at Darjeeling. It was the journey of a lifetime, and of new beginnings. It was what she would call “the call within a call” (Murzaku 2021a:Kindle), the vocation within a vocation, which marked the beginning of the Missionaries of Charity. On this retreat, Mother Teresa had an intimate encounter with Christ. She experienced specific revelations or locutions from what she referred to as The Voice who instructed her to work in the slums of Kolkata among the poorest of the poor. It said to her:

I want Indian nuns, Victims of my love, who would be Mary and Martha. Who would be so very united to me as to radiate my love on souls. I want free nuns covered with my poverty of the cross—I want obedient nuns covered with my obedience of the Cross. I want full of love nuns covered with the Charity of the Cross. Wilt thou refuse to do this for me? (Mother Teresa 2007).

Mother Teresa informed Fr. Celeste Van Exem, S. J., her spiritual director, of her extraordinary experiences and asked for his permission to talk to Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S. J., of Kolkata. She was transferred to the Loreto convent in Asansol. After four months of discernment, Fr. Van Exem was convinced that Mother Teresa’s inspiration came directly from God. Thus, he gave her permission to write to Archbishop Périer, describing in detail her encounter and what The Voice was asking of her. Mother Teresa wrote several letters to Archbishop Périer, including a detailed letter dated June 5, 1947, in which she addressed all questions and concerns related to the proposal for the foundation of a new religious community. The letter to the archbishop turned out to be the founding document and the rough draft of the constitutions for her new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity.

Archbishop Périer was planning to submit the case to Rome for examination during his upcoming visit. On the Feast of the Epiphany in 1948, the archbishop gave the go-ahead to Mother Teresa to write to the Superior General of the of Loreto Sisters, Mother Gertrude, who approved her special call. That summer, Pope Pius XII (p. 1939–1958), through the Sacred Congregation for Religious, granted her permission to leave the Loreto Order and begin her new mission in the slums. She had been granted an “indult of exclaustration,” which provided authorization for her to stay outside the Loreto convent but to keep her religious vows as a Loreto sister. A few days later, Mother Teresa left the Loreto Convent for the Holy Family Hospital of the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, to learn nursing skills.

In 1947 as the new religious order was taking shape, Mother Teresa began an unusually long mystical journey of interior darkness and suffering known in mystical theology as the “dark night of the soul.” In comparison to other saints who went through similar periods of spiritual darkness, her darkness was extraordinarily long; it lasted for almost fifty years (Murzaku 2021a). Nevertheless, a year later, wearing a white sari with bright blue border, Mother Teresa left the Loreto convent to enter the heart of the city and touch the wounds of the poor, starting a new religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. Soon, disciples who shared Mother Teresa’s missionary theology joined the ranks to serve Jesus through the poor in “absolute poverty,” by which she meant:

real and complete poverty—not starving—but wanting—just only what the real poor have—to be really dead to all that the world claims for its own (Mother Teresa 2007).

When Mother Teresa wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1950 to request a new congregation, the community had twelve members. Shortly thereafter, Archbishop Périer officially established the Society of the Missionaries of Charity in the archdiocese of Kolkata, upon permission from the Holy See. Within a year, the first sisters began their novitiate as Missionaries of Charity. Within two years, Mother Teresa opened Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for the dying. The community moved to 54A Lower Circular Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, which remains the location of the motherhouse for the Missionaries of Charity. In 1955, the community opened Shishu Bhavan in Kolkata, a children’s home for abandoned street babies and children; and in 1959, a leprosarium was established outside the city of Titagarh. The next year, Mother Teresa was elected Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity.

By the early 1960s, Missionaries of Charity were expanding their houses nationally. On February 1, 1965, Pope Paul VI granted the Decretum Laudis, which established the Missionary Sisters of Charity as a Congregation of Pontifical Right; the congregation was placed directly under the pope’s authority instead of the diocesan bishop’s (as cited in Pope John Paul II 2000). The new structure helped encourage the order to expand internationally. Missionaries of Charity houses were opened in Venezuela, Italy, Tanzania, and other countries, including countries which were behind the Iron Curtain (Albania, Cuba, Croatia, Poland, and the Soviet Union, although not China).

Mother Teresa’s charism was not for women’s congregations only. In March 1963, she founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, the first male branch of the Missionaries of Charity congregation, followed by the foundations of the contemplative branch of the Missionary of Charity Sisters (1976) and Brothers and Priests (1979). In 1984, with Fr. Joseph Langford, Mother Teresa cofounded the Missionary Fathers of Charity, whose purpose is to provide priestly service to the poorest of the poor, to provide spiritual assistance to the Missionaries of Charity, and to spread Mother Teresa’s spirituality and mission. The Fathers became a congregation of diocesan right in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1992. Her spirit and charism inspired lay followers known as co-workers of Mother Teresa (founded in 1969).

Malcolm Muggeridge’s BBC documentary Something Beautiful for God (1969) brought worldwide recognition to Mother Teresa and her expanding order (Gjergji 1990). The world was witnessing the rise of one of the most famous religious leaders of the twentieth century, as her list of awards and accolades clearly evidenced, from the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) to the Templeton Prize (1973) and Nobel Peace Prize (1979). [Image at right] She was recognized by numerous awards and honors in India, which included the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace (1962); the Jawaharlal Nehru Award (1972); and the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award for humanitarian work (1980). She also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985), the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education (1992), and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal (1997) for her missionary work with the poor of Kolkata. She firmly believed, however, the awards and accolades were given without her meriting them, as she said, “I personally am most unworthy” in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech (Mother Teresa 1979).

Despite health problems, which included heart disease, Mother Teresa stubbornly continued her mission to serve the poorest of the poor until the end, while the Missionaries of Charity were growing in unprecedented numbers. On September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa died in Kolkata surrounded by her sisters. She was granted the honor of a state funeral by the Indian government, and her body was laid to rest in the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity.

Less than two years after her death, Pope John Paul II (p. 1978–2005) in 1999 decided to open the cause for beatification of Mother Teresa, putting her on the fast track toward sainthood. In 2003, Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II, and in 2016 canonized by Pope Francis (p. 2013–present), after the miracle of healing of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumors was approved by Francis in 2015. She became St. Mother Teresa, which might have not pleased her. She wished to stay in the company of the poor, as she is recorded saying:

If I ever become a Saint—I will surely be one of “darkness.” I will continually be absent from Heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth (Mother Teresa 2007).

DEVOTEES

Mother Teresa had many followers and devotees from different religious backgrounds and walks of life: rich and poor, businesspeople and heads of state, religious leaders and popes. One of her first followers explains why she followed Mother Teresa and what she witnessed in her: “Seeing her poorly dressed in a simple, humble sari, with a Rosary in her hand, making Jesus present among the poorest. One could say ‘a Light has dawned in the darkness of the slums’” (Mother Teresa 2007).

Mother Teresa’s religious message went to the heart of the people of India, inviting them closer to their God and relieving them of the fear of proselytism and conversion to Catholicism. “Yes, I convert,” Mother Teresa is recorded as saying. “I convert you to be a better Hindu, or a better Muslim, or a better Protestant, or a better Catholic, or a better Parsee, or a better Sikh, or a better Buddhist. And after you have found God, it is for you to do what God wants you to do” (Murzaku 2022). Mother’s religious message went to the heart of the people of India, inviting them closer to God.

Mother was considered a living saint by popular piety, by her followers and devotees. Most probably because of her huge numbers of devotees and followers, the Vatican expedited her canonization. [Image at right] Pope John Paul II waived the customary canonization process in Mother Teresa’s case, allowing her cause to be opened before the five-year customary wait after her death. On December 20, 2002, he approved the decrees of her heroic virtues and miracles (“Mother Teresa of Calcutta” n.d.).

TEACHINGS/DOCTRINES

Mother Teresa was Roman Catholic nun, with a profound commitment to her Christian faith. She saw Christ hidden in the poor and the abandoned. Her unwavering faith followed the Gospel precept of “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40).

For Mother Teresa, Mary was a gift, given by Jesus at the foot of the Cross to be Mother to all (Mother Teresa 1988: Chapter Two). Christ trusted Mary, and so do the Missionaries of Charity, who trust her in imitation of Christ. Mother Teresa’s spiritual closeness with Mary was a combination of adoration, devoutness, and total trust in Our Lady’s charisma and succor that brought Mother Teresa to experience the love and power of God through the Mediatrix (Mary). Even the intimacy and unity of Mother Teresa with Jesus’ Crucifix can be credited to Mary and her intercession. “Be all for Jesus through Mary,” this was Mother Teresa’s theology of redemption, which is similar to St. Louis de Montfort’s devotion “to Christ through the hands of Mary,” with solid foundations in both Scripture and Tradition (Murzaku 2020).

Mother Teresa understood poverty, and all that comes with it, as the ultimate priority. [Image at right] Identifying with the poor, seeing Christ in the poor, suffering for the poor; all of this marked her ministry and vocation to those living in the gutters in India and continues to be the trademark of the ministry of the Missionaries of Charity serving throughout the world. Mother Teresa’s dedication to the poor was not motivated by an academic or intellectual understanding of her knowledge of their kinship with Christ; instead, she felt viscerally (from her senses to her soul) that those most in need of care presented her with opportunities to love Christ himself. A main shortcoming she saw in modern society was that

Today it is very fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them (Mother Teresa 1989:Kindle).

The Missionaries’ response to Christ is the Vow of Poverty, which entails a life of antipathy to earthly riches. It is a religious vow taken in full freedom by the sisters, who freely dispose of all property which they possess and who may also renounce any patrimony or inheritance they expect to receive (Mother Teresa 1988: Chapter Eight). This is what the constitutions of the Missionaries of Charity call Consecrated Poverty.

The poverty of the Missionaries of Charity is a lived poverty. They, as the poor they serve, depend entirely on Divine Providence. That is how Mother Teresa understood identification with the poor, by being one of them.

Related to her commitment to walking with the poor was Mother Teresa’s belief that suffering is redemptive. Similar to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose name she took, Mother Teresa learned early in life that if one wants to follow the crucified Christ, he gives his followers two companions which lead to sanctification, or divinization: suffering and sorrow. She experienced both of these in the Balkans (Skopje, North Macedonia), where she was born and raised. Thus, personal loss, suffering, and sorrow became her lifelong companions, through which she believed she experienced the kingdom of God. Mother Teresa found love in suffering because it was through “suffering and death that God ransomed the world” (Thérèse of Lisieux 2008:95).

As she said:

Suffering will never be completely absent from our lives. If we accept it with faith, we are given the opportunity to share the passion of Jesus and show him our love. . . .

I like to repeat this time and time again: the poor are wonderful. The poor are very kind. They have great dignity. The poor give us more than what we give them (Mother Teresa 1989).

Mother Teresa’s modus operandi was to relieve Christ’s suffering as she saw it in the eyes of all who are poor and who suffer.

Mother Teresa took suffering to heart, and she herself suffered in imitation of the suffering Christ and the suffering poor. Christ not only loved those suffering in this world, but he showed his love through his real suffering on the Cross. Mother Teresa’s understanding of suffering is in line with the Gospel teaching. St. Paul told the Corinthians that “For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow,” adding “If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation” (2 Cor. 1:5,6). Like Paul, Mother Teresa believed that when Christians see Christ’s redemption, their suffering has a happy ending, redemption.

Mother Teresa suffered from a prolonged spiritual darkness. Spiritual suffering can be more painful than the visible, bleeding stigmata. Mother Teresa bore the suffering and the marks of Jesus on her spirit (Gal. 6:17). She was chosen to be a victim soul, taking upon herself the redemptive power of human suffering. Darkness united her to Christ, to the poor, and to suffering humans who were working their way to redemption and divinization. As darkness increased, so did her thirst for God and the redemption of souls. For Mother Teresa, suffering, a consequence of original sin, had acquired a new meaning; it has become a participation in the saving work of Jesus (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1992:1521).

Missionaries of Charity joined the order fully aware of the vows and the expectations, and ready to imitate Christ even in suffering. They were expected to totally surrender, giving themselves to God even in suffering. How can one alleviate human suffering? By being a co-sharer in Christ’s suffering and the suffering of the poor, Mother Teresa sought to alleviate suffering: “Our Community should take its share in the Passion of Jesus and welcome suffering, in any form, as a tremendous force to renew itself and to become more sensitive to the suffering of our poor whom we are called to serve” (Mother Teresa 1988:44). In itself, suffering is nothing; however, suffering divided or shared with the passion of Christ is a gift and proof of his love, because by giving up his Son, the Father has proved his love for the world (Gorrée and Barbier 2005).

Mother Teresa made prayer central to the life of the Missionaries of Charity. Consequently, she asked every Missionary of Charity to pray with an absolute trust in God’s loving care. She is recorded as saying:

My secret is a very simple one: I pray. To pray to Christ is to love him (Mother Teresa 1989).

Unlike other religious congregations, however, for the Missionaries of Charity prayer is less structured and appears to be freer and more flexible. It is also oriented toward contemplation, with a different approach to contemplation—that is, the Missionaries of Charity are active contemplatives. Classical monasticism followed fuga mundi—fleeing the world for the desert, the mountain, or deep woods and silence. These religious needed to get away as far as possible from other people and from attachments to be contemplative. This was not the case for the Missionaries of Charity or for Mother Teresa. She made certain that that they would engage in both contemplation and action. Their day is made up of twenty-four hours with Jesus in prayer and action, which means,

We are contemplatives in the world and so our lives are centered on prayer and action. Our work is an outflow of our contemplation, our union with God in whatever we do, and through our work (which we call our Apostolate) we feed our union with God so that prayer and action and action and prayer are in continual flow (Mother Teresa 1995b:Kindle).

Mother Teresa herself was an active contemplative, which garnered her recognition and many awards. She won a place of honor at the Human Rights Porch of the National (Episcopal) Cathedral in Washington, D.C. [Image at right] The Human Rights Porch of the Cathedral has been dedicated to those individuals “who have taken significant, profound, and life-changing actions in the fight for human rights, social justice, civil rights, and the welfare of other human beings” (Murzaku 2021b). Mother Teresa became a distinguished and distinctive voice of those who did not have a voice and whose problems the modern world has ignored. This included the poor, the persecuted, immigrants, AIDS victims, terminally ill patients, the destitute, and society’s discards whom she helped until her death.

RITUALS AND PRACTICES

Mother Teresa observed all the rituals of the Catholic faith, including the Eucharist, which is the center of the community life of the Missionaries of Charity. In the Eucharist,

we receive Jesus who forms us [, . . .] pray together as a community and for the community, including daily prayer to the Hoy Spirit to unite us all in love [, . . .] share the meals and recreate together [, . . .] we forgive one another with a mutual and forgiveness and publicly ask pardon for faults committed publicly as soon as possible [, . . . engage in] mutual sharing of spiritual reflection [, . . . and] celebrate the feast of the patron Saint of the sisters”(Mother Teresa, Constitutions 1988: Part 1, Chapter 1).

As Christ on the cross was stripped of his garments, of everything, he became one and identified with the poor and the outcast. This was the model of an “absolute” or “perfect” poverty Mother Teresa and her order identified with, by making the poverty of Jesus and the poverty of the poor their own (Murzaku 2021a).

Mother Teresa followed the type of absolute poverty Christ describes to the scribe who approached him: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” (Matt. 8:20). Mother Teresa and her sisters lived and live the present moment intensely with complete trust in God (Mother Teresa 1988).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Mother Teresa’s leadership capabilities resulted in establishing a thriving religious order in the late twentieth century, at a time when other religious orders in the Catholic Church were shrinking in the number of vocations. This is a result of Mother Teresa’s extraordinary leadership as founder and leader of the Missionaries of Charity. She did not think in terms of big, systemic, yearlong plans to address poverty, suffering, drug abuse, or bringing about world peace. Instead, her leadership approach was helping one person at a time. Mother Teresa never set out to change the world, just to help the person in front of her (Bose and Faust 2011), staying focused and being active. Like the leader of a large corporation, Mother Teresa had a clear vision and purpose in which she strongly believed. Her vision was to serve the poorest of the poor, and this vision was well articulated and acted on. She was strong and stood up for her principles. She never betrayed her ethical principles. She faced criticism with humility. She had a clear understand of her strengths and weaknesses:

If we were humble, nothing
would change us—neither praise
nor discouragement. If someone
were to criticize us, we
would not feel discouraged. If
someone were to praise us, we
also would not feel proud (Mother Teresa 1989).

She was a top-down and hands-on leader, not an autocrat but rather a mother to her community. Community was a big family for Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. As the author of the Constitutions of the Missionaries of Charity, she wrote that the “first great responsibility is to be a community” (Mother Teresa 1988:43). Further, she explained that “The Authority which Superiors receive from God through the ministry of the Church is to be exercised by them in a spirit of service. In fulfilling their office they are to be docile to the will of God, and are to govern those subject to them as children of God” (Mother Teresa 1988:82).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Despite Mother Teresa’s fame as one of the most significant women religious of the twentieth century, her work and contributions have not gone without criticism and controversy. Christopher Hitchens, Mother Teresa’s unbending critic, writing in Slate on October 20, 2003, on the occasion of her beatification, asserted, “MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God” (Hitchens 2003). In a 1995 New York Times article, Walter Goodman criticized her for paying tribute at the grave of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, stating that “Mother Teresa gives more unto Caesar than is strictly required by Scripture” (Goodman 1995).

Geneviève Chénard, writing for the New York Times, wrote that she was not “convinced we should be so quick to canonize Mother Teresa.” She further raised these issues: “Her Missionary [sic] of Charity was (and still is) one of the richest organizations in the world, and yet at the facility under her watch, used syringes were rinsed with cold water, tuberculosis patients were not put in quarantine and pain medicine was not prescribed. Mother Teresa believed that suffering made you closer to God” (Chénard 2016).

Within Catholic Christianity, a number have questioned Mother Teresa’s orthodoxy. Several consider her to be a Universalist, “believing essentially that all religion leads to the same God” (Challies 2003).

Others find her belief that Jesus is present in every person to be pantheistic (Challies 2003), attacking her statement that “When we touch the sick and needy, we touch the suffering body of Christ” (Mother Teresa 1989).

Mother Teresa has had her share of criticism and skeptics who have questioned the success of her order, her faith, her works of mercy, her theology of service, her suffering which includes the dark night of the soul, and her commitment to poverty. Mother Teresa and her mission to serve the poorest of the poor cannot be understood without a mystical-ascetical theological framework. Through her dark night of the soul, she was attempting to enlighten people’s ways, including the minds and the paths of her critics. After all, trials are human, but how she stood the trial, including the trial of faith, is the key to understanding Mother Teresa’s dark night of doubt and darkness. Although Mother Teresa was going through darkness, she was not clinically depressed or displaying symptoms of smiling depression, which covers depression with a false smile or what psychologists call social smiles. These false smiles are common among people with celebrity status as Mother Teresa had, who are constantly haunted by the media. A 2010 study proved that indeed “there is no real evidence of her [Mother Teresa] being clinically depressed” (Zagano and Gillespie 2010:71).

In Mother Teresa’s view, doubts never became unbelief. She did not feel ashamed discussing her doubts with her spiritual advisors. In fact, for those who have doubts about the very possibility of faith, her experience might be enlightening, leading them to a path she walked before them. Additionally, the dark night of the soul, which is a well-known state in Christian mystical-ascetic tradition, never overwhelmed Mother Teresa (Murzaku 2021a).

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGIONS

Mother Teresa is a relatable saint, who can be emulated. She is a modern woman who had a religious calling to serve the poorest of the poor and accomplished it. She is a role model of charity, dedication, selflessness, and tenderness. She personalized poverty, giving it a name and a face, and was the biggest advocate for her poor.

She is an important figure in the study of women religious. She is a modern saint who believed that “every human being [is made] for greater things—to love and to be loved” (Maasburg 2016:Kindle). She was an advocate of women and the complementarity of women and men, and of the family and of children (Mother Teresa 1995a). She brought a traditional message of compassion for the poorest of the poor into the modern world. Through action, Mother Teresa shared the centrality of spirituality and prayer to authentically living in the world.

IMAGES

Image # 1: Mother Teresa. Courtesy Rev. Fr. Dr. Lush Gjergji.
Image # 2: School in Skopje attended by Gonxhe Agnes Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa). Courtesy Prof. Dr. Skender Asani.
Image # 3: Mother Teresa receiving the Nobel Prize in 1979. Credit: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/7-facts-mother-teresa-nobel-prize-1369697-2018-10-17.
Image # 4: Mother Teresa with Pope John Paul II. Credit: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/34441/the-happiest-day-of-mother-teresas-life.
Image # 5: Mother Teresa caring for a malnourished child. Credit: http://2breligionalexis.weebly.com/importance-of-issue-and-how-mother-teresa-helped-out.html.
Image # 6: Sculpture of Mother Teresa on the Human Rights Porch of the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. Credit: https://cathedral.org/what-to-see/interior/mother-teresa/.

REFERENCES

Bose, Ruma, and Lou Faust. 2011. Mother Teresa, CEO: Unexpected Principles for Practical Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. 1992. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4N.HTM on 15 October 2022.

Challies, Tim. 2003. “The Myth of Mother Teresa.” Challies, November 2. Accessed from https://www.challies.com/articles/the-myth-of-mother-teresa/ on 15 October 2022.

Chénard, Geneviève. 2016. “Mother Teresa Doesn’t Deserve Sainthood.” New York Times, March 25. Accessed from    https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/03/25/should-mother-teresa-be-canonized/mother-teresa-doesnt-deserve-sainthood on 15 October 2022.

Gjergji, Lush. 1990. Madre Teresa. La Madre della Carita. Bologna: Editrice Velar.

Goodman, Walter. 1995. “Critic’s Notebook; A Skeptical Look at Mother Teresa.” New York Times, February 8.

Gorrée, Georges, and Jean Barbier. 2005. Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Tu mi Porti l’Amore Scritti Spirituali. Rome: Città Nuova Editrice.

Hitchens, Christopher. 2003. “Mommie Dearest: The Pope Beatifies Mother Teresa, a Fanatic, a Fundamentalist, and a Fraud.” Slate, October 20. Accessed from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/10/the-fanatic-fraudulent-mother-teresa.html on 15 October 2022.

Maasburg, Leo. 2016. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. A Personal Portrait. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Mother Teresa. 2007. Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk. New York: Image Doubleday.

Mother Teresa. 1995a. “Message to Fourth World Conference on Women.” Accessed from https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/mother-teresas-message-to-4th-womens-conference/ on 15 October 2022.

Mother Teresa. 1995b. A Simple Path, comp. Lucinda Vardey. New York: Ballantine Books. Kindle Edition.

Mother Teresa. 1989. Mother Teresa: In My Own Words. Compiled by José Luis González-Balado. Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications. Kindle edition.

Mother Teresa. 1988. Constitutions of the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa. 1979. Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. Accessed from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1979/teresa/acceptance-speech/ on 15 October 2022.

“Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” n.d. Vatican. Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20031019_madre-teresa_en.html on 15 October 2022.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2022. “Mother Teresa’s Sisters Don’t Have to Proselytize—They Have the Love of God to Share.” National Catholic Register, January 15. Accessed from https://www.ncregister.com/blog/missionaries-of-charity-persecution-in-india on 15 October 2022.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2021a. Mother Teresa: Saint of the Peripheries. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2021b. “United Nations Honors Mother Teresa with a Postage Stamp.” National Catholic Register, August 26. Accessed from https://www.ncregister.com/blog/un-postage-stamp-honors-mother-teresa on 15 October 2022.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2020. “Be All for Jesus Through Mary.” National Catholic Register. August 15. https://www.ncregister.com/blog/be-all-for-jesus-through-mary.

Pope John Paul II. 2000. “Letter of the Holy Father John Paul II on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Missionaries of Charity.” Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_20001017_missionaries-charity.html on 15 October 2022.

Pope John Paul II. 1981. Familiaris Consortio. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html on 15 October 2022.

Thérèse of Lisieux. 2008.  Simply Surrender. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria.

Zagano, Phyllis, and C. Kevin Gillespie. 2010. “Embracing Darkness: A Theological and Psychological Case Study of Mother Teresa.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 10:52-75.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Comastri, Angelo. 2016. Madre Teresa, Una Goccia d’Acqua Pulita. Milano: Paoline Editoriale Libri.

Donohue, Bill. 2016. Unmasking Mother Teresa’s Critics. Bedford, NH: Sophia Institute Press. Kindle edition.

Egan, Eileen. 1985. Such a Vision of the Streets: Mother Teresa—The Spirit and the Work. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company.

Garrity, Robert M. 2017. Mother Teresa’s Mysticism: A Christo-Ecclesio-Humano-centric Mysticism. Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing.

Gjergji, Lush. 2022. I Hold the Albanian People in My Heart. Conversations with Mother Teresa. New York, NY: Iliria Press.

Gjergji, Lush. 1991. Mother Teresa: Her Life, Her Words. Fifth Edition. New York: New City Press.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2022. “Mother Teresa’s Vocation at 100.” The Catholic Thing, August 15.  Accessed from https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2022/08/15/mother-teresas-vocation-at-100/ on 15 October 2022.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2018. “Mother Teresa: Pro-Life Heroine of Pro-Life Millennials.” National Catholic Register, September 5. Accessed from https://www.ncregister.com/blog/mother-teresa-pro-life-heroine-of-pro-life-millennials on 15 October 2022.

Murzaku, Ines Angeli. 2017. “Papal Envoy to Consecrate New Cathedral Named for Mother Teresa.” National Catholic Register, July 20. Accessed from https://www.ncregister.com/blog/papal-envoy-to-consecrate-new-cathedral-named-for-mother-teresa on 15 October 2022.

Scott, David. 2016. The Love That Made Mother Teresa. Special Canonization Edition. Bedford, NH: Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition.

Spink, Kathryn. 1997. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Publication Date:
18 October 2022

Share

All Pacific Arise

ALL PACIFIC ARISE TIMELINE

1946 (September 6):  Michael Maeliau was born in the village of Dodaia in the To’abaita speaking region, with descent from the local Baleafoa lineage and the Gwalu’masu lineage of the Baelalea speaking group.

1958:  In order to attend school, at the age of twelve he moved to his grandmother in the nearby village of Suidara, close to Malu’u School in the To’abaita speaking region.

1963:  Maeliau attended the King George VI Secondary School in Honiara. He was expelled from the school in 1965 for organizing a strike to expel one of the teachers.

1966:  Maeliau joined the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force but resigned after a year because he wanted to join the ministry of his church.

1974:  Maeliau graduated with a college diploma from the Bible College of New Zealand (BCNZ, now the Laidlaw College) in Auckland and, in the same year, with a Diploma in Divinity from the Melbourne College of Divinity.

1975:  Maeliau married Martha Safina Atomea and took up a lecturer position at the Christian Leaders’ Training College (CLTC) in Papua New Guinea. Whilst lecturing he took up Arts courses at the University of Papua New Guinea.

1976-1983:  Maeliau served as the President of the Evangelical Fellowship of the South Pacific.

1979-1980:  Maeliau received his first revelation during two Catherine Easter Conventions in the Northern Territories, Australia. He reported that God revealed to him that First Nations of Australia would lead spiritually. This marked the beginning of the “lead-up to the battle.”

1980:  Maeliau graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Papua New Guinea.

1983:  Maeliau attended the Billy Graham conference for Evangelists in Amsterdam. From then on, “the conceptual years” began.

1984:  Maeliau received the first vision on the Latter Rain Revival on Earth during the first World Prayer Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. Back in Solomon Islands, he received a vision on a cloud above Solomon Islands bringing about the latter rain.

1984:  On a flight across Australia, while visiting the continent for a gathering of First Nations’ leaders, Maeliau learned from God that the desert underneath him had produced its own Moseses and David.

1985-1986.  Maeliau received more revelations during visits to Wagga Wagga and Mapleton (during a Baptists Leaders’ Retreat), and Bundaberg. In Bundaberg he learned that the mandate for the SSEC was the ‘“Dish and Towel’, a servant of servants” and that Solomon Islands was “the Joseph of the South Pacific.”

1986:  Maeliau received the so-called “Deep Sea Canoe Vision” during a Church Elder’s prayer meeting in Honiara. This vision heralded The Move of the Glory of the Lord (later APA).

1987:  Pastor Tom Hess established the Jerusalem House on the Mount of Olives for “watchman” from all over the world to maintain a continual twenty-four-hour prayer. Maeliau, as the representative for Solomon Islands, joined the movement from the early 1990s onwards.

1989 (December):  Key evangelical leaders Oswald Sanders, John Hitchen, and Joshua Daimoi, among others, gathered in Suva, Fiji for the first Pacific Mission Consultation. Especially the Melanesian churches advocated for an inversion of the mission.

1990s:  Labelled by Maeliau as “the formative years,” this was a period during which the South Pacific Prayer Assembly (as APPA was then named) engaged ever more confidently with prayer mountains (see below) and the organisation of South Pacific Prayer Assemblies in the region.

1992:  The South Pacific Prayer Assembly (SPPA) was established.

1996:  Pastor Tom Hess visited Brisbane and Honiara where Maeliau took him to a prayer mountain. Maeliau began to attend Hess’ yearly All Nations Convocation in Jerusalem.

1993-1997:  Maeliau founded and lead the political party called the Christian Leadership and Fellowship Group. For about one-and-a-half years, Maeliau acted as Minister of Home Affairs and subsequently Minister of Commerce under Prime Minister Francis Billy Hilly (1993-1994).

1997:  Maeliau was rewarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the church, the community and politics.

1998–2003:  Armed conflict, lawlessness and disorder gripped Solomon Islands, prompting Maeliau to call for increased sovereignty of Malaita and the establishment of a theocracy.

2000:  The tenth anniversary of the South Pacific Prayer Assembly was celebrated, and, following a call in 1998 in Jerusalem, Maeliau offered Solomon Islands to the King of Jerusalem. In September, Maeliau climbed Uluru to urge Jesus to come.

2003 (August):  Maeliau received several revelations on the Glory of the Lord while in Papua New Guinea. The movement was renamed to All Pacific Prayer Assembly (APPA).

2003 (August):  In the Solomon Islands, Maeliau introduced a gun amnesty provision to end a conflict and three days earlier, on August 17, he had received a revelation that the prophecy about the coming of the Captain had been fulfilled.

2004:  During a “24/7 Prayer Conference” in Canberra, Maeliau was ordered by God to enter Parliament House to ask Jesus to assume power over Australia, to smash the country’s Babylonian system, and to withdraw all traces of that system in the countries to which it has been exported.

2005 (February):  Maeliau attended the All Nations Convocation in Singapore where God revealed to him that Australia would go to Jerusalem through the Bethany Gate.

2005 (April):  Maeliau participated in the Third All Pacific Prayer Assembly in Auckland.

2006:  Maeliau stood as an independent candidate for the elections for the national parliament. His program of reform promised a God-fearing and non-corrupt government, but his electoral campaign was ultimately unsuccessful.

2007 (July 7):  During a church eldership meeting in Auki, Malaita, on Solomon Island’s 29th Independence Day, God revealed that the move of the Glory of the Lord would touch down in Jerusalem after ten years.

2009:  The APPA broke away from the South Sea Evangelical Church. The Church decided to defrock Maeliau.

2010:  Over the course of the year Maeliau received a succession of manifestations and messages from Jesus. The movement changed its name to All Peoples Prayer Assembly (APPA).

2015 (December 25):  Maeliau received the message that the Government of Solomon Islands was on Jesus’ shoulders (Isaiah 9: 6,7) and further messages on the restoration of sovereignty at five levels (God, state, ethnic group, tribe, family, and person).

2016 (September 6):  On Maeliau’s birthday, evangelist Peter Kama, who was in Papua New Guinea for “covenant celebrations,” received a divine message announcing Maeliau’s status as a prophet.

2017 (October):  Maeliau attended the Welcome of the King of Glory into Jerusalem meeting in Bethlehem during the Feast of Tabernacles.

2018:  The movement changed its name to All Pacific Arise (APA).

2019 (September):  Maeliau joined a prayer gathering on Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

2019 (December):  Maeliau joined a gathering of the APA Jerusalem Council in Israel for the last time in his life.

2021 (October 14):  After being hospitalized with diabetes in Malu’u, Maeliau died.

2022 (October):  There was a major celebration of the 30th Anniversary of APA and Feast of Tabernacles in the Maranatha Hall in Honiara.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The All Pacific Arise (APA) is an evangelical millenarian movement that appeared in the To’abaita and Baelalea speaking regions on the island of Malaita in the mid-1980s and has grown steadily to thousands of followers and an international network (Timmer 2015a, 2015b). The movement was built on a long tradition of revelation, revival, and ideas of autonomy in the South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC) and its predecessor, the South Sea Evangelical Mission. The Mission has been active in the region since the early twentieth century and grew most strongly on the island of Malaita (Young 1925; Hilliard 1969; Moore 2009). It is the oldest traditional and most politically engaged church on the island (Akin 2013:28). APA emerged as an alternative to the SSEC’s traditional evangelical doctrine, especially with respect to its relegation of salvation to the future. In contrast, APA is open to the imminent presence of God, revelations, and pasts that include relations with ancestors. Following several conflicts over fundamental theological matters, APA broke away by invoking a black theology and a new constitution of society in 2005.

APA was founded by Reverend Michael Maeliau, [Image at right] and he continued to lead the movement as chief prophet until he passed away in October 2021 at the age of seventy-five. In the context of secondary conversions following a major charismatic revival in 1970 (Griffiths 1977), Maeliau began to receive divine revelations of a prophetic nature concerning the past, present, and future of Malaita. He became a prophet-leader, he began to speak on behalf of God while being in control of a movement. Prophets in the context of APA are understood as a convergence between prophets in the Hebrew culture of the Old Testament and a local tradition of “priests” responsible for communication with ancestors. They are manifestations of what Garry Trompf sees as a Melanesian prophetic tradition, “even when certain messages may be palpably syncretic … or heavily garbed in Christian vocabulary, they are mouthed by Melanesians in an indigenous, non-imitative manner” (1977:9).

Over a period of years, Maeliau lived out a new understanding of himself in a local yet intensely globally connected society, constructing a movement with strong links to Israel as well as to other eschatological movements around the globe. As prophet and theologian, Maeliau has used the 1970 revival to re-define Malaita as a Christian nation, presented as possessing certain key continuities with its past forms. Essentially, APA’s theology builds on the notion that the coming of Christ’s reign is expanded through the gift of the Holy Spirit in the last days (Acts 2:17) towards the ends of the earth (13:47), including to the divinely named Solomon Islands and its past rituals for communication with ancestors and God.

Maeliau’s ideal of prophecy and the use of apocalyptic texts has continued to resonate across the movement to ground an ancient local tradition of communication with ancestors and the Christian idea of liberation and advent to a Promised Land. The movement also has continued to attract people in other Pacific countries, most prominently in Papua New Guinea (Bougainville, Manus, and Port Moresby), and Vanuatu.

Driven by Baptist and Evangelical theological studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, a major revival on the island of Malaita in 1970 (Griffiths 1977), and a vision on the Glory of the Lord, Maeliau launched The Move of the Glory of the Lord in 1984. Maeliau completed a college diploma at the Bible College of New Zealand (BCNZ, now known as the Laidlaw College) in 1974 and in the same year obtained a diploma in divinity from the Melbourne College of Divinity. In 1975, soon after he married Martha Safina Atomea, he took up the position of lecturer at the Christian Leaders’ Training College (CLTC) in Banz, Papua New Guinea. From 1976 to 1983, Maeliau served as the President of the Evangelical Fellowship of the South Pacific. When Maeliau returned to Solomon Islands in the mid-1980s, he became an ordained Minister of the South Sea Evangelical Church and later President of that church.

Maeliau carried with him theological knowledge, an eye-witness account of revivals in Papua New Guinea, more detailed knowledge of local religious movements that emerged on Malaita since British rule, and international connections. Back home he began to self-consciously engage with his own society, seeking to effect its transformation. For the transformation of his society, he envisioned a new moral community founded on pre-Christian prophethood and the manifest presence of the Lord. It should become a holy group, that, united, worships the presence of God, experiences the eruptions of revelations, joins prayers and songs, and revitalizes the past in expectation of God’s divine intervention in their group.

Over several revelations and active constructions of a black theology, a wide variety of Genesis-like narratives emerged, extending into rapidly expanding horizons of the future and the past, also breathing new life into genealogies of Malaitan lineages. People began to construct temporal and spatial maps of deep-time and deep-space around genealogical trees adapted from the Old Testament in combination with local genealogical reckoning.

The interest in such “Hamitic” origins dates back at least to the 1960s, when the evangelical theology of Herbert W. Armstrong and its British and U.S. Israelism were broadcast in Solomon Islands, as well as by decades long ponderings about why their country is named Solomon Islands. Could islanders be Israelite too? This environment was pregnant with ontological questions. With the cup being full to the brim as it were, the 1970 revival was for many the last drop, but it still needed an authoritative voice. Here Maeliau came in as a broker between possible new pasts for Malaita, biblical and present-day Israel, and the future that will arrive with the end of time.

In early 1986, a group of elders of the SSEC met to consider starting a new congregation in one of the suburbs of Honiara. On the Day of Pentecost, during prayer time, Maeliau began to receive a vision from God. This end-time prophetic vision foretold the story of a massive wave that begins in Solomon Islands, travels around the globe, and ends up in Jerusalem. The vision begins with a valley that fills with crystal-clear (unpolluted) water, which develops into a flood and later becomes a cloud. The cloud travels to Australia and returns to Solomon Islands from where it goes eastward to all the nations in the South Pacific. As the cloud reaches Papua New Guinea, it changes into a three-pronged powerful current that heads eastward towards the west coast of the United States. When it arrives in the United States, the central current continues towards the east coast then turns around 180 degrees and develops into a mighty wave that eventually stretches from the North to the South Pole. The wave then rolls back and travels westward.

The wave is so great that it submerges all the nations in its path and is so high that it floods even Mount Everest. It covers everything in its path as it moves over the Pacific and Asia until a circle encompassing the globe is complete. With the completion of the circle, the wave zooms in on Jerusalem and shoots up into the heavens like a huge pillar. As it reaches high in the sky, it opens up like a huge mushroom that gradually spreads until it envelops the Earth. At this point, a voice comes out from the cloud, saying, “And the Glory of the Lord shall cover the Earth as the waters cover the sea.”

This vision inspired followers to reflect on the Sermon on the Mount (described in Matthew 5:7 and Luke 6:17-49; and See Acts 1:8) in which Jesus referred to the uttermost parts of the world as the geographical ends to which God’s word should be spread. For most evangelical Christians in Malaita, this vision has become the most significant aspect of the sermon. In Maeliau’s historical reflection on this vision, the Lord raised him up together with a prayer movement from Melanesia (Maeliau 2018b:4).

Several key themes of the movement emerged from the first Pacific Consultation in Fiji, December 1989. The meeting was attended by several evangelical leaders and at the occasion, the Melanesian churches advocated for an inversion of the mission. This inspired Maeliau to develop a theory around the role of Malaita as the uttermost part of the world from where the Word of God should be returned. At the same time, he began to work on theologies around the manifest presence of God, celestial warfare, revelation of the Glory of the Lord, the third great invasion, and the completion of the Great Commission (Maeliau 2006:21-22).

APA was also greatly inspired by theology developed around the ”Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations’ Worldwide Watch” prayer network, which was initiated in 1987  and run by U.S. Tom Hess from his base on the Mount of Olives. The Jerusalem House has operated a 24/7 prayer and worship practice with the aim to call all nations to Jerusalem to prepare for the full restoration of Israel following its “rebirth” as a nation in 1948 (Hess 2008:1-2). Following a number of contributions by Maeliau to Hess’s prayer meetings, Solomon Islands was allotted a Worldwide Watch mandate “to take up the dish and the towel, to be a servant of all (John 13) and to guide the return of the nations from the Pacific region through the Golden Gate” (Hess and Hess 2012:279).

The urgency of a new nation to ready the region for God’s plans also motivated Maeliau to become active in national politics. He founded and led the Christian Leadership and Fellowship Group from 1993 to 1997. The group did not want to be called a political party as members sought to discontinue corruption by bringing God-fearing leaders to parliament as a first step towards building a theocracy (Fugui and Wate 1994:458). In the May 1993 national elections, Maeliau won strongly among the Northwest Malaita constituency (Premdas and Steeves 1994:55). Under the newly elected Prime Minister, Francis Billy Hilly, he became Minister of Home Affairs. The Hilly government saw a need for a clean and “Jesus Government’’ (Alasia 1997:12) and emphasized decentralization and self-reliance of the regions. One way to achieve that was to strengthen the role of churches in governing rural societies (Fugui and Wate 1994:459-60). But efforts to destabilise the Hilly government emerged soon, and almost overnight it saw its majority evaporate in November 1994 (Moore 2004:57-58). In 2006, Maeliau stood as an independent candidate for the elections for the national parliament, but his electoral campaign failed to entice voters.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

APA follows patterns of “cargo cults” in the region in the way it takes on the frameworks of Christianity, works on a transformative apocalyptic scenario, and is led by charismatic leaders with a training in the traditional church and theology (Landes 2011:132). But, as anthropologist Nancy McDowell points out, setting the analyses of such a movement in a global category of millenarian cargo cults, “distracts our attention away from the socio-cultural context in which they occur (1988:122).

Inspired by Hess’ House of Prayer, they key mandate for APA is fulfilling the King’s Great Commission of the Kingdom of God to All Nations (Isaiah 43:10-12, Acts 1:8). (Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations 2020). Maeliau sees this role appropriate for a Melanesian country where people feel “very small and intimated,” yet ready for “the Great Commission to take on the whole world” (2021:20). In a succinct historical reflection on how Melanesia became involved in world mission, Maeliau writes:

The Melanesian countries bore the brunt of the weight of the indebtedness of sharing the Gospel with the whole world because we are the uttermost parts of the Earth. We had and have been on the receiving end of God’s work up to this point in time, without an opportunity to be involved in World Missions. Even the Polynesians and the Micronesians have had a turn in evangelizing the Melanesian countries before us. Therefore, we in Melanesia felt very much like what the Apostle Paul must have felt when he said: “I am debtor both to the Greeks and the Barbarians: both to the wise and the unwise. Romans 1:14 KJV ” (Maeliau 2021:20).

Maeliau’s solace to geographical marginalization offered by taking up the King’s Great Commission at the ends of the earth, highlights a rendering of  space (and time) that provides people a sense of liberation from colonially defined geographical confines – Melanesians are not debtors to the world of time, space and men, but are in their freedom to God.

In its freedom to God, APA has set itself two tasks. The first is the removal of sins and consequences of “irregularities” in known histories and genealogies. This includes the “straightening” of genealogies so as to limit them to male descendants only and excluding inconvenient migrants, leading to unilineal lines of begetting. Secondly, these straightened genealogies were, with some variety but constrained by the confluences of the Old Testament and local histories, extended to biblical worlds. By establishing historical relationships between Malaitan genealogies and ancestors in the Old Testament people and by mapping possible migration routes, people construct new histories to a ground a sense of Malaita’s original holiness.

These new histories inspire a new social and political order. In combination with the rhetorical reservoir of Christian scripture which is effective amid communities in Malaita, we can imagine how people like Maeliau can mobilize people to engage in a state-building effort in general. Maeliau’s revelations are thus also revolutions; they are tied to a mission of transforming the world, of world-making and of world-unfolding.

In brief, APA’s theology reflects a desire for justice now, through the mediation of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, APA has a non-western gospel. Its rituals attempt to cohere biblical history and prophecy with local tradition and connections with Israel. APA is constituted around the utopian idea of a just “Israel” grounded in the ancestral soil (Timmer 2015a). This grounding in Malaitan matter and its emphasis on moral excellence for readying the nation of Malaita for the return to Jerusalem, appears to stabilize the political community. And unlike traditional SSEC doctrine APA’s theology has continuously evolved, it is open, never complete, creative, and resisting doctrine.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

APA participants often engage in prayer, [Image at right] and leading people often go on prayer journeys. In the region, many groups regularly stage non-stop, days-long prayer sessions in their villages or by coming together with others at designated locations for special programs, labeled Fathers Arise, Mothers Arise, Youth Arise and Leaders Arise. These local fellowships tend to attract hundreds of people. They go dressed in white and adhere to certain rules about purity. Convocations used to be organized under temporary leaf roofs put up at open spaces in the forests between villages in North Malaita, but since APA’s well-built Aroma Centre was established a few years ago, they are now mostly held there. Aroma is named after the Spice Route, which, according to Maeliau, is a possible route along which Hebrews populated the Pacific and along which they may return to Jerusalem. The center is also a teaching venue and caters for visits of foreign guests.

APA also engages in evangelical prayer gatherings anywhere in the world that are typically also attended by (North) American Indians, First Nation people from Australia, Māori  from Aotearoa/New Zealand, and groups from Africa, South America, and Asia. The fellowships in Israel are in principle staged every year and are organized by and for APA’s Jerusalem Council, the Spiritual Eldership of the movement. In His royal throne-room, they praise their King and act as his official councilors and messengers. They act as witnesses, investigating detectives, and perhaps fellow judges (See Daniel 7: 9-14; Jeremiah 23: 18-22). Also reserved for those who have matured in the movement as elders, prayer and fasting sessions atop mountains are organized.

Payer mountain is central to the theology of APA. Prayer mountain conjures images that resonate with past functions of Malaitan rituals conducted at mountain top shrines as well as biblical narratives on mountain tops. APA’s theology builds on similarities that people see between Mosaic law and their kastom regulations. These similarities have stimulated ideas around the above-mentioned Hamitic origins for Malaitans and feeds into the ways in which they cultivate home ground. For neighboring Kwara’ae, Ben Burt (1982) notes that such histories result from a tradition of writing lawbooks and constitutions since at least the 1920s. Among To’abaita and Baelelea speakers too, people have been actively recording histories, mapping land and producing constitutions for lineages in light of mounting subversion of the powers of the ancestors and abu (taboo, sacred, holy, grace).

Abu is the governing principle for all relationships and the political power to which forces contribute. Abu is still present, just as ancestors are still present, and original rituals are still valid and today animated in terms of a covenant with God. I suggest that for To’abaita and Baelelea, we need to see APA’s engagement with God and Israel as novel shapes of abu, now mostly expressed in terms of “grace.” Attending a fellowship is thus a theocratic moment in the sense that one achieves an ultimate unity, joining Malaita and Israel, past-present-future, and the body of other worshippers. This experience sits somewhere in between mysticism and the concrete effort to build a New Jerusalem on Malaita. For this to be successful, Malaita needs to return to an original state of abu.

God then is no longer a God disconnected from Malaita’s pasts in the way most people in the SSEC would experience and explain it, but as a continuity of an original covenant with founding ancestors. Elements of the past such as rituals at shrines and first ancestors thus generate the future. Narratives of origin and memories of rituals at mountain tops, are stretched for a historicity of Malaita. Maeliau’s visions emerge out of his familiarity with visions and prophecies, and they firmly forge a temporal space for black theology in SSEC’s largely white Christian theology and mainstream historiography. They highlight the emergence of alternative temporalities within the context of North Malaita.

These alternative temporalities eschew a unilateral cause, a linear development from Genesis to Revelation in which Malaitans are meaningful players. Nevertheless, it does allow for a sense of multiplicity of time and relations to disparate sites: contemporary Malaita and past Israel, shrines on Malaita and mountains in past and present-day Israel. These connections offer a wider variety of experiences of time and space than the linear temporality of the visions suggests. Amid all the promises of development and infrastructure programs and progress and change, APA activates its own potential by offering an experience of time not premised on developmental change and progress. Instead, it offers the return of ancestors in a particular shape, now connected to ancient and contemporary Israel, and connections to the land that go beyond mere use and the Christian conception of dominion.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Maeliau’s break with the mother church of the SSEC in 2009 not only highlights APA’s doctrine but also its form of leadership. In a key letter to the SSEC, he argued that their theologians have left the prophets aside and struggle to explain unfulfilled prophecies, referring to Joel’s prophecy as quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost in particular. Peter refers to Joel’s eschatological prophecy to convey that the last days are the first days, that the eschaton is about new beginnings. In other words, the visions and of the sons and daughters of Israel in Joel’s prophecy, are the key to what Karl Barth describes as the wonder of astonishing biblical stories that highlight the “fundamentally new event which, although undoubtedly occurring within time and space, is not to be identified with other events occurring within the limits of time and space” (1963:68).

Maeliau thus draws the contrast between APA and the SSEC in terms of wonder, vision, and openness, and suggests he is open to astonishment. He is a self-proclaimed prophet and, as he likes to see himself, a theologian as a fact of grace, who situates himself in the moment of immanence that transcends all events in historiography as Jesus stands in eternity over time. Immanence here is the manifestation of God in Maeliau’s lifeworld and in the worlds of the people he associates with. His visions indicate this immanence, while also bringing unity to people’s makings of the past, in particular the position and role of their ancestors and past rituals. For decades people wondered about their origins in light of similarities they discern between their customary rituals and rituals of worship described in the Old Testament.

Like apostle Paul, Maeliau negates the post-colonial state, especially on the grounds of its colonial and, as people allege, secular origins and legacies, and seeks to establish a sovereignty for Malaita. But, unlike Paul who sought to overcome Moses by positing Jesus as superior (Hebrews 3: 1-6), Maeliau does not repudiate the Mosaic tradition but instead invokes it. Paul saw Moses’s Ten Commandments having less glory than Jesus’ new covenant, which includes the gentiles, and which brings life and righteousness. Maeliau, in contrast, while certainly not denying the importance of the new covenant, sees his original group and their Melanesian nation as born with God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai.

This is the basis for APA’s religious sovereignty. The movement is conceptualized as a family of people who identify with the Move of the Glory of the Lord and obey God’s commandments. Its main body of leaders are the elders, all prophets, who sit in the Throne Room Council. This is a small group of select leaders who guide and educate the local communities. Overlapping in membership with this group is the APA Jerusalem Council. This council of “spiritual eldership” also includes APA members from other regions in the Pacific. This group organizes and, when finances allow, attends the yearly council meetings in Jerusalem.

In North Malaita, APA’s communities are organized under the banner of the “All Peoples Communion” (APC). Also called “estates” or “communions,” APCs are the social and economic nuclei of the Malaitan nation (Bond and Timmer 2017:146-47). As the state is perceived as the New Jerusalem, these communities are to be run as the model for all the yet to be converted nations along the path back to Jerusalem. With pretensions to a world order and to firmly root nations in scripture, APCs are not just oppositions to the current state and nation of Solomon Islands, they are assemblages that make the thought of the state critical elements in people’s life worlds (Barker 2013; Timmer 2013).

Originally referred to as the “E-State” system, the APCs signify eternal and excellent state (Faiau 2013:142–47). The system is designed to capture the “seven spheres of society for God” which can be found in international Evangelical/Pentecostal discourse and is written into the evolving APC constitution. The spheres are arts and entertainment, business and finance, church and religion, distribution and information (media), education and science, family and home, and governance and law. Leaders of APCs tend to find the last share most relevant. The APC is able to carry out all the functions associated with a modern state and enters into a federation with other Communions. More generally, APCs are physical extensions or complements of APA: they are a push toward the physic-spiritual integration and wholeness that is seen as critical to theocracy-building (Bond and Timmer 2017:147).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

While it may be tempting to see APA time as a resistance to the modern state and to the West’s modernity, the picture is less simple. Above all, Maeliau is unfolding an internal, local theological dynamic with evolving perceptions of the activities of God and Malaitan ancestral spirits in a culture in which the human order has always been unfinished. At the same time, Maeliau’s self-altering trajectory cannot be characterized as a change only reserved for himself. In APA, no one writes or owns a whole book, as it were. Works are collective, like a sacred text. Every Malaitan involved in the movement has taken on the transformation of their society towards a Christian nation.

Members of APA continuously seek to engage as new individuals with their variable relationships to living kin, ancestors, and a future nation. In other words, much of the momentum of APA is understood as generated from the divine within Malaitan culture itself, in a human order that is, like all human orders, always unfinished (cf. Jorgensen 1994). Moreover, conversion in this case is experienced as an increased interest in past, present and future social relations. The self-alteration of Maeliau led to substantial changes in his and his followers’ conceptualizations of core domains of Malaitan culture. Here spirits and spiritual power are transmitted to the group and believed in as a group, and it does not matter that this group has now been extended to ancestors in the Old Testament and fellow evangelical travelers around the globe.

What Maeliau as prophet and leader has done over the years is taking away the collective nature of prophecy. Especially since the 1970 revival, revelations became widespread but also lost overall direction. In that environment, Maeliau began to tell people that on the one hand, they should continue to be like prophets because it is a sign of the continuing presence of God and Malaitans as a chosen people. On the other hand, by becoming the leading prophet (like Moses for the Israelites) Maeliau froze the collective process by building a uniform theology and a unique history for Malaita as a foundation for a Christian nation.

Over the years though, Maeliau’s openness towards the spirits became less radical. Things are not as turbulent as they once were, and we see the emergence of increasingly more schematic and decontextualized ecclesiological themes of a gospel and liturgy. The last publication by Maeliau entitled The Revelation of the Glory of the Lord (2021) illustrates this. In contrast to his two histories of Malaita in The Land of Ophir (2018a) and The Lion Tribe of Judah (2018b), this latest book outlines an orthodoxy. It may be time, especially now that Maeliau is forever on the other side of the shrine, for a new prophet to ascend the mountain to open new gateways against this established order.

IMAGES

Image #1: Michael Maeliau in Tiberias, waiting for the bus, December 13, 2012.
Image #2: Prayer room of the Jerusalem House of Prayer.
Image #3: Prayer gathering at Little Rock, near the village of Afenakwai, North Malaita, Solomon Islands, December 24, 2015.

REFERENCES

Akin, David W. 2013. Colonialism, Maasina Rule, and the Origins of Malaitan Kastom. Pacific Islands Monograph Series 26. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press.

Alasia, Sam. 1997. “Party Politics and Government in Solomon Islands. State, Society and Governance in Melanesia.” Discussion Paper 97/7. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.

Barker, Joshua. 2013. “Epilogue: Ethnographies of state-centrism.” Oceania 83:259-64.

Barth, Karl. 1963. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Translated by Grover Foley. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston. 

Bond, Nathan and Jaap Timmer. 2017. “Wondrous Geographies and Historicity for State-Building on Malaita, Solomon Islands.” Journal of Religious and Political Change 31:36-51.

Burt, Ben. 1982. “Kastom, Christianity and the First Ancestor of the Kwara’ae of Malaita.” Mankind 13:374-99.

Faiau, James K. 2013. Exploring Community-Based Development: A case study of the Estate and rural community development in North Malaita, Solomon Islands. Master thesis. Massey University, Palmerston North.

Fugui, John Moffat, and Mike Wate. 1994. “Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1993: Solomon Islands.” The Contemporary Pacific 6:457-63.

Griffiths, Alison. 1977. Fire in the Islands! The Acts of the Holy Spirit in the Solomons. Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers.

Hess, Tom. 2008. The Watchmen: Being Prepared and Preparing the Way for Messiah. Fourth Edition. Jerusalem: Progressive Vision and the Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations.

Hess, Tom, and Kate Hess. 2012. House of Prayer for all Nations: The World Wide Watch. Revised Edition. Jerusalem: Progressive Vision.

Hilliard, David L. 1969. “The South Sea Evangelical Mission in the Solomon Islands: The foundation years.” Journal of Pacific History 4:41–64.

Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations. 2020. “The Great Commission.” Accessed from https://jhopfan.org/projects/the-great-commission on 20 September 2022.

Jorgensen, Dan. 1994. “Locating the Divine in Melanesia: An Appreciation of the Work of Kenelm Burridge.” Anthropology and Humanism 19:130-37.

Landes, Richard. 2011. Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Maeliau, Michael. 2021. The Revelation of the Glory of the Lord. Sydney: Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon.com.au.

Maeliau, Michael. 2018a. The Lion Tribe of Judah. Draft edition. Honiara: Provincial Press.

Maeliau, Michael. 2018b. The Land of Ophir. Honiara: Provincial Press.

Maeliau, Michael. 2006. The Deep Sea Canoe Movement: An Account of the Prayer Movement in the Pacific Islands over the Last Twenty Years (Revised and Expanded). Canberra and Singapore: B & M Publishing and OneStoneBooks.

Maeliau, Michael, ed. 2006. Uluru: The Heart of Australia, The Battle for Australia. Honiara: Michael Maeliau.

Maeliau, Michael. 2005. Letter to the General Secretary of the South Sea Evangelical Church in Honiara, regarding “SSEC Consultation on the Third Great Invasion,” September 26.

Maeliau, Michael. 2003. Trouble in Paradise. Honiara: Aroma Ministries.

Maeliau, Michael. 1987. “Searching for a Melanesian Way of Worship.” Pp. 119-27 in The Gospel is not Western: Black Theologies from the Southwest Pacific, edited by Garry W. Trompf. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.

Maeliau, Michael. 1984. “Foreword.” P. iii in Revival – its blessing and battles: An account of experiences in the Solomon Islands, edited by G. Strachan. Lawson, NSW: Mission Publications of Australia.

Maeliau, Michael. 1980. ‘The Evangelical Alliance of the South Pacific Islands’. Resources and Methods in History assignment for the degree of Bachelor of Theology, Christian Leaders’ Training College of PNG. Ts, 18pp. Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, PMB1348, Reel 1, Item No. 2.

Maeliau, Michael. 1976. The Remnant Church – (A Separatist Church). ‘Long Essay for Part D (Option I), Christian Leaders’ Training College, Banz, Papua New Guinea.

McDowell, Nancy. 1988. “A Note on Cargo Cults and Cultural Constructions of Change.” Pacific Studies 11:121-34.

Moore, Clive. 2013. “Peter Abu‘ofa and the Founding of the South Sea Evangelical Mission in the Solomon Islands, 1894–1904.” The Journal of Pacific History 48:23-42.

Moore, Clive. 2009. Florence Young and the Queensland Kanaka Mission, 1886-1906. Brisbane: School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland.

Moore, Clive. 2004. Happy Isles in Crisis: The historical causes for a failing state in Solomon Islands, 1998-2004. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press

Premdas, Ralph R. and Jeffrey S. Steeves. 1994. “The 1993 Elections in the Solomon Islands.” The Journal of Pacific History 29:45-56.

Timmer, Jaap. 2015a. “Building Jerusalem in North Malaita, Solomon Islands.” Oceania 85: 299-314.

Timmer, Jaap. 2015b. “Heirs to Biblical Prophecy: The All Peoples Prayer Assembly in Solomon Islands.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 18:16-34.

Timmer, Jaap. 2013. “The threefold logic of Papua-Melanesia: Constitution-writing in the margins of the Indonesian nation-state.” Oceania 83:158-74.

Trompf, Garry W. 1977. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-10 in Prophets of Melanesia: Six Essays, edited by Garry W. Trompf. Port Moresby and Suva: The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and The Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.

Young, Florence S.H. 1925. Pearls from the Pacific. London and Edinburgh: Marshall Brothers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkƗodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 754513 and The Aarhus University Research Foundation.

Publication Date:
29 September 2022

Share

Free Zone Scientology

FREE ZONE SCIENTOLOGY TIMELINE

1938:  L. Ron Hubbard constructed the Excalibur manuscript, documenting his near-death experience and claim of esoteric knowledge concerning the human goal of survival.

1948: The Original Thesis, Hubbard’s early writings on Dianetics (his theory of the human mind), was circulated amongst friends and the science-fiction community.

1950:  Hubbard’s theories were publicly outlined in Astounding Science Fiction magazine and published as a bestseller: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

1954:  Hubbard opened the first Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, California.

1965 (February 7):  Hubbard published his Keeping Scientology Working (KSW) policy, outlining an orthodoxy of Church management and practice, effectively forbidding the practice of Scientology outside the institutional hierarchy of the Church of Scientology.

1965 (February 14):  Hubbard released the Safeguarding Technology bulletin, condemning the practice of squirreling (practising Scientology outside the Church of Scientology).

1982:  Captain Bill Robertson left the Church of Scientology, resulting in the first major Scientologist schism.

1984:  Robertson founds Ron’s Org, the first major ‘Free Zone’ Scientologist group.

1986 (January 24):  L. Ron Hubbard died.

1987: David Miscavige succeeded Hubbard as the leader of the Church of Scientology, becoming the Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center.

2008:  Channel 4 (U.K.) aired The Beginner’s Guide to L. Ron Hubbard documentary, with a specific focus on Ron’s Org and Scientology outside the Church.

2011:  Mark ‘Marty’ Rathbun’s encounters with the “Squirrel Busters” (a group of Scientologists accusing him of squirrelling) went viral, drawing media attention towards the notion of Free Zone Scientology.

2015:  Marty Rathbun was featured in Louis Theroux’s My Scientology Movie.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Similar to the Church of Scientology (CoS), Free Zone Scientology’s history can be traced back to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology and developer of the ”tech,” the spiritual technology that constitutes Scientology praxis. [Image at right] Unlike the CoS, which was established and led by L. Ron Hubbard for the remainder of his life, the Free Zone (also known as “Independent Scientology”) is characterised by its schismatic nature. L. Ron Hubbard founded and managed the CoS, not the Free Zone. “Free Zone Scientology,” a particularly broad umbrella category referring to a wide range of groups and individuals, is the result of disaffiliated members of the CoS choosing to practise Scientology outside its institutional and hierarchical structures.

While the Free Zone/Independent Scientology may seem to be a relatively recent development in Scientology’s history, examples of Scientologist schisms can be traced back to its early years, perhaps most notably “Dianology” (later known as “Eductivism”), founded by Jack Horner in the 1960s, a prominent early member of the CoS (Cusack 2016:488-89; Melton n.d.). These early schisms sparked several attempts by Hubbard to maintain control of the tech and withhold its use outside the parameters of the CoS, which (as we will see below) have become the most dominant factor in the divisions between the CoS and Free Zone. Despite various examples of schismatics in the early years of Scientology, scholar of religion James R. Lewis notes that there are two major schisms of Scientologists leaving the CoS: (i) a schism led by Captain Bill Robertson in the 1980s and (ii) more recent defections in the early twenty-first century, often in protest against David Miscavige’s leadership of the CoS (2016:468).

It is with the early 1980s schism that we see the emergence of the ‘Free Zone’ as it is currently understood. This schism is closely tied with L. Ron Hubbard’s withdrawal from public life, during which managerial duties of the CoS were handled by the newly founded Church of Scientology International in 1981 (Rigal-Cellard 2009:326; Thomas 2021:28). Hubbard’s absence in public life raised concerns amongst some Scientologists regarding the ways in which the CoS was run, including its handling of the tech, which was largely regarded as a precise series of practices that are to remain unaltered from Hubbard’s original vision. Indeed, concerns regarding Hubbard’s whereabouts led to a range of theories regarding his control of the CoS.

These range from speculation that Hubbard had been forced out of the CoS to conspiracies that he had died in the 1970s and been replaced by a doppelganger (Thomas 2021). As these disputes regarding the institutional nature and policies of the CoS continued, it was under the leadership of Captain Bill Robertson (affectionately referred to as “Captain Bill” or “CBR”) [Image at right] that many Scientologists left the CoS to practise outside its hierarchical authority, and through whom the term “Free Zone” entered Scientologist discourse.

Captain Bill Robertson was a high-ranking member of the CoS. Indeed, the only member (other than Hubbard’s wife, Mary-Sue) awarded the status of ‘Captain’ by Hubbard in the Scientology Sea Organization (Sea Org), the ecclesiastical order of advanced Scientologists (organized and presented in a naval structure) (Thomas 2021: 27; Westbrook 2019: 140). Robertson was a charismatic figure in his own right, whose close friendship with Hubbard became quite alluring for the Scientologists feeling increasingly disenfranchised by the CoS. Moreover, Robertson claimed that he met confidentially with Hubbard in the 1970s, during which he was told to begin practising Scientology outside the CoS should he fail to receive frequent contact from Hubbard (Gregg and Thomas 2019: 354; Hellesøy 2016: 450). Concerned by what he perceived as Hubbard’s absence from the CoS, and his lack of success in communicating with him, Robertson became convinced that the institution had been infiltrated by American government agents with the intention of seizing control of Hubbard’s tech and its potentials (Ron’s Org Committee n.d.).

Free Zone discourses suggest that it was during this period that Robertson also claimed to have been in communication with the Galactic Grand Council (an organization of extra-terrestrials), which addressed him through an “Official Decree” claiming that the planet Teegeeack (Earth) was now free from interplanetary interference, and therefore a ‘Free Zone’ (Galactic Patrol n.d.). Urging Scientologists to protect their copies of Hubbard’s texts from government bodies, Robertson left the CoS in 1982 with the intention of continuing his practices as a Scientologist outside the Church. He founded Ron’s Org in 1984, [Image at right] a network that aims to practice and disseminate Scientology according to its vision of Hubbard’s “true tech” (known as “Standard Tech”). Ron’s Org continues to exist as the the largest Free Zone Scientologist organization, with centres found across Europe (notably Switzerland) and within Moscow (Hellesøy 2016:452). It is with the work of Captain Bill Robertson that the term “Free Zone” entered Scientologist nomenclature, yet it is important to note that Robertson’s “Free Zone” is one specific vision of Scientology, and the term is now commonly used to encompass the entirety of Scientologist groups/individuals existing outside the CoS. Moreover, the term has recently been rejected or disputed by Scientologists who have left the CoS in more recent years, particularly the early twenty-first century, in favour of terms such as “Independent Scientology” or “Indie Scientology” (Lewis 2016; Thomas 2021).

The more recent Independent Scientologists (‘Indies’) are marked by their departure from the CoS during the leadership of David Miscavige, who has led the CoS since the death of L. Ron Hubbard in 1986. Holding the role of Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center, which maintains copyright control of Hubbard’s tech, Miscavige is an administrative leader responsible for “the standard and pure application of L. Ron Hubbard’s religious technologies” (Religious Technology Center n.d.) across CoS Orgs worldwide. Various CoS initiatives under Miscavige’s leadership, however, have drawn criticism from Independent Scientologists, particularly those who accuse the CoS of altering Hubbard’s texts and practices following his death. Many in the “Indie scene” lay claim to an authentic practice of Standard Tech (as we will see below), drawing a distance between themselves and the CoS and indeed some of the Free Zone groups of the 1980s (Thomas 2021).

Unlike Ron’s Org, which acts as a more structured organization, “Independent Scientology” is a largely loose series of networks of Scientologist auditors (those who conduct “auditing,” the core practice of Scientology) and Scientologists notably enabled by the Internet to connect with one another and disseminate confidential Scientologist texts. As scholar of religion Carole Cusack (2016:503) notes, Hubbard could not have anticipated the advent of the Internet, and the ways in which it allows his teachings to be easily transferred outside the institutional and financial regulations of the CoS. Indeed, Free Zone/Independent Scientologist networks have used the Internet to disseminate Hubbard’s texts free of charge, regardless of breaches of the CoS’s copyright and potential litigation (Schorey 2016).

While we can identify two clear offshoots from the CoS which make up the “Free Zone” (broadly conceived), the largely unregulated nature of many Scientologies found outside the CoS result in diverse, contested, and innovated practices, largely developed by Scientologists unrestricted by organisational structures. Accordingly, Free Zone Scientology can be understood as a “fluid social environment” (Thomas 2021:5) wherein Scientologists can adapt and develop aspects L. Ron Hubbard’s tech to their preferred methods, often in contrast to his attempts to establish an orthodoxy of practice and belief within the CoS (Westbrook 2019:124).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS          

In a similar fashion to the CoS, the core of Free Zone Scientologist practice is the “auditing” process (often referred to as “the tech”); ‘a hybrid of secular-scientific and religious methods, aiming to improve the current existence of the self by addressing engrams [traces of anxieties and neuroses] from the current life and all previous lives’ (Thomas 2021:46), based on Hubbard’s theory of Dianetics: his theory of the human mind. Publicly introduced in his bestseller, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (Hubbard [1950], 2007), Dianetic theory and auditing found popularity with an American market, prompting Hubbard to become a popular speaker on the subject. Simultaneously, he established the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation to manage a series of Dianetic groups, through which practitioners could receive auditing sessions (Melton 2000:9).

A typical auditing session takes place between a Preclear (the patient being audited) and a trained auditor, who guides the Preclear through a series of question-and-answer exercises usually based on previous experiences. The aim is to remove the Preclear’s engrams from the “engrams bank,” a part of the brain Hubbard named “the reactive mind” (Harley and Kieffer 2009:185), allowing them to overcome mental trauma. Once all traces of engrams have been removed, the patient is believed to achieve the state of Clear, defined by Hubbard as “the optimum individual” ([1950], 2007:494). “Going Clear” is believed to empower the individual, allowing them to approach the challenges of everyday life in a more successful fashion. This core approach to auditing remains the same, both within the CoS and Free Zone, to this day. However, the subsequent religious inflection Hubbard would attribute to the auditing process has added further nuances and procedures to the practice.

Initially, Hubbard positioned Dianetics as a purely scientific endeavour, stating that “Dianetics is a science: as such, it has no opinion about religion, for sciences are based on natural laws, not on opinions” (Hubbard, cited in Urban 2011:57). As Dianetics continued its surge in popularity, Hubbard noted an increasing number of Preclears claiming to recall memories of past lives during their auditing sessions, examples of which are contained in his volume, Have You Lived Before This Life? ([1960], 1989). Whilst exploring these testimonies he introduced the concept of “theta beings” (or thetans), the spiritual self, positioned within Scientology as the “true self” in control of the human body, and trapped within the physical universe (Hubbard [1956], 2007; Thomas 2021:56). From this point onwards, Hubbard considered auditing to be a process that treats both the human mind and the spirit, marking the establishment of “Scientology.” The practice of auditing accordingly made the transition from Dianetic auditing (the treatment of the mind) to Scientology auditing (the treatment of the thetan) (Gregg and Thomas 2019:352). Scientology auditing is also distinguished by Hubbard’s “Bridge to Total Freedom” (the “Bridge”), a series of hierarchical levels a Scientologist will traverse during their spiritual development. Following achievement of the state of Clear, as per Dianetic auditing, a Scientologist is expected to continue their “journey” up the Bridge through a further series of levels, known as the “Operating Thetan” levels (The Church of Scientology International 1998:99). These levels are intended to allow the Clear to become spiritually independent, allowing the thetan to gain full control of the mind, body, and physical universe. Attitudes towards the Operating Thetan levels in the Free Zone are varied, however, with more organised Free Zone groups (such as Ron’s Org) making use of the OT levels, while independent auditors often focus on the state of Clear and place an emphasis on this-worldly results of auditing (Thomas 2021:86-88). It is worth noting here that most Scientologists (within the CoS, at least) are Preclears, with Westbrook (2019:35) estimating that around ninety percent are yet to “go Clear,” thus residing at the lower half of the Bridge.

For many Free Zone Scientologists, auditing and the concept of Scientology are interchangeable; to “do” auditing is to “do” Scientology. The fluid nature of the Free Zone, however, presents complexities surrounding how auditing should be practised, in addition to varying interpretations of the spiritual nature of the process. Further to complications surrounding belief, individual interpretation and innovation has resulted in contested methods of practising auditing. As we will discuss below, this has resulted in boundaries between not only the CoS and Free Zone, but within the Free Zone itself.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Debates surrounding authenticity and innovation in the practice of auditing are the dominant factor in the emergence of different types of Free Zone Scientologies (Thomas 2021:95). On the one hand, some Free Zone Scientologists attempt to preserve what they view as the correct version of Scientology, while on the other, a significant number of Freezoners (enabled by the lack of hierarchical authority) have developed highly individualised forms of auditing practices which deviate from the original works and intentions of L. Ron Hubbard. These changes are typically undertaken to make auditing a more efficient process, resulting in some Freezoners amending and customising Scientologist techniques to develop their own version of Scientology (Thomas 2021).

These innovations are best exemplified by the E-Meter, the core object used during auditing sessions. Also known as the “Electrometer” or “Hubbard Electrometer” (Hubbard 1982:6), the E-Meter is a technological device that is used in the detection and removal of engrams during auditing sessions. [Image at right] It consists of a main processing unit connected to two tin-cylinders. The cylinders (referred to as “cans” in Scientologist vernacular) are held in each hand by the individual being audited, while the auditor (who is trained in the use of the device) operates the main unit. In a similar fashion to the “Dianetic auditing” practice outlined in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the auditor will guide the Preclear through the regular question-and-answer exercises related to experiences of trauma. In “Scientology auditing,” however, the auditor also operates the dials of the E-Meter and monitors the movement of the tone arm as it responds to the answers of the Preclear. The device, measuring the galvanic skin response of the Preclear, is believed to allow the auditor to hone in on (and remove) engrams more efficiently (Bainbridge and Stark 1980:132; Harley and Kieffer 2009:196-97).

While various iterations of the E-Meter have been released both within and by the CoS (the most recent being the Mark Ultra VIII), each “meter found within the CoS is claimed to be developed through original designs by Hubbard, including those released posthumously (Thomas 2021:134),  drawing further from the notion of Standard Tech according to Hubbard (as explored below). Free Zone Scientology, however, has a far more nuanced approach to the device. Some Freezoners, insisting on an individualised application of the tech, do not see the E-Meter as a necessary part of Scientology, while others have taken more “DIY” approaches to the device, leading to an online marketplace of customised and modified E-Meters. These meters, which boast a variety of additional features beyond the remit of what is typically considered Standard Tech, point to the ways in which auditing, and the notion of “what Scientology is,” is contested in Free Zone spaces.

Beyond modified E-Meters, the advent of the Internet has been instrumental in the development of Free Zone auditing practices. In a contrast to Hubbard’s established auditing method, which was strictly developed as a face-to-face activity between an auditor and a Preclear, many Free Zone auditors offer their services online, using video conferencing platforms (such as Zoom) to conduct their sessions. These auditing sessions often avoid use of the E-Meter altogether. However, recent Free Zone practices have involved the use of digital E-Meters, often developed as apps, which read the responses of the Preclear on a computer screen (without the use of the “cans”). For many online auditors, who are often operating outside organised Free Zone groups, their practice of Scientology does not concern the more esoteric elements of Hubbard’s work (such as the OT Levels), and instead concentrate on mental health, self-development, and the goal of “going Clear” (Thomas 2021:88).

This does not mean, however, that the Free Zone consists of entirely of loose networks of independent auditors innovatively altering Hubbard’s work. There are significant discourses outside the CoS concerning Standard Tech and its preservation. A substantial portion of Scientologists outside the CoS insist on adhering to and protecting Standard Tech, as both a critique of the CoS (which it views as now practising an altered or distorted version) and maintaining a method they view as infallible. Recent CoS initiatives, such as the Golden Age of Technology, have been heavily criticised amongst Free Zone circles, with some claiming that CoS auditing has been made less efficient, more time consuming, and further from Hubbard’s original vision as a result (Thomas 2021:115-16). Notably, however, there are within the ‘Free Zone’ (encompassing all Scientologies outside the CoS) regarding Standard Tech, particularly between divisions the aforementioned Free Zone groups associated with Captain Bill Robertson and the more recent independent schisms of the twenty-first century (Lewis 2016:466). Such divisions between what constitutes Standard Tech and how auditing practices should be conducted are closely tied to interpretations of L. Ron Hubbard as the leader of Scientology, and questions surrounding the orthodoxy of his spiritual technology.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

A notable feature of the Free Zone is its distinct lack of leadership. Unlike David Miscavige’s leadership of the CoS following the death of Hubbard, Free Zone Scientologies, including organised groups, do not have a distinct leader. Moreover, Independent Scientologist networks have rejected the need for a leader, thus positioning Scientology as a series of techniques and spiritual development, not as a group to which an individual belongs (Thomas 2021:29). While groups such as Ron’s Org have established relatively organised communities in contrast to the fluid independent networks, they too have restricted their management to a series of administrative staff members, rather than establish a singular leader to unite members and act as a public figure.

For many Freezoners, Scientology is a series of practices and techniques developed by L. Ron Hubbard, and their possession of his written work and methods negates the need for further leadership. Matching academic models of charismatic leadership (Barker 1992; Chryssides 2012; Weber [1948], 1991; Wessinger 2012), Hubbard continues to inspire devotion for many Scientologists across Scientology, most notably due to his development of the tech, his claims of Scientological discoveries, and his establishment of Scientology. Indeed, Hubbard is known (particularly within the CoS) as “Source”; the source of Scientology’s philosophical and spiritual teachings (Westbrook 2016:30). Scholar of religion Donald A. Westbrook notes that CoS members view Hubbard as the “Model OT [Operating Thetan],” an individual whom they attempt to emulate, and refer to with a familial regard (Westbrook 2019:22).

Perceptions of Hubbard within the Free Zone, however, are directly tied to the contested methods of conducting auditing (as documented above). While some Scientologies (including the CoS itself) lay claim to “true” Standard Tech, others reject the notion of a singular type of auditing, often distancing themselves from certain aspects of Hubbard’s work and character. In his ethnographic study of Free Zone Scientologists, Aled Thomas documents Freezoners discussing “mistakes [made] by Hubbard” (2021:125), rejecting views of Hubbard as infallible, whilst also critiquing aspects of his personal character. For these Freezoners, Hubbard is viewed as a talented yet flawed individual, who established a series of spiritual techniques that Scientologists can also continue to develop. These approaches to understanding “what Scientology is” are a direct contrast to the “standards for orthodoxy and orthopraxy” (Westbrook 2019:119) found within the CoS and its ‘Keeping Scientology Working’ policy (explored further below). Moreover, debates surrounding “authentic” and innovative forms of Scientology have also presented divisions within the Free Zone itself. Many Free Zone Scientologists, drawing a line between themselves and those who innovate the tech, lay claim to an authentic application of Scientology according to their perceived understanding of Standard Tech according to Hubbard. These Freezoners are often highly critical of deviation from Hubbard’s dictations, thus placing the application of auditing and status of Hubbard at the centre of “the debate of orthodox authenticity as against heterodox innovation” (Thomas 2021:124) within the Free Zone itself. Accordingly, while the Free Zone is often depicted as operating in unison in direct opposition to the CoS, the reality is more complex.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Free Zone (broadly conceived) has experienced a highly turbulent relationship with the CoS, primarily based on “combined issues of legitimacy, authority, and hostility” (Thomas 2020:125). The CoS, using its status as the singular Scientology group established by L. Ron Hubbard, lays claim to the only “true” practice of Scientology. For the CoS, any application of Hubbard’s tech outside its institution is not merely a “lesser” form of Scientology, it is simply not Scientology at all. Simultaneously, Free Zone groups have been largely critical of the CoS and have emphasised a distinction between “Scientology” and the “Church of Scientology.” Criticisms of the CoS from Free Zone Scientologists range from the costs of its practices (such as auditing), to accusations of duplicitous changes to L. Ron Hubbard’s tech.

The CoS’ condemnation of Free Zone Scientology is in fact rooted in the policies of Hubbard himself. In an attempt to maintain control of Scientology and prevent its use in emergent groups (such as the above-mentioned Dianology), Hubbard developed a ten point programme entitled “Keeping Scientology Working” (KSW) in 1965 (Hubbard 1965a). This document, framed by Westbrook as the “crown jewel of Scientology’s systematic theology” (Westbrook 2019:124), consists of ten action points to ensure that a precise and identical application of the tech is practised and disseminated across all CoS Orgs. In KSW, and a subsequent policy letter entitled “Safeguarding Technology,” Hubbard positions the tech as an infallible method. According to these policies, any deviance from Hubbard’s methods results in the tech being ineffective at best, or potentially harmful to the mental wellbeing of the Preclear at worst. Hubbard wrote:

Scientology is a workable system. It white tapes the road out of the labyrinth. If there were no white tapes marking the right tunnels, Man [sic] would just go on wandering around and around the way he has for eons, darting off on wrong roads, going in circles, ending up in the sticky dark, alone. Scientology, exactly and correctly followed, takes the person up and out of the mess (Hubbard 1965b:2, emphasis added).

In short, KSW positions “Scientology” as a series of overlapping mechanisms that create a functioning system, which, if altered in even the most minor way, would result in the collapse of its efficiency. KSW remains a dominant aspect of contemporary CoS practice and allows the Church to draw a line between itself as “true” Scientology (as codified by Hubbard himself in Scientologist canon) and any other Scientologies. By citing KSW, the CoS frames the Free Zone as “performing the ultimate sin of squirrelling [sic] – practising the technology of Hubbard outside the sanctioned remit of the Religious Technology [Center]” (Gregg and Chryssides 2017:26), a CoS organisation which oversees the application of Hubbard’s tech across its worldwide Orgs (Religious Technology Center n.d.). Indeed, Schorey notes that squirreling is understood as “an egregious crime against the Church, resulting in excommunication and shunning of members accused of perpetrating these activities” (2016:343).

Free Zone Scientologists accused of squirreling are labelled as “squirrels” by CoS members, a derogatory term coined by Hubbard (Cusack 2016:485; Thomas 2021:29). Despite the frameworks of orthodoxy presented in KSW and Hubbard’s own condemnation of squirrels, Captain Bill Robertson’s “Free Zone” emerged almost two decades later, and the presence of Independent Scientologists grew further in the digital age, particularly due to the easily accessible nature of Hubbard’s work (both private and confidential) in online spaces (see Cusack 2016; Rothstein 2009; Schorey 2016). Hubbard’s condemnation of Scientology outside the CoS has little impact on the perspectives of contemporary Free Zone Scientologists, who often perceive the CoS as having fallen into corruption following Hubbard’s death, creating a division between what they view as “two different versions of CoS – the CoS under Hubbard, and the CoS under Miscavige” (Thomas 2021:115). This shift has significantly altered the ways in which KSW is understood in Free Zone spaces. Moreover, many Free Zone Scientologists (who lay claim to an “authentic” Scientology) accuse the CoS of distorting Hubbard’s real work, and now accuse the Church itself of squirreling (Lewis 2016:477; Thomas 2021:114). These dynamics have created occasionally hostile discourses and interactions between CoS and Free Zone members. Some Freezoners claim to have been challenged by the CoS and its “fair game’ policy,” a heavy-handed strategy to counter critics, known as “Suppressive Persons” (SPs) (Hubbard [1968], 2007:171; Lewis 2012:140; Thomas 2020:124-25). For example, following the death of Bill Robertson in 1991, Ron’s Org ‘went underground’ (Hellesøy 2016:450) and held meetings in secret due to threats of litigation for copyright violations from the CoS. Despite this, Hellesøy notes that Ron’s Org has more recently flourished following “lower pressure from CoS” (2016:450). An additional aspect of “fair game” is the “disconnection” policy, which encourages CoS members to cease contact with SPs (Hubbard [1968], 2007:206; Schorey 2016:343). Free Zone communities are often highly critical of the disconnection process, despite its presence in Hubbard’s writing, and draw attention to friends and family members from whom they have not received contact since leaving the CoS.

Perhaps the most notable example of tensions between the CoS and Free Zone Scientology was the heated interaction between Mark “Marty” Rathbun [Image at right] and the “Squirrel Busters” in 2011. Rathbun, a former CoS member who was (at the time) a practising Independent Scientologist, posted footage online of his interactions with a group of alleged CoS members outside his home accusing him of squirreling. This footage, featuring the Squirrel Busters wearing “shirts emblazoned with squirrels featuring Rathbun’s face” (Thomas 2021:viii) not only went viral, but also gathered interest from the global tabloid press (Gregg and Thomas 2019:355). While Rathbun’s current relationship with the CoS is unclear (Ortega 2020), he became a well-known figure associated with Scientology, and in 2015 featured prominently in Louis Theroux’s My Scientology Movie documentary.

Contemporary issues/challenges in Free Zone Scientology are not simply limited to its relationship with the CoS, however. The fluid and hybridised forms of Scientologies found beneath the “Free Zone Scientology” umbrella have created divisions among Freezoners themselves. Broadly, as demonstrated above, there is a division between those who attempt to maintain a Standard Tech, according to the work of Hubbard, and those who have chosen to innovate Scientology practices with their own methods. Such clashes have resulted in accusations of squirreling made within the Free Zone itself, a stark contrast to its original presentation in KSW (Thomas 2021:124). Moreover, these accusations of squirreling within the “Free Zone” (broadly conceived) have resulted in further divisions between the 1980s “Free Zone” movement (associated with Bill Robertson) and more recent Independent Scientologists of the twenty-first century, who have rejected the term “Free Zone” due to its close association with Robertson, whom they view as having subverted Scientology from Standard Tech (Thomas 2021:121). Altogether, the issues and challenges faced within the Free Zone point not only to complex and esoteric Scientologist praxis, but to the complexity of the wider category of “Free Zone Scientology.”

IMAGES

Image #1:  L. Ron Hubbard, 1960.
Image #2: Captain Bill Robertson.
Image #3: The logo of Ron’s Org in Switzerland.
Image #4: The E-Meter.
Image #5: Mark “Marty” Rathbun

REFERENCES

Bainbridge, William S. and Stark, Rodney. 1980. “Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear.” Sociological Analysis 41:128-36.

Barker, Eileen. 1992. New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. London: HMSO.

Chryssides, George D. 2012. “Unrecognized Charisma? A Study and Comparison of Five Charismatic Leaders: Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Smith, L Ron Hubbard, Swami Prabhupada and Sun Myung Moon.” Max Weber Studies 12:185-204.

Cusack, Carole M. 2016. “’Squirrels’ and Unauthorized Uses of Scientology: Werner Erhard and EST, Ken Dyers and Kenja, and Harvey Jackins and Re-Evaluation Counselling.” Pp. 485-506 in Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and K. Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill.

Galactic Patrol. n.d. “The Free Zone Decree.” Accessed from http://www.galac-patra.org on 17 March 2020.

Gregg, Stephen E. and George D. Chryssides. 2017. “’The Silent Majority?’ Understanding Apostate Testimony Beyond “Insider / Outsider” Binaries in the Study of New Religions.” Pp. 20-32 in Visioning New and Minority Religions: Projecting the Future, edited by Eugene V. Gallagher. Oxon: Routledge.

Gregg, Stephen E. and Aled Thomas. 2019. “Scientology Inside Out: Complex Religious Belonging in the Church of Scientology and the Free Zone.” Pp. 350-70 in The Insider/Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion, edited by George D. Chryssides and Stephen F. Gregg. Sheffield: Equinox.

Harley, Gail M. and John Kieffer. 2009. “The Development and Reality of Auditing.” Pp. 183-205 in Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hellesøy, K. 2016. “Scientology Schismatics.” Pp. 448-61 in Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and K. Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill.

Hubbard, L. Ron. 1982. “Understanding the E-Meter: A Book on the Basics of How the E-Meter Works.” Accessed from https://stss.nl/stss-materials/English/Books/EN_BO_Understanding_the_E_Meter_Monitor.pdf on 11 November 2018.

Hubbard, L. Ron. ([1968], 2007), Introduction to Scientology Ethics. Copenhagen: New Era Publications.

Hubbard, L. Ron. 1965. “Keeping Scientology Working.” Accessed from https://stss.nl/stss-materials/English/Courses%20Black%20und%20White%20Printing%20EN_BW_CR/EN_BW_CR_Keeping_Scientology_Working__KSW.pdf on 17 March 2020.

Hubbard, L. Ron. 1965. “Safeguarding Technology.” Accessed from http://internationalfreezone.net/safeguarding-technology.shtml on 17 March 2020.

Hubbard, L. Ron. ([1960], 1989), Have You Lived Before This Life? Copenhagen: New Era Publications.

Hubbard, L. Ron. ([1956], 2007), Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought. Copenhagen: New Era Publications.

Hubbard, L. Ron. ([1950], 2007), Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Copenhagen: New Era Publications.

Lewis, James R. 2016. “The Dror Center Schism, The Cook Letter and Scientology’s Legitimation Crisis.” Pp. 462-84 in Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and K. Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill.

Lewis, James R. 2012. “Scientology: Up Stat, Down Stat.” Pp. 133-49 in The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements, edited by Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Melton, J. Gordon. 2000. Studies in Contemporary Religion: The Church of Scientology. Salt Lake City: Signature Books.

Melton, J. Gordon. n.d. “Scientology: Schisms and Sects.” Accessed from https://www.patheos.com/library/scientology/historical-development/schisms-sects on 12 July 2022.

Ortega, Tony. 2020. “The Top 25 People Enabling Scientology, No. 18: Mark ‘Marty’ Rathbun.” The Underground Bunker [Blog]. Accessed from https://tonyortega.org/2020/08/29/the-top-25-people-enabling-scientology-no-18-mark-marty-rathbun/ on 7 September 2022.

Religious Technology Center. n.d. “Mr. David Miscavige Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center.” Accessed from http://www.rtc.org/david-miscavige.html on 24 April 2020.

Rigal-Cellard, Bernadette. 2009. “Scientology Missions International (SMI): An Immutable Model of Technological Missionary Activity.” Pp 325-34 in Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ron’s Org Committee. n.d. “Bill Robertson.” Accessed from https://ronsorg.com/bill-robertson/ on 17 March 2020).

Rothstein, Mikael. 2009. “’His Name was Xenu. He Used Renegades…’, Aspects of Scientology’s Founding Myth.” Pp. 365-88 in Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schorey, Shannon T. 2016. “’LRH4ALL!’: The Negotiation of Information in the Church of Scientology and the Open Source Scientology Movement.”Pp. 341-59 in Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and K. Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill.

The Church of Scientology International. 1998. What is Scientology? California: Bridge Publications.

Thomas, Aled. 2021. Free Zone Scientology: Contesting the Boundaries of a New Religion. London: Bloomsbury.

Thomas, Aled. 2020. “Engaging with the Church of Scientology and the Free Zone in the Field: Challenges, Barriers, and Methods.” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 10:121-37.

Urban, H. B. 2011. The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Weber, Max. ([1948], 1991). “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority.” Pp. 267-301 in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. London: Routledge.

Wessinger, Catherine. 2012). “Charismatic Leaders in New Religions.” Pp. 80-96 in The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements, edited by Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Westbrook, Donald A. 2019. Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Westbrook, Donald A. 2016. “Researching Scientology and Scientologists in the United States: Methods and Conclusions.” Pp. 19-46 in Handbook of Scientology, edited by James R. Lewis and K. Hellesøy. Leiden: Brill.

Publication Date:
13 September 2022

Share

Love Has Won

LOVE HAS WON TIMELINE

1975 (November 30):  Amy Carlson was born outside Wichita, Kansas.

Mid-2000s:  Carlson began to frequent the forums of Lightworker.org, a website focused on New Age spiritual thought. There she met Amerith WhiteEagle, who would become the first “Father God,” and the first to call her “Mother God.”

2007 (September 1):  A post on the Lightworker.org forums was the first public evidence of Carlson’s claims to supernatural experiences. She wrote that, while doing housework, a disembodied voice told her she would become the President of the United States.

2007 (December):  Carlson left her children and third husband to move to Crestone, Colorado with Amerith WhiteEagle, after announcing her plans on a Lightworkers.org forum post.

2009 (January 14):  The first Love Has Won YouTube video, featuring Amerith WhiteEagle, was posted.

2009: Carlson and WhiteEagle began posting daily video content under the name “The Galactic Free Press.”

2011-2013:  Carlson referred to her growing group of followers as the Galactic Federation of Light.

2013:  Carlson began to appear on camera in her YouTube videos.

2014:  Carlson’s relationship with Amerith WhiteEagle ended.

2014:  Carlson began to live with Miguel Lamboy (then thirty-five), the first member of Love Has Won. Lamboy became the second “Father God.” She continued filming videos, now taken by Lamboy.

2014-2018: The numbers of Love Has Won followers began to grow, including both in-person and online adherents, recruited through YouTube videos and livestreams.

2018 (March): Love Has Won began livestreams of group members known as the First Contact Ground Crew. Carlson appeared less and less often in videos.

2018 (August):  Jason Castillo first appeared in a Love Has Won video, and soon became the next “Father God.”

2018 (August):  Love Has Won members announced on video that Carlson was attacked by dark witches. Later that month, member Archeia Faith announced another assassination attempt by the “Cabal” had failed.

2019:  Members continued to announce attempts by the “Cabal” to assassinate Carlson.

2019: Love Has Won became a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization and an LLC when the group launched their first businesses.

2020 (August):  Amy Carlson, Julian Castillo, and twelve members moved to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, in the town of Wainiha.

2020 (September):  The group was escorted off the island by police after local groups protested their presence, then returned to Colorado after officials blocked their attempts to travel to Maui.

2020 (September):  Carlson, Love Has Won members Ashley Peluso and Lauren Suarez, and Carlson’s mother and two of her sisters appeared on the Dr. Phil television program.

2021 (April):  Concerned by Carlson’s deteriorating condition, members of anti-LHW group, Rising Above Love Has Won, called the police to perform a wellness check on Carlson at her group’s Mt. Shasta home.

2021 (April 28):  The police department in Crestone, Colorado conducted a search that led to the discovery of Carlson’s mummified body. Seven group members were arrested and charged with abuse of a corpse and child abuse.

2021 (September):  All criminal charges against Love Has Won members were dropped.

2021-2022:  Love Has Won split into several groups, including 5D Disclosure led by Lauryn Suarez and Ashley Peluso, and Joy Rains, led by Jason Castillo.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Amy Carlson, the eldest of three sisters, was born November 30, 1075, outside of Wichita, Kansas. [Image at right] Her parents separated when she was a child, and both parents remarried. Her family relationships were somewhat tumultuous, but her younger sister, Chelsea Renninger, reports that she was a popular teen, earned good grades in school and participated in church choir and theater. There are competing accounts of the emergence of Carlson’s spiritual interests and capabilities. In oral tradition within LHW there are narratives indicating that Carlson had begun talking to angels and understood herself to be Jesus.

By the time she was in her early twenties, Carlson had already given birth to three children and had been married twice. She had little maternal interest and ultimately abandoned her three children. A decade later, she had become a district manager in Texas for a time, but she continued to move around the country, living in  Mt. Shasta (California), Clearwater (Florida), and Yankeetown (Florida) for varying periods.

Carlson began to develop an interest in New Age spiritual ideas in the mid-2000s when she regularly visited the Lightworkers.org online forums. She began an online conversations with a man who referred to himself as Amerith WhiteEagle. Although he did not respond to her messages at the time, he later  would become the first “Father God” to Carlson as “Mother God” (Pelley 2021).

Carlson’s first public claims of otherworldly connections began with an online post in which she revealed that a disembodied voice revealed to her that she would one day become President of the United States:

…And I am cleaning the kitchen, baby just down for a nap…and I feel a tap on my shoulder and a wisk [sic] of air in my left ear…and then I heard a lower toned voice not really even a voice it was like a message a violin would play in its music and it said President of the United States…. I thought what? What in the world does that mean… I dismiss it and then I hear… You are going to be President of the United States. (Moyer 2021)

Around this time she began referring to Amerith WhiteEagle as her “twin flame” (that they were two bodies sharing a single soul). WhiteEagle, in turn, informed Carlson that she was God. The pair moved to near the New Age spiritual enclave of Crestone, Colorado for a time. Together with WhiteEagle, she began to post YouTube video clips in 2009. The group published almost daily video clips for a time. Initially many were clips of clouds floating over the mountain peaks, which were presented as starships. They were published under the name “The Galactic Free Press.” Carlson herself appeared in the videos at one point but later left the public presentations to her inner circle (Moyer 2021).he clips personally. Included in some of her posts were references to Ashtar Command, a UFO group established in the early 1950s (Pelley 2021).

Beginning about 2013 Carlson began referring to what later became Love Has Won as the Galactic Federation of Light. She  ended her relationship with WhiteEagle, began referring to herself as the primary deity, and in 2014 formed a relationship with Miguel Lamboy (then 35), who eventually became known within the group as Archangel Michael Silver. Lamboy became here video production partner. Over the next several years the group added both online and in-person followers who accepted Carlson as “Mother God.” By 2018, online postings began to feature the First Contact Ground Crew; Carlson’s personal participation in online postings gradually diminished (Pelley 2021). [Image at right]

By 2020, Love Has Won had grown in size to about 200 followers, though the number of online followers has been estimated to be much larger. Fourteen members took up residence with Carlson and Jason Castillo, with whom Carlson had begun a relationship in 2018, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in the community of Wainiha. That experiment lasted only a few months before the group was forced to leave Hawaii as a result of popular opposition, mostly due to Carlson’s controversial claim to be the goddess Pele (Arnold 2021). They returned to Colorado.

By this time, Carson’s visions had become darker and more radical. She reported herself to be in open battle with “the Cabal.” On August 1, 2018 she stated that dark witches had attacked her. Three weeks later,  member Archeia Faith reported in a video that another assassination attempt had taken place, during which a “sword sliced one of her hearts.” She went on to say that “The etheric have been doing surgery on it for many hours now and Mom is throwing up, diarrhea, she was shaking” (Pelley 2021). In 2019 reports, the group stated that Carlson had been struck with “etheric darts” and that her spleen and pancreas had been “infiltrated” by the Cabal (Moyer 2021).

Information on Carson’s health has remained fragmentary, but it is clear that her health was in steep decline by the time the group re-established itself in Colorado. [Image at right] Her skin had a bluish cast from argyria, which was caused by the over-consumption of colloidal silver. Carson herself reported that she had cancer. Although post mortem did not confirm her claim, it is clear that Carlson’s physical condition continued steep decline.

There is some evidence that group members restricted her access to conventional medical services in 2020 as he health was deteriorating. During a video filmed on September 15, 2020, one member stated that

There have been moments when Mom has asked us to take her to a 3D hospital and we’re like ‘Nope!’ Because there’s just, there’s no way, and we know exactly how hijacking works,”…“And, you can bet your fuckin’ ass that someone in that hospital, whoever it would be, would get hijacked and go straight for Mom, try to do who knows what. They would try to take her to surgery. They would try to do some crazy shit. So, absolutely not.” (Moyer 2021)

While the exact date of Carlson’s passing remain murky due to the group’s secretive nature, police discovered her mummified remains in Casada Park, near Crestone, on April 28, 2021. The autopsy report from the El Paso County Coroner’s Office concluded she “died due to decline brought on by alcohol abuse, anorexia, and dosing colloidal silver.”(Richards 2021)  In any event, members asserted that Carlson had not died in the conventional sense; she had just ascended to the 5D realm and was now “out of communication.” (Pelley 2021) From their perspective, she was just entering the next stage of her mission. Following Carlson’s death and absent her leadership the already small group experienced a schism (See, Issues/Challenges).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The LHW belief system is a bricolage of primarily New Age precepts, but with clear elements from other religious and healing traditions. In the LHW world origination narrative, the universe was all love and light before an Archangel named Jehovah separated himself from all of creation. That is, “He wanted to be God without God.” He then began taking over planets and created “dark species and the darker realms.” Father God (Jason Castillo) was appointed to go down into all of the “lower planets” and “lower realms” to master them. “And his lower aspect is Lucifer,” Lauren Suarez states. “So surprise, Lucifer is Father God.” Meanwhile “Mother God” stayed in the light realm. And now for the first time in nineteen billion years, the two have reunited on planet earth (Scofield 2020). According to Suarez, Father God gathered all of the darkness onto this one planet (Earth). During this immense history, Mother God (Carlson) has reincarnated over 500 times. The mission of Mother God and Father God has been to save the planet Earth from destruction.

Several thousand years ago, Carlson was the Queen of the ancient civilization of Lemuria. Atlanteans stole a “crystal technology” from Lemuria; the result was a massive explosion on Earth. The planet was then taken over by “Anunnaki’s” and reptilians (Moyer 2021). Since that moment the world has been controlled by an evil one percent “Cabal” who serve as “minions” of these two groups. They maintain their power by keeping the planet in “low vibration.” (Scofield 2020) The Cabal is responsible for wars, mass shootings, and pandemics, which actually are illusory and simply engineered to keep humanity mired in a state of fear. Carlson has been in constant battle with the Cabal, which has attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Carlson hundreds of times (Scofield 2020). Carlson is therefore central to human salvation as she is the only path to successful ascension.

The view of outsiders that Carlson had died was not shared by group members. In a May 2021 video a group member asserted that “Mom has ascended” and “completed her contract.”

He went on to urge followers to “have full trust in Momma’s divine plan”  because “she planned it all out, even this part.” “Mom has ascended, her mission is over,” the man said in the video. “Is the mission over? No” (Yuhas 2021).

Various conspiracy theories are a second component of LHW doctrine. Members speculate that the Sandy Hook school massacre, The 9/11/2001 attack in the U.S., and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany all were hoaxes. Recently, LHW narratives have begun to incorporate elements of QAnon conspiracy theories, including the central allegation that satanic elites are cannibalizing children. Donald Trump is credited with secretly working to defeat the Cabal. LHW maintains a Telegram Channel with roughly 35,000 followers who post both LHW and QAnon material (Moyer 2021).

A third element of third LHW worldview is mistrust of western medicine. Members believe that all illnesses are caused by energy imbalances and that “the medical system” is designed to create illness rather than health. In place of conventional medicine LHW promotes the use of colloidal silver and gold, even touting use of colloidal silver to cure, prevent, and treat COVID-19. These products were marketed through the group’s Gaia’s Whole Healing Essentials. In the case of the group’s COVID claims, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued a cease and desist order (Pelley 2021). Alternative healing is a major aspect of LHW’s philosophy and business model. Other health claims include lemon and baking soda consumption as a cure for cancer turmeric as a cure for diabetes, and frankincense as offering relief for depression. The group created an “Ascension Guide” that details its health advice.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

While LHW may have had several hundred participants in its various activities, the core group was never more than a few dozen. Ordinary members participated in a number of rituals. Upon joining the group, Carlson gave initiates new names, often angel names. Because rejection of individual ego was central to the group’s beliefs, new members participated in an “ego death ceremony.” Ego was understood to mean “edging out God.” (Scofield 2020) Manifestation of ego was met with public rebuke for expressing “egonic traits” or being in an “lower frequency.” Members were sometimes required to make public confession of such tendencies. Daily routines were regulated as Carlson believed that food and sleep were impediments to ascension.

One important ritual that demonstrated Carlson’s spiritual power was “spiritual surgeries.” She has claimed to have performed over 100,000 of these surgeries, each of which can take up to an hour to complete. Some of these are performed in person and some by remote means. They may involve brain surgery and organ repair (Doherty 2021).  These rituals take an enormous toll on Carlson’s health; she reported the combined impact had left her paralyzed (Dr. Phil 2021).

The key ritual in LHW was Carlson’s ongoing effort to process all of the negative energy in the world to create an opportunity for ascension to the 5D level of existence. She constantly urged followers to tune into “higher vibrational frequencies.” Members kept a log of her progress. On September 13, 2018 Carlson announced that she had “processed 99.3” of the planet’s negative energy (Moyer 2021). However, as she attempted to process that small remaining amount of negative energy her rate of progress slowed “exponentially.” There were reports within the group of increasingly fierce attacks by the Cabal on Carlson. On August 1, 2018, online viewers were informed that dark witches had attacked Amy. Three weeks later, the audience was told that another assassination attempt had taken place, during which a “sword sliced one of her hearts.” It was reported that  “The etheric have been doing surgery on it for many hours now and Mom is throwing up, diarrhea, she was shaking” (Pelley 2021). Stories of assassination attempts continued in videos into 2019, including supposed incidents in which Amy was struck with etheric darts, and another in which her spleen and pancreas were “infiltrated” by the Cabal (Moyer 2021). Carlson’s deteriorating health and experience of extreme pain was attributed these attacks.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Leadership of LHW was firmly in the hands of Amy Carlson, who was known within the group as “Mother God,” or the “Mother of All Creation,” through her lifetime.  Carlson’s spiritual standing was pivotal to LHW organization as she was the key to salvation through the ascension. Her quest had spanned hundreds of past lives; she recalled having been Jesus, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, and Marilyn Monroe. She also claimed that Donald Trump was her father and that she had a special spiritual relationship with actor Robin Williams, who served as her spiritual counselor (Scofield 2021).

She appointed several men as a “Father God,” (twin flames) but made changes in that partnership at her own discretion. Over the course of the group’s brief history Amerith WhiteEagle, Miguel Lamboy, Justin Castillo and Andrew Profaci played that role for different periods of time. According to Carlson, her twin flames were vessels for God’s energy, but that energy was too great to be contained in a single human being (Pelley 2021). Surrounding Carlson was the First Contact Ground Crew Team, a dozen to two dozen core group members who resided commune-style on the group’s various properties. These individuals coordinated Carlson’s plan for ascension and appeared in the group’s online videos, Facebook postings and Skype chats. They also worked to protect Carlson against the ongoing attacks against her by the Cabal. There were also a few small auxiliary groups that met in person in Australia, South Africa, and Central America (Moyer 2021). The largest regular following probably was the 100-200 “ambassadors” who stayed connected with LHW online through Facebook and chat groups on Skype.

The group supported itself financially in a variety of  ways. One of its primary businesses was  Gaia’s Whole Healing Essentials. The company marketed essential oils, crystal pyramids, and, notably,  colloidal silver (silver particles suspended in a liquid) (Moyer 2021). Other companies also sold LHW products. For example, FreckleFarm Organics offered some products that were connected to LHW’s focal concern on combating harmful energy, such as “plasma coasters,” which the group asserted could transform a glasses of water into  “receivers and transmitters” capable of neutralizing  harmful energy (Pelley 2021). LWH also marketed its products directly through its own website. One of LWH’s most profitable enterprises was “etheric surgery.” LHW claimed that this form of remote energy healing was effective in treating virtually all disease. The group also sold its “Ascension Guide,” which promoted “sun gazing (literally staring at the Sun), smoking cigarettes (only organic, hand-rolled tobacco), eating red meat at least twice a week, and taking long, cold showers” (Moyer 2021). Miguel Lamboy led the effort to gain federal approval for LHW as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization in 2019 (Pelley 2021).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

A surge of rumors and media stories surrounded LHW, particularly around the time of Amy Carson’s death. There were stories of  authoritarianism, sexual involvement with group members, potential suicide, exploitation of members, financial violations (Rolling Stone). However, there were four major sources of trouble that significantly impacted the group and its legacy: the events surrounding Carson’s death, organized opposition to the group, and the schism following Carlson’s death.

The circumstances surrounding Amy Carlson’s death generated a flurry of national media attention about the group. Police actually confirmed Carlson’s death when they finally discovered Carlson’s mummified body after exercising a search warrant on April 28,2021  (The Independent). Following the police investigation, seven LHW members were arrested and charged with “abuse of corpse,” although all criminal charges were subsequently dropped (Rolling Stone). Nonetheless, the combination of the group’s seclusiveness, its sometimes incendiary or combative web posts, the police raid, Carlson’s disappearance followed by the discovery of her mummified body, the controversy over Carlson’s cause of death, and the group’s assertion that she had not actually died but rather “ascended” to the 5D level combined to produced a stream of investigative reporting and sensationalistic coverage. Most of that coverage further undermined the group’s already negative public image. The group had attempted to reverse its image problems by agreeing to appear with group critics on the Dr. Phil television program shortly after returning from Hawaii to Colorado. However, that effort proved unsuccessful as issues such as Carlson’s abandonment of her children and precarious health became a focus, along with a statement by the Cult Education Institute’s Rick Alan Ross that compared Carlson’s leadership to classic personality traits of other cult leaders (Washington Post)

Throughout its brief history, LHW encountered organized and vocal opposition wherever it was located. In California, LHW drew opposition from the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office which reported that it had received “many complaints from families within the United States saying that the group is brainwashing people and stealing their money” (NYTIMES). The town clerk in Crestone, which is a spiritual enclave that includes a diverse array of religious and spiritual groups reported that “these people have no connection with the actual town.” She stated that “As clerk, I received at least five out-of-state calls over a period of four years from agitated family members,” …. [and that] “the callers ‘were searching for family members who had been persuaded to follow this group’s leader while giving over control of their personal finances, bank accounts, etc.’” She asserted that the group “was not connected to the greater Crestone-Baca area’s legitimate spiritual centers” (NYTIMES).

In 2020, fourteen members, along with Amy Carlson, took up  the island of Kuaui in Hawaii. Carlson publicly claimed to be Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes. The group also ignored local Covid regulations. As opposition mounted, the group became the object of organized protest and minor vandalism. [Image at right]  It was not long before the group was summarily escorted off the island (CUT). After trying unsuccessfully to relocate to the island of Maui, the group returned to Colorado (Rolling Stone). A few days later the group relocated to Colorado.

There was some more organized opposition to LHW. Initially, a small group of mothers and other relatives of LHW members organized to oppose the group and extricate their offspring, as has occurred with a number of new religious movements (Daily Beast, Guru Mag). They created a Facebook Page Love Has Won Exposed. Subsequently, two families joined forces to create what they described as a “support group” that hosted the Rising Above Love Has Won website (The Independent). The group monitored LHW activities, posted information critical of the group, offered assistance to members willing to leave the group, and alerted public officials concerning what it regarded as dangerous activities and circumstances. It was Rising Above that alerted local law enforcement about Carson’s declining health and requested a health intervention. LHW sought to defend itself and improve its negative public image, most notably by appearing, along with critics, on the Dr. Phil television program. This initative

The most significant challenge facing LHW is the schism that took place following Carlson’s death.  The LHW website has been taken offline, and two main schismatic groups have emerged (Marie Claire).  The smaller group that formed following Carlson’s death was Joy Rains. The group is led by Jason Castillo, who claims the status of “MotherFatherGod” as a result of having unified his physical vessel with Carlson’s energy (The Independent).  Castillo has vehemently rejected other contenders to Carlson’s legacy as “the false team.” The group offers “ticket to heaven” spiritual healing sessions (Marie Claire).

The larger schismatic group, 5D Full Disclosure, was formed by two close confidants of Carlson’s, Lauryn Suarez and Ashley Peluso, and has remained dedicated to “Mother God” alone (Marie Claire). The new group has continued to offer etheric surgeries, claiming that they now are being performed by Carlson from the fifth dimension. The group also has continued to develop the “Crystal Schools” charter school program that Carlson first envisioned (Rolling). 5D Full Disclosure is headquartered in Vermont and continues to livestream. In addition, the group maintains a Facebook presence and has two Telegram channels.

Love Has Won remained a relatively small group through its brief history. The group mobilized internal power with its claim of imminent world transformation (ascension) through its leader’s unique ability to assume personal responsibility for preparing the conditions for that transformation. She alone was engaged in the pivotal ritual of eliminating negative energy that prevented movement to the 5D dimension. Externally, the group was able to connect with a broader audience interested in alternative health and healing and with Endtime scenarios, primarily through its internet presence. This internet reach notwithstanding, the committed membership core remained small. With the death of Amy Carlson, who was indispensable to the group’s mission, the schism that divided an already small core group, and a largely uncommitted following, the future of Love Has Won remains precarious.

IMAGES

Image #1: Amy Carlson.
Image #2: Amy Carlson (center) appearing in a YouTube video in December 2019.
Image #3: Amy Carlson prior to her death.
Image #4: The Love Has Won ranch in Colorado.
Image #5: Protest against Love Has Won in Hawaii.

REFERENCES

Arnold, Amanda. 2021. “A cult leader known as ‘Mother God’ was found mummified.” The Cut, May 5. Accessed from https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/love-has-won-cult-leader-found-mummified-in-colorado.html on 16 August 2022.

Doherty, Simon. 2021. “Watch Our New Documentary About ‘Love Has Won’, a Group Former Members Call a Cult.” Vice, March 23. Accessed from https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mwvb/love-has-won-vice-documentary on 2 September 2022.

Dr. Phil. 2020. “Two Followers Of Love Has Won Spiritual Group Say They Believe Their Leader Is ‘God’.” Dr. Phil, September 14. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze0c9Gm_vPY on 2 September 2022.

Graziosi, Graig. 2021. “Former ‘Father God’ speaks out about Love Has Won cult after leader’s mummified corpse found in Colorado home.” The Independent, May 13. Accessed from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/love-has-won-father-god-corpse-b1847100.html on 3 September 2022.

Kinkade, Sky. 2021 “Spiritual group accused of cult-like activities may be planting roots in Mt. Shasta area.” Mount Shasta Herald, April 26. Accessed from ‘https://www.mtshastanews.com/story/news/2021/04/26/cult-like-group-love-has-won-planting-roots-mt-shasta-area-love-has-won/4844980001/ on 20 August 2022.

Love Has Won Exposed Facebook page. 2022. Accessed from https://www.facebook.com/lovehaswoncult/ on 9/20/2022.

Moyer, Christopher. 2021. “From ‘Mother God’ to Mummified Corpse: Inside the Fringe Spiritual Sect ‘Love Has Won’” Rolling Stone, November 26. Accessed from https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/love-has-won-amy-carlson-mother-god-1254916/ on 15 August 2022.

Pelley, Virginia. 2021. “Love Has Lost.” Marie Claire, September 7. Accessed from https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a37417778/love-has-won-cult-amy-carlson-stroud-death/ on 15 August 2022.

Peiser, Jocelyn. 2021. “She told followers she was ‘Mother God.’ Her mummified body was found wrapped in Christmas lights.” The Washington Post, May 5. Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/05/cult-love-has-won-carlson/ on 20 August 2022.

Richards, Zoe. 2021. “Cause of Death Revealed for Mummified Colorado ‘Cult’ Leader Found Without Eyes.” Daily Beast, December 2. Accessed from https://www.thedailybeast.com/amy-carlson-love-had-won-cult-leader-died-of-alcohol-anorexia-and-colloidal-silver-autopsy-shows on 20 August 2022.

Rising Above Love Has Won website. 2022. Accessed from https://www.risingabovelhw.com/ on 20 September 2022.

Scofield, Be. 2020. “Crestone Cult Love Has Won Leaves Man to Die in Desert.” The Guru Magazine, July 23. Accessed from https://gurumag.com/crestone-cult-love-has-won-leaves-man-to-die-in-desert/ on 14 August 2022.

Vallejo, Justin. 2021. “‘They become re-wired, a different person’: Inside the fight to deprogram Love Has Won cult members.” The Independent, June 10. Accessed from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/love-has-won-mother-god-cult-b1858639.html on 21 August 2022.

Publication Date:
30 September 2022

Share

Saint Angela of Foligno

SAINT ANGELA OF FOLIGNO TIMELINE

1248/1249:  Angela of Foligno was born at Foligno in Umbria, a few miles from Assisi, of a possibly noble and wealthy family.

1270 (?):  Angela got married. From this marriage, she might have had several sons.

1285:  At age thirty seven, Angela of Foligno received a vision of St. Francis of Assisi and converted to Christianity.

1288 (?):  All of Angela’s family members had died.

1291 (June 28):  Angela took the habit of the Third Order of Saint Francis and became a tertiary.

1291 (early autumn):  Angela met Friar Arnaldo on a pilgrimage to Assisi.

1292 (March 26):  Friar Arnaldo, Angela’s scribe, suspected that Angela was captured by evil spirits; she began dictating her book, the Memorial, to him.

1296:  Angela finished the Memorial.

1296 (April 3):  Angela went to work in hospitals to serve lepers.

1294–1296:  Angela suffered from despair.

1300 (early August):  Angela went on another pilgrimage to Assisi.

1307:  Angela visited the Poor Clares (nuns of the Order of St. Clare) of Spello.

1206 (?)–1309 (?):  Angela’s teachings were assembled as her second book, the Instructions.

1309 (January 4):  Angela died in Foligno.

1701 (July 11):  Angela formally received the title of “Blessed” by a decree of Pope Clement XI.

2013 (October 9):  Angela was canonized by Pope Francis.

BIOGRAPHY

Although Angela of Foligno shares certain similarities with other women saints, she took a male saint as her model to guide her religious life. [Image at right] She admired St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226) and imitated many of his well-known religious practices and miracles. Francis was venerated as practicing the Imitatio Christi, that is, the imitation of Christ. Angela, in contrast, practiced the Imitatio Francisci of Imitatio Christi—imitating St. Francis who imitated Jesus Christ.

Following Jesus Christ through St. Francis and adopting their voluntary poverty, Angela repudiated worldly belongings and sought a simple life. By living as a poor person, she was able to reject worldly matters as well as bodily comfort and pleasure. Like Francis, Angela wanted to focus on heavenly matters and her relationship with God. She also wanted to help the poor, which Jesus encouraged his disciples to do in the Gospels.

Angela of Foligno was a rather ordinary woman who enjoyed worldly life before she began to have mystical visions, which were then recognized and valued by others. She was born in Foligno, Italy in 1248 or 1249. We know little about her apart from her own writings and a few documents that suggest her existence (Stróżyński 2018:188). Apparently, she was quite popular during her lifetime and was respected after her death (Arcangeli 1995:41). She was married and had children from this marriage, and was known to have run her own business, possibly in trade. It is not known if her wealth was comparable to St. Francis’ luxurious life before conversion. Angela joined religious life in her thirties, relatively late in life at that time.

Angela’s “secular” life was entirely changed in 1285. According to the Memorial, a book that describes her visions, Angela was seized by fear and guilt that her sin would lead her to hell. There is little evidence to show what her sin was (Lachance 1993:17). Whatever the sin was, she cried in despair and prayed to St. Francis for spiritual help and advice. Angela believed that Francis responded to her plea. According to Angela, the saint guided her to a church so she could find an appropriate confessor. Arnaldo, a Franciscan friar, became her confessor and scribe, writing down what Angela dictated in her local dialect, Umbrian, and then translating it into Latin (Lachance 2006:20). The original Umbrian transcription is lost, but twenty-nine manuscripts exist of her written visions, making it harder to distinguish her voice from the scribe’s possible intervention (Cervigni 2005:339–40). While there is less information available for the life of Arnaldo, he played a major role in hearing, writing, and editing the record of her visions. He became her first disciple (Lachance 2006:24). Undoubtedly others edited and redacted Arnaldo’s transcriptions, but they remain anonymous (Lachance 2006:85).

Angela’s religious life did not start easily. Her family opposed her decision to renounce secular life, even after her vision of St. Francis. In her forties, Angela took the habit in the Third Order of St. Francis, only after her own family members died. Perhaps not surprisingly, Angela expressed joy at the loss of her family, since she could now work as a spiritual mother to the poor and followers (Meany 2000:65), as well as become a faithful bride of Christ. The Third Order of St. Francis is a religious group of lay penitents, called tertiaries, founded by St. Francis. Its rule was set in 1289, but individuals and groups took various forms of devotional life, frequently remaining in the secular world. The Third Order generally gave women more opportunity to join a religious life that was not bound to monasteries (More 2014:297–99). As a tertiary, Angela lived at home with her companions while attending liturgies in nearby church on the regular basis (Schroeder 2006:36).

What little information we have about Angela of Foligno is compiled in Il Libro della Beata Angela da Foligno, which contains her book of visions, the Memorial, and her book of Instructions. The Memorial depicts the process of her mystical experience as passus or “steps” in English. These steps indicate the stages the soul encounters as it approaches perfect union with God. Unfortunately for modern researchers, her scribe Arnaldo had difficulties in distinguishing and organizing the steps (Schroeder 2006:41). In the first step, Angela confesses her sin. Subsequent steps are mixed in with Angela’s accounts of her repentance from sin and the consolation she received from God. Accounts of visions and mystical experiences are also included. Higher steps portray deepening levels of penance. In the nineteenth step, Angela tastes the “first great sensation of God’s sweetness” (Angela of Foligno 1993:131). In the final, twentieth step, she converts a man on his way to the church of St. Francis in Assisi. The other book compiled in Il Libro presents thirty-six Instructions, followed by descriptions of Angela’s death and an epilogue. Assembled by anonymous scribes after the Memorial—and possibly after Angela’s death (Mooney 2007:58)—the Instructions emphasize theological discourses between Angela and her scribe.

After fewer than two decades of living the religious life, Angela died in Foligno in 1309. In the early eighteenth century, Pope Clement XI (p. 1700–1721) awarded the title of “Blessed” to Angela, a step on the path to canonization. Pope Francis canonized Angela of Foligno as a saint in 2013, in the somewhat unique process of equipollent canonization—that is, she became a saint due to the longstanding veneration she received over the centuries.

DEVOTEES

During her lifetime, Angela attracted both men and women committed to becoming holy, and she herself founded a community of female tertiaries not bound by monastic enclosure.  [Image at right] Yet Angela’s extraordinary behaviors made many people uncomfortable, which she reports in the Memorial. It is noteworthy that her book was more popular in European countries outside of Italy. The Memorial was widely circulated among the Spanish Franciscans, and Angela became a spiritual model during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Tar 2005:83). The Memorial was read in France by both the (vowed) religious and the nonreligious (laypersons) even before those in Italy saw it (Arcangeli 1995:44). Angela of Foligno’s book appears in the writings of later Italian mystics such as St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622) and St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), thus indicating her influence among later male mystics. With the recent recovery of significant female figures in Christian history, she has become the subject of study by feminist scholars and by those investigating mystical and ascetical traditions. At the same time, she retains appeal for traditionalists, being the saint that widows and those facing sexual temptation call upon.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Late medieval Catholic Christianity, especially the mystical and ascetical traditions, emphasized the body (Bynum 1990:182). The body was seen to be an effective method by which to practice Imitatio Christi, to feel God’s presence, and to demonstrate miracles. St. Francis, the model that Angela followed, also exemplified the valorization of bodily pain and miraculous events, such as stigmata (Bynum 1990:86).

Angela went much further, however, in that her holy experiences and asceticism were what most people, even then, would consider extreme. Her writings—the Memorial and the Instructions—contain three narrators: Angela of Foligno, Arnaldo, and God (Lachance 2006:20). All three characters appear as “I,” the first-person pronoun, despite the different voices each represents, although the most frequent narrator is Arnaldo, conveying the opinion of the Church (Cervigni 2005:340–41). After Angela’s pilgrimage to Assisi in 1291, in a group of which Arnaldo was also a member, they started to write the Memorial. The Memorial is filled with accounts of her visions, ecstasies, and experiences of the presence and absence of God. The Instructions is more systematic and explanatory, presenting Angela as a spiritual mother and teacher. Here, she is talking to her spiritual sons and occasionally her spiritual daughters (Lachance 2006:81-82).

In both books, Angela of Foligno’s mystical experience develops in different steps, moving toward higher and deeper union with God, from her painful repentance of the sinful past to the ineffable experience of union with God accompanied by consolation. Lachance explains these developments in three stages:

(1) imitation of the works of the suffering God–man in whom is manifested God’s will; (2) union with God accompanied by powerful feelings and consolation that, nonetheless, can find expression in words and thoughts; and (3) a most perfect union with God in which the soul feels and tastes God’s presence in such a sublime way that it is beyond words and conception (Lachance 2006:35)

While the spiritual developmental stages are not always linear in her writings, Angela of Foligno yearns for the ultimate presence of God in her heart, which often fosters her frenzied behaviors or emotions. For example, her devotion to lepers bridged ascetic practice and mystical experience in outlandish ways, as she describes one incident:

And after we had distributed all that we had, we washed the feet of the women and the hands of the men, and especially those of one of the lepers which were festering and in an advanced stage of decomposition. Then we drank the very water with which we had washed him. And a small scale of the leper’s sores was stuck in my throat, I tried to swallow it. My conscience would not let me spit it out, just as if I had received Holy Communion. I really did not want to spit it out but simply to detach it from my throat (Angela of Foligno 1993:163).

Following the life of Jesus, and overcoming his pride and disgust, St. Francis of Assisi also reportedly kissed and helped lepers, saying he experienced joy (Orlemanski 2012:151). Angela of Foligno went even further, however, by drinking the leftover water and skin from the leper. Whereas St. Francis described being filled with a vague and somewhat nebulous sweetness at seeing the lepers (Francis of Assisi 1999:124), Angela reported a more physical and tangible sensation. For her, the “sweetness” was directly connected to her tasting the body of Christ and feeling the presence of God. These bodily impressions, along with visions of the body of Jesus, and miracles involving the host (the consecrated communion wafer), seemed to provide direction to Angela for understanding the will of God. In the lower steps in the Memorial, she expressed a kind of separation anxiety, saying that she felt insecure and miserable when she did not hear from God or feel God’s presence. However, as she was guided into the higher steps, experiencing sweetness and consolation in her body, she became more confident and certain of God’s love toward her. In a process of a deep union between Angela and God, she felt comforted. As a bride of Christ, Angela not only witnessed Christ but also touched and kissed his body. For her, God talked to her and guided her through her own body.

Opening the understanding of my soul, [God] answered: “Wherever I am, the faithful are also with me.” And I myself perceived that this was so. I also very clearly discovered that I was everywhere he was. But to be within God is not the same as to be outside of him. He alone is everywhere encompassing everything (Angela of Foligno 1993:217).

On the other hand, Angela’s mystical experiences were not always pleasant. She is famous for her extraordinary behaviors, including extravagant crying. After witnessing the passion of Christ in vision, Angela stated that she cried so hard that she felt her skin burning.

I wept much, shedding such hot tears that they burned my flesh. I had to apply water to cool it. In the eleventh step, for the aforesaid reasons, I was moved to perform even harsher penance (Angela of Foligno 1993:127).

The feeling of burning appears throughout the Memorial. Extreme levels of happiness, misery, pain, and joy are listed in her devotions without much elaboration. It seems as though Angela of Foligno had little opportunity to learn or write. She had no access to formal theology apart from traditions of the church that she learned from oral teachings. Many parts of her spiritual writings, therefore, show her inability to understand or explain her visions or emotional reactions. Angela’s theology was embedded in her mystical experiences and extraordinary behaviors. Throughout her Memorial, she expresses her unfulfilled love toward God with jealousy, happiness, anger, but seldom with satisfaction.

Following the prevalent medieval tradition of Sponsa Christi, “The Bride of Christ,” Angela of Foligno often describes her intimate relationship with Jesus. She treats Christ as her lover in many parts of the Memorial, expressing her eagerness to be united permanently with Christ. She voices her great love toward him throughout book. When she feels that she is with Christ, she is extremely happy. And when she feels his absence, she is acutely sad and depressed.

These representations are somewhat dissimilar to what other medieval mystics experienced, both male and female. Those who saw themselves as brides of Christ strove to make themselves pious and chaste wives of Christ. They did not care too much about worldly things but focused on Christ and love towards him. As a bride of Christ, they wanted to devote themselves entirely to him. Regardless of their actual gender, from the twelfth century onward even some male theologians began to see themselves as a wife of Christ and wrote about their love of him (Keller 2000:34–35). They described themselves as females, following the biblical Song of Songs tradition.

What is most interesting about Angela’s depiction of being the bride of Christ in the Memorial is that she describes in detail having actual physical contact between Christ and herself in her visions. Angela represents Jesus Christ as her lover. She yearns to touch and kiss him. He thus appears to her as fulfilling not only her religious desire, but also her bodily yearning. Here, the physical affection between lovers, which is discouraged as dangerous or understood as the result of Original Sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church, becomes embedded in holiness as spiritual lovers in the words of Angela.

[I]n a state of ecstasy, she found herself in the sepulcher with Christ. She said she had first of all kissed Christ’s breast—and saw that he lay dead, with his eyes closed—then she kissed his mouth, from which, she added, a delightful fragrance emanated, one impossible to describe. This moment lasted only a short while. Afterward, she placed her cheek on Christ’s own and he, in turn, placed his hand on her other cheek, pressing her closely to him. At that moment, Christ’s faithful one heard him telling her: “Before I was laid in the sepulcher, I held you this tightly to me” (Angela of Foligno 1993:182).

In this vision, Angela and Jesus Christ are apparently lovers. Angela touches him first, and then he embraces her back. In fact, the romanticized contact between Christ and his believers is not entirely different from the exegetical traditions of the Song of Songs, which was often understood by Christians as representing Christ and his believers as lovers longing for mystical union. After this physical and spiritual contact, she had great “immense and indescribable” pleasure, emphasizing her sensual satisfaction.

What is more, this passage represents Angela of Foligno as a savior herself, by implying that she is the one who revives and saves Jesus Christ from death. Angela first sees him lying in the tomb, which reminds readers of his death. However, no one witnessed the process of his resurrection, since he had already disappeared when his women followers, traditionally believed to include Mary Magdalene among them, visited his tomb. It is Angela who witnesses and “resurrects” Jesus Christ. Unlike various Gospel traditions, Angela describes herself actually seeing him lying in the tomb. At the sight of motionless Christ, she touches and kisses him. By her physical contact, he wakes up from death. Her kiss vivifies him, bringing him back to life. Then, Christ is able to respond to Angela’s touch by embracing her and uttering sweet words to her. Now, Angela could feel his breath after she kissed him first. In this vision, Angela of Foligno is the one who brings Jesus Christ back to life. And just as God breathed life into Adam (Genesis 2: 7), so too did Angela breathe life into Christ. Thus, Angela is the savior of the Savior.

Many medieval female saints pursued a mystical path of extreme asceticism. Whereas the early Christians sought torture and martyrdom as a part of their religious duty and practice, the medieval saints tried to imitate the suffering of Jesus Christ with voluntary self-inflicted pain and ascetic practice (Miles 2006:63). While both sexes were actively engaged in asceticism (Bynum 1987:42-47), female practitioners significantly adopted more severe habits of fasting (Bynum 1987: 87). Asceticism is also tied to the historical fact that medieval women did not have many opportunities for advancement. They were not allowed into priesthood, nor could they (officially) teach or preach. Women did not have many chances to get educated or study theology. Angela of Foligno was not far from this model. Bodily pain took priority in her mystical experiences. Vivid descriptions of fleshly agonies appear in most of the steps described in the Memorial. Angela constantly confesses that she is currently in physical pain and always yearning for it. She highlights her body as an important medium for delivering her pain and vision together. In this sense, we can say that Angela’s religious life begins with pain. Pain is not negative, although Angela seems to complain about it in the Memorial. Pain works importantly in her piety, guiding her to penance and confirming her sanctity.

On many occasions in the Memorial, Angela reports to her scribe that she goes through pain when she sees Jesus Christ in her visions.

At the tenth step, while I was asking God what I could do to please him more, in his mercy, he appeared to me many times, both while I was asleep and awake, crucified on the cross. He told me that I should look at his wounds. In a wonderful manner, he showed me how he had endured all these wounds for me; and he did this many times. As he was showing me the suffering he had endured for me from each of these wounds, one after the other, he told me: “What then can you do that would seem to you to be enough?” Likewise, he appeared many times to me while I was awake, and these appearances were more pleasant than those with occurred while I was asleep, although he always seemed to be suffering greatly (Angela of Foligno 1993:126–27).

Angela of Foligno’s understanding of Imitatio Christi included a physical dimension, as did that of her model, St. Francis. Just as Christ placed himself into human life, taking on mortality and physicality, as described in the Gospels, St. Francis also wanted to endure physical pain and even death in his religious life. Along with his voluntary poverty, Francis tried to avoid bodily comfort as much as possible. Rough clothes and a hard bed made him not only uncomfortable but also caused him agony. He and his followers were mocked by people who did not understand their ascetic practices. Being mocked like Jesus was a part of following the life of Jesus. The hagiographies of St. Francis and Angela emphasize the suffering caused by being mocked.

Perhaps St. Francis’ most notable characteristic in his quest to imitate Christ was the appearance of the Five Wounds of Jesus, miraculously engraved on his body. [Image at right] The Five Wounds of Christ, or stigmata, refers to physical wounds miraculously appearing on the bodies of the saints or holy people, typically hands, feet, side, or brow. In this incident, a seraph (a six-winged angel) appeared to Francis and shot light rays into his body in the exact places where Jesus was wounded when he was crucified. Angela of Foligno experienced the wounds of Christ somewhat differently:

In the fourteenth step, while I was standing in prayer, Christ on the cross appeared more clearly to me while I was awake, that is to say, he gave me an even greater awareness of himself than before. He then called me to place my mouth to the wound in his side. It seemed to me that I saw and drank the blood, which was freshly flowing from his side. His intention was to make me understand that by this blood he would cleanse me. And at this I began to experience a great joy, although when I thought about the passion I was still filled with sadness (Angela of Foligno 1993:128).

This rather graphic scene suggests that pain is something to be shared between Angela of Foligno and Christ. Her description suggests that “holy pain” was also a source of pleasure The wound on Christ’s side is the connection between them. Directly after this experience, Angela prayed to experience severe pain in order to compensate for Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. The pain originating from Christ was repeated through the religious lives of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St. John the Apostle, St. Francis of Assisi, and many medieval saints (Angela of Foligno 1993:224; Bynum 1987:5; Cohen 2000:61).

All pain is not the same, however, for Angela of Foligno. While she suffers pain for religious reasons and to help in her devotion, she attributes other pains to her unnamed sin or to devils.

To all this my soul felt the need to respond, for it was aware that each member of my body suffered from a particular infirmity, and it proceeded to identify the sins of each other. My soul then began to enumerate all the members and the sins proper to each one; it was aware of these sins and identified them with astonishing facility. [God] listened to everything patiently, and afterward he responded that it was a great delight for him to heal each infirmity immediately and in an orderly manner (Angela of Foligno 1993:155).

Angela tries to avoid the pain originating from evil spirits, and instead seeks the holy pain that is similar to or linked to Christ’s sacrifice. Although Angela sees the source of her pain as a result of her sin, she does not consider it entirely bad. Her corporeal pain is a helpful reminder that she can look back on her life and confess her sin. Also, it makes her able to consult with Christ regarding her sin. In the Gospels, Jesus said to people that he was a doctor and was needed by the sick, not the healthy. “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but they who are sick. For I have not come to call the just, but sinners” (Mark 2:17, trans. from Vulgate). Angela takes his words literally, believing that he will heal her body wherever she feels pain due to her vice.

A final type of pain is that of childbirth. Angela of Foligno bore several children, and thus experienced the pain of parturition. Although many female saints reported great pain in mind and body, Angela is unique in that she experienced both physical childbirth pain and spiritual sacrificial pain, both of which gave life to people. Her full experience of being a physical mother may partly explain her obsession with the physical body of Jesus Christ as a baby and lover.

Our Lady [Virgin Mary] totally reassured my soul, and she held forth her son to me and said: “O lover of my son, receive him” While saying these words, she extended her arms and placed her son in my arms. . . . Then suddenly, the child was left naked in my arms. He opened his eyes and raised them and looked at me. I saw and felt such a love for me as he looked at me that I was completely overwhelmed. I brought my face close to his, and pressed mine to him (Angela of Foligno 1993:273–34).

It seems that Angela of Foligno witnessed the young child Jesus Christ as well as a fully grown man, which can be understood as emphasizing the physical role of woman as a mother and partner, demanding the physical touch. This relationship was experienced by other female mystics in the Middle Ages (Bynum 1987:246)

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Caroline Walker Bynum has pointed out the extreme fasting and mystical sensations emphasized among medieval religious women (Bynum 1987). Bynum discussed the particular importance of food among the features represented in those religious women’s piety and related it to the intense physicality that was marked as a distinctly female characteristic. Medieval theology, as well as medicine, determined women as the more physical being due to Eve’s first sin, human reproduction, and their “weak” nature.

Angela of Foligno presents an example of this. Her womanly body defined her mystical experience. Though following the voluntary poverty and ascetic model of St. Francis of Assisi, she extended her mysticism in an embodied direction, relying upon her physicality and five senses more actively. [Image at right] She did not avoid describing her body explicitly while explaining her mystical experiences and God’s teaching. Her writings are full of sensual stimuli, bodily contacts, and physical longings for Christ, all focusing on her body. In Angela’s experience, her body functioned as a medium for receiving and delivering God’s teaching and as a tool to understand God’s will. Moreover, in Angela’s books, Christ affirms her body as innocent and lovable, thus creating a positive image of her female body.

Poverty was an important part of Angela’s practice, following the model of St. Francis of Assisi. Both St. Francis and Angela gave their own garments to the poor, but there were important differences in their poverty. For example, Angela gathered all the head coverings in her community of tertiaries and donated them to the hospital for the poor (Angela of Foligno 1993:162–63). They were ready to violate social customs if it was the right way of imitating St. Francis or Jesus Christ. Taking off the veil challenged ecclesiastical regulations because of the teaching of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11). This could upset Church leaders and medieval male theologians arguing for the woman’s subjectivity, submission, and shame (Bain 2018:48–55).

Physical pain and other sensory stimuli are important features in Angela of Foligno’s mystical experiences. Sweetness in particular is the sensation that appears frequently related to her mystical experiences described in the Memorial. The taste of sweetness is one of the major bodily sensations that Angela relies on to express her elevated state of mind. It works as a positive sign to let Angela know that she is going in the right direction with her piety, visions, and practice. Contrary to the sensation of bitterness, sweetness gave Angela consolation and happiness by making her feel the presence and love of God.

There is no way that I could possibly render a just account of how great was the joy and sweetness I was feeling, especially when I heard God tell me: “I am the Holy Spirit who enters into your deepest self.” Likewise, all the other words he told me were so very sweet (Angela of Foligno 1993:141).

In this place she heard God speaking to her with words that were so sweet that her soul was immediately and totally restored. What he told her was: “My daughter, you are sweet to me”—and words that were even more endearing. But even before this, it seemed to her that God had already restored her soul when he had spoken to her as follows: “My sweet daughter, no creature can give you this consolation, only I alone” (Angela of Foligno 1993:169).

This sweetness is something Angela physically recognized with her sense of taste, not just allegorically or symbolically. Several times Angela confessed to her scribe that she felt sweetness eating the host, that is, the body of Christ. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief that the bread changes into the actual flesh of Jesus Christ during Eucharist) was a theological innovation in the Middle Ages. According to medieval theology, the Eucharist is a ritual bringing the moment back when Christ assumed the body of humankind and came to the world as a human so that he could die for the sake of others. The rite of Eucharist was especially popular with women because the body assumed an important role. According to Bynum, woman saints sought out the Eucharist frequently, and experienced miracles related to receiving the host (Bynum 1985:8–9). Thus, living in a misogynistic culture, women adopted a practice favorable to themselves and their embodiedness.

Angela of Foligno, who yearned to see, touch, and taste Christ’s body, was no exception. Like other female saints, she also wanted to receive the Eucharist as many times as she could. She wanted to receive communion every day (Angela of Foligno 1993:209). [Image at right] Once, Angela complained that she could not fully enjoy the moment of elevation of the host, blaming the priest for lowering the host too soon during Holy Communion (Angela of Foligno 1993:147). She reported that she was annoyed by that haste, since elevation of the host was the moment that she could see the beautiful body of Jesus Christ. She wanted to stay in this contemplative state longer.

Angela’s pleasure did not stop just at seeing the body of Jesus Christ. She also ate the body of Christ. Angela emphasized her sensual or physical responses when she took the host into her mouth and body.

In the [fifth supplementary] step, she reports after receiving communion, that she had just been granted a vision of God as the All Good. Further elaborating on the most recent effects of communion in her soul, she describes the host as more savory than any other food. It produces a most pleasant sensation as it descended into her body, and at the same time made her shake violently. To be noted in juxtaposition with this experience is an earlier episode in which, after having swallowed the water she had used to wash the sores of a leper, the taste of it was so sweet that she asserted it was like receiving holy communion (Lachance 1993:88).

Communion for Angela was not just about theology or mysticism. Seeing and eating the host brought her sensual pleasure. The Eucharist was something to satisfy her physically and spiritually. The carnality of the host was also highlighted by her confession that the host tasted like meat. According to Arnaldo, her scribe, writing in both the third person and the first person:

She then added that recently when she receives communion, the host lingers in her mouth. She said that it does not have the taste of any known bread or meat. It has most certainly a meat taste, but one very different and most savory. I cannot find anything to compare it to. The host goes down very smoothly and pleasantly not crumbling into little pieces as it used to do. . . . And I do so, the body of Christ goes down with this unknown taste of meat (Angela of Foligno 1993:186).

Angela described a moment when she swallowed the host. She confessed that the host not only gave her a “pleasant sensation” but also made her entire body tremble so much that she could barely hold the chalice (Angela of Foligno 1993:186).

On many occasions that Angela received visions, she felt intense sweetness, to which she became addicted immediately. The sense of sweetness occurred when she touched the body of Christ or ate it as a form of the host. Compared to this sweetness, mundane life seemed bitter and sad. On the other hand, the sweetness signaled to Angela that God accompanied her and that she was acting according to God’s will, which gave her a feeling of relief. This sweetness gave Angela such great pleasure that she constantly yearned for having this holy sweetness over and over again, which made her sorrowful without it. Then, her desire brought sweetness back to her, which Angela saw as a gift from God. As soon as this miraculous sensation returned to Angela, her sorrow disappeared. Although she could not explain how she felt with exact words, this sense comforted her. Angela wanted to die when she lacked this sweet sensation.

Bitterness, as another of the four basic taste sensations (salt, sweet, savory, bitter) is often referred to in the Bible to describe sadness, distress, disappointment, and anger. For example, Jesus described his coming persecution as a bitter cup (Matthew 26:37–46). Christ mentioned this cup in one of Angela’s visions.

And to those who are, strictly speaking, his sons, God permits great tribulations which he grants to them as a special grace so that they might eat with him from the same place. “For to this table, I was also called,” said Christ, “and the chalice that I drank tasted bitter; but because I was motivated by love it was sweet to me.” Thus for these sons who are aware of the aforesaid benefits and have received the special grace for it, even though they experience at times bitter tribulations, these, nonetheless, become sweet to them on account of the love and grace with which they are motivated. And they are even more in distress when they are not afflicted, for they know that the more they endure tribulations and persecutions, the more they will feel delight in and know God (Angela of Foligno 1993:161).

Angela applied the concept of bitterness to her feeling of the absence of God or lack of her conviction that God loved her. When Angela felt bitter, it meant that she was sad, depressed, or doubtful of God’s love. Until she arrived at the higher steps and the deeper level of mystical understanding, she was uncertain and hesitant regarding being a messenger of God. Just after the voices and consolation of God disappeared, Angela felt deserted and left behind. She described her pain of being parted from God as “bitter” and yearned for reunion with God.

Elsewhere in the Memorial, Angela reports a moment when she feels bitterness and sweetness at the same time. This experience is a clear example of how Angela depicts these two opposing sensations. The following passages describe Angela’s experience when she hears from God during her pilgrimage to Assisi.

[God speaking] “Thus I will hold you closely to me and much more closely than can be observed with the eyes of the body. And now the time has come, sweet daughter, my temple, my delight to fulfill my promise to you. I am about to leave you in the form of this consolation, but I will never leave you if you love me” (Angela of Foligno 1993:141).

Bitter in some ways as these words were for me to hear, I nonetheless experienced them above all as sweet, the sweetest I have ever heard (Angela of Foligno 1993:142).

Bitterness and sweetness alike frequently appear in Angela’s descriptions of her mystical experience, bridging her bodily sensations to God.

Finally, when Angela of Foligno was praying, she heard a voice that stated, “You are full of God.” She said that she heard it with her soul and then her body became full of the pleasant feeling of God (Angela of Foligno 1993:148). The feeling then expanded to the whole world. God said to Angela that, it is true that the whole world is full of her. God assured her that her body is full of God, which in turn produced an agreeable physical feeling. While her soul heard what God said, her body felt sensations which the presence of God poured into her. Then, Angela’s body expanded to the whole body of the universe. By confirming that God’s presence is all over the world, God demonstrated the goodness of creation through Angela’s vision. Here, Angela’s physicality worked as a kind of medium between God and the universe to deliver the presence of God to her.

As a medium between God and the world, Angela identified with Christ’s physical sensations, including his pain. Not only did Christ exist in all bodily members of Angela, but Christ also attributed his own sensations to Angela’s flesh, which gave her the opportunity to become like, or even to become, Christ. She felt the same pain as Jesus Christ did while suffering, thereby showing not only the closeness, but even the merging of Christ and Angela’s sensations (Hollywood 2002:72). Just as Jesus Christ went through many bodily afflictions, Angela received the same suffering. As he voluntarily took the pain to save humankind, Angela for years suffered the same torments to bring his message of salvation once more to all people. This message was brought by the bodies of Jesus Christ and Angela, connecting them and even identifying them.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

One challenge for understanding Angela of Foligno is that the Memorial and Instructions, the only known written works of Angela, are transcribed by a Friar Arnaldo. Thus, Angela’s voice is mediated by a man. Unlike the few female saints who were fortunate enough to be educated, Angela of Foligno was illiterate and unable to write down by herself what she went through. That is why Angela had to find a scribe, her cousin Arnaldo, to describe what she experienced. With Friar Arnaldo’s help, Angela composed an account of her visions and thoughts under the title Memorial in 1298 before recounting her visions and her own interpretations in the Instructions. However, she constantly complained that the scribe did not understand what she was reporting. These complaints were accepted and recorded faithfully by Friar Arnaldo. There seems to be a significant gap between Angela’s experience and Arnaldo’s writing that is acknowledged by both parties.

In truth, I [Arnaldo] wrote them, but I had so little grasp of their meaning that I thought of myself as a sieve or sifter which does not retain the previous and refined flour but only the most coarse. . . . I would add nothing of my own, not even a single word, unless it was exactly as I could grasp it just out of her mouth as she related it. I did not want to write anything after I had left her (Angela of Foligno 1993:137).

Arnaldo’s confession implies the possibility that Angela’s visions and interpretations may not be fully conveyed through the written word. This was a common problem for most medieval female mystics. At the same time, however, this fissure between Angela’s experience and Arnaldo’s written texts might be regarded as an effective rhetorical tactic designed to faithfully deliver Angela’s problematic visions while not losing his authority as a Franciscan friar and Angela’s scribe. Or, it may have been a strategy to give Angela more credibility by masking, or obfuscating, her more heretical comments. Arnaldo’s transcriptions give some space to the validity of Angela’s mysticism by his expressing his inability to understand her visions and by stating Angela’s self-confessed inability to describe her experiences fully. In any case, Arnaldo’ involvement in writing Angela’s narratives raises questions about his role as a commentator as well as a scribe (Cervigni 2005:342).

A second challenge is that Angela of Foligno faced the suspicion that she was preoccupied with sickness or evil spirits, and not God. This was another common problem medieval female mystics in Europe encountered (Lachance 1993:42). The difference between heretics and non-heretics was often arbitrary. Angela of Foligno was not entirely free from the threat of being condemned as a heretic, although she was not officially tested or subjected to an inquisition. Nevertheless, one of her few codices was found together with Marguerite Porete’s writings. Porete (1250–1310), a French mystic and the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1310 in Paris (Lachance 1993:112).

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGION 

Angela of Foligno [Image at right] was canonized in 2013 by Pope Francis, three hundred years after being beatified by Pope Innocent XII in 1697. This declaration skipped the formal procedure of canonization in the Catholic Church, recognizing her sainthood by being venerated by pious Catholics for a long time. This is aligned with the current movement of the Vatican to highlight more female saints. Although she was canonized almost 800 years after she died, Angela of Foligno is one of the most well-known medieval female Catholic saints. As the twentieth-century mystic Evelyn Underhill states in The Essentials of Mysticism, “excepting only St. Bonaventura, this woman has probably exerted a more enduring, more far reaching influence than any other Franciscan of the century which followed the Founder’s death” (1942:160).

Historically, Angela of Foligno influenced later mystical movements in Europe, especially among the Franciscan mystics. Initially, she seldom appears in Italian theological literature, unlike Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), who instantly achieved theological attention in Italian literature (Arcangeli 1995:42–44). Later Angela’s book started to being praised in writings, such as those of St. Francis de Sales (Devas 1953:28), and Pope Benedict XIV (p. 1740–1758). More recently, Angela of Foligno received attention from the Vatican, which pointed out that she exemplifies the importance of lay religiosity. For example, in a sermon given to the public in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI (p. 2005–2013) emphasized Angela of Foligno’s mystical union with God despite her worldly life to remind modern Catholics that God will be with them even though the world seems secular (Pope Benedict XVI 2010).

Outside of the Catholic Church, Angela of Foligno was highlighted by psychoanalytic and feminist scholars. Female mysticism in medieval Christianity was seen as an alternative to the hierarchical or elite Church. Medieval mystics, including Angela, were seen as more artistic, harmonious, and transcendental (Underhill 2002:74–76) in contrast to the artificial, hierarchical, and earthly institutions of the Church led by men. Underhill, for example, highlights Angela of Foligno as someone who achieved “a purged and heightened consciousness” in her visions (2002:219). French feminist philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray interpreted Angela’s erotic mysticism as an embodied unconscious drive to “dismantle the phallocentric and logocentric” consciousness in Western culture (Hollywood 1994:168).

IMAGES

Image #1 Angela of Foligno, depicted in a 17th-century illustration. Wikimedia Commons.
Image # 2. Holy card depicting Jesus Christ appearing to Angela of Foligno. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #3: “Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata” by Giotto di Bondone (1295 to 1300). Wikimedia Commons.
Image # 4. Saint Angela of Foligno. 1890. Wikimedia Commons.
Image # 5. Saint Angela of Foligno. Brigade of Saint Ambrose.
Image # 6. Statue of Angela of Foligno. Franciscan Media.

REFERENCES

Angela of Foligno. 1993. Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, trans. Paul Lachance. New York: Paulist Press.

Arcangeli, Tiziana. 1995. “Re-Reading a Mis-known and Mis-read Mystic: Angela da Foligno.” Annali d’Italianistica 13:41–78.

Bain, Emmanuel, and Caroline Mackenzie. 2018. “Femininity, the Veil and Shame in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-century Ecclesiastical Discourse.” Clio: Women, Gender, History 47:45–66.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1985. “Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women.” Representations 11:1–25.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1987. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1991. “The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages.” Pp. 161-219 in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.

Cervigni, Dino S. 2005. “Angela da Foligno’s Memoriale: The Male Scribe, the Female Voice, and the Other.” Italica 82:339–55.

Cohen, Esther. 2000. “The Animated Pain of the Body.” American Historical Review 105:36–68.

Devas, Dominic. 1953. “Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248–1305)” Life of the Spirit 8:27–36.

Francis of Assisi. 1999. “The Testament.” Pp. 124-27 in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents: The Saint,  Volume 1, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short. New York: New City Press.

Hollywood, Amy. 2002. Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hollywood, Amy M. 1994. “Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Mystical.” Hypatia 9:158-85.

Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth. 2000. My Secret Is Mine: Studies on Religion and Eros in the German Middle Ages. Leuven: Peeters.

Lachance, Paul, ed. 2006. Angela of Foligno: Passionate Mystic of the Double Abyss. New York: New City Press.

Mazzoni, Cristina M. 1991. “Feminism, Abjection, Transgression: Angela of Foligno and the Twentieth Century.” Mystics Quarterly 17:61–70.

Meany, Mary Walsh. 2000. “Angela of Foligno: A Eucharistic Model of Lay Sanctity.” Pp. 61-76 in Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern: A Search for Models, edited by Ann W. Astell. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Miles, Margaret R. 2006. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Mooney, Catherine M. 2007 “The Changing Fortunes of Angela of Foligno, Daughter, Mother, and Wife.” Pp. 56-67 in History in the Cosmic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, edited by Rachel Fulton Brown and Bruce Holsinger. New York: Columbia University Press.

More, Alison. 2014. “Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy.” Church History 83:297–323.

Orlemanski, Julie. 2012. “How to Kiss a Leper.” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 3:142–57.

Pope Benedict XVI. 2010. “General Audience, Saint Peter’s Square, Wednesday, 13 October 2010.” Vatican. Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101013.html on 23 August 2022.

Schroeder, Joy A. 2006. “The Feast of the Purification in the Liturgical Mysticism of Angela of Foligno.” Mystics Quarterly 32:35-67.

Stróżyński, Mateusz. 2018. “The Composition of the Instructiones of St. Angela of Foligno.” Collectanea Franciscana 88:187–215.

Tar, Jane. 2005. “Angela of Foligno as a Model for Franciscan Women Mystics and Visionaries in Early Modern Spain.” Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History 11:83–105.

Thier, Ludger, and Abele Calufetti. 1985. Il Libro della Beata Angela da Foligno: Edizione critica. Grottaferrata, Romae: Editiones Collegii S. Boinaventurae ad Claras Quas.

Trembinski, Donna C. 2005. “Non alter Christus: Early Dominican Lives of Saint Francis.” Franciscan Studies 63:69–105.

Underhill, Evelyn. 1942. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. London: Methuen.  Reproduced by Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed from https://ccel.org/ccel/underhill/mysticism/mysticism.i.html on 23 August 2022.

Publication Date:
24 August 2022

Share