Lorne. Dawson. 2017. Cults in Context: Readings in the Study of New Religious Movements. Toronto: Oxford University.
Joseph Laycock. 2022. New Religious Movements: The Basics. New York: Routledge.
Hugh Urban. 2015. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
JOHN FRUM MOVEMENT TIMELINE
1940 (November): British District Agent James Nicol conducted inquiry into theft of goats to feed people gathered at Green Point (southwest Tanna) who were meeting and dancing for John Frum. This was the first administrative record of John Frum’s name.
1941 (May 11): Only a few Presbyterian Mission converts attended Sunday services; many Catholics and Seventh-day Adventists also boycotted their churches.
1941 (June 1): Police reinforcements from Port Vila arrest suspect John Frum leaders including Jack Kahu, Karua, and Manehevi, among others.
1941 (July): John Frum’s spiritual sons (Isaac Wan, Jacob, and Last Wan) appeared to Ipikel village children (on Sulphur Bay).
1941-1956: Condominium authorities continued to arrest, exile from Tanna, and/or jail John Frum leaders; Colonial authorities changed course in 1956 to no longer treat the movement as subversive.
1942 (March): American forces landed at Port Vila and established military outposts around Efate Island, including a major airport. Many Tannese, including John Frum supporters, joined the U.S. military native labor corps.
1943 (October): New Hebrides Defense Force members accompanied by U.S. military officers arrived on Tanna to arrest Green Hill John Frum leader Neloiag and dozens of his followers who were clearing an airfield.
1944 (December): James Nicol died in an automobile accident; John Frum supporters were unsurprised.1957 (January): Movement leaders Nakomaha and Thomas Nampas were released from confinement and returned home to Sulphur Bay.
1957 (February 15): Nakomaha and Nampas raised “American flags” (apparently red warning flags scavenged from fuel dumps during the War) to celebrate John Frum’s success. February 15 became the Movement’s annual holiday during which supporters raise actual American flags.
1970s: John Frum supporters engaged in political action, mostly in support of the “Moderate” (French-supported) parties as the New Hebrides moved towards independence in 1980.1998: Song Keasipai of the John Frum Party was elected to the National Parliament.
2000: (Prophet) Fred Nase established the Unity Movement, attracting both Christian and John Frum followers. The organization headquartered at Sulphur Bay split into three factions: Fred Nase’s, Isaac Wan’s (who moved nearby to Lamakara Village), and remnant members who remained in Ipikel village.
2000s: Sulphur Bay (and Friday night John Frum dances) continued to attract attention from international tourists, whose numbers have much increased.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
The colonialization of the Pacific Islands, as elsewhere, sparked numerous resistance movements. Tanna Island’s John Frum Movement in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu today), which arose in the late 1930s, is one of the most notable and successful of these movements. It endures today institutionalized as a church and a political party. John Frum, at least today, is a spirit who appears to his followers, often in their dreams, to teach them how to live properly and, sometimes, to predict future events. Spiritual encounters on the island remain common as ancestors appear to their descendants, or as people bump into nonhuman spirits who inhabit sacred places and other island apparitions. Since the 1930s, the John Frum Movement has become one of Tanna’s most powerful religious and political organizations.
Islanders argue that John Frum himself founded his movement. Multiple stories circulate about his advent in the late 1930s. Some claim that he was human, spoke local languages in a high voice, and wore European-style clothing. Pilgrims who met him where he first appeared at Green Point (in 1940 and probably earlier) claim to have shaken his hand. Others insist that he always was a spirit, or has since resumed spiritual form. Colonial authorities at the time, however, presumed that deceitful tricksters dressed the part to fool their neighbors, perhaps as a strategy to attract girlfriends. District Agent Nicol and his successors continued to arrest, exile from Tanna, and jail suspect leaders up through 1956. The U.S. military during World War II investigated whether John Frum might be a Japanese spy come to Tanna to foment trouble (Guiart 1956).
Word of John Frum spread rapidly around Tanna, although colonial agent Nicol did not note his appearance until November 1940. Green Point leaders dispatched messengers (or “ropes”) along the island’s roads to spread the message, and people from all corners descended in pilgrimage to meet John. They cleared a large dance ground at Iamwatakarek village and built a round house in which John rested (or hid). His new acolytes lined up at night to shake his hand and feel his flesh. Sometimes, though, when one reached out, he faded away.
The name “John Frum” (sometimes Jon Frum, or John Frumm) has remained mysterious. The figure identified himself as such, and subsequent commentators have proposed several possible origins of the name. Perhaps originally this was John “Broom,” a being who would sweep British and French authority from Tanna. Or, might it be John “From America”? Urumun, in the language spoken around Green Point, means “spirit medium” and perhaps there is a semantic connection to Frum.
John Frum activity shifted in 1941 from isolated Green Point villages on Tanna’s southwest coast to Ipikel village on Sulphur Bay, when three spirit “sons” of John Frum appeared to several children (Guiart 1956:151-221). Much to the chagrin of Green Point people, young ambitious village men (including Nakomaha, Nampas, and Joshua) soon claimed best connections with John Frum. Sulphur Bay has since been the Movement’s main “headquarters,” although competing John Frum factions continue to operate. Most Islanders in the 1940s supported the movement, abandoning Christian mission affiliations. On May 11, 1941, only a handful of 3,000-some converts attended Sunday services. The missions, however, gradually rebuilt their congregations and, by the 1950s, Tanna’s population was divided into John Frum supporters, recovered Christians, and families claiming to adhere to traditional relations with ancestral and other spirits.
The U.S. military occupied the New Hebrides from March 1942 through mid-1946, and most island men and youth joined Native Labor Corps, transported to work on Efate Island installations (Lindstrom 1989). John Frum spokesmen, it seems, had predicted future American assistance in 1941, and Islanders thus expected this occupation (Rice 1974:176). Movement leaders subsequently borrowed various military elements and practices, 
incorporating these into John Frum ideology and liturgy. These included shrines decorated with red painted soldiers, airplanes, crosses (from military ambulances), and symbolic dog tags, as well as American flags, military uniforms, radio antennae, and drill teams that march with rifles made of lengths of bamboos. [Image at right] Team members paint USA on their bare chests. In addition to the annual February 15 celebration, Sulphur Bay leaders also declared Friday to be John Frum’s sabbath. Every Friday “teams” of supporters from villages across Tanna have walked down to the Bay to sing John Frum hymns and to dance through the night, although Friday sabbath participation declined, in 2000, when the Sulphur Bay organization split into three factions.
As the New Hebrides moved towards independent Vanuatu in 1980, political competition increased across the archipelago, including on Tanna. In these years, conflict over Iasur volcano—located just east of Sulphur Bay—also intensified as island factions fought over money that growing numbers of tourists paid to climb up to the caldera’s rim. The French cultivated John Frum Movement supporters, most of whom voted in bloc for French-supported parties. Sulphur Bay leaders organized their own John Frum party that ran candidates in national elections. Supporters elected a John Frum member of Parliament in 1998 and have elected several more since. John Frum followers in 1980 joined secessionist efforts to detach Tanna from newly independent Vanuatu, a rebellion that government forces quashed (Bonnemaison 1994:276-301).
The Movement remained Tanna’s most effective political organization until 2000. Fred Nase, who had worked for some years on Korean fishing vessels, returned home and began to prophesy (Tabani 2008:179-210). Nase’s main spiritual contact was the morning star. He urged people of all religious affiliations to come together in a Unity Movement. The millennial year had made many people nervous. Among the Prophet Fred’s many predictions was that Lake Siui at the foot of the Volcano would vanish. A few months later, during a massive rainstorm, the lake overflowed the volcanic ash that for centuries had served to dam it and it drained away into the Pacific. People were most impressed. Fred attracted many Christian John Frum supporters who followed him to build New Jerusalem, a new village on the ridge east of the volcano. Christian pastors and John Frum prophets, chagrined at the loss of their flocks, petitioned for government help and the state militia torched New Jerusalem in 2003. Fred retreated to a new stronghold at Port Resolution where he focused on curing people who texted their photographs to his mobile telephone and where, some years later, he died. The rump John Frum Movement at Sulphur in 2000 also split, with third-generation leader Isaac Wan moving his followers to a new village, Lamakara, located just to the south (Tabani 2008:223). Other followers remained in Sulphur Bay, faithful to rival movement leaders.
Despite these internal disputes, the movement has remained active as an island church and a political party. Since 2000, increasing numbers of tourists visit Tanna, most to experience Iasur volcano, a stromboli-type cinder cone that shoots ash and lava bombs into the sky every five or ten minutes or so (Lindstrom 2015). The organization at Sulphur Bay has attracted touristic interest since the 1950s (visitors arriving by yacht and today principally by air). Many continue to visit Ipikel, particularly on Fridays, and they provide a useful revenue stream to people living there, and elsewhere.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Published John Frum reports by administrators and missionaries first appeared in 1949 (O’Reilly 1949; Rentoul 1949). John Frum appeared soon after anthropologists, journalists, and others, had borrowed the term “cargo cult” to label Pacific social movements, no matter their particular differences in organization and goals (Lindstrom 1993). Cargo cults, supposedly, were movements of people who either revived traditional ritual practices, or devised innovative ones, to induce their ancestors, the U.S. military, or other powerful forces to enrich them with Western-produced material goods and money and (in some cases) to free them from irksome colonial domination. Many commentators carelessly classified the John Frum Movement as yet another Melanesian cargo cult, although anthropologist Jean Guiart, who was first to intensively study the Movement (1956), rejected that term preferring instead to label John Frum a “neo-pagan” movement (see Gregory and Gregory 1984).
Cargo cult stories entertained Western audiences as they continue to do so today. Accounts of deluded Pacific Islanders who covet our possessions and technology suggest why we, too, should love our things. Many John Frum supporters had joined native labor corps during the Pacific War and observed and often enjoyed military materiel, and they indeed missed access to these goods when the war ended. John Frum did promise to provide his followers with a new currency, but this was to ensure the departure of European traders, missionaries, and administrators from Tanna. When he first appeared at Green Point, John Frum prophesized that: 1) Tanna would flatten and connect with neighboring Aneityum and Erromango Islands; 2) everyone would become youthful and illness would disappear; 3) no one need work any longer as he would provide new money; 4) European missionaries, traders, and administrators along with people from other islands would leave Tanna; and 5) people must discard their colonial currency, and revive island kastom(kava consumption, dance ceremony, and polygamy) (O’Reilly 1949:194-95).
Outside observers often preferred, however, to focus on the movement’s cargoistic elements, John Frum’s material promises, although his supporters were more interested in a future without illness, death, and meddlesome outsiders, and in reviving traditional practices that Christian missionaries had suppressed. David Attenborough, an early visitor, landed on the island in 1959 in search of a “mysterious cargo cult.” He arrived with a film crew in tow. The BBC in 1960 broadcast “Cargo Cult” as an episode in Attenborough’s The People of Paradise television series, which featured also in an accompanying book (Attenborough 1960). Attenborough interviewed John Frum leader Nampas, pressing him to divulge what particular cargo people craved. Might it be refrigerators? Trucks? Airplanes? Nampas, looking perplexed, deflected Attenborough’s demands.
John Frum supporters (as did those involved in movements elsewhere in Melanesia) soon realized “cargo cult’s” negative implications. They deny that they were cargo cultists (Tabani 2014:57). By the 1970s, leaders and followers instead argued that John Frum had arrived to ensure economic and political development, echoing colonial administrators who also then preached the necessity of improving political and economic structures. By the 1980s, and still today, followers argued that John Frum appeared to save kastom (traditional island practices of kava-drinking, dance, marital exchange, and respect for ancestral spirits) that Presbyterian and other Christian missionaries had suppressed since 1910, or so. Their claim is probably correct as the movement encouraged one-time Christians to return to their own lands (many had moved to coastal mission villages), again to plant and drink kava, to celebrate family events with exchanges of kava and pigs and all-night dances, and otherwise to revalue island culture. This positive revaluation of kastom occurred within the pre-independence period when political leaders expressly celebrated island traditions as an important foundation for future national unity.
John Frum supporters expected an eventual social change that would improve island lives. Wartime experience cemented America as the transformative power (and a useful anti-colonial foil). Islanders and Americans were brothers, now better connected thanks to John Frum. American planes, ships, submarines might one day return to the islands, or perhaps American soldiers were hidden inside the volcano. Movement Americophilia persisted until the end of the twentieth century when better links to global communication systems, and American attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan tarnished the USA’s reputation.
Some eighty years beyond John Frum’s advent, most supporters don’t actively expect cargo planes to land, or ships to arrive. Rather, they celebrate John Frum’s accurate prophesies of Tanna’s ongoing transformation from colonial outpost to a vibrant island whose culture and landscape today attract increasing numbers of international tourists. Most recovered Christians likewise admit John Frum’s significant role in retrieving and preserving island kastom.
RITUALS/PRACTICES
John Frum’s prophets and early leaders borrowed ritual and liturgy from Christian, American military, and customary sources. The principal John Frum ceremony (at Ipikel and now also Lamakara villages) occurs on Friday afternoons as people gather to receive John Frum prophesies. Men prepare and consume kava together, and John Frum “teams” sing and dance until dawn. Important ceremony also takes place every February 15, including flag raisings, prayers, drill team marching, and speechifying. Over the years, movement mediums have also developed techniques to request John Frum’s assistance in curing illnesses, locating lost objects, and smiting political rivals.
Christian ritual provided an initial template for John Frum ceremony. Sulphur Bay leaders invented group prayers in front of red crosses, supplicants offering flowers to John and other spirits. [Image at right] They borrowed a religious holiday structure with Friday as John’s sabbath day, and February 15 a Christmas-like annual c]elebration. Various John Frum “church” houses have come and gone through the years. Songsmiths, inspired by John Frum, have composed hundreds of movement hymns in a style related to Vanuatu’s “string band” genre. Supporters from Sulphur Bay’s various “teams” gather each Friday to sing John Frum hymns and dance until Saturday morning.
John Frum ceremony also borrowed U.S. military objects and practices. Annual celebration on February 15 notably has included drill teams comprised of men and boys who carry bamboo rifles, with USA marked in red on their bare chests. Movement leaders have paraded in whatever military uniforms they might have to hand. [Image at right] And, at least until recently, supporters have raised American and other flags up village flagpoles. These weekly Friday and February 15 celebrations have attracted considerable numbers of visitors and tourists.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
The main John Frum organization (at Ipikel and now also Lamakara villages) is led today by fourth-generation leaders. John Frum is one of a handful of Melanesian social movements that managed to institutionalize itself, as church and political party, and so has survived for several generations, in John Frum’s case for more than eighty years.
Notably men since 1940 have served as principal John Frum prophets who best control access to his spirit, although authority on Tanna is typically diffuse, depending on context and particular issues in question. When Sulphur Bay lured John Frum away from the original Green Point prophets in 1941, leadership then devolved to Nakomaha, Nampas, and several others, with Nakomaha and Nampas attracting most external attention. Both were elderly by the 1970s when Mwelis, Poita, and Joshua took charge. As these passed away, Isaac Wan emerged as the principal John Frum prophet, until challenged by the Prophet Fred in the late 1990s. Isaac Wan died on November 7, 2021 and has been succeeded by his sons.
Sulphur Bay over the years claimed to have “twenty-six teams” of supporters scattered across the island, and each team has recognized various older men as its spokesmen and local John Frum leader. Island men, who have monopolized contact with all island spirits, also have dominated John Frum dealings. For several decades, however, Lispet (Elizabeth), one of Nampas’ daughters at Sulphur Bay, maintained her own channels to John Frum. She would contact him to cure the illnesses, or solve the problems, of people who provided her with flowers and a bit of money. She also was able to speak a spirit language that only John understood. Her popularity much annoyed John Frum’s male prophets.
IMAGES
Image #1: John Frum supporters raise an American flag, February 15 1979 (Photo by Lamont Lindstrom).
Image #2: John Frum followers with flowers pray in front of red cross, February 15, 1979 (Photo by Lamont Lindstrom).
Image #3: John Frum leaders parade, February 15, 1979 (Photo by Lamont Lindstrom).
REFERENCES
Attenborough, David. 1960. People of Paradise. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Bonnemaison, Joël. 1994. The Tree and the Canoe: History and Ethnogeography of Tanna. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Gregory, Robert J. and Janet E. Gregory. 1984. “John Frum: An indigenous strategy of reaction to mission rule and colonial order.” Pacific Studies 7:68-90.
Guiart, Jean. 1956. Un siècle et demi de contacts culturels à Tanna (Nouvelles-Hébrides). Publications de la Société des Océanistes no. 5. Paris: Musée de l’Homme.
Lindstrom, Lamont. 2015. “Cultural Heritage, Politics and Tourism on Tanna, Vanuatu.” Pp. 180-199 in Pacific Alternatives: Cultural Politics in Contemporary Oceania, edited by . Oxford: Sean Kingston.
Lindstrom, Lamont. 1993. Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Lindstrom, Lamont. 1989. “Working Encounters: Oral Histories of World War II Labor Corps from Tanna, Vanuatu.” Pp. 395-417 in The Pacific Theater: Island Recollections of World War II, edited by Geoffrey White and Lamont Lindstrom. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
O’Reilly, Patrick, 1949. “Prophetisme aux Nouvelles-Hébrides: Le Mouvement Jonfrum à Tanna,” Le Monde Non Chrétien 10:192-208.
Rentoul, Alexander. 1949. “John Frum”: Origin of New Hebrides Movement (letter to the editor), Pacific Islands Monthly 19:31.
Rice, Edward. 1974. John Frum He Come: Cargo Cults and Cargo Messiahs in the South Pacific. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company.
Tabani, Marc. 2022. “Clés pour l’ethnologie de Tanna (Vanuatu) au travers des pérégrinations ethnographiques de Jean Guiart.” Journal de la Société des Océanistes 154:47-61.
Tabani, Marc. 2014. John Frum: Histoires de Tanna, Sam Stori blong Tanna. Port Vila: Vanuatu Cultural Centre.
Tabani, Marc. 2008. Une pirogue pour le paradis. Le culte de John Frum à Tanna (Vanuatu). Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.
Publication Date:
1 August 2022
DOREEN VIRTUE TIMELINE
1958 (April 29): Doreen Virtue was born as Doreen Hannan in southern California; her childhood was spent in North Hollywood.
1968: Virtue and her family moved to Escondido, San Diego County.
1977: Virtue married Larry Schenk with whom she had two sons, Charles and Grant.
1988: Virtue received her master’s degree in counseling psychology and published her first book, My Kids Don’t Live with Me Anymore.
1993: Virtue obtained a PhD in psychology from California Coast University.
1996: Hay House published “I’d Change My Life if I Had More Time,” Virtue’s first book reflecting a more spiritual or religious orientation.
1997: Hay House published Virtue’s first book on angelology, Angel Therapy.
2000: Virtue began offering her Angel Therapy Practitioner (ATP) Certification Course.
2009: Virtue established a YouTube channel and began using it to promote her work.
2012: Virtue and her fifth husband, Michael Robinson, moved to Maui, Hawaii, near Lahaina.
2016: Virtue and her husband began attending a Foursquare Church congregation, but then moved to an Episcopal Church congregation.
2017 (January): Virtue experienced a vision of Jesus Christ and a conversion experience while worshipping in the Episcopal church.
2017 (February): Virtue was baptized in the sea near Kawaihae Harbor.
2017 (November): Virtue relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where she soon joined a Baptist church; that same month Hay House terminated its relationship with her.
2019: Virtue began work on a master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary.
BIOGRAPHY
A former self-help writer and trained psychotherapist, Doreen Virtue was one of the most successful New Age authors of the 2000s and 2010s, best known for her books on angelology. [Image at right] As well as being a prolific writer and public speaker, she established her own Angel Therapy system through which her brand spread beyond her native United States. In 2017, her conversion to Protestant Christianity and repudiation of all her previous teachings attracted considerable debate, both among her followers and larger sectors of the esoteric milieu.
Doreen Virtue was born into a “lower middle class” family (Virtue 2020a:8) in southern California, on April 29, 1958 (Virtue 2005:101), the daughter of Joan L. Hannan and William C. Hannan. William worked as a technical illustrator for the Space Electronics Corporation before establishing a mail-order company specializing in aviation books (Virtue 1997a:7–8).
The family initially lived in North Hollywood before relocating to Escondido, San Diego County, California in 1968. In both locations, Doreen and her mother attended services at a church belonging to the Unity School of Christianity, a New Thought denomination (Virtue 1997a:4, 10–11). Joan had been raised in a related tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist, with Virtue’s maternal grandmother and great-grandmother both being Christian Scientists (Virtue 1997a:10, 13). In Escondido, Joan reverted to her childhood religion, attending the area’s First Church of Christ, Scientist with her daughter, and taking classes to become a licensed Christian Science practitioner, allowing her to engage in the church’s healing procedures (Virtue 1997a:12–13).
This early religious environment profoundly influenced Virtue. Decades later, she recalled that she was “raised to believe that we are born perfect, in the image and likeness of our Creator, and that physical and mental problems stem from psychological sources” (Virtue 1995:i). She also later reported that as a child she could see both spirits of deceased persons and angels, the latter appearing as “lights in multihued greens and blues” (Virtue 1997a:2–3).
Following high school, Virtue began studies at Palomar Community College in San Marcos, California, but dropped out to become editor of The San Marcos Outlook, hoping to become a professional writer (Virtue 1997a:37). Having become pregnant, she quit this role in 1977. Her first son, Charles, was born the following June. In September she married Larry Schenk, and two years later they had a second son, Grant (Virtue 1997a:39, 43). Money was tight and their marriage was strained. Living as a housewife, Virtue found herself binge eating ice cream to cope with emotional problems (Virtue 1995:i; 1997a:44–45). After the couple separated and divorced, she became an insurance company secretary and embarked on a custody battle for her children, proving successful on her second attempt (Virtue 1997a:51–52). These experiences informed her later writings.
Virtue married again, this time to a Buddhist named Dwight Virtue (from whom she adopted the surname she later retained) and they moved to Lancaster, California, where she began studies at Antelope Valley College (Virtue 1997a:52–53). She became a counselor at the Palmdale Hospital detox center, combining this with night school studies at Chapman University to obtain a bachelor’s degree in psychology (Virtue 1997a:55, 57). She followed this with a master’s degree in counseling psychology (Virtue 1997a:68), received in 1988 (Virtue 2020:1). Virtue juggled employment and studies with writing her first book, published in 1988 as My Kids Don’t Live with Me Anymore, a work drawing on her own experiences with custody battles (Virtue 1997a:58–59, 66–68).
Her career developed as she became program director at an adolescent alcohol and drug addiction outpatient facility and then at an outpatient eating-disorder center (Virtue 1997a:69–70). Characterizing herself as “a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders” (Virtue 2002 [1994]:ix), Virtue proceeded to write about these issues for a popular audience. In The Yo-Yo Syndrome Diet, published by Harper and Row in 1989, she drew on both her own experiences trying to lose weight and those of some of her therapy patients to outline a healthy eating regimen (Virtue 1989:11). Additional books about healthy eating followed, including The Chocoholic’s Dream Diet in 1990, Losing Your Pounds of Pain in 1994, and Constant Craving in 1995. She also earned a PhD in psychology from California Coast University’s distance learning program (Aldrich 2017), allowing her to list her name as “Dr. Doreen Virtue” or “Doreen Virtue PhD” on publications from the mid-1990s onward.
After her second marriage ended, Virtue moved to California’s San Francisco Bay Area to work as the administrator of a women’s psychiatric hospital in Woodside (Virtue 1997a:82–83). From there, she relocated to working at a women’s psychiatric unit in Nashville, Tennessee for two years, specializing in child abuse victims. In Nashville, she also launched a daily radio talk show (Virtue 1997a:84). She subsequently gave up clinical work, which allowed her to focus on her career as a writer (Virtue 1997a:86). Back in California, she married again, this time to the artist Michael Tienhaara (Virtue 1997a:84–85; Tienhaara’s surname mentioned in Virtue 1995:v).
Her writings increasingly focused on relationships. The year 1994 saw the publication of two books on this topic, Yo-Yo Relationships: How to Break the “I Need a Man” Habit and Find Stability [Image at right] and In the Mood: How to Create Romance, Passion, and Sexual Excitement by Falling in Love All Over Again, each from a different publisher, after which she assisted fellow therapist Helene C. Parker (b. 1931) in writing the 1996 work If This Is Love, Why Am I So Lonely? Virtue’s writings on the subject led to her being typecast in the media as the “Love Doctor,” something that frustrated her (Virtue 1997a:121).
Supplementing her books with magazine articles, Virtue was invited to become a contributing editor to Complete Woman magazine, for which she interviewed a broad range of spiritual teachers (Virtue 1997a:xiv, 85). She also lectured during publicity tours for her books (Virtue 1997a:82); these were initially small affairs held in Religious Science churches and Mind, Body, Spirit conventions across North America and Britain, for which she often lost money after paying travel expenses (Virtue 2020:34). However, in the early 1990s she joined World Life Expo’s traveling group of speakers, as part of which she socialized with many prominent New Age writers (Virtue 2020:34–35). She also began making appearances on popular U.S. television programs. By 1994, she had been featured on Oprah, Geraldo, Donahue, and Sally Jessy Raphaël (Virtue 1994a:back cover).
It was also by 1994 that Virtue had affiliated with the publishing company Hay House, based in Carlsbad, California. This company had been founded by the American self-help author Louise Hay (1926–2017) in 1984 and went on to publish a substantial quantity of self-help, New Thought, and New Age literature. A year after first publishing with Hay House, Virtue praised Louise Hay as “the most inspiring person I’ve ever met” and declared that the publisher provided “a spiritual and metaphysical understanding unsurpassed by any other publishing company I know of” (Virtue 1995:v). She was sufficiently happy with Hay House that they remained her publisher for more than twenty years.
Virtue also began to take a renewed interest in religious matters during the early 1990s. Feeling that the clairvoyant abilities she had as a child were resurfacing (Virtue 1997a:73), she enrolled in a psychic development course at the Learning Light Foundation in Anaheim, California (Virtue 1997a:111). She also reported hearing a voice in her head encouraging her to read A Course in Miracles, the influential 1976 book by Helen Schucman (1909–1981), which includes material reportedly channeled from Jesus (Virtue 1997a:97, 128–29). Virtue would spend “about twenty years” studying the book (Virtue 2020:85), quoting from it extensively in later writings (Virtue 1996:18; 1997a:20, 82, 174; 2003a:viii). Throughout this time, she regarded herself as a Christian (Virtue 2020:27), describing a “very deep and close bond with Jesus Christ,” although she also confessed that she had established “my own personalized faith that blended Christianity, Eastern philosophy, metaphysics, and my own life experiences” (Virtue 1997a:163). Her attitude was effectively universalist, holding to the view that all religions share “a deep desire for our Divine Creator’s love” (Virtue 1997a:164). She nevertheless avoided religious topics and imagery she thought “dark and frightening,” such as Wicca, pentagrams, and the Harry Potter franchise (Virtue 2020:10–11).
In the middle of the 1990s, Virtue described herself as a “lifelong student of religion, philosophy, and metaphysics” (Virtue 1996:x) and it appears that her beliefs drew on her wide reading. Her childhood Christian Science background was undoubtedly an influence, and she would later list Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, as one of the “teachers who have inspired me” (Virtue 1996:xiii; and similar at Virtue 1997a:xiii). She also read widely in the related tradition of New Thought (Virtue 2020:9), citing New Thought writers such as Phineas Parkhurst 
Quimby (1802–1866), Emmet Fox (1886–1951), Ernest Holmes (1887–1960), Napoleon Hill (1883–1970), Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993), and Catherine Ponder (b.1927) as further inspirations (Virtue 1996:xiii; 1997a:xiii; 1997b: xvi). Elsewhere, she recalled listening to taped lectures by Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939–2009) of the Church Universal and Triumphant (Virtue 2003a:xix), from whom she may have adopted some of her ideas about archangels and ascended masters.
Virtue’s affiliation with Hay House probably provided opportunities in which she could spend more time focusing on overtly spiritual/religious topics in her writing. The first book that reflected this new orientation was “I’d Change My Life if I Had More Time :” A Practical Guide to Making Dreams Come True, first published in 1996. [Image at right] Although primarily a self-help book encouraging better time management, it moved away from the more secular nature of her earlier writings by referencing “spiritual laws” such as the “principles of manifestation” (Virtue 1996:24).
While “I’d Change My Life if I Had More Time” was clearly drawing from the New Thought milieu, in subsequent publications Virtue took 
her writing into a more overtly supernaturalist and New Age direction. In 1997, Hay House published Virtue’s first book about angels, Angel Therapy : Healing Messages for Every Area of Your Life, in which she outlined a form of psychological healing reliant on angelic communication. [Image at right] In her foreword, she relayed how she had felt angelic presences near her as a child but had only begun “listening to angels” after they warned her about an attempted carjacking she experienced in an Anaheim parking lot in July 1995 (Virtue 1997b:viii–ix). This incident exerted a sufficient impact on her that she referred to it repeatedly in later publications (Virtue 1997a:153–54; 2001:15; 2003b:5; 2008:23, 35). Angel Therapy included material presented as having been directly channeled from the angels through a process of automatic writing: “I would lose consciousness of my body while The Angelic Realm transcribed through my mind and hands directly onto the keyboard of my computer” (Virtue 1997b:x).
The following twenty years saw Virtue publish at least eighteen additional books dealing with angels, among them Healing with the Angels (1999), Archangels and Ascended Masters (2003), Goddesses and Angels (2005), and How to Hear Your Angels (2007). These were accompanied by books on other New Age topics like fairies, chakras, and Indigo Children, as well as on less overtly religious subjects such as veganism and a raw food diet. A range of audio cassettes and CDs were also issued, in which Virtue outlined her teachings and offered positive affirmations, often accompanied by soothing New Age music. Similarly successful were her oracle card sets, often featuring angels, through 
which people could engage in cartomancy, a form of divination. (Image at right) All were published by Hay House. Her output was prolific and she eventually became, she observed, “the bestselling New Age author at the top New Age publishing house” (Virtue 2020:29).
Virtue also offered in-person workshops and seminars based on her angel teachings, initially across the United States, but later in Canada, Britain, and Ireland, too. During the latter part of the 1990s she led a Certified Spiritual Counselor (CSC) course, awarded by the American Board of Hypnotherapy in Irvine, California (Angel Therapy Practitioners 2005), but ceased providing this class in 1999 (FAQ 1999). The following year she launched her new Angel Therapy Practitioner (ATP) Certification Course (Workshop 2000); in 2002, one of these five-day courses cost $1,500 USD per attendee (Kulyk 2018). Those who had already received a CSC or ATP qualification from Virtue could also go on to an Advanced Angel Therapy Training course (Workshop 2003). Many certified Angel Therapy Practitioners went on to provide their services to clients, spreading Virtue’s brand and building up a broader community around her work. Protecting her interests, Virtue trademarked the terms “Angel Therapy” and “Angel Therapy Practitioner” (Angel Therapy Practitioners 2005).
As well as holding these workshops, Virtue toured giving keynote speeches and lectures to audiences of between 500 and 4,000 people. During these she would relay messages to her audience that she claimed to have received from spirits or angels; she later maintained that although much of this material was genuinely received from supernatural sources, she sometimes resorted to “stage gimmicks” to keep the session going (Virtue 2020:48–51). Her son Charles also appeared on stage with her, similarly relaying messages reportedly received from the angels (Virtue 2020:54). Expanding her outreach, from at least 2005 she was presenting a live weekly radio show at HayHouseRadio.com (Virtue 2020:159). Making use of new social media platforms such as Facebook, she also began releasing videos on YouTube in 2009 (Virtue 2020:117). Virtue’s earnings afforded her a “first-class lifestyle” (Virtue 2020:31), and she developed a taste for designer products costing considerable sums (Virtue 2020:38).
Virtue continued to be active within New Age circles, for instance attending some of the “Great Experiment” events held from 1998 onward, at which New Agers gathered for “affirmative prayer” to collectively visualize “the world as already healed” (Miejan 2000). She also pursued relationships within this milieu. After the end of her marriage to Tienhaara, Virtue married Steven Farmer, a fellow psychotherapist and Hay House writer who espoused Neo-Shamanic teachings with a particular emphasis on power animals. They lived together in Laguna Beach, California (Farmer 2006:back cover) before that marriage also dissolved. In 2009, Virtue met a man named Michael Robinson at a New Age event; he subsequently became her fifth husband (Virtue 2020: 37). In 2012, they moved to a hill above Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii (Virtue 2020:73). There, she immersed herself in conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and New World Order, stocking up on supplies in c
ase of a takeover by an authoritarian government (Virtue 2020:76).
After more than two decades of involvement in the New Age milieu, the second half of the 2010s saw Virtue move towards Protestant Christianity. She had seen herself as a Christian for most of her life, in 2003 recalling that her “experiences with Jesus are lifelong and extensive. I call upon him before every healing session, and have always found him to be the greatest healer among my friends in the spirit world” (Virtue 2003a:99). In this context she presented him as a great spiritual teacher, but not a unique manifestation of God in human form. In 2016, Hay House issued Virtue’s 44-card deck titled Loving Words from Jesus, [Image at right] each card including a quotation from the Gospels accompanying an illustration by Greg Olsen. She later related that working on these cards was the first time she had paid serious attention to the Bible and that this immersion in the Gospels transformed her understanding of Jesus (Virtue 2020:91–92).
In 2016, Virtue and her husband began attending a Pentecostal Foursquare church before shifting to an Episcopal congregation (Virtue 2020:26, 96–97). There, in January 2017, she experienced a vision of Jesus, posting an online video about it shortly thereafter (Virtue 
2020:98, 103). She later related that on that day she “surrendered my life to Jesus as my Lord and Savior” (Virtue 2020:xii), and was baptized in the sea near Kawaihae Harbor the following month [Image at right] (Virtue 2020:122; Aldrich 2017). However, within a few years she concluded that, while her conversion was legitimate, the vision had in fact been a demon masquerading as Christ to lead her astray (Virtue 2020b; FAQ 2021).
Committing herself to Christianity, Virtue destroyed all of her New Age books and materials, and ultimately also all pictures of Jesus that she owned, deeming them graven images (Virtue 2020:109–10). She requested that Hay House stop selling her former publications and asked those who owned them to destroy them (Virtue 2020:xxi). In November 2017, Hay House terminated its involvement with Virtue after she posted online a passage from Deuteronomy (18:10–12) condemning divination, witchcraft, and mediumship (Virtue 2020:165; FAQ 2021).
Aware that their revenues were likely to drop considerably (Virtue 2020:145), Virtue and her husband moved to the Pacific Northwest in November 2017 (Virtue 2020:164). Her parents and mother-in-law lived there with them (Virtue 2020:2, 105). Although Virtue now considered Christian Science to be a heretical “false religion” (Virtue 2020:xiv, xv), her mother remained committed to it (Virtue 2020:xiii).
In the Pacific Northwest, Virtue and her husband joined a Baptist church (Virtue 2020:89). Despite her initial involvement in the more liberal Protestant perspective of Episcopalianism, Virtue shifted towards a conservative Protestantism that embraced biblical literalism, the rejection of all things not biblically sanctioned, and a belief that everyone who failed to build a personal relationship with Jesus was condemned to eternity in Hell. This shift may have been influenced by her associations with the evangelist Justin Peters and the Lutheran pastor Chris Rosebrough. She regularly watched Rosebrough’s YouTube channel, Fighting for the Faith, and later appeared on it (Virtue 2020:106).
In 2019 she began work towards a master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary, an evangelical institution with a campus in Portland, Oregon (Virtue 2020:170; About Doreen Virtue 2021). Her 2020 autobiography, Deceived No More: How Jesus Led Me out of the New Age and into His Word, recounted her life story from her new, evangelical perspective. [Image at right] Here she expressed the view that her previous visions were tricks of the Devil (Virtue 2020:44), that the New Age image of Jesus she had long admired was “a false Jesus” (Virtue 2020:85), and that as a New Ager she had been a “false prophet” who had preached “heresy” (Virtue 2020:xi, xiii, xx). Concluding that God regarded her as a “detestable abomination” for promoting divination, she felt “remorse, sorrow, and terror” (Virtue 2020:132). These new attitudes were ones that she promoted through her social media channels.
Virtue’s significant shift resulted in a loss of contact with many of her friends and family members (Virtue 2020:xxi, 159–60). As well as attracting notice from other esoteric communities, such as modern Pagans (Aldrich 2017), Virtue’s transformation was met with outrage from her New Age followers. Angry social media posts and messages often claimed that her husband had orchestrated the conversion, or that she was insincerely posing as a Christian to make money from a new demographic (Virtue 2020:143). This clearly had a psychological impact on Virtue, who felt that she was haunted by “spiritual warfare” (Virtue 2020:147). In Virtue’s opinion, the anger and criticism directed towards her by New Agers amounted to nothing less than “persecution” (Virtue 2020:xii).
TEACHING/DOCTRINES
Prior to her conversion to Protestant Christianity, Virtue’s worldview was generally perceived to be part of the New Age milieu. Like most New Agers, Virtue rarely used the term “New Age” in reference to herself or her teachings, doing so only occasionally (for instance Virtue 2003a:xv, xviii). Following her conversion, she nevertheless described herself as having been a “New Age author” (Virtue 2020:29), reflecting how the term “New Age” is more often used by outside observers than practitioners within the New Age milieu itself.
Despite having attracted academic research (Hanegraaff 1998; Heelas 1996; Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Sutcliffe 2003), the New Age remains difficult to define. The term is generally used to describe the loose and eclectic milieu emerging in western countries in the wake of the 1960s in which a recurring set of esoteric ideas regularly circulated, typically transmitted via commercial relationships (workshops, books, healing practices, channelers) rather than through organized church structures. Typical notions found in the New Age milieu include a loving monotheistic or pantheistic divinity, a multitude of benevolent spirit beings, and an emphasis on healing, self-help, and the spiritual authority of the self, all presented via a shared terminology and an aesthetic characterized by light colors and upbeat positivity, features that can all be found in Virtue’s publications.
Virtue’s New Age worldview was monotheistic, revolving around a singular divine entity: “God” (Virtue 1997b:ix), “the Creator” (Virtue 1997b:125; 2008:xii), and “the Divine source of all creativity and infinite intelligence” (Virtue 2009 [1998]:67). She regarded this being as omnibenevolent, declaring that “God is 100 percent love” (Virtue 2008:187). In the channeled material included in Angel Therapy, she told the reader that God “loves you in His deepest essence” (Virtue 1997b:8). She also used language suggesting a belief in the immanence of God, claiming that humans “are part of the Divine” (Virtue 2008:110), with each person having an “inner Divine light” (Virtue 2009 [1998]:27), an approach similarly typical of New Thought (Haller 2012:169). For Virtue, the various gods and goddesses of different world pantheons were “aspects of the God with a capital G,” representing “the various faces, aspects, personality variables, and unique traits that God presents to us. And ultimately, since God is omnipresent, then God is within the deities and also within us. In other words, all of the deities and all of us are one with God” (Virtue 2003a:xvii).
Virtue’s teachings centered heavily on angelology. In this she drew upon a lengthy history of ideas about angels present in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Indeed, as bioethicist David Albert Jones notes, “books with titles such as Angel Therapy are shaped by ideas from Christianity and Judaism, even if the original context is no longer explicit” (Jones 2010:15). Angels have already been recognized as a recurring feature of the New Age milieu, although, as historian of esotericism Wouter Hanegraaff has observed, “New Age angelology is quite unsystematic and each particular description reflects the personal idiosyncrasies of the author in question” (Hanegraaff 1998:198). Virtue’s angelology should thus be seen as her own specific tradition, even if it owes much to earlier ideas long-embedded in western culture.
Virtue’s channeled materials asserted that there are “staggering” numbers of angels and that they far outnumber humans (Virtue 1997b:81). They are also immortal (Virtue 1997b:113), having been created by “God’s thoughts of love” (Virtue 1997b:152). According to Virtue, the angels do not have physical bodies and thus are not bound by the laws of physics (Virtue 2008:66), although they will take forms through which humans can recognize them (Virtue 1997b:163).
Virtue subdivided angels into categories, among them the guardian angels and archangels (Virtue 2008:17). Everyone, she reported, has their own guardian angel (Virtue 1997b:151); hers was named Frederique (Virtue 1997b:188). The archangels are of a higher order, with their task being to “supervise the guardian angels and angels upon the earth” (Virtue 1997b:153). Among the archangels, she named Michael, Raphael, Uriel, and Gabriel (Virtue 1997b:154–59), all established figures from the Jewish and Christian pantheon of angels. Another of Virtue’s categories included the nature angels or elementals, among whom existed the fairies, “guardians of nature and animals,” who unlike other types of angels have egos, rendering them more like humanity (Virtue 2010a:ix, 1–2). According to Virtue, angels can be differentiated by the color of the light they emit. Guardian angels emit white light while each archangel emits its own color; Michael, for instance, emits royal purple and golden lights (Virtue 2008:17).
In Virtue’s New Age worldview, “the angels’ purpose is to bring your consciousness to the realization of God’s love” (Virtue 2009 [1998]:65), and they experience “great joy” by helping humans (Virtue 1997b:153). This is an idea that the angels themselves emphasize in the channeled material in Angel Therapy, which is replete with messages affirming the worth of the reader. Virtue argued that children often see angels, explaining that this is the reason behind childhood imaginary friends (Virtue 2008:2). Adults have a harder time seeing angels, but will sometimes do so in their dreams (Virtue 1997b:180–81; 2008:26). Evidence for the presence of angels can be seen in physical phenomena a person encounters, including the appearance of a white feather, a shooting star, a rainbow, or an angel-shaped cloud (Virtue 1997b:185; 2008:9, 13). Alternatively, an angelic presence can be felt through changes in air pressure or temperature, the appearance of a new scent, or as “a warm brush across your face, shoulders, hands, or arms” (Virtue 1997b:165).
As well as angels, Virtue also discussed the role of benevolent human spirits. For instance, she commented that people have “spirit guides,” each of whom is “a loving being who has lived upon the earth in human form” and who is often a deceased loved one (Virtue 1997b:152). She also referred to the ascended masters, each of whom was “a great healer, teacher, or prophet who previously walked upon the earth, and who is now in the spirit world, helping us from beyond” (Virtue 2003a:xv). The concept of the ascended masters had been taken, ultimately, from branches of the Theosophical movement, but for Virtue was possibly mediated via the Church Universal and Triumphant, a group that had achieved far greater penetration of the New Age milieu during the 1990s (Whitsel 2003:140) and disseminated teachings that Virtue encountered (Virtue 2003a:xix).
Although the masters in the parent Theosophical Society are not described as “ascended,” some of Virtue’s ascended masters, such as Kuthumi, are taken from the Theosophical tradition. Others originated as bodhisattvas from Mahayana Buddhist traditions, derived from various pre-Christian European religions, or were Jewish and Christian figures such as Moses and Jesus (Virtue 2003a). These entities, she related, were “loving friends” who “work closely with the Creator . . . to steer us in the direction of peace” (Virtue 2003a:xxiii). Virtue referred to some of these ascended masters as “deities” or “Divine beings” (Virtue 2003a:xv), but at the same time maintained that they were not to be worshipped (Virtue 2003a:xvi). Worship was something that she reserved for God. Indeed, while encouraging interactions with such intercessors, she acknowledged that that might not be for everyone; “if you feel it’s preferable to talk only with God, then that’s definitely your best path” (Virtue 2008:xiii).
Virtue’s publications also espoused reincarnation, another common belief in the New Age milieu. As well as noting that she had worked with students who recall past lives (Virtue 2009 [1998]:81), she also reported memories of her own prior incarnations (Virtue 2013:xvii). She taught that between “physical lives,” a person’s soul resides in Heaven, “a high-vibrational non-physical existence” (Virtue 2013:3). In Heaven, she claimed, “everyone behaves lovingly toward everyone else” (Virtue 2013:4), and this, according to the angels she channeled, is humanity’s “true home” (Virtue 1997b:15). Individuals agree to leave this paradisiacal environment and incarnate onto the Earth, she maintained, so as to have “the opportunity to learn and grow and heal any fears that you held previously” (Virtue 2013:6). On Earth, one will often be close to other people with whom one has incarnated before (Virtue 2013:6), essentially the idea of group reincarnation. Virtue explained that a person’s death is already “predestined” at a particular “exit time” that is in “conjunction with God’s ultimate plan” (Virtue 2008:48). Virtue also claimed that there are “earthbound spirits” who “wander among the living after death” (Virtue 2008:3). These entities often fail to realize they are dead, or “are afraid of going to the light,” and can end up causing problems for the living (Virtue 1997b:210).
Virtue referred to the existence of an astral plane (Virtue 2009 [1998]:57), and to the “akashic records” or “Book of Life,” in which is written the “soul plan” for each individual (Virtue 2008:175). Both of these concepts are part of the Theosophy taught by Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), who was co-founder and teacher of the parent Theosophical Society. As is common in the New Age and Theosophical milieu, Virtue referenced a sort of etheric force permeating the universe termed “energy” (Virtue 2009 [1998]:vii). Part of this is the “vital life energy,” identified with the concepts of chi and prana, which is pushed through the body via “energy centers” or chakras (Virtue 2009 [1998]:viii). She claimed that there are etheric cords, resembling “translucent tubes,” that can connect a person, via their chakras, to another individual with whom they have had some significant interaction. Individuals can end up being drained by an “emotionally needy person” through these tubes, which thus sometimes need to be severed to prevent harm (Virtue 2008:140).
A recurring element throughout Virtue’s writings was the positive affirmation of her readers, encouraging them to think highly of themselves and dispel self-doubt about their abilities and their worthiness to communicate with angels. Everyone, she told her readers, is “an innocent and perfect child of God,” “a blessing to the world” (Virtue 1997b:217). Virtue taught that many human beings are “lightworkers,” by which she meant “highly sensitive people on a spiritual mission to bring peace to the world” (Virtue 2013:xix) and to heal humanity “from the effects of fear” (Virtue 1997a:xi). They have come at either side of the year 2000, for these are “the crucial earth times” (Virtue 1997a:71). Each of these lightworkers, she claimed, had volunteered for the role before they were born, but had often forgotten that they had taken on this “sacred purpose” (Virtue 1997a xi). She included herself in this lightworker category, claiming that because of this she had “gifts of psychic communication, manifestation, and spiritual healing” (Virtue 1997a:xii). Many of Virtue’s readers considered themselves to be lightworkers, and in this sense her work encouraged these individuals to regard themselves as part of a spiritual elite.
For Virtue, a sub-category of the lightworkers were the “Earth Angels” (Virtue 2013:xix), people who can be identified due to their sensitive disposition, their gentle, caring, and trusting nature, their belief in fairness, their innocent outlook on life, and their interest in “the magical parts of spirituality, such as manifestation, unicorns, fairies, mermaids, and the like” (Virtue 2013:xviii–xix). Each Earth Angel has a particular “superpower” to aid them during their incarnation, with such skills including the ability to communicate with animals, to influence the weather, or to foresee the future (Virtue 2013:13–14). In Virtue’s teachings, the Earth Angels include Rainbow, Crystal, and Indigo Children (Virtue 2013:xix), the latter being an idea with a broad following in the New Age milieu (Whedon 2009). Indigo Children, Virtue claimed, were born largely from the late 1970s onward (Virtue 2001:7), arriving to “usher in the New Age of Peace” (2001:17). She taught that the Indigo Children cleared the path for a subsequent generation of lightworkers, the Crystal Children, who appeared from the mid-1990s on (Virtue 2003b:2–3). These Crystal Children, she maintained, were similar to their predecessors but were more “blissful and even-tempered,” in contrast to the “warrior spirit” typical of Indigos (Virtue 2003b:2). She later added another generation of lightworkers to her framework, the Rainbow Children, who balance both the “masculine energy” of the Indigos with the “feminine” energy of the Crystals (Virtue 2010b). The emergence of these children, Virtue held, was evidence that humanity is “progressing from an evolutionary standpoint” (Virtue 2003b:12), moving towards a better future.
The millennial notion that humanity is entering a new phase of its development, typically termed the Age of Aquarius, was sufficiently common in the New Age milieu to provide it with the moniker under which it became best known. While Virtue did not foreground this notion in her publications, it was not wholly absent. In her view, the new era would emerge through gradual change rather than through a single dramatic event, and would not be especially different from the present age. She noted, for instance, that humanity was entering a “new phase of our collective spiritual path in which everyone will be employed in careers connected to their natural talents, passions, and interests” (Virtue 2008:183). Thus, her envisioned new age was better than the present, but certainly not unrecognizably different from it.
RITUALS/PRACTICE
In her New Age books, Virtue outlined practices through which her readers could enhance their everyday lives, thus continuing the self-help ethos of her earlier work. The channeled portion of Angel Therapy, for instance, consists of advice and words of support for people facing various personal issues, from breakups to burnout.
A recurring focus of Virtue’s teachings was to encourage her readers to seek help from the angels. Unlike, for instance, Enochian magic (Asprem 2012), this angelic communication was not formulated within a complex ritual framework. Instead, Virtue stated that a person can simply call on the angels in their mind, or alternatively speak to them, visualize them, or even write them a letter (Virtue 1997b:163–64). The angels will always intervene if requested, but will rarely do so otherwise, for they must respect the “Law of Free Will” (Virtue 1997b:153). Different types of angels may be best for different tasks. Fairies for instance are “close to the earth” and thus can “assist you with material concerns involving money, home, health, your gardens, and your pets” (Virtue 2010a:2), while the archangels are best invoked when a person requires “powerful and immediate assistance” (Virtue 1997b:153). No request is too trivial for the angels (Virtue 1997b:x). Virtue, for instance, recalled repeatedly calling on the Archangel Michael to fix malfunctioning electronics (Virtue 2008:117).
As well as requesting angelic help, a person can also seek to hear the angels more clearly or even channel their messages through automatic writing, according to Virtue (Virtue 1997b:149). As angels operate at a “vibrational frequency” that is “high and fine,” the human body “must be retuned before you can hear them” clearly (Virtue 1997b:203). To that end, a person should improve their diet, avoiding things that “create static,” including alcohol, nicotine, stimulants, and meat—for the latter “carries the energy of pain that the animal endured during its life and death” (Virtue 1997b:203–4). Meditating and spending time in natural environments also make it easier to hear the angels (Virtue 1997b:167), as can enhancing the atmosphere of a room by playing classical music, burning incense, or introducing fragrant flowers (Virtue 1997b:192–93). Meanwhile, to help remember to call on the angels, Virtue encouraged her readers to surround themselves with angel statues and posters (Virtue 1997b:217). Methods of communication that she recommended included the use of oracle cards (Virtue 1997b:182; 2008:15–16) and pendulums (Virtue 1997b:182).
Virtue also taught “Angel Therapy,” something she described as “the fastest, most effective, and most enjoyable form of healing I have ever found” (Virtue 1997b:214). She related how she listened to a client and then (via a combination of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and oracle cards) gained advice from that client’s angels, thus identifying the former’s “emotional blocks,” such as low self-esteem or feeling unsafe. This accomplished, she encouraged her clients to identify their problems as stemming from ego, and then to place these problems within “thought–forms” on the “etheric” level—forms which “clairvoyantly look like soap bubbles.” The client would then visualize letting go of these bubbles, allowing them to float up to the angels, who would purify them and return them in their “purest form, which is love” (Virtue 1997b:215–16). (On thought–forms, see the book by the second–generation Theosophists Annie Besant [1847–1933] and C. W. Leadbeater [1854–1934], 1901.) Virtue’s blurring of the boundaries between therapy and religion was something that in an American context had also been attempted by a range of other modern movements, including New Thought, Christian Science, and the Church of Scientology.
Virtue also outlined simple practices for dispersing negative “energy” from around a person and their environment. This included, for instance, clearing negativity and earthbound spirits from a person’s home by invoking the angels (Virtue 2008:147), or by burning sage or putting out quartz crystals (Virtue 1997b:199). She claimed that a person’s chakras can become “dirty with dense, dark energy” generated by “negative thoughts” and that this results in feelings of sluggishness (Virtue 2009 [1998]:viii). To deal with this problem, Virtue maintained, a person should clean their chakras daily, typically through meditation or alternatively a visualization (Virtue 2009 [1998]:23, 25, 53). She also promoted a “vacuuming” method whereby she visualized a spiritual vacuum cleaner removing negative energy from an individual (Virtue 2008:135).
ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Virtue never led an organized church or similar religious institution. Instead, she established herself as a religious authority for her followers both with her publications and with the talks and courses that she offered. In this, she was typical of New Age teachers, who generally promote their ideas through client relationships, selling their teachings to paying customers via publications, lectures, and workshops. While Virtue could have proceeded to build on her channeled material to establish a specific organization (akin perhaps to the Church Universal and Triumphant or JZ Knight’s Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment) it is likely that she had little interest in formal leadership positions.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
Virtue’s work has attracted criticism, much of it coming from what could be called the skeptical milieu. These criticisms have tended to center on two points. The first maintains that the teachings Virtue promoted are unproven and/or untrue, often dismissing them as “woo woo” or with similar pejorative terms. The second condemns the substantial quantities of money that Virtue amassed through her career as a New Age teacher, sometimes alleging that she was manipulating her followers for financial gain. These criticisms were regularly voiced on internet forums, comment sections, and social media. The Skeptiko blog, for instance, pointed to Virtue’s career as evidence that “there is obviously money to be made by simply making up stupid crap for the credulous” (“Angel Came Down” 2005). These sorts of accusations are typical of those directed at New Thought and New Age writers more broadly.
Virtue’s conversion to Christianity and subsequent denunciation of her New Age writings also posed challenges, both for herself and for others in the New Age milieu. For Virtue, it cut her off both from former sources of income but also from a community that often idolized her. For that community, Virtue’s repudiation of her former teachings caused shockwaves and upset. One New Age blogger, Sue Ellis-Saller, noted that “Light Workers—myself included—are a sensitive bunch,” and many would seriously question the validity of their beliefs as a result of Virtue’s conversion (Ellis-Saller 2019). Andrew Barker, one of Virtue’s certified angel card readers, felt that Virtue was now “bullying” her New Age followers into converting to Christianity (Barker 2019). Sheri Harshberger, the president of the American Tarot Association (ATA), was “deeply disappointed” by Virtue’s behavior, believing that the latter had “only succeeded in demeaning herself” (Aldrich 2017). Others had more commercial concerns. Lisa Frideborg, another Doreen Virtue certified angel card reader, worried that many of Virtue’s followers had “built a business” around her brand, but with the brand terminated, their businesses would suffer. These people, Frideborg felt, “have a right to a refund” (Aldrich 2017).
Barring passing mentions (Whedon 2009:63, 67–68; Jones 2010:15; Haller 2012:257), Virtue and her publications have failed to attract sustained academic attention. This may in part be due to the fact that, with some exceptions (such as Hanegraaff 1998 [1996]), scholars delving into the New Age have tended to favor more sociological or ethnographic studies over examinations of the milieu’s literature. Another factor may be that, as a highly commercial manifestation of New Age ideas, Virtue’s work may have been perceived as too ephemeral and trivial to warrant serious scholarly exploration. Whatever the reason, this lack of academic attention, coupled with Virtue’s very public break from the New Age, may result in her contributions to this milieu being overlooked in coming decades.
SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGION
As part of the broader New Thought and New Age milieus, Virtue was hardly alone in being a prominent woman writer. As well as following on from the likes of Schucman, Hay, Jane Roberts (1929–1984), Shirley MacLaine (b. 1934), Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008), and Shakti Gawain (1948–2018), she was also a contemporary of other female best-selling authors such as Rhonda Byrne (b. 1951). This is clearly an environment in which women can succeed in becoming widely recognized spiritual authorities. Moreover, the aesthetic choices underpinning Virtue’s publications suggest that they were being marketed to a predominantly female audience—something that is unsurprising given the evidence for the numerical predominance of women within the New Age milieu as a whole (York 1995:180; Kemp 2004:117, 121; Heelas and Woodhead 2005:94). Virtue’s work thus carries particular interest for those researching women’s spirituality.
Virtue’s move into evangelical Protestantism may impose gendered restrictions on the roles she can occupy in future. While evangelical congregations often bar women from senior leadership positions, Virtue has stated that she does not intend to pastor a church, but instead plans to “write Bible study books and blogs about studying the Bible” (Virtue 2020:170-71). In a sense, this approach would echo that pursued in her earlier life as a New Ager, where her influence was primarily exerted through literary activities rather than through formal organizational leadership. For scholars interested in the study of women in religion, Virtue thus offers a rare case study of a woman who has sought to make an impact in two very different religious environments, potentially allowing for comparisons between them.
IMAGES
Image #1: Doreen Virtue.
Image #2: Cover of Doreen L. Virtue’s book, Yo-Yo Relationships: How to Break the “I Need a Man” Habit and Find Stability (1994).
Image #3: Cover of Doreen Virtue’s book, “I’d Change My Life if I Had More Time”: A Practical Guide to Making Dreams Come True (1996).
Image #4: Cover of Doreen Virtue’s book, Angel Therapy: Healing Messages for Every Area of Your Life (1997).
Image #5: Cover of box for Doreen Virtue and Melissa Virtue, Angel Dreams Oracle Cards (2008).
Image #6: Cover of box for Doreen Virtue, Loving Words from Jesus, card deck (2016).
Image #7: Baptism of Doreen Virtue, 2017.
Image #8: Cover of Doreen Virtue, Deceived No More: How Jesus Led Me out of the New Age and into His Word (2020).
REFERENCES
“About Doreen Virtue.” 2022. Doreenvirtue.com. Accessed from https://doreenvirtue.com/about-doreen-virtue/ on 18 June 2022.
Aldrich, Renu. 2017. “Doreen Virtue’s Conversion to Christianity Sparks Debate.” The Wild Hunt, September 5. Accessed from https://wildhunt.org/2017/09/doreen-virtues-conversion-to-christianity-sparks-debate.html on 18 June 2022.
“Angel Came Down…” 2005. Skeptico: Critical Thinking for an Irrational World, April 14. Accessed from https://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/angel_came_down.html on 18 June 2022.
Angel Therapy Practitioners. 2005. Angeltherapy.com. Preserved at WebArchive. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20051216122757/http://www.angeltherapy.com/atp.php on 18 June 2022.
Asprem, Egil. 2012. Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Barker, Andrew. 2019. “Doreen Virtue Is Cancelled,” January 25. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVw_eWzHihA on 18 June 2022.
Besant, Annie, and C. W. Leadbeater. 1901. Thought-Forms. London: Theosophical Publishing House. Accessed from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm on 18 June 2022.
Ellis-Saller, Sue. 2019. “Disappointed in Doreen Virtue.” Sueellissaller.com, January 27. Accessed from http://sueellissaller.com/2019/01/disappointed-in-doreen-virtue/ on 18 June 2022.
“FAQ.” 1999. Angeltherapy.com. Preserved at WebArchive. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20000525085048fw_/http://angeltherapy.com/faq.htm on 18 June 2022.
“FAQ about Doreen Virtue.” 2021. Doreenvirtue.com, April 19. Accessed from https://doreenvirtue.com/2021/04/19/faq-about-doreen-virtue/ on 18 June 2022.
Farmer, Steven D. 2006. Animal Spirit Guides: An Easy-to-Use Handbook for Identifying and Understanding Your Power Animals and Animal Spirit Helpers. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Haller, John S. 2012. The History of New Thought: From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation Press.
Hanegraaff, Wouter. 1998 [1996]. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Heelas, Paul. 1996. The New Age Movement. Oxford: Blackwell.
Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jones, David Albert. 2010. Angels: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kemp, Daren. 2004. New Age: A Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kulyk, Rose. 2018. “2019 How I Manifested Becoming an Angel Therapy Practitioner Certified by Doreen Virtue in 2002.” December 15. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuquVRuKyQw on 18 June 2022.
Miejan, Tim. 2000. “The Edge Interview with Doreen Virtue.” The Edge, April 1. Accessed from https://www.edgemagazine.net/2000/04/the-edge-interview-with-doreen-virtue/ on 18 June 2022.
Parker, Helene C., with Doreen Virtue. 1996. If This Is Love, Why Am I So Lonely? Minneapolis, MN: Fairview Press.
Sutcliffe, Steven J. 2003. Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices. London: Routledge.
Virtue, Doreen. 2020a. Deceived No More: How Jesus Led Me out of the New Age and into His Word. Nashville, TN: Emanate Books.
Virtue, Doreen. 2020b. “Unpacking Doreen’s Vision with Pastor Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith.” July 20. Accessed rom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9MtKZsh1U0 on 18 June 2020.
Virtue, Doreen. 2016. Loving Words from Jesus: A 44-Card Deck of Comforting Quotes. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2013. Assertiveness for Earth Angels: How to be Loving instead of “Too Nice.” Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2010a [2007]. Fairies 101: An Introduction to Connecting, Working, and Healing with the Fairies and Other Elementals. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2010b. “Is Your Kid a Rainbow Child?” You Can Heal Your Life. August 24. Accessed from https://www.healyourlife.com/is-your-kid-a-rainbow-child on 18 June 2022.
Virtue, Doreen. 2009 [1998]. Chakra Clearing: Awakening Your Spiritual Power to Know and Heal. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2008. The Miracles of Archangel Michael. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2005. Goddesses and Angels: Awakening Your Inner High Priestess and “Source-eress.” Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2003a. Archangels and Ascended Masters. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2003b. The Crystal Children: A Guide to the Newest Generation of Psychic and Sensitive Children. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2005. Goddesses and Angels: Awakening Your Inner High Priestess and “Source-eress.” Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2003a. Archangels and Ascended Masters. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2003b. The Crystal Children: A Guide to the Newest Generation of Psychic and Sensitive Children. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2002 [1994]. Losing Your Pounds of Pain: Breaking the Link between Abuse, Stress and Overeating. rev. ed. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 2001. The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen. 1995. Constant Craving: What Your Food Cravings Mean and How to Overcome Them. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Virtue, Doreen L. 1994a. Yo-Yo Relationships: How to Break the “I Need a Man” Habit and Find Stability. Minneapolis, MN: Deaconess Press.
Virtue, Doreen. 1994b. In the Mood: How to Create Romance, Passion and Sexual Excitement by Falling in Love All Over Again. Washington DC: National Press Books.
Virtue, Doreen L. 1990. The Chocoholic’s Dream Diet. New York: Bantam.
Virtue, Doreen L. 1989. The Yo-Yo Syndrome Diet. New York: Harper and Row.
Whedon, Sarah W. 2009. “The Wisdom of Indigo Children: An Emphatic Restatement of the Value of American Children.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 12:60–76.
Whitsel, Bradley C. 2003. The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
“Workshop.” 2003. Angeltherapy.com, archived at WebArchive. https://web.archive.org/web/20031005143307fw_/http://www.angeltherapy.com/workshop_right.html/.
“Workshop.” 2000. Angeltherapy.com, Archived at WebArchive. Accessed from https://web.archive.org/web/20000604010420fw_/http://www.angeltherapy.com/workshop_right.html on 18 June 2022.
York, Michael. 1995. The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Publication Date:
23 July 2022
Round Table on Identifying, Naming and Treating Harm in New Religious Movements
00:00–1:15:51 Part 1: Introduction of Panel and Opening Statements 01:46–14:48
Jessica Pratezina 1:01:09–1:16:02
Part 2: Panelist Questions What are the current methods of identifying harm in NRMs, and how can they be improved?; When should practices in NRMs be labeled abuse?; How can we promote greater accountability and transparency?; 1:42:46–1:57:22
Part 2A: What are appropriate therapeutic approaches for current and former members?; How can the therapeutic community interact with NRM scholars to create better resources? 1:57:23–2:43:14
Part 3: Audience Q&A (including J. Gordon Melton and Holly Folk) Identifying, Naming and Treating Harm in New Religious Movements. How can we prevent harm and abuse in “cults” and new religious movements? This round table discussion was sponsored by the New Religious Movements section of the American Academy of Religion on November 22, 2021. It centers on the question of It discusses many of the groups that have reached nationwide attention, such as NXIVM, Scientology, the Children of God, etc. Experts include: Joseph Laycock, PhD, Texas State University (Presider); Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, FACE, Baylor University; Brett Merrill, PhD, ABPP, CGP, Brigham Young University; Susan J. Palmer, PhD, Concordia University; Jessica Pratezina, MA, University of Victoria; Erin Prophet, MPH, PhD, University of Florida.
Study Resources: Organizations:
CESNUR, Center for Studies on New Religions: https://cesnur.org/
INFORM, Information Network Focus on Religious Movements: https://inform.ac/
Journals and Websites
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple at San Diego State University: https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/
Religions Collection, University of California Santa Barbara: https://www.library.ucsb.edu/news/ame…
Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights: https://bitterwinter.org/
CDAMM, Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millennarian Movements: https://www.cdamm.org/
Nova Religio: Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions: https://online.ucpress.edu/nr
World Religions and Spirituality Project: https://wrldrels.org/
Books & Podcassts
Melton, J. Gordon. Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions, 9th ed. Gale. 2017. https://www.gale.com/ebooks/978141446…
Podcasts Religious Studies Project: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.c…
Credits:
Video production sponsored by The Reunion Institute of Houston, Texas. (c) 2022
The Reunion Institute @ErinProphet @NovaReligio #cults #mentalhealth #sociology #religion #counseling #scientology #nxivm #psychology
PANA WAVE LABORATORY TIMELINE
1934 (January 26): Chino Yūko was born Masuyama Hidemi in Kyoto, Japan.
1970: Chino Yūko became a prominent member of the God’s Light Association.
1976: Takahashi Shinji of the God’s Light Association died.
1978: The religion of Chino Shōhō was established.
1980: Chino Yūko published her first religious text titled The Door to Heaven: In Search of Future Happiness.
1994: The Pana-Wave Laboratory was established.
2002: Pana-Wave Laboratory traveled in a caravan primarily through Fukui prefecture.
2003 (April): Tama-Chan was identified as one of Chino’s indicators of a pole reversal.
2003 (May): Chino Yuko prophesized the end of the world and the caravan was set in motion, travelling through Ōsaka, Kyoto, Fukui, Gifu, Nagano, and Yamanashi prefectures.
2003 (August): Chigusa Satoshi died.
2004: “Project Circle P” was established.
2005: “Project Lucifer” was identified.
2006 (October 25): Chino Yūko died.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
Chino Yūko (千乃裕子) was born Masuyama Hidemi on January 26, 1934 in Kyoto, Japan. In 1942, Chino’s parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to Ōsaka. Shortly after the divorce the mother remarried, yet this new relationship introduced new challenges to Chino’s childhood. According to Chino, she and her mother argued constantly with the new stepfather, and the home soon became a difficult environment in which to live. Chino noted that this was not only a forced living situation, but also a very difficult upbringing where she developed a reserved personality (Chino 1980:2-4).
As a young woman Chino studied English at a junior college and became proficient in speaking, reading, and writing. However, according to her own account, this was a depressing time in her life; she was overwhelmed by spiritual encounters with “demons” and attempted suicide several times (Chino 1980:4-10).
Although Chino’s mother was a Christian, and Chino herself was baptized and attended church regularly (Chino 1980:7), her mother sought other spiritual affiliations in an effort to understand her daughter’s behavior (Chino 1980:3-4). Chino’s mother encouraged her to sample various religious movements, eventually settling in as a member of the God Light Association (GLA), led by the well-known charismatic figure Takahashi Shinji (高橋信次, 1927-1976). By the 1970s, the once Masuyama Hidemi had become a prominent member of this new religious movement and began fashioning the name Chino Yūko.
Chino Shōhō (千乃正法, literally “Chino’s True Law”) was founded by Chino Yūko in the late 1970s after the death of God Light Association founder Takahashi in 1976. In the wake of his death, a power struggle for leadership emerged, resulting in the creation of a number of splinter organizations. Chino Shōhō, however, was never registered as a religious corporation under Japan’s Religious Corporation Law. The then forty-two-year-old Chino began crafting an eclectic form of spiritualism that adopted doctrines from the Abrahamic traditions, Buddhism, theosophy, New Age concepts, parapsychology, as well as a host of heterodox theories about physics, environmental warfare and space exploration. Chino’s syncretistic doctrine further included belief in her ability to communicate with celestial figures such as angels, gods and extra-terrestrials through both dreams and spirit possession (Chino 1980:11-44).
Chino’s fluency in English afforded her opportunities to teach private English language lessons to groups of young students at her home in Ōsaka (Chino 1980:30). Several of these students were former GLA members and would later become Chino’s first religious following. Through the combination of Chino’s charisma and her access to young novitiates, the Chino Shōhō faith gained prominence among hundreds of spiritual seekers throughout the 1980s. Although Chino Shōhō was founded in Ōsaka it was not formally stationed there. In addition, as there were no official rituals practiced routinely within Chino Shōhō, members could exercise their religious participation in the absence of a centralized location and apart from Chino. Indeed, this pattern persisted throughout her time in religious leadership, as Chino herself lived much of her later life in privacy, even residing reclusively inside a moving van that travelled with the Pana-Wave Laboratory from 1994 to 2006.
In the mid-1990s, Chino expanded her teachings by incorporating ideas of a conflict between Chino Shōhō and what she argued were the evils of communist ideologies. In what would aggrandize this conflict, Chino cast accusations toward entire political parties, nations, and their leaders about a perceived war wherein she situated herself as the target of various communist militants and their conspiracy to have her assassinated.
Out of these ideas of conflict and war emerged a vanguard of Chino Shōhō members known as the Pana-Wēbu Kenkyūjo (パナウェーブ研究所, the Pana-Wave Laboratory). As a subgroup of Chino Shōhō, these followers were tasked with the protection of Chino through their vision of science and research on such topics as electromagnetic wave warfare, flying saucers, spirits, and clairvoyance. Collectively, these two organizations became known as the Shiro-Shōzoku Shūdan (白装束集団, literally the “white-clothed group”), after gaining considerable attention in early 2003 when they travelled through city streets from prefecture to prefecture in an all-white caravan.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
In 1980 Chino Yūko published her first religious text titled The Door to Heaven: In Search of Future Happiness (『天国の扉: 未来の幸せを目指して』, Tengoku no tobira: Mirai no shiawase o mezashite). [Image at right] This book was widely distributed to her students as a foundational religious text, and as it was written in both English and Japanese it doubled as a proselytizing instrument for incoming students of English and a handbook for understanding the Chino Shōhō faith.
Throughout this book Chino describes her own personal search for happiness as a model for enduring life’s emotionally painful experiences and revelations to be sought along the way. Although Chino’s narratives are generally focused upon worldly issues associated with personal emotions and self-esteem, there is also a subtext within this book that suggests an extra-terrestrial connection. From the outset of The Door to Heaven, Chino crafts this empathic invitation to the reader:
I write these chapters to communicate with others who, like me, have felt themselves strangers to this world with an inexplicable feeling of loneliness – aliens left behind on earth (Chino 1980:1).
In this text, Chino introduces Chino Shōhō’s cosmogonic myths that date the earth’s beginnings at some 365,000,000 years ago on a star named Veh-erde. As one Pana-Wave Laboratory member explained:
The gods (spirits) that guard the chairwoman [Chino Yūko] and comprise the Heavens arrived on Earth from space, created humans, and since the days of the Sumerian civilizations, through the old and new testaments of the Bible, to this day continue to guide humanity in the right direction. Initially these gods arrived as a group of doctors and scientists. Because the level of knowledge during the ancient civilizations was low, these gods gave[/]left knowledge regarding how one should live and regarding the mechanics of nature not as scientific explanations but rather in the form of religion. (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, 2004).
According to Chino, Seven Archangels, or doctors, embarked on an exploratory mission to Earth, arriving at El Qantara, or present-day Egypt, where they inhabited the land near the Nile River renaming it “The Garden of Erden [sic]” (1980:53). Though there were no humans “capable of association” with these “star people” at that time, 364,990,000 years later, these extra-terrestrials would become the indwelling reincarnates of well-known historical figures (1980:49).
Reference to celestial figures visiting Earth prior to the “creation” or “evolution” of man is often referred to as the “Ancient Astronaut” theory (von Däniken 1971). Popularized by such figures as Peter Kolosimo and Erich von Däniken, this controversial narrative attempts to explain the trajectory of history as a result of intelligent beings programming our ancestors’ minds with knowledge to advance humanity. Supporters of the “Ancient Astronaut” theory point to such evidence as (though not confined to) such incredible architectural feats as erecting pyramids, cryptic allusions to unlikely events within popular religious texts, and pre-historic art that resembles a modern depiction of present-day space travel and space travellers.
In addition to explicitly referencing the “Ancient Astronaut” theory, Chino went a step further by believing that she was still in frequent contact with these celestial figures. According to one Chino Shōhō member:
The spirits of El Lantie and of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and other such beings have continued to exist since they experienced death as humans. A person, who acts as a Spiritual Medium, as we call it, is a person who is alive today and has the ability to communicate with such spirits. Chairwoman Yūko Chino has this ability, and this is how she transmits the words of Heaven to the world. (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, November 2004)
In this way, members of Chino Shōhō considered Chino to be a prophet in direct line with the heavens; in their view, Chino acted as a liaison for communication between the heavens and this world. From her heavily protected Toyota van named “Arcadia,” Chino acted as a spiritual medium that would relay directives and guidance from the heavens down to Chino Shōhō members.
As Chino Shōhō’s membership grew, Chino’s doctrines broadened into the secular world of politics. Her dialogue with celestial figures revealed a secretive plot by “communist guerillas” to have Chino slowly assassinated through the use of electromagnetic wave warfare. These electromagnetic waves refer to radiation that materializes in several different types of self-propagating frequencies including gamma rays, infrared radiation, microwaves, radio waves, terahertz radiation, ultraviolet rays, visible light and x-rays (Boleman 1988). The members of the Pana-Wave Laboratory believe that such electromagnetic wave phenomena were used by communist guerillas as a weapon against Chino Yūko. Pana-Wave Laboratory members referred to these electromagnetic waves as “scalar frequencies.”
Chino believed that such a plot was part of a larger conspiracy to control the East-Asian geopolitical region through a reversal of economic, social and cultural ideologies a shift toward a more communal and less autonomous world view.
Despite the contention that electromagnetic wave weaponry was being used within this conspiracy, the exact method for its application and the science behind its effectiveness were never clearly defined. Moreover, as the Cold War ended, Chino’s claims of a communist conspiracy emerged paradoxically in light of the major global transformations of the late 1980s. In 1994, Chino commissioned a portion of Chino Shōhō to research the negative effects of these electromagnetic waves. This group would be called the Pana-Wave Laboratory, and the following explanation summarized the reason for their mission:
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the scalar wave weapon proliferated, to be employed by the extreme leftist groups in Japan. They utilized the scalar wave technology by illegally altering and installing devices on the power transmission lines to mind control the masses, and to assassinate conservative citizens. Furthermore, it became clear that the harmful properties of the scalar wave, radiated from looped coils, was exerting a lethal impact on biological systems, to include human beings, as its side effect. The destruction of the environment such as anomalous weather and gravity anomalies were also brought about by excessive amount of the scalar wave (Pana-Wave Laboratory 2001:11).
Although a portion of Chino Shōhō was commissioned to be a part of the Pana-Wave Laboratory, the group was not separated in any hierarchical fashion. That is, there were no ranks or statuses that divided the two groups into categories, such as lay followers or monastic elite. In this way, all of the Pana-Wave Laboratory members were members of Chino Shōhō; the only difference was that Pana-Wave Laboratory members were devoted full-time to researching electromagnetic wave activity and personally serving Chino.
The Pana-Wave Laboratory would go on to research the effects of scalar wave activity and attempt to develop strategies for the protection of Chino Yūko. With this research mandate in place a stage was set for infinite inquiries into the un-falsifiable, an avocation of making connections between groups of communist perpetrators that no longer existed (as before in international politics) and a speculative form of immaterial weaponry that supervened invisibly.
The Pana-Wave Laboratory began as a group of some forty-two researchers focused upon electromagnetic warfare tactics. Initially this research was mobile as it was conducted out of seventeen vans, including Chino’s personal van, “Arcadia.” As Chino believed that she was constantly “under attack” by the communists, this mobility allowed the Pana-Wave Laboratory to evade electromagnetic waves. Although the Pana-Wave Laboratory would eventually settle atop 
Gotaishi Mountain of the Fukui Prefecture in May of 2003, the caravan would first pass through the Ōsaka, Kyoto, Fukui, Gifu, Nagano, and Yamanashi prefectures. [Image at right]
According to Chino, at the peak of its popularity in the mid-1990s Chino Shōhō was made up of more than 1,500 members worldwide, yet this number was never substantiated by any official information. The Pana-Wave Laboratory operation was financed through the sale of literature composed by Chino and group reports on the status of electromagnetic wave activity compiled by laboratory researchers. In addition, Chino Shōhō members outside of the Pana-Wave Laboratory would donate large sums of money to assist with the cost of expenses accrued while moving throughout Honshū, Japan’s main island, as well as the construction of the physical laboratory in Fukui. In late 2003, the Metropolitan Police Department released information about the Pana-Wave Laboratory’s finances, announcing that they had accumulated “2.2 billion yen” in donations over a ten-year period (Asahi Shinbun [Tokyo], June 27, 2003).
On the surface, the members of the Pana-Wave Laboratory exuded a relatively peculiar appearance through the use of the color white. As a means of deflecting the continuous electromagnetic wave 
attacks, the Pana-Wave Laboratory members began to gown themselves from head to toe in white uniforms. [Image at right] According to one member, Pana-Wave Laboratory members wore “white clothes made of 100 % cotton in order to protect [themselves] from artificial scalar waves that the extremists were firing into the Pana-Wave Research Center” (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004). The actual Pana-Wave Laboratory uniform consisted of a white lab coat, a strip of white cloth used as a headpiece, a white mask and white rubber boots. Similar white coverings wrapped other material accessories such as eyewear and watches.
Although the religious component was the primary attraction for Chino Shōhō members, the role of the Pana-Wave Laboratory provided a unique venture geared toward managing a scientific discourse. Within my fieldwork during the summer of 2004, Pana-Wave Laboratory members could be routinely observed recording 
data from electromagnetic waves, monitoring solar activity, running medical tests on Chino, and composing rough drafts for Love Righteous, a journal that they produced and sold back to members. [Image at right] In the view of the Pana-Wave Laboratory, “any authentic religion always has a scientific base” and the combination of these often-contradictory enterprises functioned in tandem (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004).
In a physical sense, a laboratory would appear to be functioning as an edifice for scientific endeavors, but at closer examination, Pana-Wave Laboratory merely reflected an aura of science, rather than contributing to mainstream concepts of science. That is, this laboratory provided the necessary props that enabled the scientific setting and the performances that accompanied that setting, yet the scientific theory, method and product hardly resembled generally accepted scientific theories, methods and research output. Nevertheless, if a laboratory is said to be a structure equipped for scientific experimentation or research, then surely this setting was just that, adhering, of course, to the principles and methods of the researchers involved.
Members of the Pana-Wave Laboratory appeared to be fond of presenting themselves through their roles as scientists. In a dramaturgical fashion, their activities were performed vicariously through portrayals of what may be commonly thought of as “researchers” roles. Goffman (1963) analyzed intricacies of social interaction in terms of a theatrical metaphor. In this perspective, everyone is at once an actor and an audience member in the performance of real-life situations. Roles people play within these situations are defined momentarily, depending on the management of impressions at a given time. It is at these moments of interaction that individuals are capable of commanding a situation and thus defining an interaction. Similar to the way in which actors and actresses adhere to prescribed roles from a script, the Pana-Wave Laboratory participated in the performance of a functioning laboratory. The Pana-Wave Laboratory capitalized on the general perception of these roles and created what they believed to be the necessary scenery for the re-affirmation of their positions as lab scientists.
Carrying on in a laboratory setting, gowned in laboratory jackets, all the while in the company of others in identical roles, must have given some sort of reassurance that a form of productive labor was taking place, if nothing more than the reproduction of imagery. Skepticism for Pana-Wave Laboratory members was never avowed, as this perception of science was infused with strong religious doctrines, thereby validating all claims regardless of their, for outsiders, extraordinary content.
Aside from the personal appearances of the Pana-Wave Laboratory members, there were also technological inventions that supported their claims of electromagnetic wave warfare. These inventions, however, were actually informed by a school of controversial innovators and their creations, most notably Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). The inventions of this Yugoslavian-born physicist were a central feature within Pana-Wave Laboratory research. In 1891, Tesla developed and patented the Tesla Coil for the purpose of producing wireless communication and power transmission (Fanthorpe/Fanthorpe 1998:52). Members of the Pana-Wave 
Laboratory believed that somehow the former USSR used this Tesla Coil to produce electromagnetic wave weaponry. [Image at right] According to Chino, this Tesla Coil was also distributed to the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) as a tool to conduct brainwashing programs in Japan. The Pana-Wave Laboratory contended that a surplus of electrical power cable attached to electrical poles were actually electromagnetic scalar wave generators in disguise. Indeed, these wound-up cables attached to electrical power lines roughly resemble the spiral formation of the Tesla Coil.
To combat the emissions of these generators, the research team created defense mechanisms adapted from the inventions of Russian-born engineer Georges Lakhovsky (1869-1942). Lakhovsky was said to have invented yet another coil known as the “Lakhovsky Coil” which acted as a highly potent healing mechanism. Unlike the power transmission ambitions that spurred the invention of the Tesla Coil, this Lakhovsky Coil was created to prolong life by capturing cosmic rays. Working under the premise that all living things emit and receive radiation, the reception of life-prolonging radiation could be maximized through the use of a coiled antenna as a receptor.
Lakhovsky believed he had proved this in 1925, when he revived and prolonged the life of one geranium out of several others inoculated with cancer. By wrapping an open metallic circuit around the geranium, he claimed to have helped resuscitate the plant from the cancer inoculations. However, Lakhovsky did not stop with geraniums, proposing that he could achieve the same result with human cancer patients by using his 1931 invention known as the “Multiple Wave Oscillator” (MWO). This time Lakhovsky used two recessed coils of concentric circles (one a transmitter and the other a resonator) to create an “electrostatic field.” Lakhovsky argued that patients could be cured of various cancers through exposure to the MWO.
Although this method of cancer treatment is not used today in clinical treatment, a version of the MWO was utilized by the Pana-Wave Laboratory to divert the direction of scalar waves, rather than collect the radiation as Lakhovsky’s MWO had done. The Pana- 
Wave Laboratory’s version of this mechanism was the Scalar Wave Deflector Coil (SWDC). [Image at right] These SWDCs were placed all over the laboratory and could be found strategically covering certain portions of Pana-Wave Laboratory members’ bodies.
Similar to the MWO, the SWDC acted as a receptor for electromagnetic waves. Pana-Wave Laboratory members contended that these SWDC receptors received the electromagnetic waves and forced their radiation to run a labyrinth-like track of semi-concentric lines, eventually reaching a section designated by an arrow where they were then cast away from the laboratory. This arrow marks the direction toward which the waves were rerouted. 
A similar mechanism that was used by the Pana-Wave Laboratory was produced through reasoning that scalar waves could be captured and then redirected toward a panel that neutralizes the effects of the radiation. This mechanism was referred [Image at right] to as the Direction Specific Wave Diffuser (DSWD). SWDC and DSWD were artificial security mechanisms; however, Pana-Wave Laboratory also believed that nature could act as a defense against electromagnetic waves. One such natural defense mechanism was the physical structure of trees. According to Pana-Wave Laboratory members, the trunk portion of trees actually acted as a repository for scalar waves. Similar to the DSWD, the trunk of a tree first captures scalar waves, then discharges them into the air 
through the branches extending above and beyond the laboratory. [Image at right] However, the Pana-Wave Laboratory also acknowledged that this natural repository feature would eventually endanger the trees, and thus to rectify this issue they began wrapping the tree trunks with the same white cloth they used to protect themselves.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
Chino Shōhō and Pana Wave-Laboratory were organized entirely around the teachings and memoranda of Chino Yuko. Despite Chino’s death in October of 2006, the Pana-Wave Laboratory remained in Gotaishi through at least 2007. After the death of Chino, membership dwindled down to less than ten resident researchers of the twenty-nine that were present in 2004 when I began my fieldwork.
In late 2007, the Pana-Wave Laboratory members were in the process of building a foundation for a structure in the center of the research center. According to one spokesman, this structure would become the site of an animal sanctuary, a building that fulfills one of Chino’s final wishes. Although the roles Pana-Wave Laboratory members would play in running this sanctuary were unclear, the overall commitment to carry out Chino’s wishes did appear to be moving forward.
The circumstances under which the Pana-Wave Laboratory operated had also undergone major transformations. Although Pana-Wave Laboratory research on electromagnetic waves continued to yield what they viewed as evidence of dangerous emissions generated by communist guerillas, their frequency and intensity were said to have decreased considerably. According to the Pana-Wave Laboratory, this trend was due to the fact that Chino no longer resided at the research center and thus Gotaishi became less of a target than previously believed. Given this, Pana-Wave Laboratory relaxed its electromagnetic wave deterrence activities by removing much of the white shrouds, mirrors, SWDCs and DSWDs. In addition, members were seen without their laboratory suits, going about less research-oriented routines such as maintaining gardens, cooking, cleaning, participating in the construction of the sanctuary, and generally tending to each other’s needs.
The current Pana-Wave Laboratory leadership remains decentralized. Without the consistent flow of communiqués from Chino’s van, the Pana-Wave Laboratory now takes direction from two new middle-aged male leaders. One of these individuals has been member of Chino Shōhō since its inception and the other since the early 1980s. Although both were equally committed to continuing the laboratory operation, the former resides in Gotaishi, while the latter operates from a neighboring prefecture.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
The Pana-Wave Laboratory was not unlike the many other peripheral religious groups in Japan at the close of the twentieth century and on into the early years of the twenty-first. There was no shortage of extraordinary belief systems interwoven into the doctrines of various Japanese new religious movements. Everything from conspiracy theories and grandiose supposition, to perceived elite knowledge of science or even its potential for transforming otherwise science fiction-like propositions into realities, these new religious movements possessed a variety of similarities cut from the fabric of this alternative milieu of reasoning. However, what made the Pana-Wave Laboratory a focus of media attention, and somewhat of a fixture of public fear and anxiety, were the speculative parallels drawn between their operation and those that culminated in the violent incidents perpetrated by the Aum Shinrikyo. The moral panic and public concern for stemming the potential for terror, as witnessed in the sarin gas attacks in Matsumoto in 1994 and in Tokyo in 1995, gave way to a preoccupation with watching the Pana-Wave Laboratory and its activities for all those with memories of Aum Shinrikyo.
In April 2003, the Pana-Wave Laboratory continued its caravan journey through Honshū in search of a location free of electromagnetic waves. While the Pana-Wave Laboratory was relocating, Chino picked up on a story about a wayward seal popularly known as Tama-chan (たまちゃん) that had lost its way and had swum into the Tama river. According to Chino, Tama-chan’s loss of direction was evidence that major magnetic-pole shifts had taken place, which was considered a persuasive indication of an impending disaster. Under the direction of Chino, a group of Pana-Wave Laboratory members became involved in a plot to rescue Tama-chan from its polluted surroundings and provide some type of sanctuary for the seal. Helping to form the Tama-chan o Mamoru Kai (たまちゃんを守る会), or the Tama-chan Rescue Group, the Pana-Wave Laboratory members reportedly built makeshift pools in Yamanashi prefecture to facilitate the transportation and liberation of the seal. Although the rescue attempt ended well within the planning stages, in the view of the Pana-Wave Laboratory the Japanese media misconstrued the event as a kidnapping scheme (Dorman 2005:92-93).
Less than six months later, the Pana-Wave Laboratory was again at the center of media attention, when police officials effectively raided their caravan facilities on May 14, 2003, one day prior to Chino’s doomsday prediction. In the full view of the media, some 300 police investigators searched the Pana-Wave Laboratory vans and conducted eleven other affiliated operations throughout Japan. Despite the enormity of the operation, the police only managed to collect evidence of falsely registered vehicles.
The May 15, 2003 date came and went uneventfully. As the Japanese media looked on, nothing spectacular happened at the Pana-Wave Laboratory research center. A spokesman for the group attempted to divert attention away from the initial failed prophecy by issuing another date of May 22, 2003; however, the Japanese media only seized the moment to dismiss the Pana-Wave Laboratory’s predictions as acts of desperation and thus lacking any credibility.
Although both of the doomsday predictions of May 2003 passed without incident, new prophecies surfaced including the following prediction made in July of 2004:
There have been new messages revealed to us regarding a new end date. Cracks are forming on the sea floors of Japan, and at this rate Japan will sink to the bottom of the seas by spring next year. (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004).
Despite these subsequent predictions, Pana-Wave Laboratory’s 
activities went generally unnoticed until later that summer when a violent incident occurred among members: On August 7, 2003, Pana-Wave Laboratory member Chigusa Satoshi (千草聡, 1957-2003) [Image at right] failed to keep a grounding device, which was attached to a van, in contact with the street. In response to Chigusa’s perceived negligence, Chino ordered five Pana-Wave Laboratory members to administer a physical punishment. Several hours after this punishment took place, medics arrived to find that Chigusa’s heart had failed and he was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Shortly thereafter, these five individuals were arrested and charged with assault in the investigation of Chigusa’s murder. None of the men indicted were convicted of the charges, as prosecutors did not have enough evidence to prove that Chigusa’s inflicted injuries were directly related to his death. Instead, these five members were fined 200,000 yen each for their involvement in the assault (Agence France Press 2003).
The Pana-Wave Laboratory members, however, told another side of this story. They stated that quite a few factors went un-addressed in the investigation. First, the Pana-Wave Laboratory argued that Chigusa had not taken care of himself during the hot summer days leading up to his death:
Mr. Chigusa, busy with his job and with writing for the publication, was not always available to work at Pana-Wave. He had neither eaten nor slept for a period of just over two days. In addition, despite his poor health he worked under extreme temperatures under the sun the next day, and died of extreme heat exhaustion (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004).
It was confirmed that Chigusa did suffer from heat exhaustion, as the autopsy report concluded that his death was caused by a combination of posttraumatic shock and heatstroke.
Evidenced by bruises left on Chigusa’s back, Pana-Wave Laboratory members did not deny that some punishment had taken place as the media had reported. Yet, in the view of Pana-Wave Laboratory members, when Chigusa did not ground the vehicle correctly, he actually compromised Chino’s life:
If a worker performing this operation sympathizes with the extremists [communist guerillas] in any way, the worker may create a backward flow of scalar waves back into the car and introduce an attack to the chairwoman, such as forced urination, an attack her physician referred to as “life threatening” (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004).
Thirdly, the Pana-Wave Laboratory members contended that the alleged beating was actually more of a scolding and not as physical as the media portrayed it to be:
In an effort to prevent these attacks and protect her [Chino], members of the Heavens have given instructions to use a rolled-up piece of corrugated cardboard coated with electrical tape to strike the worker (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, July 2004).
Pana-Wave Laboratory members also expressed concern about an apparent double standard between themselves and other religious groups with regard to judging punishment as appropriate or inappropriate. They did so by comparing their practice of punishment to the physical discipline found within Zen Buddhism, arguing that it was unfair to question the legitimacy of such religious practices. In the view of Pana-Wave Laboratory members, investigators were in no position to comprehend the situation, as Chigusa’s punishment was a direct order from the Heavens. As one spokesman explained:
Three doctors are among these members of Heaven, and this striking is not something that would cause death. In the case of Mr. Chigusa, most likely since he was not someone who was accustomed to manual labor, combined with his poor physical health that day, his body was in a state that would be scarred easily by striking it just a little (E-mail from Pana-Wave Laboratory member, November 2004).
In the end, the five members that had been convicted of the act of punishment paid their fines and the incident was largely forgotten by fall 2003.
On December 12, 2004 I received a series of short, but urgent, memoranda stating that “all 21 units of the UFO Fleet have crashed into the sea, as a result of a shortage of food and fuel” (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, December 2004). As Chino explained, Chino Shōhō was now going to build a spacecraft of their own and leave Earth prior to yet another prophesied impending disaster.
The Shōhō Group has plans for its escape as early as next spring if preparations are complete, but if time not ripe [sic] yet (if the UFO’s needed for the escape are not yet ready) the plan is three years down the line. The building material for the UFO is an alloy of steel and titanium. Currently we are considering methods of where to obtain this material. We would be more than happy if you, as a guest member of Pana-Wave, would join the members of the PW office, head of the science department, etc., with activities relating to the building or piloting (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, December 2004).
When the materials were not obtained, Chino Shōhō pursued an alternative plan. Five months later I received another series of memoranda entitled “Project Circle P,” elaborating on Chino Shōhō’s plans for departure from Earth. The “P” stood for “pick-up,” a rescue mission by another UFO fleet as a last resort:
[Project Circle P] started when we were made aware of the Nibiru-related disasters. If planet Nibiru were to approach Earth, Earth would see great destruction and the possible ruin of humankind. Therefore, I have worked with the extra-terrestrial beings to have Shōhō Members rescued. A UFO would be arriving to “pick us up” from earth to salvage humankind and create a new civilization on a different planet (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005).
This was not the first mention of a rescue mission. In fact, Chino had been directing mass departures as early as 1982 when she believed that the Soviet Union was going to invade Japan. In 2005, however, Chino revealed an even greater plot that went beyond conspiring communist guerillas and approaching planets. In this plot, dubbed “Project Lucifer,” which allegedly took place several years prior to the planning of “Project Circle P”, the U.S. government was involved in an operation to transform Jupiter into a new sun (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005). According to Chino, this project was a continuation of a previous attempt by the U.S. to crash a “space probe carrying 23 kg of plutonium” into the planet and thereby “solarise” Jupiter (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005). Chino warned that this solarization would pulverize Mars into an asteroid belt, putting Earth in harm’s way of being bombarded with asteroids.
If Mars is destroyed, Jupiter’s gravity will attract Earth, inevitably causing it to approach contact with the second asteroid belt, and it is quite obvious that Earth will see catastrophe. 99 % of humans on Earth will most likely be ruined (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005).
With this communiqué Chino advised Chino Shōhō members to prepare themselves for a six-month journey into outer space. These preparations included gathering “items that are less affected by gravity, such as space food, and other items instructed by PW” (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005). In addition, some instructions appeared to be geared toward salvaging animal life, in an effort to someday reconstitute the ecological fabric of Earth:
Bring Pets, such as birds, dogs, and cats, and other living things to fill the nature of the new world, including seawater fish and young fish. Needless to say, bring enough food for these animals as well. It would be appropriate to think of it as Noah’s ark, only on a UFO (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005).
Essentially Chino Shōhō was planning to re-build and re-populate an Earth-like setting on another planet.
Naturally, what humans of Earth and Martians must do is transplant the nature existing currently on Earth to that planet. The science department of PW has already been instructed to prepare the seeds, plants, saplings and, needless to say, food and necessities for each person (Memorandum from Yūko Chino, April 2005).
Chino Shōhō remained determined to leave Earth through July of 2005 when members constructed a flying-saucer landing port near Gotaishi. However, the plan seemed to slip into obscurity as Chino’s health gradually deteriorated during that summer. Soon there was very little communication between Chino, Chino Shōhō and myself. On October 25, 2006 Chino Yūko died.
IMAGES
Image #.1: Chino, Yuko. The Door to Heaven: In Search of Future.
Image #2: Aerial view of the Pana-Wave Laboratory. (Salvador J. Murguia 2004).
Image #3: Member of the Pana-Wave Laboratory displaying his uniform. (Mainichi Shimbun 2003).
Imaage #4: Love Righteous Journal publication produced by the Pana-Wave Laboratory. (Salvador J. Murguia 2004).
Image #5: Electromagnetic Scalar Wave Generator within the Fukuoka Prefecture. (Naganishi Hide 2003).
Image #6: Pana Wave Laboratory’s Scalar Wave Deflector Coil. (Salvador J. Murguia 2004).
Image #7: The Direction Specific Wave Diffuser. The red arrows represent scalar wave activity (Salvador J. Murguia 2004)
Image #8: Trees surrounding the Pana-Wave Laboratory. (Salvador J. Murguia 2004)
Image #9: Pana Wave Laboratory van covered with SWDCs. Pictured is the type of van Mr. Chigusa failed to “earth-check” in 2003. (Mainichi Shimbun 2003)
REFERENCES
Dorman, Benjamin. 2005. “Pana Wave: The New Aum Shinrikyo or Another Moral Panic?” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 8:83-103.
“Japanese doomsday cultists charged over beaten member’s death.” Agence France Press, December 5, 2003.
“Cult earns 2.2 billion from followers.” Asahi Shinbun, June 27, 2003.
Bolman, Jay. 1988. Physics: An Introduction. New Jersey: Prentice Hall College Division.
Chino, Yuko. The Door to Heaven: In Search of Future Happiness (『天国の扉: 未来の幸せを目指して』, Tengoku no tobira: Mirai no shiawase o mezashite). Tokyo: Jihi to Ai Pub Co Ltd.
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall
von Däniken, Erich. 1971. Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. U.K.: Corgi Books.
Publication Date:
17 July 2022.
LOST CAUSE MOVEMENT TIMELINE
1860 (November 6): Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States and the first from the Republican Party.
1860 (December) – 1861 (January): The first seven states seceded from the Union.
1861 (February): The secessionist states organized the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. Jefferson Davis was appointed its first President.
1861 (March 4): Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
1861 (March 11): The Confederate Constitution was ratified.
1861 (April 12): Southern naval forces initiated the Civil War with an attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
1861 (April 15): President Lincoln declared an insurrection and called for mobilization of Union military forces.
1862: Jefferson Davis, became a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.
1865 (December 24): The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee.
1865 (April 3): Jefferson Davis was informed that Confederate forces were unable to defend Richmond and ordered a fire to be set in the city that would destroy potential supplies for advancing Union forces.
1865 (April 9): General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered Confederate forces to General Grant at Appomattox Court House.
1865 (April 14): President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
1870 (January 26): The Commonwealth of Virginia was readmitted to the United States and military forces were withdrawn.
1877: The informal Compromise of 1877 secured the election of Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes, initiating a period of white political control throughout the South what has been referred to as the Jim Crow Era.
1894: The United Daughters of the Confederacy was formed in Nashville, Tennessee and later headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.
1896 (February 22): The Confederate Museum (later the Museum of the Confederacy) was established.
1924 (May 21): A statue honoring Robert E. Lee astride his horse, Traveller,” that was donated by Paul Goodloe McIntire was unveiled in a segregated city park in Charlottesville, Virginia.
1970 The Confederate Museum changed its name to the Museum of the Confederacy as part of an initiative designed to assume a more contemporary museum posture.
2013: The American Civil War Museum was created by a merger between the American Civil War Center and the Museum of the Confederacy.
2012 (February 26): Seventeen year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.
2013 (November): The Museum of the Confederacy and the American Civil War Center at Tredegar merged to create the American Civil War Museum. The new name was announced the following year.
2013: The Black Lives Matter movement emerged following the acquittal of George Zimmerman on murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
2014 (July 17): Forty-three-year-old Eric Garner was killed in the Staten Island borough of New York City borough after, a New York City Police Department officer, Daniel Pantaleo, was placing him under arrest.
2014 (August 9): Eighteen year-old Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a white Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri.
2015 (June 17): Dyllan Roof killed nine African-American parishioners during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
2015: The 2015 Episcopal Church’s General Convention passed a resolution that called for the universal discontinuation of display of the Confederate Battle Flag.
2015: Washington National Cathedral announced that it was removing Confederate battle flags from two windows in the cathedral honoring Confederate generals.
2017 (August 11-12): In Charlottesville, Virginia, at a Unite the Right rally associated with the Alt-Right movement that opposed the removal of a Robert E. Lee memorial Statue an Alt-Right supporter, James Fields, drove his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring nineteen other individuals.
2020 (May 25): Forty-six year-old George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, who was later convicted and imprisoned.
2020 (and after): Removal of Confederate symbols (monuments, named buildings, statues, streets) in public space and buildings continued to accelerate throughout the United States.
2021 (January 6): Numerous confederate flags were visible during the insurrection and the U.S. Capitol.
2021 (July): The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia was removed from its public park setting.
2021 (September): The Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia was removed from its plinth.
2023 (April): The Governor of Mississippi proclaimed April as Confederate History Month.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the Union was fragmented, beset by what Taylor (2021) refers to as “rival regions.” While slavery was not the only division facing a fragile Union, the nation was deeply divided sectionally over slavery in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States and its first Republican. The Republican Party generally opposed the extension of slavery into U.S. territories. Signaling the deep political division in the nation, Lincoln was 
elected with less than forty percent of the popular vote and did not received significant support in any state that would become part of the Confederacy. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1860 seven southern states had seceded, the Confederate States of America had been formed, and within a month the Civil War had commenced with the southern naval attack on Fort Sumpter. [Image at right]
Religion was an important component of the north-south division during the Civil War. The situation was fluid and conflicted. There were conflicts within the major Protestant denominations that led to north-south denominational divisions, as well as ongoing intra-denominational divisiveness. Organizational turmoil within and between religious groups was exacerbated by military ebb and flow, and the ability of churches even to hold services varied depending on which military force controlled the territory on which they were situated. Not all of these divisions were permanent. In the case of the Episcopal Church, for example, the division began in 1861, when the southern component became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, but ended shortly after the war in 1866, with Bishop John Johns leading the campaign for reunification.
In addition to the broad North-South division and disputes and schisms within institutional religion, there was also persistent and determined religiously-based resistance to the foundational premises on which the Confederacy was based. The slave population’s version of Christianity featured themes of freedom, redemption and punishment for their oppressors and was practiced at their secret “hush harbors.” This resistance to assertions of the legitimacy of slavery by enslaved populations only served to intensify efforts by whites to shore up their ideology (Irons 2008).
Denominational disputes notwithstanding, religious fervor surged on both sides during the war. Missionaries and colporteurs spread the gospel to troops, and revivals broke out on both sides periodically during the second half of the war. For example, the Army of Northern Virginia enjoyed its greatest revivals in the spring and summer of 1863. Newspapers published reports of a surge in church attendance and even mass conversions (Irons 2020). A newspaper in Tennessee reported that “immense congregations assembled to hear the word … and many sinners led to cry for mercy; a chaplain informed me that 1,000 men in his division had professed the faith.” In Richmond in 1864, the Richmond Daily Dispatch reported that “the religious interest in the army is unchilled by the cold weather. Meetings are still held in every part of the army; and in many, if not all the brigades, meeting-houses have been constructed for their own use, and faithful chaplains nightly preach to large and deeply attentive congregations” (Stout 2021).
Events on April 3, 1865 signaled an impending conclusion to the Civil War. Reportedly, while in attendance at St. Paul’s, Jefferson Davis was informed that Confederate forces were unable to defend Richmond any longer. Davis left the church and ordered what became known as “the fire” be set in the city of Richmond to destroy supplies potentially useful to advancing Union forces. However, the fire raged out of control, ultimately destroying about 800 buildings in the city. [Image at right] The railroad bridge across the James River was also burned to slow the Union army advance (Slipek 2011). Just six days later, on April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House in Appomattox County, Virginia, effectively ending Civil War combat.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the eleven secessionist states faced massive dislocation as a product of military defeat, mass loss of life (well over 300,000 military deaths and probably twice that number of total casualties), political submission, an economy (an agricultural plantation system and captive labor force) and infrastructure (roads, bridges, harbors, railway systems) that had collapsed, and a culture and way of life that was in chaos.
The process referred to as Reconstruction actually began prior to the end of the war, with a combination of national legislation and constitutional amendments on one side and legal and extra-legal maneuvering to replace slavery with racial segregation on the other side. 1877 was a watershed year with the implementation of the informal Compromise of 1877, which resolved an impasse in the 1876 presidential election, removed remaining federal control over southern states, and resulted in solid democratic control in the former states of the Confederacy. What followed was what has been referred to as the Jim Crow era in which racial segregation replaced slavery as a form of control.
Following the end of the war, the economic base in southern states began to shift. As Hillyer has observed (2007:193-94):
As early as 1869, despite the residual animosity of the Civil War and political upheaval of Reconstruction, business-oriented Southerners advertised the wealth of untapped natural resources in the South and courted Northerners for capital and expertise…. Southern industrialists perceived economic diversification as a means towards regional self-sufficiency.
Whereas in antebellum Richmond the interests of the commercial elite were complementary to, if not dependent upon, the plantation economy, the “new race” of Richmond exemplified the rising class of businessmen and industrialists who owed their growing economic power to allegiances with northern business interests. This “new race” sought to promote an era of national reconciliation and a climate favorable to business and industrial expansion.
However, as Rawls (2017) has noted, reconstruction and economic development would be achieved while preserving white supremacy. Slavery was replaced by segregation in former Confederate states. Over the next century, control over state and local government created a formal legal and political framework for white political control. Extra-legal enforcement was provided by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was formed in Tennessee as the war was ending; the first Grand Wizzard was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general and wealthy slave trader. The KKK employed tactics ranging from voter intimidation to lynching in defense of white supremacy. The KKK was one of the sources of the 4,000 lynchings and other executions of African Americans over this century (Bill of Rights Institute 2022). “Lost Cause” emerged in southern states as a revisionist history and legitimating narrative for racial suppression, one that was supported by an active network of organizations in southern states (Domby 2020).
DOCTRINES/RITUALS
Like Reconstruction, sacralization of the southern cause actually began before the end of the war. For example, a sermon preached on Thanksgiving Day 1861 at historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond asserted that (Stout 2021):
God has given us of the South today a fresh and golden opportunity—and so a most solemn command—to realize that form of government in which the just, constitutional rights of each and all are guaranteed to each and all. … He has placed us in the front rank of the most marked epochs of the world’s history. He has placed in our hands a commission which we can faithfully execute only by holy, individual self-consecration to all of God’s plans.
As it developed, the Lost Cause served as a means of retrospectively redefining the meaning and outcome of the Civil War. [Image at right] Military defeat became moral victory. As one veteran who fought for the Confederacy put the matter, “If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country” (Williams 2017).
The mythology contained several key elements (Wilson 2009; Janney 2021; Williams 2017):
At the center of the myth is the assertion that secession was not about slavery at all; rather, secession was a constitutionally legitimate process, a protection of states’ rights, and a defense of agrarian southern culture against the northern infidels. The Confederacy preferred to refer to the Civil War as the War between the States. Confederate states asserted that secession was an institutional right of every state. In that sense secession was viewed in many ways akin to the original American revolution as a fight against tyranny. The disavowal of slavery as the central element of secession was belied by its prominence the declarations of secession in a number of Confederate states.
In Lost Cause mythology, slavery was benevolent. Slaves were depicted as happy with their status, faithful to the masters, protected within the plantation system, and unprepared for the responsibilities of living independently. Christianizing the slaves was presented as part of southerners’ religious mission. In fact, slaves are depicted as not only accepting their status but also as standing with their owners in resisting northern aggression (Levin 2019).
The Confederacy in the Lost Cause myth was not understood to have been so much defeated as simply overwhelmed. The North possessed a numerical and technological advantage of such magnitude that even determined resistance and enormous sacrifice was insufficient to win the day. However, the moral superiority of southern society and culture would ultimately prevail.
In this narrative, Confederate soldiers were portrayed as valiant and heroic defenders of their way of life, with General Robert E. Lee being its sanctified leader. For their part, women in the Confederacy were saintly figures who made enormous sacrifices for the cause (Janney 2008, 2021). Women were particularly prominent and critical to the cause since so many men were serving in the Confederate army or had been killed in battle.
The myth has remained publicly visible through more recent American history. For example, at the beginning of World War I when then President Woodrow Wilson, who was seeking to assemble a large wartime army, spoke at a gathering of the United Confederate Veterans in Arlington National Cemetery. He stated that (Paradis 2020):
There are many memories of the Civil War that thrill along the blood and make one proud to have been sprung of a race that could produce such bravery and constancy.” To a standing ovation of applause and rebel yells, Wilson warmly recalled how “heroic things were done on both sides.
In 1948, the Confederate flag was adopted by the Dixiecrat Party, led by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurman, which withdrew from the Democratic Party in response to the Democrats’ more progressive stance on civil rights issues.
In 1962, a Confederate flag was placed outside of the statehouse in South Carolina as a response to the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2007, in Richmond, Virginia, a year-long celebration of Robert E. Lee’s two hundredth birthday was planned that included a restoration of his Monument Avenue, a memorial ceremony at his birthplace, and a symposium at Washington and Lee University (Sampson 2007; Bohland 2006:3).
In 2023, the Governor of Mississippi proclaimed April as Confederate History Month.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
At the end of the Civil War Southerners were faced with responding to their disempowered circumstances. Symbolically, they faced the option of acknowledging that their social order was based on systematic oppression and exploitation through slavery or recasting the war as a moral victory, a sacred struggle to maintain their superior cultural heritage and resist northern aggression. Lost Cause represented the latter response. Local and state Jim Crow legal provisions created a set of social mechanisms through which voting restrictions and racial segregation replaced slavery so that white supremacy was asserted and maintained. For example, in Virginia the state constitution was amended in 1902 to impose poll taxes and require literacy and understanding provisions for voting eligibility. Extra-legally, mob violence and lynching functioned to suppress resistance. For example, the number of lynchings, virtually none of which resulted in legal prosecution, has been estimated at about 4,000 between 1877 and 1950 (Wolfe 2021; Equal Justice Initiative 2017).
Support for Lost Cause was organized through a loosely-coupled movement that included organizations such as churches, memorial groups, museums, cemeteries, history education monitoring groups, veterans organizations, and newspapers. These groups shared in common a goal controlling physical, social and cultural space. The movement was remarkably determined and successful for a considerable period in post-Civil War history. It surged during surged between 1877 following the Compromise of 1877 and World War I and again during the 1950s and 1960s in response to the civil rights movement. The current resurgence is linked to initiatives designed to eliminate Lost Cause memorialization (See, Issues/Challenges).
Memorialization is a power creation and consolidation strategy and was one of the primary ways that Lost Cause narrative was promoted (Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). For example, monuments, particularly those in public spaces, connected present and past and created symbolic ownership of those spaces. There have been well over 1,000 memorials of various kinds created in the United States since the end of the Civil War, even if predominantly in states comprising the Confederacy. These memorials have often been constructed using public funds. Palmer and Wessler (2018) report that between 2008 and 2018 over $40,000,000 of public funds was spent on such projects and the organizations that organize them. As the American Historical Association described the process of monument construction (2017):
The bulk of the monument building took place not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War but from the close of the 19th century into the second decade of the 20th. Commemorating not just the Confederacy but also the “Redemption” of the South after Reconstruction, this enterprise was part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South. Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life. A reprise of commemoration during the mid-20th century coincided with the Civil Rights Movement and included a wave of renaming and the popularization of the Confederate flag as a political symbol.
Across the country, the Daughters of the Confederacy, which was headquartered in Richmond, sponsored hundreds of commemorative monuments beginning in the late nineteenth century (Breed 2018).
Two major Lost Cause monuments were the Stone Mountain Project outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. The Stone Mountain Project was originally envisioned as a memorial to the Confederacy. There was to be a mountainside sculpture of Confederate soldiers on 
horseback riding with members of the Ku Klux Klan (Lowery 2021). The site became a state park in 1958, the sculpture was completed In 1972. The memorial ultimately took the form of a carving of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson astride their horses. [Image at right] The Ku Klux Klan held cross burning rituals at the summit on several occasions through the early 1960s. The U.S Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp in 1970. For many years Stone Mountain was the most popular tourist destination in Georgia.
Monument Avenue in Richmond combined memorialization with residential segregation. The avenue grew out of a post-war search for a memorialization site for Robert E. Lee, and was given momentum by the “City Beautiful” movement of that era. It became a segregated upper-status residential development project in Richmond’s West End. The development included restrictive covenants that prohibited sale of properties to buyers of “African descent.” The City of Richmond added several restrictive ordinances that buttressed 
impediments to integrated residential areas in the first decades of the twentieth century. The first memorial statue, Robert E. Lee on his horse Traveller, was dedicated in 1890. [Image at right] The dedication attracted a gathering of over 100,000 attendees. Monuments subsequently were added to other military leaders of the Confederacy: J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis in 1907 and Stonewall Jackson in 1919.
While memorial monuments to the Confederacy have been contested and removed in recent years, new additions also have been made. Between 2000 and 2017, thirty-two new monuments were dedicated (Holpuch and Chalabi 2017).
Churches were an important component of legitimating Lost Cause mythology. Confederate imagery was frequently found in church sanctuaries across the south during that last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Episcopalians were particularly prominent in this regard: because “the Episcopal church was the church of the antebellum planter class” (Wilson 2009:35). The denomination established the National Cathedral in Washington, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia became known as the Cathedral of the Confederacy. As Griggs (2017:42) notes:
Of all of Richmond’s churches, none was more closely associated with the Southern Confederacy than St. Paul’s. President Jefferson Davis worshipped there, as did Robert E. Lee when he was in Richmond….On many Sundays, St. Paul’s was filled with soldiers in gray and many women dressed in black to symbolize that they had lost a loved one.
Davis became a member of the congregation in 1862. It was Episcopal Bishop John Johns who baptized Jefferson Davis in the Executive Mansion of the Confederacy and confirmed him in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Most of the St. Paul’s congregation at that time were involved in the slavery economy in some fashion.
At St. Paul’s, it became popular during the 1890s to memorialize family members with wall plaques in the sanctuary, some of which featured Confederate battle flags (Kinnard 2017). The church erected memorials to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the 1890s and embraced the “Lost Cause”narrative (Wilson 2009:25). In an 1889 mural, for example, a youthful Moses is presented in a way that resembles Robert E. Lee as a young officer in the Confederacy (Chilton 2020). The accompanying inscription read:
By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s Daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the Children of God for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. In grateful memory of Robert Edward Lee born January 19 1807.
Another way that Lost Cause proponents sought cultural legitimacy, one which had broad social impact, was through control of the secular presentation of the Civil War history in textbooks and library collections. Early in the twentieth century, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and United Confederate Veterans (UCV) created a “Historical Committee,” which had as its mission to combat “long-legged Yankee lies,” and to “select and designate such proper and truthful history of the United States, to be used in both public and private schools of the South,” and to “put the seal of their condemnation upon such as are not truthful histories” (McPherson 2004:87).
One leader of this formidable effort was Mildred L. Rutherford, a Georgia teacher and “historian general” of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In 1915, she delivered a UDC address in San Francisco titled “The Historical Sins of Omission and Commission” that urged the organization to become a textbook watchdog. In 1920, she published a pamphlet, A Measuring Rod to Test Textbooks and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges and Libraries. The publication warned against books that failed to assert that states rights and not slavery were the cause of secession, that referred to Confederate soldiers as traitors, that denigrated slaveholders, that described the war as a rebellion, or that celebrated Abraham Lincoln and denigrated Jefferson Davis. Elements of the Lost Cause narrative continued to be represented in American popular culture and in educational materials well into the next century (Thompson 2013a, 2013b; Greenlee 2019; Coleman 2017). Indeed, by 1940 the Lost Cause narrative dominated textbooks throughout the U.S. (Ford 2017).
If educational materials have been an important means of buttressing the Lost Cause mythology, museums have created an additional means of narrating Lost Cause through the selection and arrangement of display objects and presentations that thematize and interpret their meaning (Luke 2002). Memorial museums are scattered around the nation, although predominantly in former Confederate states: South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum (South Carolina), Corydon’s Civil War Museum (Indiana), Confederate Memorial Hall Museum (Louisiana), General Longstreet Headquarters Museum (Tennessee), Confederate Memorial Museum (Texas). Virginia has been a center of museum commemoration: Lee Chapel Museum (Washington and Lee University), VMI Museum (Virginia Military Institute), Old Court House Civil War Museum (Winchester), Warren Rifles Confederate Museum (Front Royal) (Wilson 2009).
The foremost museum, of course, has been the Richmond museum that originated as the Confederate Museum, later became the Museum of the Confederacy, and ultimately the American Civil War Museum. (Coski 2021; Davenport 2019). As Davenport reports, the early museum initially was closely linked to Lost Cause:
Opened as the Confederate Museum in 1896, what later became the Museum of the Confederacy emerged directly from the Lost Cause propaganda machine, which itself had largely been steered from Richmond. Lost Cause organizations, like the all-female Confederate Memorial Literary Society, which funded and operated the Confederate Museum, campaigned to shift public opinion to a more sympathetic, pro-Confederate understanding of the South’s “true” reasons for fighting the Civil War.
The museum was located in the former Confederate White House. As Coski (2021) described the museum:
The museum assigned rooms to each of the eleven Confederate states, along with Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland; the center parlor of the house was designated the “Solid South Room” and displayed the Great Seal of the Confederate States of America and other artworks and artifacts deemed important to the entire Confederacy.
The museum subsequently underwent a rather dramatic transformation (See, Issues/Challenges).
A variety of other forms of memorialization were also developed that promoted Lost Cause mythology. After the war ended, special cemeteries were created for the fallen (Confederated Southern Memorial Association), veterans of the war organized voluntary associations (Confederate Veterans, United Sons of Confederate Veterans). Veterans groups sponsored educational activities and participated in memorial activities and battlefield re-enactments. Most Confederate military personnel were granted amnesty following the war. Confederate generals were among them. By 1917, U.S. Army policy stipulated that southern military bases could be named for Confederate officers. Nine U.S. army bases ultimately were so named.
Confederate cemeteries were one means of creating sacred space for fallen soldiers (Confederated Southern Memorial Association). Women’s groups, such as the Daughters of the Confederacy, which was headquartered in Richmond, became a major organizer of commemorative groups (Janney 2008; Cox 2003). For example, Mary Dunbar Williams of Winchester, Virginia was particularly active in this mission and went on to lead cemetery memorialization campaigns across southern states. New publications (Southern Historical Society Papers, The Confederate Veteran) were established. Confederate veterans formed post-war associations (United Confederate Veterans, United Sons of Confederate Veterans). Soldiers’ aid organizations transformed into commemorative groups. Confederate cemeteries and memorial days for fallen soldiers were created (Confederated Southern Memorial Association). Confederate veterans held meetings, participated in dedication of monuments, and organized battle re-enactments.
Lost Cause was even thematized sporting events (Howard 2017). Gudmestad (1998) observes that in Richmond:
In many ways, the Richmond Virginia baseball team became representative of the city during the first half of the 1880s. Because many of the men who formed the Virginia Base-Ball Association had fought in the Civil War, the club served as a tangible link to the conflict, not yet two decades distant. Baseball in the former capital of the Confederacy fit neatly with romantic conceptions of war that began to emerge with the mythology of the Lost Cause. Those who directed the club used the game to promote the veneration of the Confederacy, while the team itself became a visible reminder of the recent struggle.
Later, the Blue-Gray football classic matched college seniors from former Confederate states against northern states. It was established in 1939 and was played annually through 2001, with a few minor exceptions. It was not desegregated until 1963.
Richmond, Virginia was a center of organization and activity for many of the Lost Cause movement groups. The White House of the Confederacy, Museum of the Confederacy, Confederate Memorial Chapel, headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (the Cathedral of the Confederacy) and Hollywood Cemetery were among the organizations located there. There is a KKK klavern just outside of Richmond in Powhatan County.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
The Lost Cause movement grew and became highly influential in establishing some components of its mission over the century following the end of the Civil War. Two of the movement’s most successful initiatives were memorialization and education. These were public matters as memorial monuments often were placed in public spaces and Lost Cause was included in textbooks used in public schools. The movement began experiencing setbacks more frequently after 2000 and major reversals after 2010. The pace increased of the removal of Confederacy-themed interior décor and renaming of public and private buildings, public streets, statues and monuments on public and private land, and public libraries (Anderson and Svrluga 2021). Because Virginia, and Richmond in particular, was a center of Lost Cause organization and activity, the growing opposition to Lost Cause was particularly visible there.
The most significant museum promoting the Lost Cause was The Confederate Museum. The museum changed its name to the Museum of the Confederacy in 1970 to adopt a more conventional museum 
posture as it began to present a more “inclusive” set of exhibitions and added permanent exhibitions focused on the exploitation and abuses associated with slavery (Brundage 2005:298-99). An even more dramatic change occurred in 2013 when The American Civil War Museum [Image at right] was formed as the product of a merger between the American Civil War Center and the Museum of the Confederacy. The American Civil War Center incorporated three sites: The White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, the American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, and the American Civil War Museum at Appomattox. The earlier Lost Cause orientation of the museum was criticized both by the new museum itself but also in articles published in the prestigious Smithsonian Museum’s periodical (Davenport 2019; Palmer and Wessler 2018). Other museums that challenge Lost Cause mythology had also been established in recent years, most notably The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Established in 2018, the museum, along with its counterpart National Memorial for Peach and Justice, is devoted specifically an historical portrayal of lynching (McFadden 2019).
The Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain in Georgia went into decline after being a major tourist site since its origin. The corporation operating the site for the State of Georgia ended its contract after suffering financial losses in 2017 and 2018, with continuing controversy being one of the reasons for their action. In 2017, the Ku Klux Klan applied for a permit to hold a gathering at the site but was denied. The at the time Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams made Stone Mountain a campaign issue, referring to the sculpture as a “blight upon our state (Fausset 2018). In 2020, over 100 protestors gathered at Stone Mountain to call for removal of the carving. A month later a white nationalist group attempted to organize a gathering, which led to the park being temporarily closed. The site subsequently received little interest from other potential management firms, and the future of the site remained opaque after 2022 (Fausset 2018; Shah 2018; King and Buchanan 2020).
The evolution of memorialization along Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue is another instructive example of Lost Cause decline (One Monument Avenue 2022).
Monument Ave Looking back over the past 50 years, we can see even more clearly how the Lost Cause narrative began to unravel. By the end of the 1970s, changes to the racial profile of local and state governments, especially in the South, allowed African Americans to shape how their communities commemorated the past. New monuments rose up and key public sites were renamed. Historic places such as Colonial Williamsburg began to address some of the more challenging aspects of their pasts, such as slave auctions.
In 1965, the City Planning Commission in Richmond, Virginia issued a report in which it referred to the five existing monuments along Monument Avenue as “a bridge from the past into the present” and proposed the addition of seven more statues in various locations (Black and Varley 2003). The first significant change in the set of monuments along the avenue occurred in 1996 with the dedication of the Arthur Ashe monument. The situation had changed dramatically by 2010. In that year Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell issued a proclamation that the month of April would be Confederate History Month. There was backlash and McDonnell almost immediately withdrew the proclamation and announced that April would be celebrated as Civil War History Month.
The broader Confederate memorial removal movement gained momentum after 2010, particularly as a response to the deaths of African Americans at the hands of whites. In 2012, seventeen year-old African American Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in Florida. Zimmerman was subsequently acquitted of criminal charges. In 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement emerged, with Trayvon 
Martin’s death as a major impetus. Martin’s death was followed by the deaths of African Americans Eric Garner and Michael Brown Jr. in encounters with police the following year. 2015 was a flashpoint year as white teenager Dyllan Roof killed nine African-American parishioners during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Photographs later emerged of Roof, who was convicted of the crimes, carrying a Confederate flag. [Image at right]. The monument removal campaign gained further momentum in 2017 when a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville motivated by the planned removal of the Robert E. Lee monument from a public park turned violent, killing one and injuring nineteen. All of the monuments, except the Lee memorial, along Richmond’s Monument Avenue were removed in 2020. Two additional, significant successes in removal campaign in Virginia were the removal of the Robert 
E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia in July 2021 and a similar removal in Richmond, Virginia [Image at right] in December of that year.
The movement to eliminate the display of Confederate symbols accelerated in 2020 following the murder of forty six year-old George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin. Over 160 Confederate Symbols of all kinds were removed, renamed or relocated in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd that year. Virginia removed the largest number, followed by North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama. The total number of removals was greater than the four previous years combined. The U.S. military has recommended the renaming of eight military bases currently honoring Confederate military leaders by 2023. The replacement names would be more contemporary and diverse than the earlier names (Martinez and Khan 2022). The remarkable pace of memorialization removal notwithstanding, many Confederate symbols remain in place and a number of states have taken steps to protect them against local removal actions (McGreevy 2021; Anderson and Svrluga 2021; Kennicott 2022). Eight busts of Confederate leaders, with two busts being selected by each state, remain in place in the U.S. Capitol.
A number of religious denominations have responded to their own histories of direct support for Lost Cause mythology or their implication in slavery. The Episcopal Church has been the most highly visible in this campaign as it established the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, which was popularly referred to as the “Cathedral of the Confederacy.” In 2006, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church issued a resolution requesting that denominational churches, which are predominantly white, undertake studies of how they benefited from the practice of slavery. The Episcopal Church followed this up in 2018 with a three-year audit of church leadership. In part the audit proposal stated that
the church’s leadership, like its membership, is overwhelmingly white, and it found that white leaders and leaders of and leaders of color tend to perceive discrimination differently. People of color said they have often felt marginalized – despite the church’s professed commitment to racial reconciliation. White Episcopalians, on the other hand, frequently weren’t aware of how race has shaped their lives and their church (Paulsen 2021).
Predominantly white denominations in several states followed suit, including the Presbyterian Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Both passed resolutions (in 2004 and 2019, respectively) to study the denominations’ role in slavery and have begun the process of determining how to make reparations.
Among Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church has had the highest profile on what the church termed “reconciliation” efforts. In 2006, the General Convention requested that local dioceses study how they profited from slavery, and dioceses in several states responded. The Church followed up in 2018 with a three-year audit of church leadership. In part the audit proposal stated that
the church’s leadership, like its membership, is overwhelmingly white, and it found that white leaders and leaders of and leaders of color tend to perceive discrimination differently. People of color said they have often felt marginalized – despite the church’s professed commitment to racial reconciliation. White Episcopalians, on the other hand, frequently weren’t aware of how race has shaped their lives and their church (Paulsen 2021).
Three years later the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, announced a “churchwide racial truth and reconciliation effort,” noting that “Many congregations and schools and seminaries have done this – not all, but many have (Millard 2021). He went on to state that
The proposal will include ways to “tell the truth about our collective racial and ethnic history and present realities, to reckon with our church’s historic and current complicity with racial injustice, make commitments to right old wrongs and repair breaches and discern a vision for healing and reconciliation,” Curry said. To do that, the group will conduct a review of past and present truth and reconciliation processes within The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and in the countries where those churches are present, such as South Africa, Rwanda and New Zealand.
In the state of New York, the Episcopal Bishop, Andrew M.L. Dietsche, addressed the clergy in 2019 and stated that “The Diocese of New York played a significant, and genuinely evil, part in American slavery,” …. “We must make, where we can, repair.” In the address he reminded the audience that churches had owned slaves and that abolitionist Sojourner Truth had been a slave in the diocese. Following his address, a reparations fund was established for the “Year of Reparation” (Moscufo 2022).
A most instructive case of confronting Lost Cause was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, [Image at right] as it had been popularly known as the Cathedral of the Confederacy and openly supported Lost Cause during and following the Civil War. St. Paul’s continued to exhibit various forms of Confederate memorialization in its sanctuary but, as Richmond changed demographically and the church congregation changed, the church had already become a progressive Episcopal church by the mid-2010s. The church sponsored a variety of projects, including funding for public health, educational, and fair housing projects (St. Paul’s n.d.).
The watershed moment for the denomination as a whole and for St. Paul’s specifically came in 2015 in the wake of the murder by white nationalist Dylann Roof of nine African-American parishioners during a Bible study at A.M.E Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In that year the Washington National Cathedral, which is Episcopal, announced that it was removing two Confederate battle flags from windows honoring Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. St. Paul’s removed battle flags and Confederate embroidered kneels; it also retired its coat of arms.
St. Paul’s Church announced the History and Reconciliation Initiative in 2015 following the Dylann Roof murders (St. Paul’s n.d.):
We are part of a living and evolving history. Our story began in 1844 as the United States’ economic and political structures fully embraced racial slavery. The resources that made this church possible came directly from the profits of factories and businesses, built on the backs of enslaved African American people. During those years, many white Protestants sought to justify slavery as God’s plan. St. Paul’s members also supported, along with most proslavery Protestants, a theology that insisted that God ordained racial inequality and that, as white people, they had a responsibility to govern black people. St. Paul’s became inextricably entwined with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was the home church to Confederate officials and officers and the scene of dramatic events at the end of the conflict. In the aftermath of the Civil War, St. Paul’s officially recognized its connections to Robert E. Lee, who worshipped here, and Jefferson Davis, who was baptized as a member of the parish, by marking their pews and installing windows in their honor.
The church began removing Confederate memorials in 2015. Underscoring the complexity of fully reversing its history with regard to race, the Truth and Reconciliation Initiative took five years to reach a point of an initial milestone and a plan for future continuation of the project, with the presentation of its project report, Blindspots.
While there has been a trend toward removal of Lost Cause perspectives on the Civil War in public school textbooks, the skirmish over content on that subject (as well as a number of others) has continued as decisions are typically made by state school boards (Thevnot 2015). In Texas, opposition to earlier renderings of history produced organized opposition, with the result that in 2018
…the Texas state school board decided that public school curricula should be changed to emphasize slavery as a primary cause of the Civil War, when it previously prioritized sectionalism and states rights; those changes are scheduled to go in effect this school year for middle and high school students (Greenlee 2019).
In Florida, by contrast, Governor Ron DeSantis developed a Civics Literacy Initiative that limited what content public schools can teach in the areas of race, gender identity, including Civil War history. For example, the destructive effects of slavery are modulated. The continuing tensions dividing the U.S. population is indicated in the governor’s portrayal (Ceballos and Brugal 2022):
They are trying to establish a religion of their own. This woke ideology functions as a religion, obviously it is not the Judeo-Christian tradition, but they want that to be effectively the governing faith of our country.
Nationally, at least thirty-sex states, including all of the secessionist states, have taken steps to limit teaching material related to race and racism. By contrast, only seventeen states have expanded teaching material in these areas (Leonard 2022).
The trend toward marginalization of Civil War era Lost Cause mythology and material representations notwithstanding, there are new forms of resistance that echo the same underlying cultural values (Schneider 2022). The states on either side of the most contentious social/political issues (gun ownership, abortion regulations, racism, electoral eligibility) in the U.S. often roughly coincide with the set of states that did and did not secede from the Union. For example, the strong and growing opposition to Critical Race Theory recalls the denial of a racist social structure in the Confederate states. The endorsement of Replacement Theory tracks to the same sense of displacement created by the freeing of slaves, the revocation of racial segregation statutes, and the increasing diversity of the American population.
The debate over abortion has often been couched in terms of states rights as opposed to nationally protected individual rights of all citizens. While the Ku Klux Klan is no longer the imposing force that it once was, it was visible at the Charlottesville rally and at Stone Mountain and is a close relative of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Stolen election claims resemble the Lost Cause claims of the war that was not lost. Confederate symbolism in public places may be diminished, but the Confederate flag was a visible presence at the U.S. Capitol insurrection. [Image at right] And Trumpism in its most generic form incorporates the kind of white nationalism that is compatible with Lost Cause. Since the forces on one side of this now great divide seek to re-establish a world that never was and the forces on the other side seek to build a global social order that remains emergent, it is likely that intense polarization of the kind witnessed during the Civil War will remain a persistent force in unfolding American history.
IMAGES
Image #1: Flag of the Confederate States of America.
Image #2: The burned over district in Richmond, Virginia following the 1865 fire.
Image #3: The Lost Cause authored by Edward Pollard in 1896.
Image #4: The carving of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson on Stone Mountain.
Image #5: Statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.
Image #6: Dyllan Roof holding a Confederate flag.
Image #7: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Image #8: The removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue from its pinth on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.
Image #9: An insurrectionist in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 carrying a Confederate flag.
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Publication Date:
7 July 2022
NEW WORLD TIMELINE
1964: Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1994: Jspeff Bezos founded Amazon, initially as an online bookstore.
2000: Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, a company to develop spaceflight technologies.
2016: The Amazon corporation announced it was developing New World, a massively multiplayer online game set in a “cursed” land, along with two small-team combat online games named Breakaway and Crucible.
2018: Breakaway was cancelled before completion.
2020: Crucible was launched and then rather quickly cancelled.
2021 (September 28): New World launched worldwide, with huge publicity and gaining far more than 1,000,000 paid players.
2022 (February 11): Amazon published Lost Ark, an adapted version of a 2019 Korean game.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
The New World massively multiplayer online (MMO) game depicts colonization of a mythical America four hundred years ago, in which the fictional Covenant religion plays a significant role. This work of dramatic art may represent what the massive corporation founded by ideologue Jeff Bezos hopes our real America is becoming: A technocratic civilization dominated by economics in which religion still exists but has become marginalized, rather like just one more subset of customers buying a narrow genre of books being sold by Amazon. Or, as Carolyn Chen (2022) reports in her study of Silicon Valley high-tech companies, a new form of religion may be emerging from secular companies, often drawing upon Buddhist traditions of meditation or mindfulness. Founded far north of Silicon Valley, near Seattle, we may imagine Amazon was not named after a vast river, as usually reported, but after the aggressive daughters of war god Ares and the sacred nymph Harmonia, called Amazons in Greek myth.
New World illustrates the possible future High Secularism, in which religion has no special public honor at all, while a few religious minorities struggle for power against other factions that totally lack any faith in supernatural beings. Magic seems to be real in New World, but unconnected to religion, and thus merely a form of technology in a virtual world dominated by invisible computer algorithms. Over the past quarter century, many MMOs have blended imaginary religions into their virtual cultures (Bainbridge 2013), and New World serves as a capstone beyond which fictional faith may be difficult.
Jeff Bezos has been described as a revolutionary (Khan 2017; Williams 2020; O’Connell 2021), and his radical values may have shaped the virtual culture, even as his ownership of the Washington Post newspaper may have influenced politics. To be sure, Amazon’s main goal with New World was to become a dominant profiteer in the computer game business, and we have very little information about the thinking of the game designers and the extent to which Bezos or his assistants participated in the development (Royce 2016). Yet New World was clearly intended to revolutionize massively multiplayer games, and the peak number of players online at the same moment in its first week was a spectacular 913,027, according to the Steam online store that sold copies for forty dollars each.
Each avatar of a player was a colonist invading Aeternum Island, which represented America, but the avatars were not specifically European, nor were the indigenous populations “American Indian.” This was part of the revolutionary character of New World within the wide gaming culture that often assigned avatars to races, like the Elves, Dwarves and Humans in both World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. In New World, the avatar that represents a player is not created within a specific racial or ethnic group, nor locked within a specific functional class. Rather, each avatar begins simply as an individual person, who later voluntarily acquires roles in the economic system and usually joins one of three directly competing player factions, Marauders, Syndicate, or the cultic Covenant. Beginning factionless, a player’s avatar is encouraged to join one of the factions after a few hours of gaining experience, but is not required to do so.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
All three player factions often use magic, explore the same mysterious territories, and undertake nearly identical missions. Each is identified by its ideology, as described on the special wiki, newworld.fandom.com:
Marauders: “a ruthless military force bent on establishing a free nation where anyone with the strength to do so can prosper and profit.”
Syndicate: “a secretive organization of boundless guile and intellect in search of forbidden knowledge to usher in a new age of enlightenment.”
Covenant: “a fanatical order that has charged itself with cleansing the land of heretics and defilers so that its true holy nature can flourish and justice can be restored.”
Their three ideologies are military, academic, and religious, but all very selfish and probably deceptive. There is no hint of altruism, although there is a mention of enlightenment. The Covenant may be treated as sacred by its me
mbers, but it does not promote ethical values. Some towns have churches in which leaders of the Covenant give missions, but God seems to be absent. [Image at right] Thus, at least as predicted in New World, the High Secularism perspective on religion is that its faith is merely self-serving rhetoric, on the same level as competing factions that use non-religious rhetoric. The sum of the three factions may reflect the values of Amazon and Bezos, which could be described as competitive, intellectual and spiritual.
New World also includes four main factions of non-player characters, against whom the players fight, each of which has supernatural qualities. Most prominent are the aggressive Corrupted who occasionally attack towns held by one or another of the player factions. Comparable to zombies, many of them are dead colonists brought back to life by an evil spirit, violent and aggressive. The other three non-player factions are more passive, defending their own territories against the players, described as follows in the special wiki:
Lost: “soulless wretches, the ghouls of New World. The Lost are humanoids or creatures who have eternal life but without a soul. They’re stuck in a half-death state because they died in a horrific way or sailors who have crash landed on the island.”
Ancients: “previous residents of Aeternum, depicted in the large, four-armed statues with split heads in Ancient Ruins. They can no longer be found in the world, but they created the Ancient Guardians that serve as protectors of the ruins.”
Angry Earth: “the pure, natural power of the island in the New World fighting back against the people who’ve come to corrupt it.”
Of these, the Ancients and the Angry Earth have strong religious qualities, as well as being the indigenous populations. Statues of deities can be found in the ruins of the Ancients, a civilization that fell long before the new colonists arrived, apparently because the Ancients misused a magical mineral named “azoth.” Player avatars gain supplies of azoth, and one prominent use is energizing a spirit shrine at one location in order to teleport magically to a distant shrine. Much of the lore of New World is communicated to players through fragments of writings like scraps of parchment, found across a local territory. For example, one of the historical field notes of non-player character William Heron, titled “Center of the Stars,” can be found in Shattered Obelisk of the Ancients, but it also suggests the meaning of Angry Earth:
We all know that the earth is the center of the planets and universe, and it is only fitting that the jewel of our planetary system is the one with such a fantastical island like Aeternum on it. If our planet is the center of the heavens then Aeternum must be the center of the planet, located so closely to the equator and imbued with power as it is. Azoth, the substance found here and nowhere else, is further proof that is the primordial Eden of which the scriptures spoke, the place from which all life sprang. I am honored and humbled to be standing at the center of everything, and must know what the Ancients thought of this phenomenon.
The fragments of written lore found across the landscape of Aeternum remind one of the books for sale at Amazon, which serves as an archive of all human culture. Once upon a time, people would obtain books at local shrines called bookstores, often receiving guidance from their clergy, the booksellers. The scriptures available in a traditional bookstore were quite limited, which is not the case for Amazon, where the sacred role of booksellers was taken over by computers. Thus New World is an expression of Amazon’s complex culture, in which many human traditions are housed but perhaps also diminished.
RITUALS/PRACTICES
Each of the three player factions is run by a set of non-player characters, including several that give out sacred quests, missions that the player’s avatar must complete to earn material rewards and improved reputation with the faction. These missions are of two 
kinds: (1) PvE or Player versus Environment that may merely require the player to catch some fish, could require stealing relics from a nearby Ancients shrine, or looting goods from a farm tended by the Lost. [Image at right] (2) PvP or Player versus Player that may involve directly fighting players who belong to one of the other two factions.
The status structures of the three player factions are identical, but use different terminology and have special initiation rituals for their status levels. For example, upon joining the Covenant, a player gains “initiate” status, while the beginner term is “soldier” in the Marauders, and “adept” in the Syndicate. It is worth noting that some real-world religious movements have systems of rank for all their members, not just for clergy, inspired by the hierarchies in the fraternal organizations that were influential in society long ago, and perhaps by the status ranks in academia, from freshman to full professor (Jolicoeur and Knowles 1978; Bainbridge 1985). However, the organizational structure of player groups in New World is really not based upon this status symbolism. The benefit of being at a higher level is that a player may buy increasingly more effective weapons, armor, and other goods from non-player faction vendors, using virtual currency that can be earned in-game at great effort or purchased for real-world money. Indeed, many of the design aspects of New World are intended to earn for Amazon far more than the initial forty dollar cost.
After earning 3,000 reputation points in the Covenant, players may accept a mission called Trial of the Templar for their avatars. This quest seeks to find a missing initiate named Bremen Luca, and further information must be obtained at the church in the town of Brightwood, from non-player Covenant templar Beatris Roose. She demands: “Find the Apostate and bring him back here. We will purge these ideas from his mind, one way or another.” What ideas exactly? In a ruined village the avatar finds a page titled “A Question of Faith,” torn from the personal journal of Bremen Luca:
The Spark… perhaps we are not worthy of it, after all. I view the Lost, as they go about their days in perfect harmony… no concerns, no worries, no need for conflict or violence save for those that wish to do them harm. Is this what we are meant to learn from Aeternum? To become Lost is the way to find the true path? I shall meditate on this, and seek guidance.
The Spark is the nearest thing to a god which the Covenant recognizes, yet it is impersonal. [Image at right] Indeed, a spark is electronic, like the basis of computers, and may represent the souls of leaders in the Covenant, all of which are non-player characters, and thus unhuman, operated by simple artificial intelligence. Here is their godless theology, as summarized in a Covenant pamphlet titled “Keep Faith:”
Shall we rejoice? Humankind’s oldest enemy is gone: Death is dead. We have reached the promised land… yet there are some who call it a false promise. ‘This land seeks our ruin’, they cry, but even more dangerous are the enemies within: moral weakness blinds us to the truth. Those who live in the dark can never recognize Paradise. But where eyes fail, faith sees. The Covenant carries the Spark. In our time of need, the Spark carries us. Its clarity is our greatest gift. We bring the light of the Spark to the darkest corners. We keep it shining, at any cost, against any foe. And one day, it will shine bright enough to reveal Paradise itself.
After dealing with the apostate, Bremen Luca, an avatar is elevated to Templar rank in the Covenant, and can begin earning higher reputation to undertake additional initiation quests to rise upward: “excubitor” then “lumen” then “adjudicator.” In this context, the phrase “false promise” has many meanings. The trial to become an excubitor requires invading three Lost communities and killing ten innocent ghouls in each of them. The trial to become lumen is strangely distorted, placing the avatar under the command of Livia Luca, mother of the apostate, perhaps continuing to hold her position in the Covenant because of her remote location in the snowy north. She orders the avatar to kill many corrupted templars to collect their prayer beads, as evidence that a high official of the Covenant, adjudicator Zuzanna Maras, was really responsible for the unnecessary execution of her beloved son and many other evil deeds. The final trial quest is assigned by Zuzanna Maras herself, obviously to kill Livia Luca. Once becoming adjudicators themselves, the player avatars do not seem to get a quest to gather evidence about who was really evil, Livia Luca or Zuzanna Maras, but that would require the assumption that good and evil are valid opposites in New World.
A very different kind of quasi-religious ritual, experienced equally by the three player factions, is attacks on towns and other locations by the Corrupted, which are typically announced ahead of time so players can sign up to be defenders and schedule their active hours. On March 19, 2020, a year and a half before the actual launch, Amazon posted on its newworld.com website a prophecy, titled “March to Battle: Corrupted Breaches:”
Aeternum is a land of immense beauty and endless wonder that The Corrupted seek to stain and dominate with their vile presence. Taking what was once serene and peaceful and twisting it to their will. They do this by ripping open the ground and flooding the area with corrupted creatures and structures. The very air turns to a thick black smoke and all is illuminated by an evil red glow, pulsating with an unearthly light. These are known as Corrupted Breaches. As you establish a safe haven in a Settlement or Fort, the Corrupted ake notice. Corrupted Breaches will begin to emerge in your territory, making travel and resource gathering more difficult the longer these Breaches go unaddressed. Guarding these Breaches are the Zuzana Acolytes of Corruption. Like their lesser brethren the Cultists, they channel the dark, forbidden forces of Corruption to summon forth and sustain the dread portals and monoliths that form the heart of Corrupted Breaches.
Factional trials are like initiation rituals for individuals, although teams of players in one faction may complete them together if they prefer, which can be advantageous for the difficult killing of Livia Luca. Battles against the Corrupted often involve temporarily assembled teams, and battles between avatars in different factions must usually be pre-arranged and held in special battlefields. In both cases, religious ritual is violent, rather like the proverbial human sacrifice of so-called primitive tribes. The other key factor in more secular social organization is economic commerce.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
As is the case for other popular massively multiplayer online games, many versions of New World exist (literally called “worlds”) comparable to separate Internet servers, each capable of supporting about 2,000 players simultaneously. Globally, they are divided into five geographic regions: North America East, North America West, Brazil, Europe, and Australia. Each avatar is registered to one of these worlds, and opportunities to move from one to another are severely limited. The territories of the worlds are identical, most prominently holding eleven towns, each dominating a region of the island, plus some northern territories intended for highly experienced avatars.
Towns are centers for production, commerce, and mission recruitment, operated by non-player avatars who are recent colonists but do not belong to a faction. As players gain experience, wealth as measured by a virtual currency, and for social status, they can form durable voluntary groups, called “companies.” This term is standard in military social structures as well as commercial business, and the companies of New World serve both functions. Notably, a prosperous company can buy a town and collect taxes in order to pay the costs of governing as well as to gain personal profit. Each company belongs to one of the three player factions, and may form an alliance with other companies of the same faction to take over other regions either financially or violently.
Individual avatars of one faction are usually greeted peacefully in towns dominated by other factions. One reason is that many avatars, but by no means all, rent homes from the town government, and decorate them with artifacts and trophies for personal status display, major components of the town’s economy. Game journalist Chris Neal (2022) reported the results of a contest to identify the three most beautiful homes, and other players posted pictures and descriptions of their own: “I built a small pharmacy in Cutlass. On the second floor is a study room with a small hidden entrance to an even smaller bedroom 😀 and yes: I like Plants.” “I built a tree house in the back yard of my Monarch’s Bluff abode. It’s a nice place to nap in the sun. Drop by for a visit if you want to try it out.” “My Everfall home features a play style of vibrant colours. Here I walk you through a red Chinese-theme front yard into the greens from fine jade furniture as well as a purplish romantic section away from Aeternum’s corruption.” “My shrine and prayer room in Ebonscale.”
Each well-functioning town has a variety of facilities such as a metal forge, essential for manufacture of weapons and heavy armor, but also for components of the furniture an avatar can place in a rented home, which also requires wooden components from a sawmill and workshop. The town government may decide to upgrade the forge, for production of higher-quality output, and finance this by posting some quests on the Town Project Board. This raises the question of whether player companies are at all democratic, or give huge wealth and power to their top executives, which Amazon did as a company in our real world. Using the standard gamer term “guild” for player group, rather than “company.” Chris Neal (2021) offered this example, expanding upon a debate in the Reddit online forums, in which OP stands for the “original poster” who in this case expressed outrage over what happened:
“The leader of a Covenant guild by the name of Jade reportedly took several steps to make the faction lose the territory of Mourningdale, including replacing the territory’s previous tier three siege equipment with nothing but horns, encouraging participants and members of his guild to go into the war without armor, and ignoring a full standby list of level 60 players who came to defend the territory, letting low level characters into the war instead. Several replies to the OP corroborate the events, with one Redditor sharing personal accounts of conversations with Jade and another poster providing a video of the war. Why do all of this? Because evidently Jade was going to transfer servers and so he wanted to burn the Covenant down with him.”
The spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, was apparently named in a metaphor for our own planet, which is blue because of its vast oceans, and the origin of humans who wish to migrate to new worlds. New World may therefore be a computer simulation of our own world in the context of High Secularism. Gods have vanished, so “good” is defined as whatever powerful people desire. Religion has been transformed in two ways. Magic, including the extreme spell conferring immortality, has separated from religion and combined with technocracy. The physics symbolism of the Spark has allowed a religious movement to consolidate, calling itself the Covenant, but indistinguishable in function from social movements having military or academic ideologies.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
Like Amazon itself, New World placed a heavy emphasis on management of a complex economy via Internet-connected 
computers. Every town had a trading post where avatars could place items for sale, that they had either gathered or produced, and other avatars could buy them. [Image at right] The market prices were quite dynamic, and the economic system had depth, for example the connection between the price for a particular kind of item and the prices for the raw materials needed to make it. A versatile text chat communication system allowed direct trading of items and a diversity of other actions. Soon after launch, flaws in the system were exploited by players who might be called “hackers,” leading to several periods in which major parts of the economic system were shut down until repairs could be completed (Marshall 2021; Orland 2021; Yang 2021; Gonzalez 2022).
Very early, advanced features of the text chat built into the game’s user interface were removed, because some players used them to disrupt the performance of other player’s computers. One widely publicized hack was rendering one’s avatar nearly invulnerable by constantly moving the display image around on the computer’s screen. Then a whole series of “duping” hacks were discovered by clever players. That means duplicating virtual money or valuable items at no cost, typically by moving them from one storage location or player to another in a way that interfered with the complex transfer algorithm. Simply put: Moving an item from box A to box B goes in two steps, adding to B and subtracting from A, but interruption of the process in the middle can wind up with two copies of the item, one in each box. Other problems arose in some of the processes by which players used virtual resources to manufacture products.
By mid-November 2021, the accounts of over 1,200 players apparently guilty of duping were cancelled (Stanton 2021). Rather chaotically, duplicated or falsely enhanced items were erased from other players’ inventories. In online forums, players complained they had been punished but were innocent. It was possible that players might benefit from a bug in the software without being aware of its nature and not intending to violate the rules. This whole situation raises a philosophical issue: If a culture is unethical in ways that benefit it, how can it claim the behavior that harms it is unethical? If members of the Covenant are serene about performing dozens of quests to steal from the Lost, how can they argue that stealing from members of the Covenant is criminal?
Given the heavy publicity that drew many players into New World when it launched, it was not surprising that the peak number of simultaneous players reported by Steam for each month declined: October = 913,027, November = 357,188, December = 145,038, January = 117,042, February = 67,943. By early 2022, any really active player would have been able to explore all of Aeternum and experience many special events and PvP battles. As with real-world religious movements, developing social bonds with other players might prevent defection to some other virtual world, but New World’s event recruitment system and the heavily economic aspects of companies may have discouraged such bonds from forming with many avatars.
Then on February 11, 2022, Amazon published another violent multi-player online game, Lost Ark, based on an apparently religious story described thus on its playlostark.com website: “The god Regulus brings order and light to balance the darkness of chaos and creates worlds to embody each: Arkesia and Petrania. The order of the light is powered by the Ark, split seven ways for seven gods and spread across Arkesia. 
When the two worlds nearly destroy each other the Guardians are created to restore peace.” [Image at right] But Amazon had not created Lost Ark, merely publishing a westernized version of a Korean game three years after its original launch, and polytheistic lore is standard in Korean games. Steam reported that at launch New Ark leapt to a maximum current players of 1,324,761. In March the maximum player count for New World dropped to 34,098, while New Ark was at 907,696.
We do not currently have good data on the dollar earnings of New World, its total number of avatars, or the hours invested by players. We may estimate that 1,000,000 avatars reached the initial experience cap of sixty, which required investment of about 100 hours of player time. So even if New World dies quickly, its human significance is great, comparable to many new religious movements in the real world, few of which reach 100,000,000 hours of member involvement. There is certainly room to debate whether High Secularism is a valid concept, or Amazon represents it properly. Such questions may not be fully answered for a century, yet examination of a diversity of examples like Amazon’s New World may help us understand the future that approaches.
IMAGES
Image #1: A church of the Covenant; note that worship services are never held here, but the priestess standing on the box in front of the banner of the Spark offers quests to members.
Image #2: A colonist, confronting one of the Lost who seeks to defend his farm from invaders.
Image #3: A non-player evangelist for the Covenant proclaiming the sacred Spark to several avatars of players.
Image #4: Two high-level player avatars who belong to the Covenant, making products at a work bench primarily for sale and increasing their manufacturing skills.
Image #5: A member of the Syndicate battling a Guardian of the Ancients, seeing to gain entrance to sacred ruins that contained valuable artifacts.
REFERENCES
Bainbridge, William Sims. 2013. eGods: Faith Versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bainbridge, William Sims. 1985. “Cultural Genetics.” Pp. 157-98 in Religious Movements, edited by Rodney Stark. New York: Paragon.
Chen, Carolyn. 2022. Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Gonzalez, Christina. 2022. “New World Bans Over 500 Players and Removes Substantial Number of Items Duped in Glitch.” Accessed from https://www.mmorpg.com/news/new-world-bans-over-500-players-and-removes-substantial-number-of-items-duped-in-glitch on 4 June 2022.
Jolicoeur, Pamela M., and Louis L. Knowles. 1978. “Fraternal Associations and Civil Religion: Scottish Rite Freemasonry.” Review of Religious Research 20:3-22.
Khan, Lina M. 2017. “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” The Yale Law Journal 126:710-805.
Marshall, Cass. 2021. “Players Are Gleefully Breaking New World with Gold Duping, Chat Exploits.” Accessed from https://www.polygon.com/22760062/new-world-post-launch-bugs-exploits-chat-gold-duping on 4 June 2022.
Neal, Chris. 2021. “New World’s Faction Pvp Is Rife with Guild Drama over ‘Throwing’.” Accessed from https://massivelyop.com/2021/10/21/new-worlds-faction-pvp-is-rife-with-guild-drama-over-throwing on 4 June 2022.
Neal, Chris. 2022. “Look at the Cool Things New World Players Are Doing with Their In-Game Houses.” Accessed from https://massivelyop.com/2022/05/03/look-at-the-cool-things-new-world-players-are-doing-with-their-in-game-houses on 4 June 2022.
O’Connell, Mark. 2021. “‘A Managerial Mephistopheles’: Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos.” Accessed from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/03/jeff-bezos-and-the-world-amazon-made on 4 June 2022.
Orland, Kyle. 2021. “New World Disables Wealth Transfers as Item Dupes Ruin In-Game Economy Second Shutdown this Month Has Players Despairing for the State of the Young MMO.” Accessed from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/new-world-shuts-its-economy-again-amid-widespread-item-duplication-glitch on 4 June 2022.
Royce, Bree. 2016. “So One Of Amazon’s New Games Is an MMORPG Sandbox, and It’s Called New World. ” Accessed from https://massivelyop.com/2016/09/29/so-one-of-amazons-new-games-is-an-mmorpg-sandbox-and-its-called-new-world on 4 June 2022.
Stanton, Rich. 2021. “New World Permabans Over 1200 Accounts for Duping Exploits.” Accessed from https://www.pcgamer.com/new-world-permabans-over-1200-accounts-for-duping-exploits on 4 June 2022.
Williams, Dana M. 2020. “Power Accrues to the Powerful: Amazon’s Market Share, Customer
Surveillance, and Internet Dominance.” Pp. 35-49 in The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy, edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese. London: Pluto Press.
Yang, George. 2021. “New World Is Having a Problem With Gold Duplication – Again.” Accessed from https://www.ign.com/articles/new-world-gold-duplication on 4 June 2022.
Publication Date:
18 June 2022
THE CATHEDRAL TIMELINE
1925 (September 20): Justo Gallego Martinez was born in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain.
1952: Martinez entered a Trappist monastery, the Santa Maria de la Huerta Monastery in Soria Province.
1960: Martinez left the monastery after contracting tuberculosis.
1961 (October 12): Martinez began construction on his “Cathedral.”
1990s (Early): Ángel López joined Martinez as his assistant.
2019: Martinez’s health began to deteriorate seriously, probably from dementia.
2021 (November 9): An engineering firm examined The Cathedral and pronounced it to be structurally sound.
2021 (November 28): Justo Martinez died in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
Justo Gallego Martinez was born in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain in 1925. [Image at right] His family was relatively prosperous and owned land outside of Madrid that he later inherited. Martinez reports being very close to his mother and having had a strong Catholic faith from an early age to which she contributed: “She was the one that taught me the words of the Bible” (Bremner 2022). As a youth he witnessed the devastation created during the Spanish Civil war. The war also interrupted his education, and so his formal education was quite limited. Martinez was twenty-seven when he decided to become a novitiate in a Trappist monastery, the Santa Maria de la Huerta Monastery in Soria Province. After eight years in the monastery, Martinez contracted tuberculosis and was forced to exit the monastery. At the time he pledged that if he recovered his health he would build a shrine to honor Our Lady of Pillar. Amidst a period of personal depression and in a quandary about how to pursue his quest for a sacrificial life, he conceived the project of building a cathedral for God (Bremner 2022). In 1961, Martinez commenced what would become his lifetime project, constructing what local residents began to call “The Cathedral,” and sometimes “the cathedral of Justo” or “the cathedral from junk.”
DOCTRINES/RITUALS
Since Martinez never completed construction, his cathedral has not functioned as a church in any formal sense. [Image at right] His personal schedule has been highly ritualized for most of his sixty-year project as he rose at four AM every day and worked for ten hours gathering and processing construction materials. On Sundays he attended Mass. His dedication to his task was reinforced by the surrounding community’s treatment of him as an outcast until his project began to attract favorable attention from outside the community and he became a minor celebrity.
The site receives both pilgrims and tourists. Beyond The Cathedral Martinez himself is a source of fascination for visitors. Bremner (2022) reports that
Over the years, tens of thousands of people have come to visit the cathedral. They all want to see Justo – to touch him, to hear him speak, to understand him, his inspiration, his genius and his imagination. I saw old ladies kiss him, pilgrims accost him and fanatics pitch him with all manner of schemes for the future of the cathedral.
Visitors are encouraged to leave donations to support the construction project.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
The Cathedral is one of many visionary environments (with religious or spiritual themes) conceived and created by committed individuals (Roux 2004), such as Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens (Bromley 2016) and Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain (Bromley and Urlass 2016).
Like these other visionary projects, The Cathedral on Avenida Antoni Gaudí Street in Mejorada Campo was largely a singular creation (Keeley 2021). For most of the project’s sixty year history Martinez worked alone. For brief periods members of his family helped him and volunteers occasionally offered assistance. In the early 1990s, Ángel López Sánchez joined Martinez in his project and remained with him for the remainder of Martinez’s life. On rare occasions he hired an expert consusltant. However, Martinez was the central visionary, architect and builder throughout. He was also a fascinating, complex figure in his own right (Rogan n.d.):
Justo, in this world, is a dinosaur building a colossal monument to a god long since given up for dead. Nevertheless, his achievement is nothing short of miraculous. I am fascinated by the paradox of his character – whether he is madman or martyr? On the one hand, it has been an enterprise of total self-indulgence, on the other, total self-negation. To work with, especially for his helpers, he can be difficult, angry and harsh. His serene contentment in his work can switch to searing fury if anybody gets in the way of his project. But his determination is necessary precisely because he is a man who has succeeded in living outside of society pursuing an eccentric dream. His unswerving faith has enabled him to carry out a super-human task, revealing the raw power of religion in the hands of an exceptional individual.
Certainly the most distinctive and impressive feature of The Cathedral is that most of the construction materials were recycled (Rainsford 2010). Martinez gathered discarded, everyday materials from the surrounding neighborhood and nearby construction companies and factories. For example, columns in The Cathedral were construction from old petroleum barrels. Other materials used in the construction process included barrels, tires, ceramic shards, bricks, wire, and bits of colored glass.
Martinez was inspired by St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, the White House in the U.S., and various other churches and castles in Europe. What all of these other buildings modeled was curvature (Bremner 2022):
He preferred curves and circles – vaulted ceilings, domes, arches, rounded chapels, annular altars and spiral staircases. “God made all things round. He made the planets round. He made the earth round.”
The Cathedral incorporates twelve towers, twenty-eight cupolas minor chapels, cloisters, a sacristy, lodgings, a library, frescoes, and a crypt. [Image at right] The central dome in The Chapel itself took twenty years to complete. The crypt was built as the place that Martinez hoped to be interred. All of this construction took place without any formal architectural plans. Much of The Cathedral remained unfinished at the time of Martinez’s death in 2021.
ISSUES/CONTROVERSIES
The Cathedral project was beset by two major problems through Martinez’s life, it lacked funding and it lacked community and institutional support.
From the outset The Cathedral was largely a personal project and commitment. There never has been a stable source of funding. Martinez sold and rented land that he had inherited as one source of funding, but he incurred debts and was forced to live in The Cathedral beginning in the 1980s to reduce expenses (Bremner 2022). As Martinez persevered and the project grew, it began to attract national and international attention. A photograph of The Cathedral was displayed at an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2003. An advertising campaign for the Aquarius soft drink produced by Coca-Cola brought attention in Spain in 2005.
The other major challenge to The Cathedral was its institutional standing. Martinez had hoped to bequeath The Cathedral to the Catholic Church so that it could operate as a local parish. However, there were no architectural plans or construction approval from the local planning commission, and so local church leaders had studiously ignored Martinez’s project (Rainsford 2020). This problem became more serious as Martinez’s health began to erode in 2019, construction remained unfinished, and legal status of the 
building was precarious. Just prior to Martinez’s death in 2021, transfer of responsibility for The Cathedral was arranged to the NGO, Messengers of Peace (Menageries de la Paz), [Image at right] headed by Father Ángel García Rodríguez. The organization pledged to complete the construction process. He then engaged a major engineering firm to assess the structural integrity of The Cathedral and, to the surprise of many observers, it was deemed structurally sound (Hughes 2021). Other support then began to materialize (One Man Cathedral website 2022). An architect offered to address the legal standing of the building. Municipal officials have shown interest in preservation by filing a petition to have The Cathedral designated as an asset of cultural interest (Bien de Interés Cultural). Cathedral supporters have also approached UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) with the goal of gaining the protected status of an item of cultural heritage for The Cathedral. The Catholic Church, however, has maintained its distance (Hughes 2021). The future of The Cathedral still remains somewhat unclear as Martinez had envisioned a link to the Catholic Church while Rodriguez has expressed a preference for a multi-faith space (Farrant 2021).
IMAGES
Image #1: Justo Gallego Martinez.
Image #2: The exterior of The Cathedral.
Image #3: An interior section of The Cathedral.
Image #4: Messengers of Peace (Menageries de la Paz) logo.
REFERENCES
Bremner, Matthew. 2022. “The man who built his own cathedral.” The Guardian, May 22. Accessed from https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/jun/13/the-man-who-built-his-own-cathedral-podcast on 10 June 2022.
Bromley, David G. 2016. Paradise Gardens.” World Religions and Spirituality Project. Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/paradise-gardens/ on 10 June 2022.
Bromley, David G. and Stephanie Urlass. 2016. “Salvation Mountain.” World Religions and Spirituality Project. Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/salvation-mountain/ on 10 June 2022.
Farrant, Theo. 2021. “Madrid monk’s 60-year ‘scrap cathedral’ project lives on after his death.” Euro News, November 30. Accessed from https://www.euronews.com/culture/2021/11/30/madrid-monk-s-60-year-scrap-cathedral-project-lives-on-after-his-death on 10 June 2022.
Hughes, Felicity. 2021. “The man behind Madrid’s most unusual cathedral, and the last-ditch effort to save it.” Lonely Planet, November 23. Accessed from the https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/cathedral-of-justo-gallego-spain on 10 June 2022.
Rainsford, Sarah. 2010. “Madrid man builds cathedral from junk.” BBC, 30 December. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12088560 on 10 June 2022.
One Man Cathedral website. 2022. “Save the Cathedral of Justo.” Accessed from https://onemancathedral.com/ on 10 June 2022.
Rogan, James. n.d. “The Story.” The Madman and the Cathedral. Accessed from http://www.cathedraljusto.com/home.html on 10 June 2022.
Roux, Caroline. 2004. “Castle Magic.” The Guardian, January 7. Accessed from
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/jan/07/homes on 10 June 2022.
Publication Date:
15 June 2022
ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH TIMELINE
1811: Monumental Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia was planned as a memorial to the devastating Richmond Theater fire on December 26 that took the lives of seventy-two persons.
1814 (May 4): The first service was held in Monumental Church.
1843: Organization of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church began. A cornerstone was placed.
1845: St. Paul’s Church was consecrated.
1859: The General Convention of the Episcopal Church was held in Richmond Virginia.
1861 (April 17): Virginia seceded from the Union.
1861: The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America was formed.
1862: The President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, became a member of St. Paul’s Church.
1865 (April 3): Jefferson Davis was informed that Confederate forces were unable to defend Richmond and ordered a fire to be set in the city that would destroy potential supplies for advancing Union forces.
1890s: Family members often were memorialized in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church with Confederacy-themed wall plaques in the sanctuary.
2013: The loosely coupled groups constituting the Black Lives Matter movement emerged following the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin the previous year and the acquittal of George Zimmerman in a criminal trial.
2015 (June 17): Dyllan Roof killed nine African-American parishioners during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
2015: The Episcopal Church’s General Convention passed a resolution that called for the universal discontinuation of display of the Confederate Battle Flag. St. Paul’s removed its Battle Flags.
2015: St. Paul’s Church announced the History and Reconciliation Initiative following the Dylann Roof murders.
2018 (August): Violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia at a rally of white nationalists opposed to the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee.
2020: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church celebrated its 175th anniversary.
2021: The Washington National Cathedral announced that stain-glass windows depicting Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would be replaced with works related to social justice by renowned artist Kerry James Marshall.
2021 (June 25): The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church General Convention announced the formation of a new international, churchwide racial truth and reconciliation effort at its annual meeting.
2022: A “Stations of St. Paul’s” liturgy and art installation acknowledging the church’s history of complicity in slavery and systemic racism was placed on view at the church.
2022: St. Paul’s published a plan for continuing it History & Reconciliation Initiative.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
The history of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church [Image at right] can be traced to the formation of Richmond’s Monumental Episcopal Church (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church n.d.). Monumental was planned as a memorial to the devastating Richmond Theater fire on December 26, 1811 that took the lives of seventy-two persons. At the time it reportedly was the largest urban disaster in American history. Monumental held its first service three years later on May 4, 1814. Church membership slowly declined, however, as Richmond’s population began migrating westward. A segment of the Monumental membership began planning for what became St. Paul’s (along with St. James’s in 1831 and All Saints in 1888). The cornerstone was laid in 1843, and the church was consecrated two years later just west of the Virginia State Capitol.
During its early years, the St. Paul’s congregation consisted primarily of upper status whites, such as bankers and industrialists, with a small number of black men and women also attending services. It was only fifteen years after its founding that St. Paul’s was swept up in the Civil War, and it from this period that the church became popularly known as the Cathedral of the Confederacy. As Griggs (2017:42) notes:
Of all of Richmond’s churches, none was more closely associated with the Southern Confederacy than St. Paul’s. President Jefferson Davis worshipped there, as did Robert E. Lee when he was in Richmond….On many Sundays, St. Paul’s was filled with soldiers in gray and many women dressed in black to symbolize that they had lost a loved one.
Davis became a member of the congregation in 1862. It was Episcopal Bishop John Johns who baptized Jefferson Davis in the Executive Mansion of the Confederacy and confirmed him in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Most of the St. Paul’s congregation at that time were involved in the slavery economy in some fashion.
It was following the Virginia Convention of 1861, which resulted in a convention vote (April 17) and a confirming public vote (May 23), that Virginia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In the case of the Episcopal Church, the division also began in 1861, when the southern component became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. A sermon preached on Thanksgiving Day 1861 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond clearly linked the church to secession (Stout 2021):
God has given us of the South today a fresh and golden opportunity—and so a most solemn command—to realize that form of government in which the just, constitutional rights of each and all are guaranteed to each and all. … He has placed us in the front rank of the most marked epochs of the world’s history. He has placed in our hands a commission which we can faithfully execute only by holy, individual self-consecration to all of God’s plans.
Events on April 3, 1865 signaled an impending conclusion to the Civil War. Reportedly, while in attendance at St. Paul’s, Jefferson Davis was informed that Confederate forces were unable to defend Richmond any longer. Davis left the church and ordered what 
became known as “the fire” [Image at right] be set in the city of Richmond to destroy supplies potentially useful to advancing Union forces. However, the fire raged out of control, ultimately destroying about 800 buildings in the city. The railroad bridge across the James River was also burned to slow the Union army advance (Slipek 2011). Just six days later, on April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House in Appomattox County, Virginia, effectively ending Civil War combat. The national reintegration of the Episcopal Church occurred soon after the end of the war in 1866, with Bishop John Johns leading the campaign for reunification.
For much of St. Paul’s history following the Civil War the guiding narrative for the church implicitly or explicitly involved racial inequality/slavery and what is termed “Lost Cause” mythology. Like many other Protestant denominations in the South, Episcopal churches accepted versions of Christianity that legitimated slavery. The Lost Cause mythology contained several key elements (Wilson 2009; Janney 2021):
At the center of the myth is the assertion that secession was not about slavery at all; rather, secession was a constitutionally legitimate process, a protection of states’ rights, and a defense of agrarian southern culture against the northern infidels. The Confederacy preferred to refer to the Civil War as the War between the States. Secession was an institutional right of every state. In that sense secession was in many ways akin to the original American revolution as a fight against tyranny.
The Lost Cause narrative gained momentum toward the end of the nineteenth century nationally, but it was particularly notable in Richmond and among Episcopalians. Episcopalians were prominent in the support for the Lost Cause, due to “…their position in Southern society: the Episcopal church was the church of the antebellum planter class” (Wilson 2009:35). At St. Paul’s, it became popular during the 1890s to memorialize family members with wall plaques in the sanctuary, some of which featured memorial wall plaques, alter kneelers, and Confederate battle flags (Doyle 2017; Kinnard 2017). The church erected memorials to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the 1890s and embraced the“Lost Cause” 
narrative of the Civil War (Wilson 2009:25). [Image at right] In an 1889 mural, for example, a youthful Moses is presented in a way that resembles Robert E. Lee as a young officer in the Confederacy (Chilton 2020). The accompanying inscription read:“By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s Daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the Children of God for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. In grateful memory of Robert Edward Lee born January 19 1807.”
That cultural tradition persisted through the mid-twentieth century. As the chair of the church’s History and Reconciliation Initiative commented, “ St. Paul’s remained steeped in Lost Cause lore through the Jim Crow era,” that is, between the 1870s and 1960s (Williams 2018).
Even during the first decade of the twenty-first century, public celebration of the Confederacy and its leaders was still highly visible in Virginia (Feld 2020). In 2006, there was overwhelming legislative support for state authorization of license plates honoring Robert E. Lee. In 2007, a bill titled “Authorizes the Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue special license plates honoring Robert E. Lee” unanimously passed both houses of the Virginia state legislature.
The roots of the Episcopal Church’s initial inquiry into its role in racial oppression can be traced at least to initiatives by its Black caucus in the 1960s (Paulsen 2021). However, it was in 2006 that the Episcopal Church began to take action. In 2006, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed a resolution acknowledging its participation in slavery and segregation:
Resolved, That we express our most profound regret that (a) The Episcopal Church lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture, and (b) after slavery was formally abolished, The Episcopal Church continued for at least a century to support de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination;
Following this resolution, Episcopalian dioceses across the country (Georgia, Texas, Maryland and Virginia) began programs in response to the resolution. Other predominantly white denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church (2004) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church (2019) passed similar resolutions and initiated denominational and inter-denominational response programs (Moscufo 2022).
Several key events contributed to St. Paul’s and other institutions reassessing their racially freighted histories. In 2013, the loosely coupled groups constituting the Black Lives Matter movement emerged following the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin the previous year and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman in a criminal trial. In 2015, 
Dyllan Roof killed nine African-American parishioners during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. [Image at right] It was just a few months after that shooting that systematic removal of Confederate-themed relics began. That year the Episcopal Church’s General Convention passed a resolution that called for the universal discontinuation of display of the Confederate Battle Flag: “The Episcopal Church strongly urges all persons, along with public, governmental, and religious institutions, to discontinue the display of the Confederate Battle Flag.” In Richmond, shortly after the Dyllan Roof murders, the Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley, St. Paul’s rector, asked in a sermon, “What if in this, the last summer of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, we begin a conversation here at St. Paul’s about the Confederate symbols in our worship space?” (Doyle 2017). St. Paul’s sought to distance from its popular sobriquet as The Cathedral of the Confederacy (Noe-Payne 2015; Millard 2020):
We are not and do not wish to be identified with white supremacy, or Lost Cause theology. The St. Paul’s of today is a diverse church community open and welcoming to all (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities 2017).
The process began with discussion about which of the numerous Confederacy-themed artifacts should be removed. Initially, stained glass windows were preserved. The church vestry voted to remove the battle flags in November 2015. Subsequently, kneelers with the Confederate flag in needlepoint were removed and the church’s coat of arms was retired. By 2020, the church decided to remove or rededicate all of its remaining Confederate memorials (Kinnard 2017; Chilton 2020).
There was, of course, a much broader movement to remove Confederate symbols that was similarly fraught. Numerous other Virginia churches, including the R.E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington, encountered sometimes intense engagement and conflict during this period, as did public colleges and universities across Virginia (Cumming 2018; Anderson and Svrluga 2021). A major development occurred in 2020 when the mayor of Richmond ordered the immediate removal of all Confederate themed statues on public property (Wamsley 2020).
DOCTRINES/RITUALS
St. Paul’s has embraced two distinct identities through its history. In recent years it has sought to exchange its earlier identity as the Cathedral of the Confederacy for its current promise to become the Cathedral of Reconciliation. Symbolically, this transformation begins with its open acknowledgement of its historical involvement in racial oppression and Lost Cause mythology (Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church n.d.):
We are part of a living and evolving history. Our story began in 1844 as the United States’ economic and political structures fully embraced racial slavery. The resources that made this church possible came directly from the profits of factories and businesses, built on the backs of enslaved African American people. During those years, many white Protestants sought to justify slavery as God’s plan. St. Paul’s members also supported, along with most proslavery Protestants, a theology that insisted that God ordained racial inequality and that, as white people, they had a responsibility to govern black people. St. Paul’s became inextricably entwined with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was the home church to Confederate officials and officers and the scene of dramatic events at the end of the conflict. In the aftermath of the Civil War, St. Paul’s officially recognized its connections to Robert E. Lee, who worshipped here, and Jefferson Davis, who was baptized as a member of the parish, by marking their pews and installing windows in their honor.
Juxtaposed to this acknowledgement is its vision of a mission to “Proclaim Christ in the Heart of the City.” That mission involves openness, equality, service, community, and active engagement (St Paul’s Episcopal Church n.d.):
Welcoming all to join us in worship and ministry.Respecting the dignity of every human being.
Seeking and serving Christ in all people, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Growing as a community of God’s people by reaching out to others.
Being active in the world as witnesses of God’s love.
Pledging ourselves to compassion and service by supporting one another in local, national, and international ministries.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
St. Paul’s is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion and one of three dioceses in Virginia. It is a moderate-sized congregation. Its active membership is 300-400, with about half of the active membership participating attending Sunday services (Doyle 2017). When the church began its History and Reconciliation Initiative, about 100 members initially participated.
The Richmond Metropolitan Area has increased in size and diversity in recent decades and has become less conservative (Weinstein 2022). This more progressive stance has been reflected in some religious congregations, and notably in St. Paul’s. Beginning in the 1970s, St. Paul’s undertook dozens of initiatives intended to alleviate the legacies of racism and segregation in Richmond, including the funding for public health, educational, and fair housing projects. (Doyle 2017; St. Paul’s n.d.). Although church membership continues to be predominantly white, racial diversity in leadership positions has changed substantially (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 2022). The History and Reconciliation Initiative has become a focal point of church activity since 2015.
ISSUES/CONTROVERSIES
The evolution of the conflict over Confederate-themed symbols, plaques, names, holidays, statues, and buildings continues as do activities on both sides. For example, in 2018 lethal violence erupted in August 2018 in Charlottesville at a rally of white nationalists opposed to the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. Confederate paraphernalia was present at the January 6, 2021 political insurrection in Washington, DC. At the same time removal or Confederate objects and symbols has continued apace across the nation. In 2020, 168 objects and symbols were removed across the country, with Virginia recording the most (McGreevy 2021). The removals, of course, left unanswered what would replace them, and in Richmond the Virginia Museum of the Fine Arts was tasked with leading the development of proposals for repurposing the sites. In one case of replacement, a bill passed both state legislative bodies replacing the Lee-Jackson Day holiday with an Election Day holiday (Stewart 2020).
The Episcopal Church moved ahead with its truth and reconciliation project. In June 2021, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church General Convention announced the formation of a new international, churchwide racial truth and reconciliation effort at its annual meeting. A working group was formed to develop proposals “that will foster and facilitate the convention’s adoption of a plan and pathway for a process of truth and reconciliation in The Episcopal 
Church” (Millard 2021). In Richmond, St. Paul’s History and Reconciliation Project reached a milestone with the presentation of its project report, Blindspots. [Image at right]
IMAGES
Image #1: Monumental Church
Image #2: The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad depot near Eighth and Byrd streets after the evacuation fire of 1865.
Image 3: Stained glass windows in the St. Paul’s sanctuary honoring Robert E. Lee. (Clickable image).
Image #4; Dylann Roof displaying a Confederate flag.
Image #5: The front cover of the History and Reconciliation Project report, Blindspots.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Nick and Susan Syrluga. 2021, “From slavery to Jim Crow to George Floyd: Virginia universities face a long racial reckoning.” Washington Post, November 26. Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/11/26/virginia-universities-slavery-race-reckoning/?utm_campaign=wp_local_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_lclheads&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F356bfa2%2F61a8b7729d2fdab56bae50ef%2F597cb566ae7e8a6816f5e930%2F9%2F51%2F61a8b7729d2fdab56bae50ef on 10 May 2022.
Banks, Adelle. 2021. “Cathedral to replace Confederate windows with stained glass reflecting Black life.” Religion News, September 23. Accessed from thehttps://religionnews.com/2021/09/23/cathedral-to-replace-confederate-windows-with-stained-glass-reflecting-black-life/ on 10 May 2022.
Bohland, Jon. 2006. A Lost Cause Found: Vestiges of Old South Memory in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Ph.D. Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Chilton, John. 2020. “St. Paul’s Richmond to rededicate Lee and Davis windows with new meaning.” Episcopal Café, July 12. Accessed from https://www.episcopalcafe.com/st-pauls-richmond-to-rededicate-lee-and-davis-windows-with-new-meaning/ on 1 November 2021.
Cumming, Doug. 2018. “Our church was named for Robert E. Lee — here is how we changed it.” Religion News Service, January 15. Accessed from https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/our-church-was-named-robert-e-lee-here-how-we-changed-it on 10 May 2022.
Doyle, Heather Beasley. 2017. “‘Cathedral of the Confederacy’ reckons with its history and charts future.” Episcopal News Service, June 19. Accessed from the https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2017/06/19/cathedral-of-the-confederacy-reckons-with-its-history-and-charts-future/ on 10 May 2020.
Feld, Lowell. 2020. “Just 10-15 Years Ago, Virginia Legislators Were Voting Overwhelmingly to Approve “Special License Plates Honoring Robert E. Lee” and to “Defend Marriage.” Blue Virginia, June 18. Accessed from https://bluevirginia.us/2020/06/just-10-15-years-ago-virginia-legislators-were-voting-overwhelmingly-to-approve-special-license-plates-honoring-robert-e-lee-and-to-defend-marriage on 10 May 2022.
General Convention. 2007. “2006 Study of Economic Benefits Derived from Slavery.” Journal of the General Convention of…The Episcopal Church, Columbus. New York: General Convention, pp. 664-65. Accessed from https://episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution-complete.pl?resolution=2006-A123 on 10 May 2022.
Griggs, Walter. 2017. Historic Richmond Churches & Synagogues. Charleston, SC: The History Press.
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McGreevy, Nora. 2021. “The U.S. Removed Over 160 Confederate Symbols in 2020—but Hundreds Remain.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 25. Accessed from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-removed-over-160-confederate-symbols-2020-more-700-remain-180977096/ on 10 May 2022.
Millard, Egan. 2021. “Presiding Bishop announces new churchwide racial truth and reconciliation effort during first day of Executive Council.” Episcopal News Service, June 25. Accessed from
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Publication Date:
19 May 2022
KNIGHTS TEMPLAR TIMELINE
1970 (March 8): Nazario Moreno González was born in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico.
1980s: La Familia Michoacán (LFM) formed, initially as a group of vigilantes that sought social justice.
1986: Moreno emigrated to the United States.
1990s: La Familia Michoacána became the Gulf Cartel’s paramilitary group, seeking to take control from rival drug cartels.
2003: Moreno returned to Michoacán with Servando Gómez Martínez and José de Jesús Méndez Vargas. Moreno began organizing LFM into a drug cartel. Moreno became the spiritual leader of LFM.
2006: The Mexican government declared war on drug cartels.
2010: Moreno was allegedly killed by Mexican authorities in a shootout in Apatzingán, Michoacán, but no body was ever produced by the police.
2011: LFM split up into various factions. Gómez created the Knights Templar (Los Caballeros Templarios (CT).
2012: There were sightings of Moreno, who some people claimed was resurrected to lead the Knights Templar. Gomez released a video in which he called on other cartels to join forces against the leading cartel in Mexico, Los Zetas. Indigenous populations in Guerrero started rising up against the CT.
2014 (March): Moreno was confirmed killed, although who murdered him has remained a matter of controversy.
2015: Gomez was captured and imprisoned.
2015: CT waned in power with the official death of Moreno and the capture of Gomez.
2020: In Zitácuaro, Michoacán, Armed Forces stormed a safe house allegedly belonging to members of the LFM, which confirmed that they were still operating, although only in splinter cells.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
The Knights Templar Group, known as Los Caballeros Templarios (CT), originated in Michoacán, Mexico. The group formed as an offshoot of an earlier cartel, known as La Familia Michoacán (LFM) or The Michoacán Family (Soboslai 2020). In the 1980s, LFM emerged as would-be vigilantes. Founded originally in Tierra Caliente (Hot Land) in southwest Michoacán, LFM claimed that their goal was to provide security to and protect people in the region from encroaching cartels and their violence. Indeed, initially they were welcomed by many as they executed known criminals in their region who the police had treated with impunity. Gradually, the group turned increasingly to criminal 
insurgency as they acquired new leaders. One such leader in the 2000s was Nazario Moreno González (hereafter Moreno or Nazario), also known as “El Más Loco” (The Craziest One) or “El Chayo” (The Rosary), who rapidly rose within LFM to take on the role spiritual leader (Kingsbury 2019; Mekenkamp 2022; Grillo 2016). [Image at right]
According to biographical and presumably autobiographical sources (Grillo 2016; Mekenkamp 2022), as a teenager Moreno lived in California, where he encountered people openly drug trafficking in a stash house near his own home. This appears to have impressed him. He eventually began selling marijuana himself, crossing back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. to traffic ganja grown in his home country. Those who knew him described him as belligerent, and frequently drunk and stoned. His anger only increased after four of his brothers were murdered in a series of killings.
His bellicose and unpredictable temperament, which earned him the epithet “el mas loco” (the craziest one) further deteriorated in 1994. That year, Moreno nearly died from a brutal beating when, following an altercation during an amateur soccer game, he was repeatedly kicked in the head. His skull was fractured. Surgeons had to insert a metal plate to hold his cranium together. The wound and treatment aggravated his mental condition. His visions and hallucinations may well have been due to the injury to his brain and resultant inflammation. As a result of the metal plate, it is said that when agitated Moreno’s face and forehead bulged disconcertingly.
The suffering and shock caused by the deaths of his brother and his own near death reportedly caused Moreno to re-examine his life. To overcome his alcohol dependency, Moreno turned to Alcoholics Anonymous, and the twelve-step program helped him to achieve sobriety. He also discovered Evangelical Christianity, after having been involved in Catholicism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses earlier in his life. He was drawn to the idea that one could be “Born Again.” However, changing one’s life for the better appears to have meant acquiring power, riches and respect as a drug lord. He also was drawn to the idea of adhering to a strong moral code and of becoming a foot soldier of Christ, an ideology that Nazario would implement within LFM, and later again within CT. In the version that he constructed, he encouraged his foot soldiers to do violence in the name of God and to follow his narco honor code.
In August 2003, Armando Valencia Cornello, the most powerful drug lord in Michoacán, was arrested. Moreno returned to Tierra Caliente and with Gómez and José de Jesús Méndez Vargas (or “El Chango”) (hereafter, Méndez), and began to unite LFM into a powerful and deadly cartel that became involved in the hypertrophic crystal meth trade. [Image at right] Moreno and Gomez split off to create the Cartel Templarios (CT). They became involved in extortion of local farmers, migrant smuggling into the U.S., illegal mining, the sex trade, illegal gasoline trafficking (known as huachicolero), arms trafficking, and appropriation of water sources.
One event that exemplified the brutality and attempted religious legitimation by LFM occurred on September 6, 2006, in Uruapan, Michoacán. LFM dumped onto a local dance floor the heads of five men said to be Los Zetas with a message that stated: “The family does not kill for pay, it does not kill women or innocents. Only those who deserve to do, will die. Everybody understand: this is divine justice.” The message evinced Nazario’s belief that he was doing God’s work and that he was protecting the people, demonstrating the bizarre mixture of populist, anti-establishment and Evangelical rhetoric he preached. LFM also replicated Old Testament style punishments with crucifixions and floggings (Sanchez 2020:40).
More broadly, Moreno framed himself, with his co-founders, as a savior who would carry out justice where the Federal Government was failing. For example, in 2006, the group placed an announcement in numerous newspapers with the headline, “MISSION:”
Eradicate from the state of Michoacán kidnapping, extortion in person and by telephone, paid assassinations, express kidnapping, tractor-trailer and auto theft, home robberies done by people like those mentioned, who have made the state of Michoacán an unsafe place. Our sole motive is that we love our state and are no longer willing to see our people’s dignity trampled on” (Grayson 2006:179-218).
In December 2010, Moreno was reportedly killed in a shootout with Mexican authorities in Apatzingán, Michoacán. Mexican authorities celebrated the purported victory. However, no body was ever found, and Moreno’s death was never confirmed. While the Mexican government continued to claim that Moreno was dead, sightings of him became frequent, such that it was highly improbable that he had been killed in 2010 but rather was feigning death while masterminding CT behind the scenes with Gómez (Grillo 2016). LFM then splintered. Méndez and those loyal to him remained in LFM, which became La Nueva Familia Michoacana.
If LFM was a testing ground, CT was to be the final product of Moreno’s narco-evangelism. Both Moreno and Gómez embraced the link between religion and narco-trafficking, seeing it as a way to organize their cartel both ideologically and structurally. Additionally, they had both belonged to Evangelical movements in the U.S. and extolled a militant Christian ideology. They found inspiration in the Knights Templar, one of the major military religious orders that grew out of the crusading movement (1096-1102). Known for their ferocity, the original Knights Templar spent their lives protecting Christian territory, to the death if need be. While some engaged in temporary military service as an act of devotion, for the self-styled warrior monks waging war in God’s name became a way of life. This symbolism was attractive to the cartel leaders and also legitimated violent young men ready to do whatever was required to serve and protect to the death their narco-territory, ostensibly in the name of God.
Going one step further than LFM, whose religious elements had largely been based in text and praxis, Moreno and Gómez began using structural elements, symbols, as well terminology, from the original Knights Templar of the Crusades in rituals and in organization of their cartel.
In August 2012, Gómez posted a video seeking to galvanize other cartels to join with the CT against their most powerful enemy, and the leading drug syndicate at that time, Los Zetas. Against the backdrop of a wall featuring photos of Che Guevara and Pancho Villa, as well as a Mexican flag, Gómez not only outlined CT plans but also detailed the “Code of the Knights Templar of Michoacán” which once again depicted them as honorable, holy warriors fighting for safety of the people of Michoacán. One strategy for creating expanded CT power was to establish a shadow state by financing the political campaigns of numerous Michoacán politicians, including Fausto Vallejo Figueroa, a member of the PRI who was elected to the governorship of Michoacán. After he took his position as governor, the CT publicly reminded Vallejo and other politicians to make good on their agreements with their syndicate.
The CT had gradually expanded its narco-territory into neighboring Guerrero, much of which was under its control. Guerrero has a large Indigenous population, with Nahua, Tlapaneco and Amuzgo peoples. Many such Indigenous communities have long sought independent control of their land and to keep their peoples and meagre profits safe in the face of encroaching, usually violent, groups that only wanted to extract revenue from their territories. As part of such efforts to resist outside forces detrimental to their well-being, many Indigenous communities have a tradition of organizing volunteer police forces when necessary. Known as “Policía Comunitaria” (community police) and tolerated by the federal government, such community police groups have generally been less amenable to external corruption and benefited from far more local support than official government counterparts. In 2012, Indigenous peoples began to resist CT extortion, kidnappings and increased violence within their communities. While there had been an earlier uprising against the CT in Cheran, Michoacán, this had not gained much momentum. In Guerrero, multiple communities, though poorly armed, joined forces and soon other non-Indigenous towns and villages rallied to the cause. These vigilante movements grew, numbering in the hundreds and as their communities restored order, regained control of their lands and produce and safeguarded their people.
Others in Michoacán who had formerly accepted the CT’s message of spiritual insurgency began to take notice of the events and recognise the devastation CT had wrought on their communities. This led to the rise of other “autodefensas” (self-defense groups) (Perez 2018). In relatively more affluent Michoacán, thanks to funding from local businessmen, such groups were even better armed, organized, and, equipped to combat the CT. These Michoacán vigilantes gained significant support.
In 2013, autodefensas had developed tactics and increased in numbers such that within Michoacán the movement covered many municipalities. At the outset, the federal government in Mexico City denounced the actions of the vigilantes, but by November 2013, upon witnessing the success of such auto-defensas in freeing swaths of land from CT control, the federal government changed its position. As Ernst (2019) notes,
…autodefensas were like a Trojan horse. Working hand in hand with the federal government, they fractured the Templars. The kingdom crumbled, leaving a trail of warring fiefdoms mostly led by former mid-level Templar commanders.
Popular support for the vigilantes reached an all-time high and the government, under President Pena-Nieto, while not officially endorsing them turned a blind eye to their activities. Meanwhile, military troops were deployed to seize the Lazaro Cardenas port, which the CT had previously controlled and used in its illegal activities.
By 2014, government security forces and vigilantes joined forces to weaken the grip of the CT. In January, Dionisio Loya Plancarte, one of the most senior members of the cartel was arrested. In March 2014, Moreno was once again killed but this time a body, confirmed to be his, was produced by authorities. [Image at right] The official story was that he was assassinated in a shootout with Mexican authorities. Rumours have it, however, that Moreno was killed by those within his own entourage. It is said that weary of his crazy and pugnacious behavior and the extortions he carried out upon locals, they joined forces with vigilantes to overthrow the CT from the inside. Nevertheless, not eager to face vendetta for murder, they turned the narco’s body over to the police so that they might have the glory of claiming the kill. (Garcia 2016; Grillo 2016) While this time, Moreno’s death was confirmed, many Michoacanos refused to believe it, arguing that it was a hoax. If he had not really been killed in 2010, how could one assume he was actually killed in 2014, they posited. To this day in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most religious states, there are still some that believe that San Nazario continues to protect and guide them.
Despite living on in the popular imagination as a narco-saint, with the death of Moreno, CT power began to wane as local people sought to take control of their communities and the government began to exert its authority. Auto-defensas were disbanded by the government. While government authorities had initially suggested that a more formal rural defense force unit should be established, comprising of the vigilantes who had helped free the many municipalities of Michoacán, it suddenly backtracked and began arresting the leading members. While Gómez roamed free, he eventually founded a new crime syndicate, known as “la tercera hermandad,” the third brotherhood (or Los H3), with other criminals, including members from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). However, this new crime syndicate did not develop as had LFM and CT. In 2015, Gómez was captured and imprisoned (Rama 2015). While the glory days of CT and LFM were then over, vestiges of their groups linger on across the state of Michoacán. In 2020, in Zitácuaro, Michoacan an LFM safe house was raided by the police. As the influence of LFM and CT has dwindled, new cartels such as Los Viagras, Cartel del Abuela, and CJNG have moved into the territory.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Other Mexican folk saints have been associated with drug cartels, most notably Jesus Malverde (Bromley 2016) and, more recently, Santa Muerte (Kingsbury 2021). CT is distinctive. It developed a theology that was a bricolage of religious messaging with a revolutionary narrative of insurgency, as well as narcoculture. Centered around a moral code, the CT believed themselves to be God’s loyal foot soldiers waging a holy war to protect their turf, the local population and narco-family. Promoting a sort of populist uprising, these insurgency elements were inspired by revolutionary figures such as the Mexican hero Pancho Villa and Argentinian Guerilla leader, Che Guevara who fought for the communities in Cuba, and later Congo and Bolivia. Doctrines presented CT members as protectors of their people, fighting for justice against the state, as well as other rival cartels.
A militant Christian ideology was espoused which came from both the Evangelical 
movements Moreno had encountered during his time in the U.S. and the original Knights Templars of the crusades. Their avowed mission had been to safeguard Christian pilgrims visiting sites in the Holy Land while also waging war against Islamic Armies. The Knights Templar adhered to a strict code of conduct which required them to be humble and obedient. They wore distinctive white capes with a red cross. The CT took from the Original Knights both symbologically, such as using the cross pattée, [Image at right] as well as ideologically, adopting the idea of a strict moral code to which new members had to swear. This code of conduct that emphasized obedience was used to indoctrinate CT members into carrying out whatever orders their superiors requested. The code book, which members were required to carry around with them, specifically described cartel members as holy warriors, delineating their responsibilities within the organization and duties to each other and to leaders in fifty-three commandments that they had sworn to obey. While the CT carried out acts of violence, doctrinal elements emphasized that the struggle was for the people and for future generations.
Additionally, in Evangelical prosperity gospel, hard work and obedience were understood to be rewarded not only with God’s grace but with material wealth. The ideas that individuals have a personal mission and that members can be “re-born” to fight in the name of God also derived from Evangelical movements. The CT, much like LFM, drew on Evangelicalism in teaching that members should remain humble and not be ostentatious with their wealth. This differentiated them from rival cartels that strove to display their wealth. Instead, the CT especially during rituals, created an egalitarian community where all members dressed identically, such as wearing the white capes with the red cross that the original Knights Templar had worn.
Chesnut (2018) has summarized the moral and religious precepts contained in Moreno’s writings, Pensamientos (James 2018), that lent transcendent purpose to cartel activities:
Article number 8 commands Templarios to “selflessly love and serve all of humanity.” In a similar vein, article 9 states, “A Templar Knight understands that there is a God, a life created by Him, an eternal truth and a divine purpose to serve God and mankind.” Given the cartel’s logic of neutralizing rivals, point 16 makes a bizarre call to respect diversity. “The Templars should not have a negative attitude against any man that has been created by God, even if he is different or strange. On the contrary, the Templar should understand how others seek God.” Going a step further, article 17 makes it clear that the raison d’etre of the cartel is seeking truth through God. “A soldier of the Templars cannot be enslaved by sectarian beliefs and shallow opinions. God is truth and without God there is no truth. The Templar must always search for the truth because in truth there is God.
RITUALS/PRACTICES
A key ritual in the building of CT was initiation. The cartel recruited primarily among young, poorly educated Michoacáno men who were adrift and disillusioned with the opportunities afforded to them in contemporary Mexican society. Membership offered them a sense of community, membership in a sacred family, holy purpose, and a new idealized masculine identity. As Lomnitz (2019) sums up the matter:
With the breakdown of the biological family in many parts of Mexico, including Michoacán due to divorces, single parent households, labor migration to the US, deaths both natural and caused by the drug war and increasing urban anomie, affinal families have faced many pressures and young men in particular, may seek more familial alternatives.
Members could become divinely ordained warriors and take up arms and fight as God’s foot-soldiers to protect local populations and stave off invasion from rival cartels, even as they engaged in violence and criminality.
The young men transitioning into the cartel were required to read both Eldredge’s book, The Wild Heart, and Moreno’s Pensamientos and to carry the latter with them at all times. Pensamientos contains the fifty-three commandments CT members are expected to obey and emphasize hard work, subservience and service (James 2018). During the initiation rituals new members dressed in white capes with the red cross of the original Knights Templar and swore an oath of loyalty to the cartel. Pensamientos stipulated that CT members who betrayed the cause would be penalised with capital punishment.
Symbols were carefully selected to appeal to young Michoacáno men. The most important of these was the Cross Patteé. In a country where around eighty percent of the population identifies as Catholic, the crucifix in its many forms has mass appeal in that it represents the religion of the great majority and is therefore seen as a major marker of national identity. During rituals of initiation and special occasions, battle gear and ceremonial garb employed by the CT adorned with the signature red cross, as well as other significant symbols (crests, replicas of those of the medieval Knights Templar) were used for inductions of new members. Weaponry also frequently featured such insignia, mobilized to remind CT members of their holy role in waging cartel war.
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
The central founders of CT were Nazario Moreno Gonzalez (“El Mas Loco” or “el Chayo”) and Martínez Servando Gómez (“La Tuta,” the teacher). Moreno and Gómez initially began working together in the drug industry when they formed part of a group of core founders. From the beginning Gómez frequently sought the limelight and, like a televangelist, used the media stage to spread the word of LFM and later the CT narco-theology. Gómez released numerous YouTube videos, attended interviews with TV reporters and even called in to radio phone-in shows to offer explanations and rationalizations for the cartel’s actions. After Moreno’s feigned death in 2010, the pair separated from the rest of LFM leaders to found CT.
By contrast, Moreno assumed a role of spiritual leadership. Indeed, Moreno emerged in the popular imagination as a folk saint, or perhaps to be more exact, a narco-saint. His death was scripted as a sacrifice for the greater good, and sightings of him, dressed in white robes wandering the countryside, added to CT mythology, making him a martyr who had been resurrected to lead the CT. His name added to this mythology. Nazario, an unusual name in Mexico, means “from Nazareth,” alluding to the biblical Jesus, who was resurrected after dying on the cross for “our sins.” In CT script, Moreno had died doing God’s work, fighting for justice for Michoacános. A cult following soon emerged. Shrines were built by CT members around Michoacán 
containing statues and images of Nazario dressed in traditional Templar garb to further build the mystique of Moreno as a narco-saint. [Image at right] The cross pattée had been a symbol of martyrdom for the Knights Templar of the crusades, of their sacrifice for Christ and Moreno’s death for the CT further played into this mythos.
Organization of CT beneath Moreno and Gómez was hierarchical, and new members were required to swear their fealty to CT leaders. Hierarchies were loosely based upon the original Knights Templar and used biblical lexicon. Important core members were called apostles, preachers were responsible for various territories, and hitmen were dubbed celestial warriors. The cartel’s organizational activities involved a broad range of criminal enterprise: extortion of agricultural businesses, coordinating undocumented migration into the U.S., illegal mining, the sex trade, illegal gasoline trafficking (known as huachicolero), arms trafficking, and appropriation of water sources. All of these enterprises were stabilized by force and violence.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
The growth and success of CT can be attributed to a number of factors. Some are external, most notably the tumultuous, dysfunctional state of Mexican society and the availability of a cohort of adrift and dispirited young potential recruits. Indeed, the condition of Mexican society has remained desperate, which has set the stage for similar successor cartels in the wake of CT. Some are internal, most notably the ability of the founders to create community and transcendent purpose for potential recruits through its doctrines and rituals. Not all cartels incorporated religious/spiritual themes as did CT. Its leaders were particularly adept at drawing themes from Evangelical Christianity, promising recruits that they could be “born again” as warriors in a godly cause; incorporating the idea of a revolution in a way that drew on ideologies key to Mexican national identity and revolutionary figures such as Pancho Villa; producing a “bible” that professed high moral ideals; and invoking the Knights Templar of the crusades in declaring a holy war that was to be waged in the name of God but at the same time legitimated and vindicated violence and brutality. And, for a time, CT was a formidable presence among the numerous drug cartels in Mexico.
The inventive quasi-religious doctrines and tight, hierarchical organization of CT notwithstanding, the cartel had a relatively brief lifespan. Following the capture of Gomez and the death of Moreno, the cartel began to disintegrate. In this respect, the fate of CT replicates that of numerous Mexican cartels. Like the group’s emergence, its demise involved both internal and external factors. As Sullivan (2019) summarized the external factors, they involved
…endemic corruption; weak state institutions, extreme violence, and diminishing state legitimacy. The conflict at times involves direct confrontation with the state and its security forces. At other times, corrupt state officials collude with cartel capos hollowing out state capacity and exerting territorial control over municipalities, large portions of some states, and economic processes, including resource extraction and illicit taxation. The cartels not only confront the state, but battle each other for control, profit, and prestige within the emerging narcostate.
Geopolitically, the nation has been divided into a number of areas of control, with the shape of those areas and the identities of the dominant cartels constantly in flux. For the nation as a whole, the situation has become so dire that characterizations as “civil war,” “cartelization,” and “failed state” have been invoked to describe it (Grayson 2006; Lomitz 2019). As for CT, for a time it attempted to form an alliance with other cartels, United Cartels (Cárteles Unidos) to fend off the dominance of the Los Zetas Cartel but continued to lose ground. CT subsequently faced another major challenge from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which itself may be continuing the cyclical growth of Mexican drug cartels (Dittmar 2020).
Internally, the group confronted the problems of organizational development amid a highly chaotic, violent environment and also experienced the kind of internal conflict, schism, and leadership loss characteristic of new movements of various kinds. Even more significantly, the cartel created an inherent internal contradiction. On the one hand its bricolage ideology combined elements of Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, Mexican folklore, and historical Knights Templar symbolism. This ideology presented the cartel as a spiritually legitimated messianic enterprise dedicated to protection on local populations and in opposition to an illegitimate and corrupt central government. The juxtaposition of this ideology with the violent and exploitive practices of the cartel ultimately was not manageable and eroded the cartel’s initial popular support. This combination of erosion of local support, the emergence of auto-defensas, cartel competition and aggressive governmental control measures proved to be more than the cartel could endure.
IMAGES
Image #1: Nazario Moreno González.
Image #2: José de Jesús Méndez Vargas (or “El Chango”).
Image #3: Nazario Moreno cadaver.
Image #4: The cross pattée
Image #5: San Nazario.
Image #6: Candlelight Vigil at a San Nazario shrine.
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Publication Date:
10 May 2022