TIMELINE FOR WOMEN’S ROLES IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST

1821 (July 16):  Mary Morse Baker was born to Mark and Abigail Baker in Bow, New Hampshire.

1843:  Mary Baker married George Washington Glover, who died in 1844. They had one son in 1844 named George W. Glover.

1853:  She married Daniel Patterson.

1866 (February 4):  Mary Patterson slipped on ice in Lynn, Massachusetts on February 1, and was seriously injured. Three days later, while reading about Jesus’ healing ministry in the Gospels, she was healed. She later cited this as the date she discovered Christian Science, as the result of her healing through prayer of injuries from a serious accident.

1866 (March):  Her husband Daniel Patterson deserted her. They divorced in 1873.

1867:  Mary Patterson began teaching about her discoveries, as well as maintaining an active healing practice.

1875 (October 30):  Now active as a spiritual healer and teacher in Lynn, Massachusetts, she published the first edition of her book Science and Health.

1876 (July 4):  She established the first Christian Science organization, the Christian Scientist Association, a small group of her students, a mix of both men and women.

1877 (January 1):  She married Asa Gilbert Eddy. He passed away in 1882.

1879 (April 12):  The Christian Scientist Association voted to found a church. The charter for the first Christian Science church, the Church of Christ (Scientist), in Boston, was granted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in August. Mary Baker Eddy served as pastor.

1881 (January 31):  The Massachusetts Metaphysical College was chartered in Boston. Eddy served as its only President and taught classes there in Christian Science over the next eight years.

1881 (November 9): Eddy was ordained Pastor of the Boston church. While women served as pastors in other Christian Science churches, aside from Eddy only men served in this role in Boston at this time.

1883 (April 14):  The Journal of Christian Science began publication, eventually becoming a monthly periodical that included articles on religious themes, as well as listings of both men and women as Christian Science healers, teachers, and nurses. Eddy served as the magazine’s first editor.

1889 (May 28):  Eddy resigned the pastorate of the Boston church.

1890 (January):  The Christian Science Quarterly began publishing Bible lessons. Originally intended for study and Sunday School classes, they later became “lesson-sermons” for reading in church services.

1892 (September):  The Boston church was reorganized, and the Christian Science Board of Directors was established to transact the business of the church. The evolving system of membership allowed for both membership in the Boston church (The Mother Church) as well as in a branch church anywhere in the world.

1894 (December):  Mary Baker Eddy named the Holy Bible and Science and Health the pastor of the Boston church.

1895 (January 6):  The newly completed original Mother Church building in Boston was dedicated. A large extension church building was added in 1906.

1895 (April):  Eddy named the Bible and Science and Health Pastor for all churches of the denomination.

1895 (April 23):  Eddy was given the title “Pastor Emeritus” by the Boston church’s board of directors.

1895 (September 10):  The first edition of the Church Manual was published, containing bylaws for the church, including a bylaw which specified that a male and a female would be appointed as Readers in the Boston church.

1898 (January):  The Christian Science Board of Lectureship was established. The majority of lecturers during Eddy’s lifetime were men, though two women were appointed as lecturers in 1898.

1898 (September):  At Eddy’s request, The Christian Science Publishing Society began publication of the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly devoted to religious articles and testimonials of healing.

1903 (February):  Originally comprised of four members, the Christian Science Board of Directors was expanded to five members. All were male until 1919.

1903 (April):  The Herald of Christian Science, a non-English periodical, was first published. As of 2022, the publication was published in fourteen languages.

1908 (January 26):  Eddy moved from Concord, New Hampshire, to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, near Boston.

1908 (November 25):  The Christian Science Monitor was first published. As of 2022, the paper had been awarded seven Pulitzer Prizes and more than a dozen Overseas Press Club awards.

1910 (December 3):  Mary Baker Eddy died in Chestnut Hill, aged eighty-nine years.

1913:  Laura E. Sargent (a student of Eddy) became the first woman other than Eddy to teach the Church’s Normal class, training Christian Science practitioners to be teachers.

1919:  Annie Macmillan Knott (an Eddy student) became the first woman to serve as a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors.

1927:  Ella W. Hoag (an Eddy student) became the first woman to serve as President of The Mother Church. This annual appointment was largely an honorific.

1935:  Margaret Murney Glenn Matters became the first woman to serve as chairman of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship.

1959:  Helen Wood Bauman was appointed editor of Christian Science religious periodicals, the first woman in this position since 1892.

1977:  Grace Channell Wasson became the first woman appointed to the First Reader role. Previously, only men had held that position at the Boston church in three-year terms.

1983:  Katherine Fanning was appointed editor of The Christian Science Monitor. She was the first woman to head the newspaper, although women had worked as reporters and editors since its founding.

1988:  It was in this year that as many as two women served simultaneously as Directors for the first time. In 2001, three women served simultaneously as Directors for the first time.

2021:  Women accounted for nearly sixty percent of the denomination’s public lecturers.

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST

The history of women in The Church of Christ, Scientist naturally begins with its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), who led the movement until her death. [Image at right] Born in New Hampshire, Mary Baker grew up in a large family and received a modest education, while regularly battling various health issues. She was married in 1843. Her husband died in 1844, shortly before their son, George W. Glover, was born. She married Daniel Patterson in 1853, who deserted her in 1866; they divorced in 1873. She married Asa Gilbert Eddy in 1877, and thereafter became known as Mary Baker Eddy. It was in 1866, after a fall on an icy street in Lynn, Massachusetts, that she received what she later felt was a divine revelation that brought healing of her injuries while reading about the healing ministry of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. She felt that the revelation was not some kind of singular miracle, but an indication of divine laws governing humanity and the universe, a science that could be discovered and taught to others. She became a healer and teacher and published the first edition of her book Science and Health in 1875. The Christian Scientist Association was founded in 1876, attracting both women and men.

The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879, and, with a reorganization in 1892, it came to have a basic structure that remains in place today. The Christian Science Board of Directors transacts church business. The Christian Science Publishing Society (governed by three trustees) directs the denomination’s publications, including its famed daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. Christian Scientists typically belong to the Boston church (formally known as The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and also known as The Mother Church), as well as a local “branch” church. Local churches are found all over the world. The Christian Bible and Science and Health serve as pastor for all churches. [Image at right] Eddy’s book has been translated into seventeen languages as well as Braille.

There have been times when the denomination’s leadership has been dominated by men. Christian Science historian Jean McDonald observed that “women scholars have generally theorized that Eddy and other women of the period gravitated toward Christian Science, not for its theological worth but for its personal utility, because it satisfied their needs for status and power in a male-dominated society that largely closed off other avenues of achievement” (McDonald 1986:89). But McDonald does not explore whether Christian Science actually provided this status and power. An examination of historical data presents a more complex picture, with men tending to obtain leadership roles at Boston headquarters, as well as in branch churches in many large cities and metropolitan regions. Yet women did succeed in finding leadership positions in Christian Science churches in some large cities (such as New York City, for example) and in many smaller, less prestigious localities.

Despite the difficulties in traversing some of the Christian Science “avenues of achievement,” there were women who were able to face this disparity, becoming public faces for the movement as well as making things happen. In 1913, Laura E. Sargent (1858–1915), who had studied under Eddy and served as her companion for a number of years, became the first woman to teach in the Church’s Board of Education, training Christian Science practitioners (healers who advertise their services) to be teachers.

In 1919, Annie Macmillan Knott (1850–1941), a Scottish immigrant, rose to the top ranks in the early church organization, serving as the first woman on the Christian Science Board of Directors, an office of considerable authority and significance within the denomination.  [Image at right] This was, however, nearly a decade after Eddy’s passing. Knott’s path to the directorship was hardly an easy one. She began practicing Christian Science in the 1880s as a single mother in Detroit, Michigan. She became a church leader in Detroit, serving as a Christian Science healer, teacher, and preacher. She moved to Boston in 1903, to serve as an associate editor for Christian Science publications; the editor-in-chief was a man.

Mary Baker Eddy had recognized Knott’s promise five years earlier, in 1898, when she made the decision to appoint two women to serve with the five men she had already appointed as Christian Science lecturers. Knott and Sue Harper Mims (1842–1913) [Image at right] were Eddy’s choices. The Board of Lectureship had been established just months earlier as a way to reach those unacquainted with Christian Science via public talks, an arena in which women were becoming more accepted. Knott later recalled that at first she received few calls to lecture, and mentioned this in a conversation with Eddy. The church leader responded that Knott must “rise to the altitude of true womanhood, and then the whole world will want you. . . .” Knott soon found greater success in the lecture work (Knott 1934:42).

In 1935, Margaret Murney Glenn Matters (1887–1965), who had been a powerful force as chairman of the committee revising the Christian Science Hymnal, became the first woman to serve as chair of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship. [Image at right] Glenn had also served as a Second Reader in church services in Boston. It was not until 1977 that Grace Channell Wasson (1907–1978) became the first woman appointed to the First Reader role, leading the weekly church services. Previously, only men had held that three-year position at the Boston headquarters.

Women were also serving in leadership roles outside of Boston. Some of the better known figures in the movement’s early years (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) were Sue Ella Bradshaw (San Francisco), Mary M. W. Adams and Kate D. Kimball (Chicago; Kimball’s husband, Edward A. Kimball, was also a Christian Science leader in the city), E. Blanche Ward and Lady Victoria Murray (London and Manchester, England), and Bertha Günther-Peterson and Frances Thurber Seal (Germany; Seal, however, was an American). They worked as healers, teachers, lecturers, and responded to criticisms of Christian Science in the press.

Women’s advancement at headquarters came more incrementally. It was not until the 1950s that a number of women were holding supervisory positions in Boston, and women in senior management roles were quite rare until the late 1960s. Equal representation in management positions has become the norm in the half century since.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS CONCERNING WOMEN’S ROLES

Mary Baker Eddy regarded men and women as equals in society and in leading the Christian Science movement.

Let it not be heard in Boston that woman, “last at the cross and first at the sepulchre,” has no rights which man is bound to respect. In natural law and in religion the right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened understanding and the highest places in government, is inalienable, and these rights are ably vindicated by the noblest of both sexes. This is woman’s hour, with all its sweet amenities and its moral and religious reforms (Eddy 1887:57).

In 1904, Eddy stated firmly:

The Magna Charta of Christian Science means much, multum in parvo, — all-in-one and one-in-all. It stands for the inalienable, universal rights of men. Essentially democratic, its government is administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed. The church is the mouthpiece of Christian Science, — its law and gospel are according to Christ Jesus; its rules are health, holiness, and immortality, — equal rights and privileges, equality of the sexes, rotation in office (Eddy 1914:246–47, punctuation as in original).

Why do Eddy’s statements give strong support for the equality of the sexes, while the administration of her religious denomination was largely relegated to men? Eddy was aware of this, as her essay “Man and Woman” (not published in her lifetime) makes clear. She wrote that she had “given the preponderance to the masculine element in my organizations for carrying out the functions of Christian Science.” However, she didn’t really explain why, although she may be hinting that this was all she could do given the social norms of the day and the capacities of her followers:

If at any period the reflection of the masculinity of God seems more apparent and desirable to the human senses than the reflection of His femininity, it is because the human perception, apprehension, and understanding have not kept pace with the Divine Love and order that characterize the period which manifests the dual nature of God, coupled with his trinity and the equality of man and woman (Eddy n.d.).

Theological statements tend to focus on the fact that men or women cannot be relegated to certain roles. Ella W. Hoag (1854–1928), an Eddy student, became in 1927 the first woman to serve as President of The Mother Church in Boston. In 1919, as the individual states were ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Hoag reflected in an editorial titled “Equal Suffrage”:

Because Christian Science teaches that all good is the equal inheritance of all of God’s children, it does not in any way relieve anyone from the responsibility of proving this for himself. Each individual must at some time not only prove that all good is for him as the image and likeness of God, but he must also come to understand that all good is equally for every other child of God. The practical application to-day of this truth to the subject of “equal rights for women,” if approached in obedience to the teachings of Christian Science, may do much to liberate the world from all its beliefs in inequality. . . . To give the “vote” to women will do comparatively little for them and for the world unless men perceive and relinquish the selfish, egotistical belief—which as a class they are indulging—that at least a degree of superior intelligence has been bestowed upon them. (Hoag 1919:365–66).

ORGANIZATIONAL ROLES

Although The Church of Christ, Scientist, was founded by a woman, advancement was rarely easy for women in its early days, or even later. But as Christian Science became more widely known in the late nineteenth century, with branch churches founded throughout the United States and beyond, a structure developed that included two paths for women. At the headquarters of the movement, centered then (as now) at The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, leadership opportunities were somewhat limited for women. Yet in the churches throughout the global “field,” ranging from tiny Christian Science societies to large and impressive urban churches, leadership roles were far more available for women. Scholar and Christian Scientist Stephen Gottschalk describes the state of affairs in his 2006 study Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism:

In part, Eddy appointed men to visible posts in the movement, not because she saw them as having superior capacities, but because they were more acceptable to society at the time than women would have been in the same roles. . . . If Eddy looked to men as the public face of Christian Science, she largely looked to women to make things happen—that is, to build the movement from the ground up. This they did in considerable numbers, so that outside Eddy’s own labors, the work of women was probably the single most important element in the spread of the Christian Science movement in the period before her death. Their labors as healers, teachers, and organizers of churches accounted in large measure for the development of Christian Science, for example, in Minneapolis, New York, Spokane, San Francisco, southern Los Angeles, Detroit, and also in such European cities as London, Hanover, and Berlin (Gottschalk 2006:185).

Readers play a significant role in a global church that has no clergy. Sermons are compiled from the two texts that form the “Pastor” of the church: the Bible and Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The Sunday sermons, found in the Christian Science Quarterly published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, are read by two Readers (First Reader, Science and Health; Second Reader, Bible). The First Reader also is responsible for conducting the services. At Wednesday meetings, First Readers compile their own readings on self-chosen topics from Science and Health and the Bible. Readers are lay positions, elected by the congregations in the branch churches. At The Mother Church, Church headquarters, the Christian Science Board of Directors appoints Readers for the Boston services every three years.

Christian Science practitioners are not clergy, but are found worldwide, and play an important role in the church. To be listed as a practitioner in the church’s monthly periodical, The Christian Science Journal, an individual must devote his or her full time to helping individuals through prayer. (Eddy’s Science and Health is the best source for information on the Christian Science approach to spiritual healing, particularly the chapter “Christian Science Practice.”) Practitioners are self-employed, and fees and payment are determined by the individual practitioner. Practitioners, like many Christian Scientists, have taken Primary class instruction, a two-week course of study that teaches students how to heal themselves and others. Some practitioners eventually take Normal class instruction and become teachers of Primary classes.

A quick survey of the listings of Christian Science practitioners (healers and teachers of classes in healing) in the monthly Christian Science Journal gives a sense of the situation: women could attain leadership roles outside of Boston. [Image at right] In 1900, San Francisco’s listings of practitioners were sixty percent women; Chicago’s listings were eighty-three percent women; and London’s listings were eighty-one percent women. In 1950, San Francisco’s practitioners were nearly eighty percent women; Chicago’s practitioners were eighty-one percent women and London’s practitioners had increased to 85.5 percent women. In 2000, San Francisco’s Christian Science practitioners were 65.5 percent women; Chicago’s practitioners were close to eighty percent women, and London’s practitioners were eighty-four percent women.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES FACING WOMEN

Today, the roles women play in The Church of Christ, Scientist are, at last, many and varied, both at Boston headquarters and in branch churches worldwide. Is this a reflection of a change in Christian Science attitudes, or a reflection of changes in society? It is likely a little of both, but such progress is welcome, even as it is ongoing. In 1959, Helen Wood Bauman (1895–1985) was appointed the first woman editor of the Christian Science periodicals since 1892. Katherine Fanning (1927–2000), [Image at right] the first woman editor of the daily newspaper founded by Eddy, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Christian Science Monitor, was not appointed until 1983. In 1988, for the first time, two women were simultaneously serving as members of the Mother Church board of directors, a sign that the “highest places in government” in the denomination were becoming more and more accessible to women.

Currently in 2022, women serve in a variety of leadership roles at church headquarters in Boston. For example, Barbara Fife and Mary Alice Rose are members of the board of directors; the First Reader conducting church services is Mojisola George; (Image at right) Ethel Baker serves as editor of The Christian Science Publishing Society’s religious periodicals; the President of the church is Mimi Oka; and The Christian Science Monitor’s managing editor is Amelia Newcomb.

Another important advance for The Church of Christ, Scientist, is its increasingly international as well as racially diverse presence. The November 2021 admission of church members included applications received from a number of countries: Angola, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, India, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Spain, Togo, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Women are playing an important role in leading the internationalization of the denomination.

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGIONS

Mary Baker Eddy founded a religion. This is significant, for even today, nearly 150 years after this founding, there are not many religions that identify women as among their founders. Eddy also led the church and was deeply involved in its government from the time of its founding until her passing three decades later. The Church of Christ, Scientist, while not intended by Eddy to be a women’s religion, has attracted a large number of women into its ranks. Its theology emphasizes the spirituality and the equality of men and women, without segregation or subordination of women, or men. This strong sense of equality precludes the placement of either sex on a pedestal. By ruling out comparisons that define the superiority (or inferiority) of maleness or femaleness, Christian Science has over time made it more possible for women to attain important positions within the denomination, and for a fairly new church (which will be 150 years old in 2029) this progress will surely continue to become evident.

IMAGES

Image #1: Photograph of Mary Baker Eddy taken in the 1880s. Library of Congress. Wikimedia Commons.
Image #2: Cover of Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Courtesy of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Image #3: Annie Macmillan Knott, the first woman to serve on the Christian Science Board of Directors. P01082. Courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Image #4: Photograph of Sue Harper Mims in the book edited by Frances E. Willard, A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading Women in All Walks of Life (1893). Wikimedia Commons.
Image #5: Portrait of Margaret Murney Glenn Matters, circa 1940. Bachrach Studios. Courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Image #6: Fujiko Signs, of Tokyo, Japan, is a Christian Science practitioner, teacher, and lecturer. Signs is also `serving as Committee on Publication for Japan, responding to public statements on Christian Science. Courtesy of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Image #7: Katherine Fanning, 1983. Photography by Linda Payne. The Christian Science Monitor. Courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Library.
Image #8: Mojisola Anjorin Solanke George, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher based in Lagos, Nigeria, is currently serving as First Reader of The Mother Church in Boston, and has formerly served as a Christian Science lecturer.

REFERENCES

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1914. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany. Boston, MA: Allison V. Stewart.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1887. Christian Science: No and Yes. Boston, MA: The Author.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1895. Church Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. First Edition. Boston, MA: The Christian Science Publishing Society.

Eddy, Mary Baker. n.d. “Man and Woman.” The Mary Baker Eddy Library, A10142B.

Gottschalk, Stephen. 2006. Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Hoag, Ella W. 1919. “Equal Suffrage.” The Christian Science Journal 37: 364–66.

Knott, Annie M. 1934. Reminiscence, archival collections of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

McDonald, Jean A. 1986. “Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century ‘Public’ Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2: 89–111.

Voorhees, Amy B. 2021. A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

The Mary Baker Eddy Library (www.mbelibrary.org) regularly publishes articles on its website relating to women Christian Scientists. The series is titled “Women of History.” The site also has a downloadable chronology of church founder Mary Baker Eddy’s life. This chronology is fully annotated, providing references to many primary and secondary sources. PDFs of The Christian Science Journal listings of practitioners from 1883 to the present day are available on The Christian Science Publishing Society subscription website JSH-Online (https://jsh.christianscience.com/).

Christian Science Journal listings are available on The Christian Science Publishing Society website JSH-Online https://jsh.christianscience.com/.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1925. Prose Works Other than Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston, MA: The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1910. Manual of The Mother Church, Eighty-Ninth Edition. Boston, MA: The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1910. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston, MA: The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Gill, Gillian. 1998. Mary Baker Eddy. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.

Voorhees, Amy B. 2021. A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Publication Date:
1 May 2022

2021: Women accounted for nearly 60 percent of the denomination’s public lecturers.

ALLIANCE FOR THERAPEUTIC CHOICE AND
SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY TIMELINE 

1992 (March):  The National Association for Psychoanalytic Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) was founded.

1992 (December 18): The organizing committee of NARTH, with twenty-three members, met at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.

1992:   The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases.

1993 (May 20):  NARTH held its first annual conference in San Francisco.

1997:  NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the Hawaii Supreme Court to oppose legalizing same-sex marriage.

2000 (May 17):  NARTH and several ex-gay ministries published a full-page newspaper ad in USA Today and held a press conference in Chicago to protest the American Psychiatric Association’s cancellation of a debate on therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation.

2001:  Evangelical Christian psychologist James Dobson of Focus on the Family declared NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi to be the “foremost expert on homosexuality.”

2002:  NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the Kansas Supreme Court, which ruled that a “transsexual” is not a woman, voiding her marriage and inheritance.

2003:  Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who advocated in 1973 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder, published a study based on participants recruited through NARTH and Exodus International, that concluded sexual orientation change is possible.

2005 (December 25):  NARTH co-founder Charles Socarides died.

2009:   Reacting to NARTH and others promoting the belief that homosexuality is a disorder and sin that can be changed through therapy and religious interventions, the American Psychological Association evaluated the peer-reviewed research literature on sexual orientation change efforts and found no scientific evidence to support their efficacy.

2009:   NARTH established the Journal of Human Sexuality.

2010:  NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court to oppose legalizing same-sex marriage.

2010:  George Rekers resigned from NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Board after a newspaper reported that he hired a male escort to accompany him on a trip to Europe.

2010:  NARTH Executive Secretary Arthur Goldberg resigned from NARTH after it was publicly revealed that he served time in federal prison for conspiracy to commit fraud.

2012:  Robert Spitzer repudiated and sought to retract his 2003 study, saying it was flawed. He also apologized for the harm it caused.

2012:  NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act.

2012:   California became the first state to ban conversion therapy with minors.

2012:   Exodus International removed NARTH materials from its website. Exodus President Alan Chambers renounced reparative therapy.

2012:  NARTH lost its tax-exempt status.

2013:  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of California’s ban on conversion therapy with minors.

2013: The World Medical Association released a statement condemning “so-called ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ methods.”

2013: The American Psychiatric Association removed “Gender Identity Disorder” from the DSM and replaced it with “Gender Dysphoria.”

2014:  NARTH leaders rebranded the organization as the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity and established “the NARTH Institute” as one of its divisions.

2014:  Members of The United Nations Committee against Torture expressed concern about conversion therapy on youth in the United States.

2015 (June 1):  The Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report calling for all nations to ban “conversion therapies.”

2015 (June 25):  Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) lost a consumer fraud civil lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

2015 (August):  The American Bar Association adopted a resolution urging legislation to prohibit conversion therapy on minors.

2015 (October):  NARTH co-founder Benjamin Kaufman relinquished his medical license amid allegations of gross negligence and unprofessional conduct.

2017 (March 8):  NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi died.

2017 (May 1):  The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to California’s law banning conversion therapy with minors.

2018-2019:  Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. trademarked “reparative therapy” and “reintegrative therapy,” in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

2019:  Retailer Amazon.com announced a decision to stop selling books on conversion therapy.

2020:  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit invalidated two ordinances in Florida (the city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach county) that banned conversion therapy with minors based on “free speech.”

2021:  The American Psychological Association adopted a resolution opposing gender identity change efforts and another strengthening its stance against sexual orientation change efforts.

2021:  For the first time, legislation to protect conversion therapy was introduced in a few states.

2022:  More than half of the states and several U.S. cities had some form of conversion therapy ban, by statute or regulation.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (ATCSI) is “a multi-disciplinary professional and scientific organization” headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is

dedicated to preserving the right of individuals to obtain the services of therapists and medical professionals who honor the clients’ values; advocating for integrity and objectivity in social science research; and ensuring that competent licensed professional assistance is available for persons who experience unwanted same-sex erotic attractions or who experience conflict between their biological sex and perceived gender identity (ATCSI 2022).

Its motto is “Because your values matter.”

ATCSI was originally founded as a scientific, professional organization under a different name in March of 1992 by Charles Socarides, Joseph Nicolosi, and Benjamin Kaufman (NARTH Bulletin 1993a, Kaufman 2001-2002). The organizing committee of NARTH, with twenty-three members, met at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Twenty-three members attended (NARTH Bulletin 1993a). Its founders, religiously conservative mental health professionals, created the organization to protect and advocate for the interests of licensed psychotherapists to offer sexual orientation and/or gender identity “conversion therapies.” Conversion therapists were gradually marginalized in the U.S. mental health professions (Drescher 2015a; Kaufman 2001-2002) in the years following the 1973 American Psychiatric Association decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In response to threat of a lawsuit (Isay 1996), the American Psychoanalytic Association became the last major mental health professional organization to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the training of psychoanalysts (Drescher 2015a). This was the catalyst for creating NARTH.

ATCSI was originally named the National Association for Psychoanalytic Research and Therapy of Homosexuality  (Socarides and Kaufman 1994). It was renamed the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality [Image at right] the same year. The organization existed as NARTH until it rebranded as ATCSI in 2014. It is one of the most influential partners in the transnational conversion ministry movement and the anti-LGBT Christian Right (Moss 2021, Robinson and Spivey 2019), both of which were inaugurated during the 1970s. The founders attempted to establish NARTH as a scientific association and promote therapy as an effective method for treating homosexuality, which they viewed as a gender identity disorder (Bennett 2003, Robinson and Spivey 2007). To date, the organization’s legacy includes revitalizing the market for conversion therapy and developing a global advocacy network for its practitioners. For many years, NARTH also rendered some credibility for its two major partners, the ministry networks that promise the possibility of change and Christian political groups opposed to LGBT rights.

No major mental health professional organization has ever recognized NARTH as a scientific organization. NARTH has repeatedly been described as pseudo-scientific (Cianciatto and Cahill 2006, Drescher 2015a, Ford 2001, Haldeman 1999, Panozzo 2013) and accused of distorting and misusing scholars’ research (Besen 2003, ILGA World and Mendos 2020, Robinson and Spivey 2015, Waidzunas 2015, Williams 2011). Beginning in 1992, major professional health organizations began to publish position statements and resolutions opposing attempts to change sexual orientation (NASW 1992), and later, gender identity (NASW 2015), citing the absence of scientific support, among other concerns (see Shidlo, Schroeder, and Drescher 2001). In 1992, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases, a diagnostic tool used around the world for reimbursement systems in health care. Today, all prominent professional mental health and medical associations “reject ‘conversion therapy’ as a legitimate medical treatment” (AMA 2019) to change sexual orientation or gender identity as well as the etiologies on which they are based (APA 2021a, APA 2021b).

Several scholars have questioned or disputed NARTH’s claim to be a secular organization (Alumkal 2017; American Psychiatric Association 2000; Besen 2003; Burack and Josephson 2005; Clucas 2017; Drescher 1998, 2015; Grace 2008; Haldeman 1999; ILGA World and Mendos 2020; Queiroz, D’Elio and Maas 2013; Robinson and Spivey 2007, 2019). Beverley’s (2009) Illustrated Guide to Religions lists NARTH as an organization that is critical of pro-gay theology. Psychologist John Gonsiorek (2004:758) referred to conversion therapy as “theocracy in scientistic drag.” Jurist Craig Konnoth (2017:283) argued that conversion therapy is “quintessentially a form of religious practice.” Scholars (Babits 2019, Martin 1984) have documented the central role of religion in conversion therapies since the early twentieth century. Religion itself remains the “primary driving force that perpetuates” conversion therapy in the U.S. and globally (Horne and McGinley 2022:221).

Although NARTH was neither established as nor officially affiliated with a religious organization, religion has been essential to the work and vitality of the organization and its leaders throughout its thirty-year history. Despite repeated assertions found in NARTH’s literature and by its representatives that NARTH is not a religious organization, NARTH’s newsletter, conference presentations, journals, and website promote socially conservative religious beliefs and practices. Religion is the keystone on which the vocation and professional work of conversion therapists depend, since most clients who seek therapy do so based on moral or religious conflicts related to their own or their children’s sexuality or gender (Flentje, Heck and Cochran 2013; Haldeman 2022; Nicolosi and Nicolosi 2002; Rosik 2014; Spivey and Robinson 2010; Streed, Anderson, Babits and Ferguson 2019).

The organization’s founders were religious conservatives. Joseph Nicolosi, [Image at right] a Roman Catholic who served as the organization’s first executive director, was a psychologist and consultant for the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese (Christianson 2005) prior to co-founding NARTH and consistently integrated religion into his psychotherapy practice with clients (Nicolosi 1991, 2001, 2012). For many years, NARTH was headquartered at Nicolosi’s Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic. Charles Socarides, [Image at right] a psychiatrist who served as the organization’s first president, was one of the most vocal opponents of the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In a magazine published by the Jesuits of the United States, Socarides described his clinical work with homosexual men as “…a kind of ‘pastoral care’…. many of us thought we were quietly doing God’s work” (Socarides 1995). He called the idea, found in some pro-gay literature, that God made people gay “blasphemy.” Benjamin Kaufman was a Jewish psychiatrist (Thorn 2015) who served as the organization’s first vice-president.

Early in NARTH’s first decade, its officers intentionally developed working partnerships with several established “ex-gay” Christian networks, which had already begun to incorporate psychoanalytic etiologies of homosexuality and “transsexuality” into their ministries, based on the teachings of two theologians, Leanne Payne and Elizabeth Moberly (Ford 2001, Robinson and Spivey 2007, 2019). In its first year, NARTH established a leadership structure, which included “Liaison with Religious and Ex-Gay Ministries.” “Mr. and Mrs. Bill Grasso and Rev. Tom Mullen” first served in these roles (NARTH 1993a). In 1993, NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi spoke as a psychologist in a video titled “Choosing to Change from Homosexuality,” sold by the largest ex-gay ministry Exodus International, an evangelical Christian organization. The video featured Exodus president Joe Dallas and religious testimonies of change. Bob Davies, former executive director of Exodus, acknowledged that the organization worked with NARTH to help Exodus boost its credibility (Davies 1998). Randy Thomas, former executive vice-president of Exodus, revealed in a recent documentary that “There was a symbiotic relationship between our need for credibility and then, of course, the therapists who get clients. Our networks were infused with their books… teachings… and therapeutic approach. It sounds awful, but it was a mutually beneficial business arrangement” (Stolakis 2021).

Several NARTH officers had prior working relationships with and held leadership positions in ex-gay ministries and Christian political organizations. NARTH officers had also engaged in anti-LGBT political activities (Drescher 1998, 2001; George 2016; Robinson and Spivey 2019) prior to developing formal partnerships with major Christian political and legal organizations such as Liberty Counsel and the Pacific Justice Institute. NARTH and its officers sought to establish the idea that sexual orientation is not an immutable characteristic (Byrd and Olsen 2001-2002), a criterion considered by the US judiciary to grant protected class status (Nussbaum 2010, Knauer 2021). In 1993, Charles Socarides and Harold Voth submitted affidavits in support of an amendment to Colorado’s constitution to ban cities from passing ordinances to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation (Socarides 1993, Drescher 1998). Joseph Nicolosi appeared in a documentary by Summit Ministries titled “Gay Rights, Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda,” touting his American Psychological Association membership to claim that gays can change their behavior and attractions, in support of the film’s message that gays are not a minority group entitled to protected class status. Socarides submitted an affidavit in 1995 in support of the state’s defense of the Tennessee sodomy law (Dresher 1998).

In 1995, NARTH intentionally cultivated partnerships with major Christian Right political organizations. It established as goals “networking with conservative public policy organizations such as Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Heritage foundation” and “interfacing with religious organizations, including ex-gay ministries, Christian counseling services, orthodox ‘Jewish’ groups, and the National Association of Christian Educators” (NARTH Bulletin 1995:2). By the end of NARTH’s first decade, the organization had solidified mutually beneficial partnerships with ex-gay ministries and Christian Right political and legal organizations (Barack and Josephson 2005; Robinson and Spivey 2019). In 2001, co-founder Joseph Nicolosi secured the blessing of powerhouse evangelical Christian psychologist James Dobson, who endorsed him as “the foremost authority on the treatment and prevention of homosexuality” (Dobson 2001:18).

NARTH continued to reap the harvest of its labors at the end of its first decade. In 2001, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who advocated in 1973 to remove homosexuality from the DSM, presented a peer-reviewed study at the American Psychiatric Association, based on participants recruited through NARTH and Exodus International, that concluded that is possible for some people to change sexual orientation through therapy and religious practices. NARTH and its partners touted Spitzer’s study as validation of its claims. Its publication in a peer-reviewed journal (Spitzer 2003) generated a firestorm of political and scholarly debate (Drescher and Zucker 2006). The publicity benefitted conversion therapists and invited renewed interest, and greater scrutiny of, the ex-gay movement, including NARTH, by journalists (Besen 2003), scholars (Silverstein 2003, Stewart 2005), activists, and others. In 2002, NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the Kansas Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit filed by Liberty Counsel. The court ruled that a “transsexual” is not a woman, voiding her marriage and inheritance (Robinson and Spivey 2019). In 2005, co-founder Charles Socarides died.

By 2007, several members of the American Psychological Association became so concerned about NARTH and other organizations promoting the belief that homosexuality is a disorder that can be changed through therapeutic and religious interventions, that it formed a task force to evaluate the peer-reviewed research literature on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) (Drescher 2015b). The task force report found no scientific evidence to support the efficacy of SOCE (APA 2009; Dresher 2015b). In 2009, the APA also passed a resolution stating that psychologists should avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of SOCE when working with individuals distressed by their own or others’ sexual orientation. Infuriated by the findings of the APA Task Force, NARTH established the Journal of Human Sexuality in 2009 and devoted the first volume to NARTH’s response to the Task Force report. Subsequent issues of the journal published articles and book reviews, mostly by prominent NARTH officers.

Two high-profile scandals severely damaged NARTH’s reputation toward the end of its second decade. In 2010, NARTH officer George Rekers, a psychologist and Baptist minister who also co-founded the Family Research Council, resigned from NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Board after a newspaper reported that he hired a male escort to accompany him on a trip to Europe, where he allegedly received nude massages. Rekers had also frequently provided expert testimony to support discrimination based on sexual orientation in adoption cases and in other areas (Rekers 2006). The same year, NARTH executive secretary Arthur Goldberg, co-founder of the ex-gay ministry Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, resigned after it was publicly revealed that he had served time in federal prison for conspiracy to commit fraud (Kent 2010). These events led to more bad press. In 2011, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper aired a special report titled “The Sissy Boy Experiment,” which revealed Rekers’ role in overseeing shocking experiments designed to extinguish effeminate behavior and prevent homosexuality in boys, one of whom committed suicide as an adult. At the close of NARTH’s second decade, Warren Throckmorton (2011), a former NARTH member who previously supported reorientation therapy, revealed that seventy-five percent of NARTH’s members were neither scientists nor therapists, but “lay people, ministers, and activists.”

The beginning of NARTH’s third decade is marked by turmoil and organizational reconstruction. 2012 ushered in a series of major setbacks. In 2012, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer sought to retract the 2003 study that claimed sexual orientation change was possible, saying it was flawed, and apologized for the harm it caused. NARTH submitted an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, which they partially invalidated, and directed the federal government to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. NARTH lost its tax-exempt status after neglecting to file the necessary paperwork. The most devastating event for NARTH in 2012 occurred when California became the first state to pass a law banning licensed health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with minors. NARTH sued and lost. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the law. The Supreme Court denied a request for further appeal. Exodus International removed NARTH materials from its website and its president, Alan Chambers, publicly renounced reparative therapy. This prompted several Exodus officers and ministries to leave the organization and form a rival ministry network called The Restored Hope Network. NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi joined RHN’s Board. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association removed “Gender Identity Disorder” from the DSM and replaced it with “Gender Dysphoria,” which depathologized people who are transgender and non-binary (APA 2013). The same year, the World Medical Association released a statement (WMA 2013) that “condemns so-called ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ methods” by health care professionals. NARTH’s response was published in the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association (Rosik 2014).

These events prompted NARTH’s leaders to entirely rebrand the organization and its messaging. In 2014, the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity became the organization’s new name and “the NARTH Institute” was placed alongside one of ATCSI’s new divisions. ATCSI represents a significant departure from its previous incarnation. In addition to renaming the organization and broadening its mission, ATCSI’s leaders also announced they had created a global advocacy organization, the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC), and located ATCSI within that federation. The language of IFTCC’s organizational mission is almost identical to ATCSI’s. The most significant aspect of IFTCC is its “anthropological approach,” which “is based on a Judeo-Christian understanding of the body, marriage and the family” (IFTCC 2022). This development is an official acknowledgement of the religious commitments of the federation and its member organizations, particularly the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

NARTH’s founders endeavored to frame the organization as scientific and secular. Despite many years of successfully marketing etiologies of disorder and “reparative therapy” to clients, NARTH’s conversion to ATCSI, which positions “therapeutic choice” before “scientific integrity,” and its new practice guidelines (ATCSI 2018) for change therapy endorsed by the organization, Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy (SAFE-T), appears as a concession. NARTH’s appeals to science have not protected licensed mental health practitioners against professional and legal regulation. As psychologist Charles Silverstein (2003:33) observed, the “concept of ‘choice’ currently favored by the conservative Christian right is a regression to an earlier religious belief in ‘free will.’”

In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a consumer fraud civil lawsuit against an ex-gay organization, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH), which was co-founded by former NARTH officer Arthur Goldberg. NARTH officers Joseph Nicolosi, Joseph Berger, Christopher Doyle, and James Phelan provided expert declarations in advance of the trial and testified in court in support of JONAH. In 2015, the judge declared that, as a matter of law, homosexuality is not a mental illness and excluded their testimony (Dubrowski 2015). The jury returned a unanimous verdict, finding JONAH liable for consumer fraud. The scientific claims of NARTH experts are increasingly being rejected by the courts (Dubrowski 2015). While ATCSI maintains, despite evolving stances of the mental health establishment to the contrary, that the therapy they endorse is effective, ethical, and safe, it is clear that NARTH’s salvation can no longer rely on its appeals to science alone. Since 2014, ATCSI has more intentionally leveraged rights-based arguments (client autonomy, self-determination, religious liberty, religious diversity, conscience, free speech, and parents’ rights) to defend the legitimacy of its profession (Clucas 2017, Robinson and Spivey 2019).

The first years of ATCSI were extremely difficult. In 2014, members of The United Nations Committee against Torture questioned officials in the U.S. State Department about why 48 states allow conversion therapy with minors (Margolin 2014). In 2015, The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (United Nations 2015) issued a report calling for all nations to ban “conversion therapies.” In 2015, NARTH co-founder Benjamin Kaufman relinquished his medical license amid allegations of gross negligence and unprofessional conduct (Truth Wins Out 2016). The American Bar Association adopted a resolution urging “…all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments to enact laws prohibiting state-licensed professionals from using conversion therapy on minors” (ABA 2015). In 2016, the World Psychiatric Association declared conversion therapy to be “wholly unethical.” In 2017, NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi died, a couple of months before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to California’s law banning conversion therapy with minors. Nicolosi’s practice had been harmed by this law, and he was a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging it (as was NARTH). After his father’s death, Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. trademarked “reparative therapy” and “reintegrative therapy,” in 2018 and 2019 respectively (Justia 2018, 2019). In 2019, juggernaut retailer Amazon.com announced its decision to stop selling books on conversion therapy.

ATCSI’s rights-based rhetorical strategy garnered a significant legal victory in 2020, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit invalidated two ordinances in Florida (the city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach county) that banned conversion therapy with minors. Liberty Counsel, the Christian litigation firm that has worked closely with NARTH/ATCSI for several years (Robinson and Spivey 2019), represented two therapists, former NARTH President Julie Hamilton and Robert Otto. They challenged these ordinances as a violation of free speech. Only time will tell if this is a harbinger of future success.

In 2021, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution that strengthened its stance against SOCE (APA 2021a) as well as its first resolution opposing gender identity change efforts (APA 2021b). For the first time in the U.S., pro-conversion therapy legislation was “quietly” introduced in five state legislatures (Terkel 2021). Oklahoma’s bill, “The Parental and Family Rights in Counseling Protection Act,” was patroned by Rep. Jim Olson, who quoted ATCSI board member, pediatrician Michelle Cretella, to claim that conversion therapy can be effective and is not harmful (Brack 2021). Arizona’s bill sought to prohibit state agencies from punishing practitioners who engage in therapy “consistent with conscience or religious belief.” None of these bills was passed into law. As of 2022, more than half of the states, and several U.S. cities, have some form of conversion therapy ban, by law or regulation (Movement Advancement Project 2022). Almost all of these prohibit conversion therapy on minors by state-licensed health providers.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

NARTH’s founding goal was to protect the livelihoods of professionals who provide counseling to clients who are distressed about their same-sex attractions and gender nonconformity. In an early Statement of Policy, NARTH asserted that homosexuality “…is inimical to the preservation of the family unit” (NARTH Bulletin 1993a:2). The worldview that NARTH promoted and that ATCSI continues to promote (and shares with its transformational ministry and Christian Right partners) is that the patriarchal, nuclear family structure is God-ordained, is reflected in the natural order, and is the keystone of a healthy society. All of society’s institutions (religion, law, medicine, etc.) should preserve and protect this grand design and the essential gender structure on which it depends (Burack and Josephson 2005; Robinson and Spivey 2007, 2015, 2019).

ATCSI promotes the belief that homosexuality and gender variance are gender identity disorders that develop from gender-deviant parenting/family dynamics or other childhood trauma, which are abetted and exacerbated on a societal level by feminism, gay rights, and the transgender movement (Robinson and Spivey 2007, 2019). Its efforts to market the treatment and prevention of “gender confusion” are reinforced by conservative Judeo-Christian theology and laws that deny LGBT people human and civil rights. ATCSI remains an active partner in these endeavors as well, and currently features on its website a webinar by Liberty Counsel attorney Mat Staver on why The Equality Act, which would add anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity to federal law, should be opposed.

NARTH’s officers and organizational literature from 1992-2013 attempted to establish a scientific rationale for conversion therapy. The vast majority of the organization’s officers, board members, and advisors during its thirty-year history are individuals who hold religiously conservative positions on the morality of homosexuality and gender variance. In addition, several officers and board members simultaneously held prominent positions in and/or work closely with ex-gay ministry networks and Christian anti-LGBT political organizations. Despite declarations that NARTH is primarily a scientific organization, its literature consistently expressed and encouraged conservative Judeo-Christian condemnation of homosexuality and gender non-conformity. Reparative therapy, which integrates and prioritizes religion within a therapeutic model that prescribes gender resocialization (Robinson and Spivey 2007, 2015, 2019), was developed by theologian Elizabeth Moberly (1983). It has been the dominant “treatment” model since the late 1980s. It was popularized, and possibly plagiarized, by NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi (Besen 2003, Erzen 2006). It has been the most prominent therapy promoted by NARTH and Christian and Jewish ministries around the world for diagnosing and “healing” people of their same-sex attractions and gender dysphoria (Hall 2017, Mikulak 2020, Robinson and Spivey 2015).

In 2014, when the organization rebranded as the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity and developed new practice guidelines, science became secondary to “therapeutic choice” and the religious values and rights of clients and practitioners.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The original goal of NARTH was to protect licensed mental health practitioners who offer SOGIE change therapy from professional regulation. The organization also sought to market therapy to clients, who primarily pursued therapy based on religious conflicts. Both are likely more difficult in a society that increasingly accepts and recognizes the civil rights of LGBT people.

Through NARTH, conversion advocates appeared to engage in all of the familiar activities of a scholarly, scientific professional association. They provided stable leadership, generated a membership, and created an organizational structure to facilitate its work. NARTH sponsors a newsletter, hosts an annual conference (since 1993), maintains a website (since 2006), and publishes its own journal (since 2009). NARTH purported to uphold science as the foundation for research and therapy and to be a secular organization. Its endeavors were exceedingly fruitful for developing mutually beneficial collaborations with change ministry networks and Christian political and legal organizations. NARTH provided scientific legitimacy for ministries and expert testimony for Christian Right litigation, legislation, and policy advocacy. In return, these partners supplied publicity, client referrals, and legal counsel (see Robinson and Spivey 2019). In addition to its scientific practices, NARTH has always operated, de facto, as a religious organization in every aspect of its work (Clucas 2017; Drescher 1998).

ATCSI’s organizational literature (newsletter, website, conference presentations, and journal) has always disseminated and promoted conservative, Judeo-Christian religious views of homosexuality and gender variance. Most of its officers and board members who are licensed mental health professionals integrated theology and/or prescribed religious practices (prayer, reading scripture, attending church or ministry support groups) into their work with clients. The organization’s own survey (Nicolosi, Byrd and Potts 2000) found that most “reorientation psychotherapists” incorporate religion into their work with clients at least some of the time.

ATCSI’s leadership has always represented an interfaith alliance of socially conservative Christians and Jews. The overwhelming majority of ATCSI’s officers, board and committee members, past and present, hold religious affiliations representing conservative Catholic, Jewish, LDS, mainline Protestant, nondenominational and evangelical Christian traditions. Every President in the organization’s history has been a Christian. They commonly publish their work in religious journals and presses (Waidzunas 2015).

ATCSI’s leaders worked closely with and frequently held prominent positions in ex-gay ministry organizations (Robinson and Spivey 2015, 2019; Waidzunas 2015). James Phelan is the former President of Transforming Congregations, a Methodist ministry (Kuyper 1999). Arthur Goldberg co-founded JONAH, a Jewish ministry. David Pruden, Dean Byrd, Shirley Cox, Jerry Harris, and David Matheson served prominently in the LDS ministry, Evergreen International (Petrey 2020). Michael Davidson directs a ministry in the U.K. Charles Socarides, Joseph Nicolosi, Janelle Hallman, Richard Fitzgibbons (Tushnet 2021) and others worked closely with Courage International, a Catholic ministry. Over the years, NARTH/ATCSI conferences regularly included leaders of these ministries as well as Exodus International, One by One, the Restored Hope Network, the International Healing Foundation, and others.

ATCSI also collaborates closely with Christian legal, political, and medical organizations, particularly Liberty Counsel, Focus on the Family, and the American College of Pediatricians (Robinson and Spivey 2019; Spivey and Robinson 2010). Representatives of these and other similar groups often speak at ATCSI conferences. ATCSI’s board members have also held significant leadership roles in Christian political and medical organizations. Former NARTH psychologist and Baptist minister George Rekers co-founded the Family Research Council. Jewish psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover served as the medical advisor for Focus on the Family. Catholic pediatrician Michelle Cretella was president of the American College of Pediatricians.

In addition to ATCSI’s success in disseminating its literature and ideas through formidable and fruitful partnerships with conservative religious organizations, its leaders have also been prolific advocates, providing media interviews and appearing on popular television shows. A significant aspect of its ability to resist against professional and legal regulation, attract clients, and justify its existence in the public sphere is its rhetorical appeals. Scholars have analyzed the rhetorical “framing” strategies used by NARTH/ATCSI leaders to defend conversion therapy and appeal to various audiences (Arthur et al. 2014, Bennett 2003, Burack and Josephson 2005, Clucas 2017, Conrad and Angell 2004, Robinson and Spivey 2019, Stewart 2005, Waidzunas 2015). While the organization maintains, despite the evolving stances of the mental health establishment to the contrary, that therapy is effective, ethical, and safe, it is clear that ATCSI’s future must depend on a different approach. As SOGIE change therapy became increasingly regulated by the mental health profession and the law, ATCSI’s framing emphasized “client autonomy” and religious rationales more than science. This is the essence of what is reflected by rebranding NARTH as The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity is highly bureaucratized. [Image at right]  NARTH’s original leadership structure consisted of an executive director, president, and vice-president, first staffed by Joseph Nicolosi, Charles Socarides, and Benjamin Kaufman (respectively). Nicolosi also edited the NARTH Bulletin and served as the first secretary-treasurer. NARTH established several committees during its first year (NARTH Bulletin 1993a), including: an advisory committee to government, educational and mental health agencies; a committee on media, religious and social service organizations; a committee on the public information/pamphlets, a committee on political and academic intimidation, and a committee to liaison with religious and ex-gay ministries. Jack Hale initially provided legal counsel. NARTH received tax exempt status as a private, non-profit organization in 1993 (NARTH Bulletin 1993b). In 1994, it added a research committee (NARTH Bulletin 1994). NARTH also established a board of directors and a scientific advisory committee.

The NARTH Newsletter (1992:7), renamed “NARTH Bulletin” thereafter, delineated the original categories of membership. These include member (“for individuals engaged in psychological treatment or research of homosexuality… open to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and certified social workers [who] have completed a Masters’ [sic] Degree level training sexuality, family, and MFC programs”), associate member (“for educators, public health officials, religious leaders, social scientists and historians, as well as writers in the field of sexuality and family health [including] any individual in the behavioral sciences with a particular interest in homosexuality”), and friends of NARTH (for “individuals who wish to further and encourage the educational and therapeutic aims of this organization”). The membership form noted that NARTH offers client referrals for members in the first category.

NARTH created and dissolved several ad hoc committees from 1992-2013, including an interfaith committee. However, its leadership, organizational and membership structures remained relatively stable as the organization grew. The size of organization’s membership, which was occasionally mentioned in the newsletter and at the annual conference, grew steadily during its first decade. In 2003, NARTH’s membership was “approaching 1,500 and rapidly growing” (Byrd 2003:5). In 2009, NARTH established The Journal of Human Sexuality and created new positions (such as managing editor, and later, an editorial board) to carry out the journal’s work.

In 2014, when NARTH became the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, the organization’s leadership originally located “the NARTH Institute,” alongside the organization’s newly-developed divisions within ATCSI. Eventually, the NARTH acronym was phased out altogether. To date, ATCSI’s six divisions include three “public advocacy” divisions (Ethics, Family & Faith; Public Education; and Client Rights) and three “professional” divisions (Clinical, Research, and Medical). Each division has its own goals, a working committee, and an advisory committee.

In 2014, NARTH’s officers also established a global organization, The International Federation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice, with an explicitly Judeo-Christian worldview, and announced ATCSI as a member of this federation.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

In 30 years, ATCSI has accomplished a great deal of its founders’ vision. Its charter members successfully developed a network of devoted professionals and supporters to advance the organization’s mission and carry out its work. By cultivating synergetic partnerships with established ministry networks and religious political, legal, and health organizations, ATCSI’s efforts revitalized the profession of conversion therapy in the United States, and strengthened the transnational conversion therapy movement. ATCSI has endured loss, weathered scandals, and persisted through negative publicity involving some of its leaders and former allies; however, its primary obstacles are external. ATCSI’s efforts and accomplishments also raise a number of unresolved issues.

The most pressing challenge facing ATCSI is professional and/or legal regulation. ACTSI has formidable opponents, including and beyond mental health, medical, and legal professional associations. These include non-profit organizations that have worked to educate, advocate, legislate, and litigate against conversion therapy, such as Truth Wins Out, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Trevor Project. To what extent and in what ways can/will mental health associations, state licensing boards, and legislatures regulate conversion therapists? Will the movement to pass state laws banning licensed health providers from engaging in conversion therapy with minors maintain momentum? What is the likelihood of regulating this through existing laws protecting children from abuse (Hicks 1999)? Scholars have identified limitations and loopholes of these approaches (Alexander 2017, Calvert 2020, Drescher 2022). What about consumer fraud legislation, such as the proposed federal Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, which would make advertising conversion therapy in exchange for remuneration a fraudulent practice for minors and adults? What about state and federal legislation to “defund” Alexander 2017) or deny the use of public funds to pay for it, such as the proposed Prohibition of Medicaid Funding for Conversion Therapy Act? In what ways might the daunting prospect of “high-tech” conversion therapies present new opportunities for conversion proponents, and more complex challenges for regulating them (Earp, Sandberg, and Savulescu 2014)?

In three decades, ATCSI has proven resilient and has largely resisted attempts by professional associations and advocacy organizations to discourage or obstruct SOGIE change therapy. The consensus position of the mental health establishment is that no sexual orientation or gender identity is a mental illness. Should clients be allowed to pursue attempts to change anyway, for themselves or their children, based on their religious beliefs or any other reason? While some licensed practitioners have been affected by state laws and regulations banning therapy with minors, most have largely avoided legal and/or professional regulation (IRTC 2020). This is particularly true for unlicensed, religious counselors, whose religious practices are beyond the regulatory reach of U.S. law (Cruz 1998-1999, Knauer 2020). ATCSI’s division on client rights is dedicated to resisting professional and legal control, and earned a significant, recent victory that invalidated two ordinances. To what extent will ATCSI’s religious freedom and rights-based arguments succeed in the judiciary? What about the court of public opinion? How will furthering the human and civil rights of LGBT people, which have advanced significantly since NARTH began in 1992, affect the demand for conversion therapy? The market today remains robust.

IMAGES

Image #1: Joseph Nicolosi
Image #2: Charles Socarides
Image #3: Logo of National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
Image #4: The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

REFERENCES

Alexander, Melissa Ballengee. 2017. “Autonomy and Accountability: Why Informed Consent, Consumer Protection, and Defunding May Beat Conversion Therapy Bans.” University of Louisville Law Review 55:283-322.

Alumkal, Antony. 2017. Paranoid Science: The Christian Right’s War on Reality. New York: New York University Press.

American Bar Association. 2015. Accessed from  https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/-administrative/crsj/committee/aug-15-conversion-therarpy.authcheckdam.pdf on 10 April 2022.

American Medical Association. 2019. “LGBTQ Change Efforts (So-called ‘Conversion Therapy’).” Accessed from https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2019-12/conversion-therapy-issue-brief.pdf on 10 April 2022.

American Psychiatric Association. 2013. DSM-5 Fact Sheet: Gender Dysphoria. Accessed from https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/-educational-resources/dsm-5-fact-sheets on 10 April 2022.

American Psychiatric Association. 2000. “Therapies Focused on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation (Reparative or Conversion Therapies).” APA Document Reference 200001. Accessed from http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/other/APA_position_conversion%20therapy.pdf on 10 April 2022.

American Psychological Association. 2021a. “APA Resolution on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts.” Accessed from https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-sexual-orientation-change-efforts.pdf on 10 April 2022.

American Psychological Association. 2021b. “APA Resolution on Gender Identity Change Efforts.” Accessed from https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-gender-identity-change-efforts.pdf on 10 April 2022.

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Publication Date:
12 April 2022

ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS TIMELINE

1855 (June 28):  Theodor Reuss was born.

1875 (October 12):  Aleister Crowley was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Britain.

1901–1902:  Reuss obtained charters to operate several high-degree masonic rites in Germany.

1902:  Reuss began issuing the periodical Oriflamme.

1904 (April 8–10):  Crowley received The Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt.

1906 (January 22):  The date of the earliest constitution of the “Ancient Order of Oriental Templars,” likely produced closer to 1912.

1910:  Reuss granted Aleister Crowley a charter for the “Antient and Primitive Rite.”

1912 (April 21):  Reuss granted Crowley a charter for Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and designated him National Grand Master General for Britain and Ireland. Reuss also designated Crowley “General Representative” for America around this time.

1912 (June 1):  A British branch of OTO, “Mysteria Mystica Maxima” or M\M\M\, was established in London.

1912 (September):  Reuss announced the existence and mission of OTO, as well as Crowley’s status, in a “Jubilee” issue of Oriflamme. Crowley concurrently announced the “Order of Oriental Templars” and its British branch, M\M\M\, in the September issue of his periodical The Equinox.

1913:  Crowley penned “Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ,” the Gnostic Catholic Mass, as the “central ceremony” of OTO.

1913:  The first local Lodge of OTO was established in London.

1913 (December 20):  Crowley issued an OTO charter to James Thomas Windram for South Africa, leading to the formation of two Lodges.

1913–1914 (c.):  Crowley revised OTO’s initiation rites up until the VI°.

1914: Crowley published a manifesto for the British branch of OTO, “Manifesto M\M\M\”.

1915 (January 1): Crowley issued a charter to Charles Stansfeld Jones, appointing him OTO representative in Vancouver.

1915 (November 15)  : J.T. Windram issued an OTO charter for Australia to Frank Bennett.

1917 (January 22):  Reuss announced an “Anational Grandlodge” as the new headquarters of OTO in the utopian commune Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland.

1917 (August 15–25):  Reuss held an OTO “Anational Congress” at Monte Verità.

1918:  Reuss published Crowley’s Gnostic Mass in German under the auspices of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC).

1918 (March):  The first English-language publication of the Gnostic Mass, in The International.

1919 (March 21):  The Equinox III (1) was published. This issue comprised documents related to the organization and mission of OTO.

1921 (July):  Reuss issued a multinational charter for OTO in North America to C.S. Jones, and a national charter for Germany to Heinrich Tränker.

1921 (September 3):  Reuss issued an OTO charter to Carl William Hansen, alias Ben Kadosh, for Denmark.

1923 (October 28): Theodor Reuss died.

1924 (December):  Crowley formally accepted the position of Outer Head of the Order (OHO) of OTO with the support of Jones and Tränker.

1925 (August):  The Conference of Grand Masters was held in Weida, Germany.

1935:  Wilfred Talbot Smith, working with Jane Wolfe, established the Agape Lodge of OTO in Southern California.

1940 (April 8):  Crowley appointed Karl J. Germer as Grand Treasurer General.

1941:  Germer emigrated to the U.S.

1941 (July 18):  Crowley named Germer as the next OHO.

1941:  Grady Louis McMurtry was initiated into the Agape Lodge of OTO.

1946 (March 22):  Crowley authorized McMurtry to assume control of OTO in California in case of emergency.

1947 (December 1):  Aleister Crowley died in Hastings, East Sussex. He was succeeded by Germer as OHO.

1948:  Agape Lodge was closed.

1962 (October 25):  Karl Germer died in West Point, California.

1968–1969:  Learning of Germer’s passing, McMurtry acted on his previous authorization from Crowley and moved to reestablish OTO in California with the aid of members of the old Agape Lodge.

1977 (October 12):  McMurtry chartered Thelema Lodge in Berkeley, CA, as the Grand Lodge of the reestablished OTO.

1979 (March 20):  OTO was incorporated as a religious non-profit organization under the laws of the State of California.

1985 (July 12):  The U.S. District Court of Northern California declared McMurtry’s OTO the rightful heir to the Crowley–Germer organization, with exclusive legal rights to Crowley’s literary legacy and the OTO name and lamen.

1985 (July 12):  Grady McMurtry died.

1985 (September 21):  The IX° members of OTO elected William Breeze, alias Hymenaeus Beta, as acting OHO.

1996:  An International Headquarters of OTO was established, with the United States Grand Lodge (USGL) as a subordinate body.

2005:  The United Kingdom Grand Lodge (UKGL) was established.

2006:  The Australia Grand Lodge was established.

2014:  Grand Lodges were established in Italy and Croatia.

2014 (October 10):  The five National Grand Masters voted to elect Breeze as de jure OHO.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) or the Order of Oriental Templars is an initiatory magical order that arose out of the irregular and high-degree masonic networks of early-twentieth-century Central Europe. Carl Kellner (1851–1905), a wealthy Austrian paper chemist and Freemason with an interest in yoga and occultism, is traditionally credited as the “spiritual father” (geistige Vater) and first “Outer Head” of OTO (Reuss 1912:15). [Image at right] However, the order appears to have arisen from the collaboration between the German socialist and singer Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) and the British occultist, poet, and mountaineer Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), the latter being the principal architect of the present-day order’s structure and teachings.

Theodor Reuss was born in 1855 to an English mother and a German father. Having worked as a journalist in the 1880s, Reuss in 1885 joined the Socialist League, one of several early socialist movements emerging in England. He was expelled the following year due to accusations of operating as a spy for the Prussian police (despite scant evidence) (Howe and Möller 1978). During the 1890s, Reuss moved in several esoteric and masonic groups. [Image at right] This is where Reuss met Carl Kellner, whom Reuss later claimed wished to create an “Academia Masonica” uniting all masonic degrees and systems (Reuss 1912:15). Around the year 1900, Reuss obtained charters to establish several high-degree masonic rites in Germany via Gérard Encausse (alias Papus, 1865–1916), founder of the Martinist Order; William Wynn Westcott (1848–1925), Freemason and co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; and the Freemason John Yarker (1833–1913). In 1902, Reuss began issuing the periodical Oriflamme as a vehicle for his ideas (Höwe and Möller 1978; Kaczynski 2012).

Also embroiled in the neo-Gnostic movement of the time, Reuss attended a spiritualist masonic conference organized by Papus in Paris in 1908. There, Reuss may have been ordained bishop of Jean Bricaud’s (1881–1934) l’Église Catholique Gnostique (later l’Église Gnostique Universelle). Bricaud (formerly a bishop of Jules Doinel’s (1842–1902) Gnostic Church) had broken away in 1907 to form his own church, supported by Papus and Louis-Sophrone Fugairon (b. 1846). Reuss later established a German branch of the church titled Die Gnostische Katolische Kirche (G.K.K.) (Toth 2005).

In 1910, Reuss granted a charter for Yarker’s Antient and Primitive Rite to Aleister Crowley (Reuss 1906 [1910]; Crowley 1989:628–629). Born in 1875 to parents who were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a dispensationalist Christian sect, Crowley was no novice to esoteric activity. In 1898, he had joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London, rising quickly through the grades. His involvement with the order ended in 1900. In 1904, on honeymoon with his first wife Rose (née Kelly, 1874–1932), [Image at right]  Crowley was visited by a discarnate entity named Aiwass, whom Crowley considered to be a messenger of the god Horus. Over three days, Aiwass dictated a text to Crowley: The Book of the Law, later given the technical title Liber AL vel Legis (Crowley 2004). Though initially skeptical of the book’s message, Crowley eventually accepted his status as prophet of a new religion: Thelema (Greek for “will”), of which The Book of the Law became the central sacred text. In 1907, Crowley and his former Golden Dawn mentor George Cecil Jones (1873–1960) founded the Order of the Silver Star or A\A\, which drew on the degree structure and ritual magical practices of the Golden Dawn combined with yogic techniques Crowley had learned travelling in Asia (Crowley 1994). Crowley also made study of the “Holy Books of Thelema” part of the A\A\ curriculum (Crowley 1909). Like Reuss, Crowley was a periodical publisher, having issued The Equinox as a vehicle of A\A\ since 1909.

In 1912, Crowley and Reuss again crossed paths. Crowley claims Reuss sought him out at his London home, accusing Crowley of disseminating the “supreme secret” of Reuss’s Ordo Templi Orientis, associated with the IX° of the order. As a result, Reuss stated, Crowley must be initiated into the order and ceremonially sworn to secrecy. Crowley claimed to have retorted that he, ignorant of the order’s secret, could hardly be guilty of revealing it, to which Reuss responded by indicating a passage from Crowley’s The Book of Lies (first published in 1912, see Crowley 1980). Crowley describes how realization dawned on him. On April 21, Reuss thus conferred the IX° on Crowley, appointing him National Grand Master of OTO in Great Britain and Ireland (Crowley 1989:709–10). [Image at right] Reuss also appointed Crowley OTO representative for the U.S.. Parts of Crowley’s account are called into question by the lack of evidence of OTO existing as a membership organization prior to 1912. Though the order’s first constitution is dated to January 22, 1906, the document was likely produced closer to 1912, and it is thus reasonable to assume that OTO as a functioning organization emerged from Reuss’s and Crowley’s collaboration and mainly from 1912 on (cf. Howe and Möller 1978).

A British branch of OTO, “Mysteria Mystica Maxima” or M\M\M\, was established in London on June 1, 1912 (Reuss 1912:14). In September 1912, Reuss issued a “Jubilee edition” of Oriflamme, announcing OTO and revealing the nature of the order’s supreme secret: sexual magic, claimed as the key to all Hermetic and masonic systems (Reuss 1912:21). Concurrently, the September 1912 issue of Crowley’s The Equinox announced an “Order of Oriental Templars” and its British branch, M\M\M\. Though it is unclear whether Reuss had consecrated Crowley as bishop of his own Gnostic Catholic Church, Crowley’s announcement of OTO also mentioned the “Gnostic Catholic Church” as a spiritual antecedent to the order (Crowley 1912).

From the point of its official launch, OTO admitted men and women on equal terms. Though the order had this in common with several other contemporary occult societies, including the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, the policy of initiating women distinguished OTO from its masonic roots. The decision to admit women can likely be linked to the order’s sex magical teachings. From the outset, several women held executive offices within the order, including Crowley’s first Grand Secretary General, Vittoria Cremers, and succeeding Secretaries, Leila Waddell (1880–1932) and Leah Hirsig (1883–1975) (cf. Hedenborg White 2021b). [Image at right]

After his induction into OTO, Crowley proceeded to reshape the order. Dissatisfied with Reuss’s initiation rituals, Crowley with Reuss’s support revised the initiations up until the VI°. In Moscow in 1913, Crowley also penned a neo-Gnostic, Eucharistic ritual for the order: “Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ” or the Gnostic Catholic Mass, which Crowley intended to communicate OTO’s central, sex magical secret (Crowley 1989:714; Crowley 2007:247–70). The Latinized name Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica had not previously been in general use, though Crowley’s adoption of this terminology clearly links the ritual to Reuss’s neo-Gnostic interests. The ritual centers on the veneration of the masculine and feminine principles and their erotic union (see Rituals/Practices for further information). The order also expanded geographically around this time. On December 20, 1913, Crowley issued a charter to his student James Thomas Windram (1877–1939) for South Africa, leading to the formation of two lodges. On November 15, 1915, Windram in turn granted a charter for Australia to Frank Bennett (1868–1930) (Windram 1915).

Though Crowley had utilized sexual acts to attain spiritual purposes on several previous occasions (see e.g., Hedenborg White 2020:54; 76 n89), his collaboration with Reuss marked the beginning of a more systematic engagement with sexual magic; the use of sexual acts or energy to attain specific goals. From 1914 on, Crowley explored sexual magic with numerous partners both male and female, recording the experiments in his diary (e.g., Crowley 1983; Crowley 1996). He also penned instructional documents for OTO’s higher degrees (e.g., Crowley 1914a; 1914b). Briefly summarized, Crowley’s technique consisted of concentrating on a desired outcome and raising and focusing sexual energy, culminating at the point of orgasm with the “charging” of an appropriate mental image. The resulting genital fluids were subsequently consumed or, in some cases, used to anoint a material talisman. Sexual magic was initially linked to the OTO’s VIII° and IX°, associated with autoerotic exercises and heterosexual intercourse, respectively. After performing a series of invocations with his lover and disciple Victor B. Neuburg (1883–1940) in 1914 in Paris, Crowley added an XI°. This degree is generally held to be associated with anal sex, which Crowley performed with both male and female partners (Crowley 1983: e.g., 53–64; Crowley 1998:343–409; cf. Bogdan 2006:218). In 1915, Crowley formally introduced Thelema into the branches of OTO under his jurisdiction (cf. Bogdan 2021:34).

During World War I, Crowley settled in the U.S., while Reuss relocated to Switzerland. In January 1917, Reuss announced the establishment of OTO’s headquarters in the form of an Anational Grandlodge in the progressive, utopian commune Monte Verità near Ascona, Switzerland (Howe & Möller 1978; Green 1987). In August that year, Reuss hosted an “OTO Anational Congress,” which featured a special reading of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Reuss 1917; Adderley 1997:245). Reuss also undertook a translation of The Book of the Law into German (Reuss n.d. [1917]), and in 1918 issued a modified German translation of the Gnostic Mass under the auspices of OTO (Reuss 1997:226–38; cf. Hedenborg White, forthcoming). The adoption of the Gnostic Mass as a central ritual established Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC) as a Thelemic organisation and marked a break with previous forms of Gnostic revivalism.

1918 marked the first English-language publication of the Gnostic Mass in The International (Crowley 1918). Around this time, Crowley again undertook a major revision of the OTO initiation rituals for 0°–III° to further distinguish the order from its masonic origins (Starr 2003:20–24; 98–100). On the spring equinox (March 21), 1919, Crowley resumed publication of his periodical The Equinox after a five-year silence. This was part of a larger publishing endeavor undertaken with the support of Detroit-based Freemason Albert W. Ryerson (1872–1931) and his mistress Bertha Bruce (b. 1888/1889), who also became Crowley’s lover. Commonly called the “blue” Equinox due to the color of its cover, The Equinox III (1) represents a benchmark in OTO history (cf. Kaczynski 2019:1–16). It comprises several key documents detailing the organization and mission of OTO, including Crowley’s revised manifesto for the order and a very slightly modified version of the Gnostic Mass that has since become canonical (Crowley 1919).

Crowley returned to Europe in December 1919. By the summer of 1921, his relationship with Reuss had become strained. Though Crowley later claimed an increasingly mentally unwell Reuss abdicated his position around this time, asking Crowley to take over as Outer Head of the Order (OHO), there are no surviving documents to prove this claim (quoted in Starr 2003: 110–13, 363). Reuss died in 1923, leaving the question of successorship unanswered. In 1924, Crowley formally accepted the office of OHO with the support of two of the remaining National Grand Masters: Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886–1950), who held a multinational charter for North America, and Heinrich Tränker (1880–1956), who held a national charter for Germany. It appears that all three were unaware, at the time, that Reuss in 1921 had issued a national charter for Denmark to Carl William Hansen (alias Ben Kadosh, 1872–1936) (Reuss 1921). Hansen’s successor Grundal Sjallung (1875–1976) contacted Crowley in 1938, believing that OTO had ceased to operate internationally.

With the aid of a close circle of followers, Crowley sought to defend his authority at a conference of occult leaders hosted by Tränker at his home in Weida, Germany, during the summer of 1925. The participants held mixed feelings towards Crowley. While Tränker’s secretary and publisher Karl J. Germer (1885–1962) sided with Crowley, the conference precipitated a schism between Crowley and Tränker (Lechler 2013; Kaczynski 2010:418–23; for further details, see Issues/Challenges).

Coincident with the apparent rise of totalitarianism in Europe, Crowley decided to focus his efforts on establishing OTO in the U.S. Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885–1957), formerly active as a member of OTO in Vancouver, Canada, and Jane Wolfe (1875–1958), [Image at right] a long-time friend and student of Crowley’s who had resided with him in Europe, proceeded to establish the Agape Lodge of OTO in Los Angeles, California, in 1935. After suffering interment in a Nazi concentration camp, Germer emigrated to the U.S. in 1941. On July 18, Crowley indicated Germer as the next OHO of OTO (Crowley 1941). The same year, engineering student Grady Louis McMurtry (1918–1985) [Image at right] was initiated into the Agape Lodge. McMurtry had spent time with Crowley in England during WWII while being stationed there as a soldier. In 1942, the Agape Lodge relocated to Pasadena at the behest of its new lodge master, jet fuel engineer John “Jack” Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952). In the spring of 1946, Crowley authorized McMurtry (under his magical name Hymenaeus Alpha) to take control of OTO in California in case of an emergency (Crowley 1946). By the end of WWII, the Agape Lodge was the only active OTO body in the world (Starr 2003: passim).

Aleister Crowley died in Hastings on December 1, 1947. The Agape Lodge dissolved the following year. While OTO membership activities subsequently dwindled in North America for a number of years, Germer supervised the publication of some of Crowley’s writings and collaborated with Crowley’s friend Gerald Yorke (1901–1983) to preserve letters and documents by Crowley and his followers (Germer 2016; Kaczynski 2010:553–54).

Karl Germer died in West Point, California, on October 25, 1962. In the aftermath of his passing, several persons made claims to successorship, including the British occultist Kenneth Grant (1924–2011), a student of Crowley’s who had been the latter’s secretary late in life; Herman Metzger (1919–1990), who led a Swiss branch of the order; and the Brazilian Thelemite Marcelo Ramos Motta (1931–1987). The strongest claim to successorship, and the only one to have been legally recognized, was that of Grady McMurtry. Learning of Germer’s death in 1968, McMurtry acted on his previous authorizations from Crowley (e.g., Crowley 1946) and moved to reestablish the order with the aid of former Agape Lodge members Phyllis Seckler (1917–2004) and Helen Parsons Smith (1910–2003). In 1977, McMurtry chartered Thelema Lodge in Berkeley, California, as the Grand Lodge of the reestablished OTO. On March 20, 1979, OTO was incorporated as a religious non-profit under California law. On July 12, 1985, the U.S. District Court of Northern California ruled in favor of McMurtry’s OTO, establishing it as the successor to Crowley’s organization and granting it the exclusive copyrights to Crowley’s works. McMurtry died on the day the court ruling was announced (Wasserman 2012).

As McMurtry did not name a successor, the task of choosing the next OHO was delegated to the remaining IX° members of the order. On September 21, 1985, William Breeze (b. 1955) was chosen as acting OHO under the name Hymenaeus Beta. OTO has grown considerably under Breeze’s leadership: 1996 witnessed the incorporation of the International Headquarters of OTO, with the United States Grand Lodge (USGL) as a subordinate body, and additional grand lodges have since been established in the UK (2005), Australia (2006), Croatia (2014), and Italy (2014). On October 10, 2014, Breeze was unanimously elected de jure OHO by the order’s five National Grand Masters.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

A discussion of the teachings of OTO necessitates a demarcation between the order’s first years of existence and its development under Crowley’s increasing stewardship and after. As noted, Reuss declared the order’s initial agenda to be the union of masonic and Hermetic systems via the key, sexual magic. Though the exact nature of Reuss’s teachings on sexual magic prior to his collaboration with Crowley is unclear, previous scholarship has identified three distinct sources of inspiration. Firstly, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, whose practices encompassed the sex magical teachings of physician, abolitionist, and spiritualist medium Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875) (Deveney 1997). [Image at right] Randolph’s ideas may have reached Reuss indirectly via Carl Kellner and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, with which Reuss claimed Kellner had been in contact (Reuss 1912:15; Godwin et al. 1995). A second source of inspiration for Reuss was eighteenth and nineteenth-century Phallicism or Phallism, as propagated by Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824), Sir William Jones (1746–1794), and Hargrave Jennings (1817–1890), whose work Reuss partly plagiarized in the book Lingam-Yoni (Reuss 1906; cf. Kaczynski 2012:246–8). The core notion of Phallism was that the original religion of humankind consisted of the worship of the regenerative organs of both sexes. Reuss envisioned OTO as a vehicle for a reinstated cult of the Phallus (cf. Bogdan 2006; 2021:33–36). A third source of influence for Reuss was the Belgian Freemason and spiritualist Georges Le Clément de Saint-Marcq (1865–1956) and his ideas about spermatophagy (consumption of semen) as the true Eucharist established during the Last Supper (Pasi 2008; Reuss 1993:56–57).

OTO was fundamentally restructured by Crowley’s introduction and increasing emphasis on Thelema and its principles as put forth in its core sacred text, The Book of the Law. Its central tenet “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” was prefigured in Francois Rabelais’s Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532), which features an “Abbaye du Thélème.” Rather than an injunction to act on each impulsive desire, Crowley interpreted “Do what thou wilt” as referring to the duty of each person to discover and accomplish their “true Will”, which he believed to be the unique purpose of each individual life (e.g., Crowley 1974:129–30). The related maxim: “Love is the law, love under will” (foreshadowed by St. Augustine’s dictum: “Love, and do what thou wilt”) was interpreted by Crowley to mean that the nature of the true will is love, and that each intentional act is an act of union (i.e., love) with creation (e.g., Crowley 1974:163–64; Crowley 2007b). Crowley viewed magic (or “Magick,” as he preferred to spell it) as the key to discovering and honing one’s will, defining it as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” (Crowley 1994:128). Between 1907 and 1911, Crowley produced several additional inspired writings, which together with The Book of the Law comprise the “Holy Books of Thelema,” the canon of Thelemic texts (Crowley 1988; 1998).

Crowley considered the reception of The Book of the Law to mark the beginning of a new age, which he designated the Aeon of Horus. In his notion of aeons (approximately 2,000 year-periods correlating with different stages in the spiritual evolution of humanity), Crowley was inspired both by his upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren and its dispensationalist teachings, and by Frazerian theories of religious evolution (Bogdan 2012; 2021:16–20). The first aeon Crowley mentions by name is the Aeon of Isis, which he associates with matriarchal prehistory and the veneration of a great goddess representing the natural world. Isis was superseded, according to Crowley, by the Aeon of Osiris, characterized by patriarchal monotheism, the elevation of spirit over matter, and worship of various embodiments of the “Dying God,” such as Christ, Dionysus, or Orpheus. The reign of Horus, divine offspring of Isis and Osiris, would be characterized by individualism, the shattering of old illusions, and the union of matter and spirit (Crowley 1936; Crowley 1974:137f; 271ff).

Erotic imagery is central to Thelemic ontology, which is conceptualized as a dialectic between the goddess Nuit, envisioned as the night sky and representing limitless space and potential, and her consort Hadit, the infinitely condensed life-force of each individual. Their ecstatic union gives rise to Ra-Hoor-Khuit (a form of the god Horus), [Image at right] associated with the sun and the liberating energies of the new aeon (Crowley 1974; 2004, passim). This triad is reflected in The Book of the Law, whose three chapters are ascribed to Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, respectively. The Thelemic pantheon also includes the goddess Babalon and her consort Chaos. Based on a favorable re-interpretation of the Biblical Whore of Babylon (Rev. 17), Crowley identified Babalon with the magical formula of openness or receptivity towards all aspects of creation, and the sacredness of liberated (and particularly feminine) sexuality (Hedenborg White 2020, passim). This Thelemic pantheon is celebrated in Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Crowley 2007).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

OTO offers a series of staged initiation rituals through which the initiate is gradually made privy to esoteric secrets. As noted above, the masonic elements that characterized the early OTO initiations were gradually toned down under Crowley’s influence. Sexual magic is taught in the order’s higher degrees. The present-day OTO’s initiatory structure (organized under M\M\M\ (see below)) comprises thirteen numbered degrees from O° to XII° and eight intermediary degrees. The degrees are organized in three “Grades” or “Triads”: Man of Earth, Lover, and Hermit. The Man of Earth degrees are correlated with the chakra system and represent a dramatized progression of the soul through incarnation: conception, birth, life, death, and beyond (see Crowley 1982:122–24: Crowley 1990:193). The 0° (Minerval) degree is equivalent to the status of “honored guest”, while the first degree (I°) confers full membership. Two degrees are primarily administrative: X° marks a National Grand Master, and XII° is held exclusively by the OHO.

Aside from initiations, larger OTO local bodies are expected to provide regular celebrations of the Gnostic Catholic Mass, considered to be the “central ceremony of [OTOs] public and private celebration” (Crowley 1989:714). The Gnostic Mass is performed under the auspices of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC) and is often open to the public, serving an important function in introducing Thelema to new seekers as well as providing a spiritual experience and opportunity for socializing. Though Crowley claimed to have written the Gnostic Mass under the inspiration of the liturgy of St. Basil’s Cathedral, his Eucharistic ritual is structurally more like the Tridentine mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Direct parallels include the recitation of a creed; an acknowledgment of spiritual predecessors; recitation of collects; blessings for the dead; and the dissemination of a Eucharist of wine and bread (so-called Cakes of Light). The Gnostic Mass celebrates the Thelemic worldview and divine pantheon. Mirroring the Thelemic view of divinity as comprising both masculine and feminine aspects, the Gnostic Mass is performed by a priest and priestess aided by a deacon and two auxiliary officers known as “children.” Priest and priestess collaboratively invoke the masculine and feminine divine and prepare the Eucharist by enacting a “Mystic Marriage,” a symbolic sexual union where the priest’s lance is lowered into a wine-filled cup (Crowley 2007:247–70).

In addition to performances of the Gnostic Mass, the contemporary EGC confers lay membership via baptism and confirmation and performs weddings, last rites, and clerical ordinations. Many larger OTO bodies offer social gatherings, study groups, workshops, and classes on Thelema in addition to ritual activities. It is common for local bodies to celebrate the solstices, equinoxes, and some or all the “Thelemic Holidays” marking important dates in the life of Aleister Crowley. Such events are frequently open to non-initiates, and this combined with the fact that many larger OTO bodies maintain permanent temple facilities gives the organization a more public presence than many other initiatory orders.

A large-scale study of the individual esoteric practices of OTO members is lacking. However, tentative conclusions can be drawn based on the author’s observations. Though not a formal requirement, many (if not most) OTO members maintain some form of personal magical practice. Though A\A\ is formally distinct from OTO, dual affiliation has been relatively common since Crowley’s lifetime and remains so today. Even among OTO members who are not affiliated with A\A\, many adopt elements of the A\A\ system into personal practice. This includes, but is not limited to, keeping a magical diary (a practice Crowley taught his disciples); daily salutations to the sun as prescribed in Crowley’s “Liber Resh vel Helios” (Crowley 1994:645); regular rituals in service of magical hygiene such as the “Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram” or Crowley’s “Star Ruby” ritual (Crowley 1980:60); and yogic and meditational practices. Though sexual magic is traditionally linked to the higher degrees of OTO, eclectic and individualized sex magical practices appear relatively common among rank-and-file members (cf. Hedenborg White 2020:196, passim).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Counting approximately 4,000 members, OTO is the world’s most populous Thelemic order. As of January 2022, it is organized on five continents in more than thirty countries, with over 150 local bodies worldwide. The order’s International Headquarters (IHQ) is administered by the Supreme Council, comprising the three principal international officers of the order. These are: (1) the Outer Head of the Order, also known as Frater (or Soror) Superior or Caput Ordinis, (2) the Secretary General, or Cancellarius, and (3) the Treasurer General, or Quaestor. IHQ presides over National Grand Lodges in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Croatia, and Italy. Of these, the United States Grand Lodge (USGL) is the largest and most active, comprising roughly a third of global membership. National Grand Lodges are headed by a National Grand Master General, holding the degree of Rex Summus Sanctissimus or Supreme and Most Holy King (X°). Countries without a National Grand Lodge may operate as National Sections under the supervision of a Frater Superior’s Representative (FSR). At the Man of Earth level, local bodies (organized as Camps, Oases, and Lodges, and differentiated by the initiations and activities they are expected to offer) are operated either under the jurisdiction of a National Grand Lodge or directly under IHQ. Additional forms of organization include so-called Chapters of Rose Croix, formed by members of the Lover Grade, and Guilds, which center on promoting a particular profession, occupation, or science. There are no official statistics on OTO membership or leadership by gender, though observations suggest a slight male majority among rank-and-file members (Hedenborg White 2020:198).

OTO encompasses two constituent rites: Mysteria Mystica Maxima (M\M\M\) and Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC). Originally denoting Crowley’s British branch of OTO, M\M\M\ today presides over OTO initiations worldwide. Though originating as an independent organization (and existing as an autonomous, religious non-profit between 1979 and 1985) EGC is today integrated in OTO as its ecclesiastical arm. The office of patriarch (or matriarch) of EGC is held by the OHO, and the primacy of the church comprises the National Grand Masters of the order. EGC also comprises episcopate, priesthood (priests and priestesses), and diaconate. Though baptism and confirmation in EGC do not require OTO membership, ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate require particular OTO degrees.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The issue of succession and leadership has posed recurring challenges throughout OTO’s history. As noted above, Reuss’s death was followed by disagreements as to the rightful successor to the office of OHO. The issue was broached at the Conference of Grand Masters, a gathering of occult leaders hosted by Heinrich Tränker at his home in Weida, Germany, 1925. Also present for the gathering were Crowley’s long-term disciple Martha Küntzel (1857–1941) and her lover, Otto Gebhardi; Tränker’s secretary and publisher, Karl Germer; Tränker’s wife, Helene: members of Tränker’s Pansophical movement, Albin Grau (also a member of Crowley’s A\A\) and Eugen Grosche (1888–1964); Henri Birven (1883–1969); and the artist Oskar Hopfer, as well as Crowley and his disciples Leah Hirsig, Norman Mudd (1889–1934), and Dorothy Olsen (b. 1892). The conference was hardly an unequivocal success for anyone involved. While Küntzel and Germer supported Crowley, Tränker, Grau, Birven, and Grosche agreed to keep the Pansophical movement independent of Crowley’s leadership. Tränker subsequently came to reject Crowley (e.g., Lechler 2013), as did Mudd and Hirsig (cf. Hedenborg White 2021b). Bringing together several ex-Pansophists, Grosche went on to found Fraternitas Saturni, which regarded Crowley as a prophet but maintained its independence as an order.

As noted above, the issue of succession resurfaced after Karl Germer’s death in 1962. McMurtry’s claim to OTO headship was challenged by Hermann Metzger, head of a Swiss branch of the order that traced its lineage to Reuss, and which regularly performed Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Giudice 2015). Following Germer’s death, the members of Metzger’s group voted to elect him as OHO (Weddingen 1963). Lacking authority as per the OTO constitution, the results of this election were not accepted by order members outside of Switzerland. An alternate claim to OTO headship was made by Kenneth Grant, who had served as Crowley’s secretary late in the latter’s life. In 1948, after Crowley’s death, Grant was accepted as a IX° initiate of OTO, and later received a charter from Germer to operate an OTO body in London. In 1955, Grant issued a manifesto announcing the foundation of his “New Isis Lodge” as a body of OTO (Grant 1955). The manifesto put forth that the earth was under the influence of a “transplutonic” planet named Isis, and that the task of the New Isis Lodge was to channel its influence. Germer took issue with Grant’s ideas and expelled the latter from OTO. Grant, however, continued to operate the New Isis Lodge until 1962. From the late 1960s, Grant claimed to be head of a “Typhonian” OTO (referencing the idea of a Typhonian tradition, which Grant elaborated in his nine “Typhonian Trilogies,” published 1972–2002). In 2011, the name of this organization was changed to the Typhonian Order (Bogdan 2015).

The most substantial challenge to McMurtry’s leadership was brought by the Brazilian Thelemite Marcelo Ramos Motta (1931–1987), a former A\A student of Germer’s who had been publishing new editions of Crowley’s works, often with his own commentaries. Upon learning that Crowley had bequeathed his copyrights to OTO, Motta enlisted his student James Wasserman (1948–2020), then an employee of the Samuel Weiser bookstore in New York, to aid him in securing the rights. However, Wasserman ultimately backed McMurtry’s claim. The ensuing hostility led Motta in 1981 to sue Weiser for copyright infringement, positing his own Society Ordo Templi Orientis as the continuation of the Crowley-Germer OTO. As mentioned above, the U.S. District Court of Northern California eventually ruled in favor of McMurtry’s OTO. Today, these issues are largely resolved, and little controversy remains as to the religious non-profit Ordo Templi Orientis Inc. being the legal successor to the Crowley-Germer organization (Wasserman 2012).

The reception of Crowley’s ideas has been affected by larger societal changes, including feminism and LGBTQ rights advocacy. The Thelemic milieu (including OTO as well as other, smaller Thelemic orders, networks, and solitary practitioners) since at least the 1990s has witnessed an increasing proliferation of publications and initiatives (including conferences, podcasts, newsletters, and social media campaigns) aimed at highlighting women’s voices and experiences. The organization of Thelemic Women’s Conferences (in 2006, 2008, and 2016) can be noted as important benchmarks. In the U.S., many larger OTO bodies have regular meetings for women members of the order. The U.S. branch of EGC, which is the largest and most organized, shows awareness of ongoing conversations about gender identity, and has developed EGC policy to accommodate trans priests and priestesses in the Gnostic Mass, as well as non-binary and/or genderqueer identified EGC clergy (cf. Hedenborg White 2021a:189–90).

IMAGES

Image #1:  Carle Kellner.
Image #2: Theodor Reuss .
Image #3: The Crowley family.
Image #4: Aleister Crowley as Baphomet X°.
Image #5: Leah Hirsig.
Image #6: Jane Wolfe.
Image #7: Grady Louis McMurtry.
Image #8: Paschal Beverly Randolph.
Image #9: The Stele of Ankh-af-na-Khonsu.

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Publication Date:
10 April 2022

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE TIMELINE

1322:  A shepherd in Extremadura, Spain, found a 59 cm statue of the black Virgin of Guadalupe.

1340:  A sanctuary to Guadalupe was founded by King Alfonso XI at Villuercas, Extremadura, Spain.

Pre-Hispanic Period:  Goddess Tonantzin-Coatlicue was venerated at the Tepeyac Hill in Mexico.

1519:  A banner with the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception was brought by Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Mexico.

1531:  Five apparitions of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe took place at the Tepeyac Hill, Mexico

1556:  Fray Francisco de Bustamante delivered a sermon denouncing the excessive cult attached to a painting of Guadalupe by the Indigenous artist, Marcos Cipac de Aquino.

1609:  The first Spanish sanctuary to Guadalupe was built at the Tepeyac Hill.

1648 and 1649:  The first historical references to the Mexican Guadalupe cult were published in essays by Miguel Sánchez and Luis Lasso de la Vega, respectively.

1737:  Guadalupe was proclaimed the official patroness of Mexico City.

1746:  Guadalupe was proclaimed the official patroness of all of New Spain (Mexico).

1754:  An official Guadalupe’s holiday was established in the Catholic calendar.

1810-1821:  Guadalupe played a patriotic role during the Mexican War of Independence.

1895:  Guadalupe was crowned.

1910:  Guadalupe was declared patroness of Latin America.

1935:  Guadalupe was proclaimed patroness of the Philippines.

1942:  Guadalupana Societies were funded by Mexican American Catholic women.

1960s:  Guadalupe became a cultural icon for the United Farmworkers strike and other Movimiento Chicano struggles.

1966:  Guadalupe was granted a golden rose by pope Paul VI.

1970s-Present:  Deconstruction, appropriation, and transformation of the traditional Guadalupe image by groups of Chicanos/as for various social and political causes have taken place.

2002:  Pope John Paul II canonized the Indian Juan Diego, who was the object of Guadalupe’s apparitions in 1531.

2013:  Pope Francis granted Guadalupe a second golden rose.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Documentation by various sources dating back to the sixteenth century confirms that, before Cortés’s Conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1519–1521, Mesoamerican peoples worshipped the Mother Goddess Tonantzin-Ciuacoatl (Our Mother–Wife of the Serpent/Snake Woman) in her many forms, performing a yearly pilgrimage to her shrine on the Tepeyac hill. Tonantzin was revered in the same location where the Virgin of Guadalupe’s 1531 apparitions later took place and where the Virgin’s Basilica stands today. The sixteenth-century Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, referring to the state of things at the onset of the Conquest, affirmed: “[O]n Tepeyacac . . . . they had a temple consecrated to the mother of the gods, called Tonantzin, which means ‘our mother’ . . . and people came from afar . . . and they brought many offerings” (Sahagún 1956, volume 3:352). Sahagún’s testimony was further confirmed by Fray Juan de Torquemada and the Jesuit Clavijero. During the conversion process of the Indian population, the ancient sacred place of Tepeyac was imbued with new powers by substituting the preexistent Aztec goddess with a Christian holy figure. This common practice was promoted by the church. Although this mandate was carried out, the goddess Tonantzin-Ciuacoatl did not disappear. More correctly, she was synthesized into the Virgin of Guadalupe. This new hybrid figure proved to be an ideal focal point of common faith for the eclectic population of the Spanish Vice-Royalty of New Spain. The process, however, did not occur without surprises.

According to the Virgin of Guadalupe legend, Mary appeared to the humble Indian Juan Diego Cuauhtlatonzin on the Tepeyac hill in 1531, expressing her will that a temple be built for her there. This Nahuatl account of the apparitions, titled Nican Mopohua (Here Is Being Said), attributed to the learned Indian Antonio Valeriano, was published by Lasso de la Vega in 1649 (Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda 1982:26-35). It took four apparitions, a miraculous healing, roses out of season, and the imprint of Mary’s image on Juan Diego’s rustic tilma (cloak) to finally convince Archbishop Zumárraga that the apparitions were true. Interestingly, sixteenth-century sources, such as Sahagún’s Historia general, document the great devotion to the goddess Tonantzin-Ciuacoatl centered on the Tepeyac hill, but there is no written record of the apparitions or of the Virgin of Guadalupe until the mid-seventeenth century. In 1648, Imagen de la Virgen María Madre de Dios Guadalupe, milagrosamente Aparecida en la ciudad de México (Image of Virgin Mary Mother of God Guadalupe, Miraculously Appeared in Mexico City) by Miguel Sánchez, and in 1649, the Nican Mopohua, were published. In fact, what can be found prior to 1648 are omissions or attacks regarding the Tepeyac cult (Maza 1981:39–40). For example, on September 8, 1556, Fray Francisco de Bustamante delivered a sermon in Mexico City, denouncing the excessive cult attached to a painting made by the Indian Marcos and placed in the Guadalupe shrine, because he saw this cult as idolatrous:

It seemed to him that the devotion that this city has placed on a certain hermitage or house of Our Lady, that they titled Guadalupe, (was) in great harm of the natives, because they made them believe that that image which an Indian [Marcos] painted was performing miracles . . . and that now to tell them [the Indians] that an image painted by an Indian was performing miracles, that this would be a great confusion and would undo the good that was sowed, because other devotions, like Our Lady of Loreto and others, had great grounds and that this one would be erected so much without foundation, he was astonished” (Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda 1982:38-44).

Even now, a great controversy surrounds the issue of the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the newly baptized Indian Juan Diego. In countless studies related to different aspects of the apparitions and the famous image itself, such as those analyzing the paint, the fabric, the reflections in the Virgin’s eyes, and so on, aparicionistas (those who believe in the apparitions) and antiaparicionistas (those who oppose the apparitions), try to prove their point. What we know for sure is that apparitions are impossible to prove, especially six centuries later. Whether they were real or constructed, we will concentrate on the consequences the alleged apparitions brought to the colonial church, to the national cause, and to the people of Mexico.

Following a precedent established by other Span

Following a precedent established by other Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores, Hernán Cortés came to Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City) in 1519, under the protecting banners of the Apostle Santiago (Saint James) and the Virgin Mary. In Spanish minds, the Conquest of America was the continuation of the Reconquista or Reconquest of Spain opposing eight centuries (AD 711–1492) of domination by the Moors. The year 1492, a date that marks the “discovery” of America, held multiple significance. It was the year of the final defeat of the Moors in Granada and of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Another important event of 1492 was the publication of the first Spanish (Castilian) grammar book and the first printed grammar of a vernacular language, The Art of the Castillian Language, by Antonio de Nebrija. These actions reflect the zeal to reinforce the political unity of Spaniards by “cleansing” their faith and by systematizing the official language of the newly united Spain. The popular dramatized dances of Moros y cristianos, representations of battles between Moors and Spaniards, continued in the New World as Danza de la conquista, Danza de la pluma, and Tragedia de la muerte de Atahuallpa, with one alteration, the Moors were replaced by the new infidels, the Indians. The Virgin Mary, traditionally connected to the seas, was long the protectress of the sailors (Nuestra Señora de los Navegantes) and of the Conquest. Cristóbal Colón (Columbus) named his flagship caravel “Santa María” in her honor. Hernán Cortés, like many other conquerors of the New World, came from the impoverished Spanish region of Extremadura. He was a devotee of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Villuercas, whose famous sanctuary was located near his place of origin, Medellín. Villuercas, founded

ish and Portuguese conquistadores, Hernán Cortés came to Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City) in 1519, under the protecting banners of the Apostle Santiago (Saint James) and the Virgin Mary. In Spanish minds, the Conquest of America was the continuation of the Reconquista or Reconquest of Spain opposing eight centuries (AD 711–1492) of domination by the Moors. The year 1492, a date that marks the “discovery” of America, held multiple significance. It was the year of the final defeat of the Moors in Granada and of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Another important event of 1492 was the publication of the first Spanish (Castilian) grammar book and the first printed grammar of a vernacular language, The Art of the Castillian Language, by Antonio de Nebrija. These actions reflect the zeal to reinforce the political unity of Spaniards by “cleansing” their faith and by systematizing the official language of the newly united Spain. The popular dramatized dances of Moros y cristianos, representations of battles between Moors and Spaniards, continued in the New World as Danza de la conquista, Danza de la pluma, and Tragedia de la muerte de Atahuallpa, with one alteration, the Moors were replaced by the new infidels, the Indians. The Virgin Mary, traditionally connected to the seas, was long the protectress of the sailors (Nuestra Señora de los Navegantes) and of the Conquest. Cristóbal Colón (Columbus) named his flagship caravel “Santa María” in her honor. Hernán Cortés, like many other conquerors of the New World, came from the impoverished Spanish region of Extremadura. He was a devotee of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Villuercas, whose famous sanctuary was located near his place of origin, Medellín. Villuercas, founded in 1340 by King Alfonso XI, was the most favored Spanish sanctuary from the fourteenth century until the times of the Conquest. It contained the famous black, triangular, fifty-nine-centimeter-high statue of the Virgin with the Christ on her lap, supposedly found by a local shepherd in 1322 (Lafaye 1976:217, 295). [Image at right]

What demands our attention, though, is a different representation of the Virgin Mary carried on a banner accompanying Cortés in his Conquest of Mexico, currently in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle museum. This image portrays a gentle, olive-skinned Mary with folded hands, her head slightly tilted to the left, with hair parted in the middle. A red robe drapes her body, and a crown with twelve stars rests on her mantle-covered head. This rendering of the Virgin Mary bears a striking resemblance to the famous representation of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. The Italian historian Lorenzo Boturini (1702–1775) described Cortés’s banner thus: “A beautiful image of the Virgin Mary was painted on it. She was wearing a gold crown and was surrounded by twelve gold stars. She has her hands together in prayer, asking her son to protect and give strength to the Spaniards so they might conquer the heathens and christianize them” (quoted in Tlapoyawa 2000).  According to Kurly Tlapoyawa, the Indian Markos Zipactli’s (Marcos Cipac de Aquino’s) painting, which was placed at the Tepeyac temple, was based on Cortés’s banner. This image is also very similar to an eight-century Italian painting called Immaculata Tota Pulcra, [Image at right] and to a 1509 central Italian representation of the Madonna del Soccorso by Lattanzio da Foligno and by Francesco Melanzio. The expression of her face, the pattern of her robe and mantle, and the halo surrounding her body and crown are almost identical to those of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. The difference is that on the Madonna del Soccorso paintings Mary is represented defending her child from the devil with a whip or a club. Moreover, Francisco de San José, in his Historia, affirms that the Mexican Guadalupe is a copy of a relief sculpture of Mary placed in the choir opposite the Spanish Guadalupe statue in her Villuercas sanctuary. On the other hand, Lafaye (1976:233) as well as Maza (1981:14) and O’Gorman (1991:9–10) believe that the original effigy placed by the Spaniards at Tepeyac was that of the Spanish Guadalupe, La Extremeña, which only years later was replaced by the Mexican Virgin. Lafaye supposes that the change of images corresponds to the change of the dates of the Guadalupe celebration in Mexico from December 8 or 10 to December 12: “we know for certain . . . that the substitution of the image took place after 1575 and the change of the feast day calendar after 1600” (Lafaye 1976:233). December 8 was the day of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Villuercas, Spain, as well as that of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. Fray Bustamante’s sermon discussed previously further supports this view.

Whether appearing in person or on canvas, Guadalupe is clearly a syncretic figure, possessing both Catholic and Native Mesoamerican elements. Her original name comes from the Arabic wadi (riverbed) and Latin lupus (wolf) (Zahoor 1997). There have been speculations arguing that the Mexican Guadalupe’s name comes from the Nahuatl Cuauhtlapcupeuh (or Tecuauhtlacuepeuh), She Who Comes from the Region of Light as an Eagle of Fire (Nebel 1996:124), or Coatlayopeuh, the Eagle Who Steps on the Serpent (Palacios 1994:270). Curiously, Juan Diego’s name was Cuauhtlatonzin (or Cauhtlatoahtzin). Cuahtl means “eagle,” Tlahtoani is “the one who speaks,” and Tzin means “respectful.” This would suggest that Juan Diego was the Eagle Who Speaks, someone of a very high rank in the Order of Eagle Knights, continuing the mission of the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtemoc, the Eagle Who Descends (“Where Does the Name Guadalupe Come From?” 2000), but some scholars doubt the very existence of Juan Diego. Since the Nahuatl language does not include the sounds of “d” and “g,” the use of Guadalupe’s name with the above meaning may indicate a native adaptation of the Arab-Spanish word.

As to other particularities of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, her attire is of primary importance. Guadalupe’s mantle is not blue, a characteristic of the European Virgins, but turquoise or blue-green, which in Aztec mythology symbolizes water, fire, prosperity, and abundance. [Image at right] In native Mexican languages, such as Nahuatl, there is only one word for blue and green. Blue-green, jade, or turquoise was a sacred color and it was worn by the high priest of Huitzilopochtli. Turquoise is also the sacred color of the earth and moon Mother Goddess Tlazolteotl (Goddess of Filth), the water and fertility goddess Chalchutlicue (The One with a Skirt of Green Stones), and the fire and war god of the south, Huitzilopochtli. This god was believed to be “immaculately” conceived with a feather by his mother, the goddess Coatlicue (Lady of the Serpent Skirt). Blue is also the color of the south and of fire, and “in Mexican theological language ‘turquoise’ means ‘fire.’” On the other hand, the Virgin’s robe is red, signifying the east (rising sun), youth, pleasure, and rebirth (Soustelle 1959:33–85). Thus, the Aztec symbology of the main colors worn by Mary (red and blue-green) corresponds to her Christian duality as young virgin and mature mother. It is indeed remarkable that the skin tone of the faces of both Guadalupe and the angel are brown, as in the image of Cortés’s banner and the faces of the Indians themselves.

Additional correlations surface in prophetic literature between Guadalupe, the woman of the Apocalypse, and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. According to the Book of Revelation, “there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and a moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown with twelve stars” (The Holy Bible). In her Mexican representations prior to the nineteenth century, Guadalupe also wore the crown with twelve stars, present on the image of Cortés’s banner. Later, the crown was eliminated. Obviously, the distinctive elements of the Apocalyptic woman were reproduced quite precisely in the Virgin of Guadalupe image, who also wears a starry mantle, a crown of twelve stars, is surrounded by the rays of the sun, and stands on the moon. These cosmic elements (the sun, the moon, and the stars) played an important part in the Aztec religion as well. In fact, Tonacaciuatl, the goddess of the upper skies and the Lady of Our Nutrition, was also called Citlalicue, the One with a Starry Skirt (Soustelle 1959:102). Other goddesses such as Xochiquetzal (Flowery Quetzal Feather), Tlazolteotl-Cihuapilli (Goddess of Filth-Fair Lady), Temazcalteci (Grandmother of the Bathhouse), Mayahuel (Powerful Flow, Lady Maguey), and Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina (Goddess of Filth-Lady Cotton) were represented with crescent-shaped adornments as part of their attire. Moreover, the passage from Revelation “And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman . . . And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly to the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished” (quoted in Quispel 1979:162) coincides with the Aztec foundational legend. The legend describes how the Aztecs were instructed to look for the sign of an eagle devouring a serpent while perched on a nopal cactus. The sign functioned as a divine indication of a permanent homeland, Tenochtitlan, for the nomadic people coming from the northern region of Aztlán. The eagle motif occurs frequently in Aztec mythology. For example, the goddess Ciuacoatl, or Wife of the Serpent (also identified with Tonantzin), appears in her warrior aspect adorned with eagle feathers:

The eagle
The eagle Quilaztli
With blood of serpents
Is her face circled
With feathers adorned
Eagle-plumed she comes
. . .
Our mother
War woman
Our mother
War woman
Deer of Colhuacan
In plumage arrayed
(“Song of Ciuacoatl,” Florentine Codex, Sahagún 1981, vol. 2: 236).

The association of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the eagle and the cactus may be seen in New Spain’s iconography as early as 1648, and it intensifies during the nationalist surge of the mid-eighteenth century.

The first historical references to the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe devotion appeared in the form of essays by Miguel Sánchez in 1648 and Lasso de la Vega in 1649. According to Lafaye, “they had a special meaning . . . for they were the first step toward recognition of Guadalupe as a Mexican national symbol.” The Creole bachiller Sánchez created a prophetic vision of the Spanish Conquest, stating “that God executed his admirable design in this Mexican land, conquered for such glorious ends, gained in order that a most divine image might appear here.” As the title of the first chapter of his book, “Prophetic Original of the Holy Image Piously Foreseen by Evangelist Saint John, in Chapter Twelve of Revelation,” makes explicit, Sánchez draws a parallel between the appearance of Guadalupe at Tepeyac and Saint John’s vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse at Patmos (Lafaye 1976:248–51). Eighteenth-century paintings, such as Gregorio José de Lara’s Visión de san Juan en Patmos Tenochtitlan and the anonymous Imagen de la Virgen de Guadalupe con san Miguel y san Gabriel y la visión de san Juan en Patmos Tenochtitlan, illustrate Saint John’s vision of a winged Guadalupe and of a Guadalupe accompanied by the Aztec eagle at the Tepeyac hill. By providing a parallel not only between the Woman of the Apocalypse and Guadalupe but also between Patmos and Tenochtitlan, local painters portrayed Mexico as a chosen land. This idea was also reflected in poetry. In 1690, Felipe Santoyo wrote:

Let the World be admired;
the Sky, the Birds, the Angels and Men
suspend the echoes,
repress the voices:
because in New Spain
about another John it is being heard
a new Apocalypse,
although the revelations are different! (quoted in Maza 1981:113)

It is evident that “the identification of Mexican reality with the Holy Land and the prophetic books,” as well as statements such as “I have written [this book] for my patria, for my friends and comrades, for the citizens of this New World” and “the honor of Mexico City . . . the glory of all the faithful who live in this New World” (quoted in Lafaye 1976:250–51), make Miguel Sánchez a Creole patriot whose writings had important consequences for the emancipation of Mexico. Developments in the iconography reflecting Mexican history make it apparent that the Virgin of Guadalupe has gained increasing agency in the social and political realms.

There certainly was a need for a powerful protective entity among the populace of New Spain. From the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, thousands fell victim to yearly calamities such as floods, earthquakes, and epidemics. There was also an urgency for the appearance of a native symbolic figure, one that could reconcile and fraternize the diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and class components of Mexico, serve the purpose of identification, and instill national pride. The historical perspective explains why Guadalupe becomes a presence sine qua non during colonial times; there is no important image or event from which she may be omitted. The nineteenth-century Mexican historian Ignacio Manuel Altamirano made reference to the 1870 Guadalupe celebrations when he wrote that the worship of Guadalupe united “all races . . . all classes . . . all castes . . . all the opinions of our politics . . . The cult of the Mexican Virgin is the only bond that unites them” (quoted in Gruzinski:199-209).

This increase in devotion to Guadalupe responded to a need by Creoles to find a feature of their own that would clearly distinguish them from the Spaniards: “[T]here will be then the Creoles, who in the seventeenth century will give a definitive position in history to guadalupanismo” (Maza 1981:40). As a consequence, the first Spanish sanctuary was built at Tepeyac in 1609. As early as 1629 the image of Guadalupe was carried in solemn procession from Tepeyac to Mexico City by pilgrims who implored her to deliver the population from the menace of floods. Having achieved this goal, Guadalupe was proclaimed the city’s “principal protectress against inundations,” and she “achieved supremacy over the other protective effigies of the city” (Lafaye 1976:254). By the end of the seventeenth century, a legend was added to the image of Guadalupe, thus making her emblem complete. The legend, Non fecit talliter omni nationi ([God] Has Not Done the Like for Any Other Nation), was taken by Father Florencia from Psalm 147. It became attached to the sacred image (Lafaye 1976:258), further reinforcing its national character. But it wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that Guadalupe became the center of collective fervor. In 1737 the effigy was proclaimed the official patroness of Mexico City, and, in 1746, of all of New Spain. In 1754, Pope Benedict XIV confirmed this oath of allegiance, and Guadalupe’s holiday was established in the Catholic calendar (Gruzinski 1995:209).

Our Lady of Guadalupe also played an important role in the Mexican War of Independence from Spain (1810–1821). She was then carried on banners of the insurgents, led by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and later by Father José María Morelos, confronting the Spanish royalists who carried the Peninsular Virgen de los Remedios. The first president of independent Mexico changed his name from Manuel Félix Fernández to Guadalupe Victoria in homage to the patriotic Virgin. Other Mexican political and social struggles, such as the War of Reformation (Guerra de la Reforma, 1854–1857), the Mexican Revolution (1910–1918), and the Cristeros Rebellion (1927–1929), were also performed under the banners of Guadalupe (Herrera-Sobek 1990:41–43). The process of exaltation of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of Juan Diego continues. On July 30, 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized the Mexican Indian, declaring him an official saint of the Catholic Church. This was done in spite of the fact that even some Mexican Catholic priests, such as father Manuel Olimón Nolasco, doubt the actual existence of Juan Diego (Olimón Nolasco 2002:22). In turn, on December 1, 2000, after being sworn in as the new Mexican president, Vicente Fox directed his first steps to the Virgin of Guadalupe Basilica at the Tepeyac hill, where he asked the Virgin for grace and protection during his presidency. This constituted an unprecedented case in Mexican politics (“Fox empezó la jornada en la Basílica” 2000), as a strong division between church and state has been officially enforced since the Mexican Revolution. Once again, the Virgin of Guadalupe claimed victory over official customs and rules.

From the onset, the patriotic significance of the Virgin of Guadalupe was exhibited in iconography and other artistic expressions. As her image achieved increasing national and political significance, it was placed above the Aztec coat of arms (the eagle devouring a serpent on a nopal (prickly pear) and Mexico City-Tenochtitlan. Sometimes the image was framed by allegorical figures representing Americas and Europe, as in the eighteenth-century painting Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México, Patrona de la Nueva España (Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patron of New Spain) (see Cuadriello, Artes de México 52). In Josefus de Ribera i Argomanis’s 1778 painting Verdadero retrato de santa María Virgen de Guadalupe, patrona principal de la Nueva España jurada en México (Real Portrait of Holy Mary Virgin of Guadalupe, Main Patron of New Spain Sworn in Mexico), her image was framed by a non-Christianized Indian representing America, and Juan Diego, a European-influenced one. In contemporary art, we see the progressive Mexicanization of Guadalupe reflected in the use of the colors of the Mexican flag (red, green, and white) as well as in the darkening and the Indianization of her features. [Image at right]

Thus, Guadalupe played an important role in Mexican struggles for independence from foreign aggressors, for freedom, and for social justice.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe, is part of the Catholic religion, and Guadalupe is one of the manifestations of the Virgin Mary (Mother of God). She is believed to be the one who gave birth to the Savior, Jesus Christ, conceived in a miraculous manner, without the intervention of man. Mary herself is also believed to be conceived in an immaculate way, thus one of her expressions is called the Immaculate Conception. Among the myriad of other manifestations, there is the Virgin of the Pillar, of El Carmen, of Montserrat, of Fatima, of Sorrows, of Regla, of Częstochowa, etc. Some of them are black, some brown, and others white. Sometimes the Virgin is portrayed seated with her divine child on her lap, and at others she is standing alone; nevertheless, all her images refer to the same historical Mary who lived in Nazareth and gave birth to Jesus at Bethlehem, at the beginning of the Common Era. Devotees venerate the Virgin as Guadalupe, often above any other divinity of the church, and place her images and altars in their homes. They see her as a protective mother who is always there for them, feeds them and shields them from danger, especially in times of wars and calamities. This phenomenon happens across social classes, but is especially notable among disenfranchised population who experience hardships and great need. This isn’t a new tradition, as the Virgin is a heir to the Great Goddess of Life, Death, and Regeneration as the mother who feeds and protects their children, but also receives them at death.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The rituals for the Virgin of Guadalupe are the same ones practiced for all Virgin Marys, and they include Rosaries, Novenas, and masses. Specifically, there is a huge, yearly international pilgrimage to her basilica at the Tepeyac hill in Mexico City, in which people of all nationalities and walks of life arrive, often after walking for weeks, and sometimes on their knees, in order to give her homage on December 12, the day of her feast. This is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world (Orcult 2012). Another frequent practice are the petitions, promises (votos) and the offering of ex-votos, objects dear to the devotees who were granted favors by the Virgin. They include jewels, crutches, and symbolic representations of the afflictions that were cured, or of the favors granted. She appears on portraits and altars, both in churches and other public spaces, as well as in the intimacy of people’s homes. Oftentimes, she is the object of shrines in front of private homes, on buildings, and on public roads. [Image at right]

She offers protection and guidance to the faithful and is believed to be very miraculous. Although her devotion is officially part of Catholicism, it trespassed the boundaries of religion, and in many cases the cult to the Virgin of Guadalupe stands by itself, regardless of the faith of the devotees. Our Lady is believed to be the purest of women and her symbol is a rose-colored rose.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The organization and leadership of the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe occurs within the Catholic Church structure, but specific groups, such as the Guadalupanas, and those that organize the Rosaries and other events in her honor, are often led by women devotees. Sociedades Guadalupanas (Guadalupe Societies) are Catholic religious associations funded by Mexican American women in 1942 (“Guadalupanas”; “Sociedades Guadalupanas”). The most important Guadalupe day is December 12, the Feast of Guadalupe, when millions of pilgrims visit her basilica in Mexico City, but also in many other places locally. There is an extensive network of named Guadalupe churches, shrines, and chapels especially in Mexico, Latin America, the United States. The basilica in Mexico City that houses the miraculous portrait of Guadalupe imprinted on Juan Diego’s tilma (cloak) that allegedly withstood ca. 500 years without damage, is the most-visited Catholic site in the world. Since the mid-eighteenth century, when Our Lady of Guadalupe was declared the official patroness of New Spain, and her official holiday was established, she has been the object of numerous endorsements by different popes. She was crowned on her feast day in 1895, and was declared the patroness of Latin America in 1910, and of the Philippines in 1935. In 1966, she was granted a symbolic golden rose by pope Paul VI, and in 2013 by pope Francis. Pope John Paul II canonized Juan Diego in 2002, and declared Our Lady of Guadalupe Patroness of the Americas (“Our Lady of Guadalupe”).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Since the inception of the Virgin of Guadalupe devotion, there has been a controversy between  aparicionistas and antiaparicionistas, as described above. The former firmly believe in the miraculous apparitions of Guadalupe at the Tepeyac Hill in 1531. The latter claim that her new image was commissioned to the Indigenous artist Marcos Cipac de Aquino who painted her following traditional images of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, including Mexico’s conqueror Hernán Cortés banner. In this latter view, her persona and devotion were constructed for the purpose of Christianization during colonial times. Later, she served as a unifying force for the multiethnic Mexican nation and the enhancement of feelings of patriotism. In addition, the contemporary transformations and appropriations of her image, mainly by U.S. Chicanx groups, to convey political, social, or feminist ideas, are often met with great controversy, and the rejection of the church and traditional Catholics. A development of the past twenty years is the competition between Guadalupe and unofficial saints, particularly La Santa Muerte,  [Image at right] whose following is greatly increasing. Many devotees feel abandoned by and mistrust official church and state institutions, and prefer to pray to powerful holy figures that don’t judge them and do not require intermediaries, such as La Santa Muerte (see Oleszkiewicz-Peralba 2015:103-35).

IMAGES

Image #1: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Villuercas, Spain (From the archives of the late Antonio D. Portago).
Image #2: Immaculata Tota Pulchra, Italy, 8^th Century.
Image #3: Virgin of Guadalupe, Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City.
Image #4: Virgin of Guadalupe with the colors of Mexican flag. Photograph by author.
Image #5: Street altar of Guadalupe. El Paso Street, San Antonio, Texas. Photograph by author.
Image #6: Santa Muerte as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Cover, La biblia de la santa muerte.

REFERENCES

Unless otherwise noted, the material in this profile is drawn from The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (University of New Mexico Press 2007, 2009, and 2011). All translations in this text are by the author.

Cuadriello, Jaime, comp. n.d. Artes de México 29: Visiones de Guadalupe. Santa Ana, CA:  Bowers Museum of Cultural Art.

Cuadriello, Jaime. n.d. “Mirada apocalíptica: Visiones en Patmos Tenochtitlan, La Mujer Aguila.” Cuadriello 10–23.

“Fox empezó la jornada en la Basílica.” 2000. Diario de Yucatán, December 2,  February 7, 2003. Accessed from http://www.yucatan.com.mx/especiales/tomadeposesion/02120008.asp on 5 April 2022.

“Guadalupanas.” 2022. Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, April 6. Accessed from http://ihmsatx.org/guadalupana-society.html on  5 April 2022.

Gruzinski, Serge. La guerra de las imágenes: De Cristóbal Colón a “Blade Runner” (1492–2019). 1994. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995.

Herrera-Sobek, María. 1990. The Mexican Corrido. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

The Holy Bible. n.d. King James version. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company.

La Biblia de la Santa Muerte. n.d. Mexico: Ediciones S.M.

Lafaye, Jacques. Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1813. 1974. Translated by. Benjamin Keen. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Maza, Francisco de la. El gaudalupanismo mexicano. 1981 [1953]. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Nebel, Richard. 1996 [1995] Santa María Tonantzin Virgen de Guadalupe. Translated by Carlos Warnholtz Bustillos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996.

Nebrija, Antonio de. 1926. Gramática de la lengua castellana (Salamanca, 1492): Muestra de la istoria de las antiguedades de España, reglas de orthographia en la lengua castellana. Edited by Ig. González-Llubera. London and New York: H. Milford and Oxford University Press.

O’Gorman, Edmundo. 1991. Destierro de sombras: Luz en el origen de la imagen y culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Tepeyac. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Małgorzata. 2018 [2015]. Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kali, Pombagira, and Santa Muerte. Palgrave Macmillan: New York, NY.

Olimón Nolasco, Manuel. 2002. “Interview.” Gazeta Wyborcza. July 27–28.

Orcult, April. 2012. “World Most-Visited Sacred Sites.” Travel and Leisure, January 4. Accessed from travelandleisure.com on 6 April 2022.

“Our Lady of Guadalupe Patron Saint of Mexico.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed from britannica.com on 4 April 2022.

Palacios, Isidro Juan. 1994. Apariciones de la Virgen: Leyenda y realidad del misterio mariano. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy.

Quispel, Gilles. 1979. The Secret Book of Revelation. New York: McGraw-Hill,.

Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson. Santa Fe, NM: School for American Research; Salt Lake City: University of Utah, book 1, 1950; book 2, 1951 (Second Edition,  1981); books 4 and 5, 1957 (Second Edition, 1979); book 6, 1969 (Second Edition, 1976).

Quispel, Gilles. 1956. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. 4 Volumes. 1938. Edition. Angel María Garibay K. Mexico City: Porrúa.

“Sociedades Guadalupanas.” 2022. TSHA Texas State Historical Association. Accessed from  tshaonline.org on 6 April 2022.

Soustelle, Jaques. 1959. Pensamiento cosmológico de los antiguos mexicanos. Paris: Librería Hermann y Cia. Editores.

Tlapoyawa, Kurly. 2000. “The Myth of La Virgen de Guadalupe.” Accessed from http://www.mexica.org/Lavirgin.html on 24 February 2003.

“Where Does the Name Guadalupe Come From?” 2000. The Aztec Virgin. Sausalito, CA: Trans-Hyperborean Institute of Science. Accessed from http://www.aztecvirgin.com/guadalupe.html on 3 March 2003.

Torre Villar, Ernesnto de la, and Ramiro Navarro de Anda, comps. and eds. 1982. Testimonios históricos guadalupanos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Zahoor, A. 1997 [1992]. Names of Arabic Origin in Spain, Portugal and the Americas. Accessed from http:cyberistan.org/islamic/places2.html on 15 March 2003.

KARDECISM TIMELINE

1767:  Franz Anton Mesmer began to practice medicine in Vienna using “magnetized” water as a cure.

1784:  The Marquis de Puységur discovered “magnetic somnambulism.”

1787:  Swedenborgians in Sweden reported regular communication with spirits of the dead via mediums in mesmeric trance.

1849 (November 14):  The Fox sisters held the first public demonstration of Spiritualist practices in Rochester, New York.

1857:  Allan Kardec published Le Livre des Esprits (The Spirits’ Book) in Paris.

1858:  Allan Kardec founded La Revue Spirite (the key Kardecist journal) and the Société Parisienne des Études Spirites (the leading association and institutional model).

1858–1862:  Kardecist publications began to be printed in Mexico, Brazil and Chile.

1872:  Kardecist Spiritism began to attract interest in Puerto Rico.

1877:  The first Kardecist group in Argentina was founded.

1882:  The first Kardecist group in Venezuela was founded.

1890:  The First Brazilian Republican Penal Code (1890) criminalised Spiritist activities and “curandeirismo” (magical healing/curses and divination).

1944:  Brazilian medium Chico Xavier published Nosso Lar, a best-selling psychographed afterlife autobiography of the spirit André Luiz.

2018:  A rift between social conservatives and progressives developed in Brazilian Kardecism.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

 Kardecism is a doctrinally and ritually developed variation of nineteenth-century Spiritualism (the séance movement). It began in France in the mid-1850s and spread to Latin America in the 1860s, where it continues to have its largest impact, especially in Brazil.

Popular religious and healing practices around the world include the ritualized practice of communicating and interacting with disembodied entities, while in a trance state; and this has formed part of various European esoteric traditions for more than two millennia (Laycock 2015). Such entities include the souls or spirits of dead humans, in addition to animal and plant spirits, spirits of disease, gods, divine spirits, djinn, angels, demons, extraterrestrials etc. These entities can be helpful, harmful or irrelevant; they can be good, evil, or morally ambivalent; they usually have trans-mundane knowledge and/or supernatural powers.

Spiritualism is generally seen as having begun in the U.S. in 1848 or 1849: on March 31, 1848 the Fox sisters (Leah, [1813–1890], Maggie [1833–1893] and Kate [1837–1892]) first contacted the spirit world; and on November 14, 1849, they offered the first public demonstration of interaction with spirits of the dead. Communication with dead people in esoteric contexts had become prominent over six decades earlier as a side-effect of mesmeric trance, beginning with the work of Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur (1751–1825), a follower of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). In 1784, while magnetizing patients for healing purposes, Puységur discovered what he called “magnetic somnambulism” (which later came to be called “hypnosis”), arguably inaugurating the modern era of “psychodynamic psychology and psychotherapy”:

Beginning with the Marquis de Puységur, magnetic somnambulism revealed an alternate consciousness that is intelligent (capable of understanding and making judgments), reactive (aware of what is happening in one’s environment and capable of responding to those events), purposeful (able to pursue its own goals), and co‐conscious (existing simultaneously with ordinary consciousness). This understanding of the alternate consciousness amounted to a new paradigm for defining the dynamics of the human psyche (Crabtree 2019:212).

Theological and spiritological frames for this phenomenon were soon developed by esoteric thinkers, notably Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). By 1787, Swedenborgians in Sweden were reporting regular communication with spirits of the dead via mediums in mesmeric trance (Gabay 2005:86).

As Spiritualism exploded onto the religious landscape in the U.S. in the 1850s, it had impacts abroad, especially in the U.K. (where it arrived in 1852), as well as in Canada and other British settler nations. It developed in a unique direction in Iceland, where it continues to be prominent (Dempsey 2016). Spiritualism’s séance and “table-turning” events became a huge public phenomenon in France in 1853–1854; Kardecism developed from there, when Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804–1869) became interested (Aubrée and Laplantine 1990). Rivail was involved in phrenology and Mesmerism, including research into clairvoyance and trance states.

Writing as Allan Kardec, [Image at right] Rivail systematized French Spiritisme in The Book of the Spirits (1857), subtitled, Containing the Principles of the Spiritist Doctrine Concerning the Immortality of the Soul, the Nature of Spirits and Their Relationships with Humankind, Moral Laws, the Present Life, the Future Life and the Destiny of Humanity – According to the Teachings Given by Highly Evolved Spirits through Several Mediums – Received and Coordinated (2011 [1857]). The book consists primarily of questions posed by Kardec along with answers provided by spiritually evolved spirits, as psychographed (transcribed during a light trance) by a team of mediums. (Kardecist books are often published with named spirits as their authors, and with the name of the medium in smaller print.) [Image at right] Four other books by Kardec also form part of what is, in effect, a canon: The Book of Mediums (1861); The Gospel according to Spiritism (1864); Heaven and Hell (1865); and Genesis: Miracles and Predictions according to Spiritism (1868). Other important French Spiritiste writers of the period include Léon Denis (1846–1927) and Gabriel Delanne (1857–1926).

Kardec drew on mesmerism (e.g., non-contact manipulation of “magnetic fluids” in people, especially through the ritual of passe), Christianity (e.g., God as efficient and final cause, Christ as the most elevated previously incarnated spirit, and charitable works as a standard of spiritual evolution) and esoteric traditions (e.g., the doctrine of many worlds and reincarnation, the latter also perhaps influenced by Asian religions). (There are rare references to Hinduism, Taoism and Islam in the key publication of early French Spiritisme, the Revue Spirite; there appears to be no reference to Buddhism [Campetti Sobrinho 2008].) Kardec considered Spiritism to be a science and philosophy not a religion: communication with the dead is a natural reflection of the dual constitution of reality, material/visible and spiritual/invisible.

The dramatic impact of Spiritisme in late-nineteenth-century France resonated with other religious and intellectual developments of the time: in Catholicism a pious upsurge of interest in angels, purgatory, and Marian apparitions; in esotericism an emphasis on empirical study, e.g., Eliphas Lévi (1810–75); in the emerging field of psychiatry an interest in the interiority of the psyche; and, more generally, ideas of science, progress, and social reform (Engler and Isaia 2016). Kardec may have been a Freemason (Guénon 1972 [1923]:37), but this question remains open (Lefraise and Monteiro 2007). These points of resonance, especially with Catholicism and progressivism, shaped the reception of Kardecist Spiritism in other countries, most significantly in Latin America. Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), cofounder of modern Theosophy, was an adept of Spiritualism and influenced by Mesmerist and Kardecist ideas; and this has been a key line through which Kardecism has had an impact on other esoteric traditions, including the New Age movement.

Kardecism is common throughout most of Latin America and the Caribbean. Influenced directly by French Spiritisme, the first Kardecist publications in Mexico date from 1858, in Brazil from 1860 and in Chile from 1862 (Hernández Aponte 2015:109–111). Justo José de Espada founded a Spiritualist group in Uruguay in 1858 and a successor group in Argentina in 1872; the first Kardecist sociedad espiritista was founded in 1877; and surveys in 1887 and 1912 reported many thousands of members and fifty or more groups (Gimeno, Corbetta, and Savall 2013:88, 86, 79–80). (Many Kardecist groups and Kardecist-influenced new religious movements are active in Buenos Aires today [Di Risio and Irazabal 2003].) Influenced by Spanish Espiritismo, the first Kardecist group in Venezuela was founded in 1882 (Hernández Aponte 2015: 112). Mesmerist demonstrations are recorded in Puerto Rico from 1848 and séances from 1856, with Kardecist publications sparking interest in that tradition from 1872 (Hernández Aponte 2015:122).

In Brazil, an important development resulting in a sharp distinction between orthodox Kardecism and popular invocations of spirits was the foundation of the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB) in 1884. The First Brazilian Republican Penal Code (1890) criminalised Spiritist activities and “curandeirismo” (magical healing/curses and divination) (Maggie 1992). In part, this legislation was the culmination of recent professionalization in Brazil’s medical community (Schritzmeyer 2004 69–81). The Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB, founded in 1884) lobbied government during the Empire and, after 1889, the Republic in order to protect the literate elites who practiced Kardecism (Giumbelli 1997). The FEB’s insistence on distinguishing between “true” and “false” spiritists (and journalistic echoes of these claims) played a supporting role in the processes of marginalization, repression and criminalization that constructed “low spiritism” (often Afro-Brazilian) as a marginal religious category (Giumbelli 2003). In Brazil, state repression of “low” Spiritisms and Afro-Brazilian traditions was prominent during the “New State” dictatorship (1937–45) of Getúlio Vargas. Elite Kardecism escaped relatively unscathed, though many centres were closed: “the state and the medical profession were not as successful with Kardecian and other ‘scientific’ Spiritists as they were with the ‘low Spiritists’ who had recourse to Afro-Brazilian magic” (Hess 1991:160; Maggie 1992). In part this reflected the political value of nationalist discourses in Kardecism (See the discussion of Nosso Lar in the following section). Some other forms of Spiritism, broadly defined, sought protection under the Kardecist umbrella: e.g. certain groups in the heterogenous religion of Umbanda went through a process of de-Africanization in order to emphasise affiliation with Kardecism (Oliveira 2007). Comparable legislation was passed and enforced in many countries: for example, many laws against the “dangerous others” of esoteric traditions in Argentina were passed in the late nineteenth-century, with persecution hardening after 1921 (Bubello 2010:97–114).

Kardecism is found almost exclusively in Europe and its settler colonies. National groups in Europe consist of from hundreds to a few thousand members: e.g., French Spiritisme, Italian Spiritismo, British Spiritism, Finnish Spiritismi, Romanian Spiritismul, Spanish Espiritismo, and others; there are groups in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. (Aubrée and Laplantine 1990:289-331; CESNUR 2017; Spiritist Group n.d.).

Brazil has the largest number of Kardecists in the world. 3,800,000 Brazilians (two percent of the population) self-identified as members on the 2010 census. (The Brazilian Spiritist Federation estimates that as many as 30,000,000 Brazilians, many of them Catholics, regularly attend study sessions and rituals.) Important Brazilian mediums have included Adolfo Bezerra de Menezes (“the Brazilian Kardec”: 1831–1900), [Image at right] Francisco Cândido “Chico” Xavier (1910–2002) and Yvonne do Amaral Pereira (1926–1980). Brazilian Kardecismo has diverged from French Spiritisme. The latter remains a small philosophical/scientific movement (Union Spirite Française et Francophone website. n.d.). Brazilian Kardecism has become a large and thriving religion with a central emphasis on spiritual therapy: e.g., emphasising healing and miracles, reflecting mixture with popular, especially Afro-Brazilian, practices, and sometimes sanctifying leaders, due to their reputation as healers (Damazio 1994:154; Silva 2006). Brazilian kardecistas, like French Spiritistes, tend to see their tradition as more philosophy and science than religion. However, a dramatic increase in the size of Kardecism between the censuses of 2000 and 2010 (from 1.3 percent to 2 percent of the Brazilian population) reflects, in part, a shift away from kardecistas self-declaring as having “no religion” on the national census (Lewgoy 2013:196–98).

Brazilian Kardecism has been shaping the global Kardecist community to the point that Kardecist Spiritism is arguably now a “Brazilian religion” (Santos 2004 [1997]). Kardecist groups have been established in many countries among Brazilian emigrant communities; and prominent contemporary Brazilian mediums, like Divaldo Pereira Franco (1927-) [Image at right] and José Raul Teixeira (1949–), have growing international impact through books, lectures and the Internet (Lewgoy 2008; 2011). This increasing transnationalization of Brazilian Kardecism reflects the decline of a nationalistic myth of origin, as found especially in the works  of key medium/author Chico Xavier, and a growing emphasis on “spiritual health and well-being” and “the happiness of the spirit” (Lewgoy 2012). This latter shift, “from Spiritism to self-help” (Stoll 2006:267), is illustrated by Kardecist moralistic novels, a popular sub-genre of books on “spirituality.” For example, Zíbia Gasparetto (1926–2018), author of over two dozen books as a medium, became a consistent presence on Brazilian bestseller lists, selling millions of copies and reaching an audience far beyond Kardecist circles (Stoll 2006:264). Her son, Luiz Antonio Gasparetto (1949–2018) took Kardecism in a different direction: spending time at the Esalen Institute; becoming well-known in Europe through a series of speaking tours in the 1980s; breaking with official Kardecism (as represented by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation) due to, in his view, its antiquated and moralistic approach; founding what is in effect an esoteric spa, with his “Life and Consciousness Space”; developing a sort of Kardecist theology of prosperity, linking spiritual progress and worldly goods; and emphasizing the use of social media (e.g., Luiz Gasparetto Facebook page. 2022; Stoll 2006).

There are many examples of the emergence of Kardecist-influenced new religious movements. For example, in Argentina, Spanish Kardecist, Joaquín Trincado Mateo (1866-1935) founded in 1911 the Escuela Magnético-Espiritual de la Comuna Universal (Magnetic-Spiritual School of the Universal Commune), combining Kardecist and Theosophical ideas (Bubello 2010:91). Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934) joined this group in Mexico, and it had “a profound and lasting impact on his life, thought, and strategy” (Navarro-Génie 2002:80). In Brazil, the “Temple” of the Legião da Boa Vontade (Legion of Good Will), with its associated Religião de Deus (Religion of God), presents Kardec as just one source of revelation in an “unrestricted ecumenism” that includes many esoteric and New Age elements (Dawson 2016 [2007]:45–48). Waldo Vieira (1932–2015), who worked closely with the most famous Brazilian medium Chico Xavier, left Kardecism in the late 1960s and founded Conscientiology (first called Protectiology) in 1988: his tradition cultivates out-of-body experiences, mixing Kardecist and New Age ideas (D’Andrea 2013).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Spiritualism (as opposed to Spiritism) is often pragmatically focused on allowing living and dead people to communicate with their loved ones, with little emphasis on developing a doctrinal basis for this practice. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke excludes it as a type of esotericism for this reason: “Spiritualism’s lack of a coherent philosophy other than the implication of life beyond the veil of death tend[s] to disqualify it as a variety of esoteric philosophy” (2008:188). This is unfair to Spiritualism, which does sometimes include such doctrinal development, for example, in the work of Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) and in many Spiritualist Churches. However, it suggests the value of distinguishing Spiritualism from the more general category of Spiritism.

Though “Spiritism” and its translations are used in a variety of ways in different religious cultures, it is usefully defined as referring to esoteric traditions that place prominent emphasis on communication with the spirits of the dead. In this light, Spiritualism, Kardecism, Umbanda (Engler 2018, 2020), Mexican-American curanderismo (Hendrickson 2013) and hundreds of other traditions, like Cao Dai in Vietnam (Hoskins 2015) are types of Spiritism. Candomblé, Santeria and related Afro-diasporic traditions in the Americas are not, because communicating with the dead is a marginal aspect and because they do not share in the loose family of characteristics that characterize esoteric traditions (e.g., levels of mediation between humans and the divine, ontological and epistemological correspondences between these levels, the transmutation of practitioners through ritual, flexible borrowing of characteristic from other esoteric traditions, and a reflexive relation between social functions of secrecy and these other characteristics). (The key source for this broad approach to defining esotericism is the work of Antoine Faivre [e.g., 2012 {1990}]).

It is also useful to make a related and relative distinction between horizontal and vertical relations between the living humans and spirits. In horizontal relations, the dead are like us, at our level; and in vertical relations, they are powerful and (usually) helpful spiritual beings. With horizontal relations, the only significant difference between the living and the dead is death itself. With vertical relations, the dead are more advanced, with a significantly higher state of level of spiritual development and knowledge: they communicate primarily to offer spiritual assistance to the living. (Sometimes they are seen as significantly less developed and potentially harmful. This underlines the idea of a scale of development.) Spiritualism emphasizes horizontal and Kardecism vertical relations, though both are present in both.

Kardecism maintains the core beliefs of nineteenth-century French Spiritisme. God (one, and good) created all human souls equally in an innocent state, and our purpose is to progress, spiritually and ethically, as we face the expiating challenges of a series of (re)incarnations on this world (and others). There are no entities other than God and created spirits, no angels or demons. Charity is the core virtue and marker of spiritual evolution. Disincarnated souls (both those awaiting their next resurrection and those sufficiently advanced to require no further incarnations) work compassionately with earthly mediums in order to help their less evolved incarnate fellows with their spiritual progress. Mediums receive (vertically-oriented) messages from more highly evolved spirits, as part of God’s plan of universal spiritual progress. Jesus is a created spirit like all of us, but he proceeded with unmatched speed on the path of spiritual evolution and was the most developed spirit to ever incarnate in this world. The spiritist view of Jesus is more like that of a bodhisattva in Buddhism than of the agent/victim of an Atoning sacrifice in Catholic Christianity; there is no concept of Original Sin in Kardecism.

The concept of “spiritual progress” characterizes each spirit’s individual trajectory from creation to perfection, over a series of incarnations, until a point is reached at which incarnation is no longer needed, and advancement continues only at an elevated spiritual plane:

God created all Spirits in a state of simplicity and ignorance, that is, without knowledge. He gave them each a mission, with the goal of enlightening them, making them gradually achieve perfection through the knowledge of truth, and bringing them closer to Him. Eternal and unalloyed happiness lies, for them, in this perfection. Spirits acquire this knowledge by passing through the trials that God imposes on them. Some accept these trials with submission and arrive more quickly at their destiny’s end. Others undergo them with murmuring and so remain, through their own fault, far from that promised perfection and happiness. … In each new existence, the Spirit takes a step on the path of progress. When it has divested itself of all its impurities, it has no further need for the trials of bodily life (Kardec 1860 [1857], §115, §168).

Kardecism does not believe in demons or any other form of essentially evil spirits. There is no spirit possession:

A Spirit does not enter a body as you enter a house. It assimilates itself with an incarnate Spirit that has the same defects and the same qualities, in order to act jointly. But it is always the incarnate Spirit that acts as it wills on the material with which it is clothed. No Spirit can take the place of another that is incarnated, because the Spirit and the body are linked during the period of material existence (Kardec 1860 [1857]: §473).

Kardecist mediums do not consider themselves to be “possessed by” but rather to be “working with” spirits. They generally describe their state while doing this work as fully conscious, with a voluntary relaxation of the will that allows spirits to communicate, usually through automatic writing.

Kardecist views of afterlife states are exemplified in a book by Francisco Cândido “Chico” Xavier (1910–2002), the most famous and influential of Brazilian Kardecists. (For a French Spiritiste view, influenced by Brazilian Kardecism, see the Centre Spirite Lyonnais website 2015). His more than 400 “psychographed” books have sold over 50,000,000 copies, with all proceeds donated to Kardecist charities: this led to his being honoured as a philanthropist by the Brazilian Senate in 2020 (Agência Senado 2020). In 1944, Chico Xavier  [Image at right] wrote a moralistic and to an extent nationalistic novel, Nosso Lar (Our Home): psychographed autobiography of a highly evolved disincarnate spirit, André Luiz (2006 [1944]). It became his most well-known book, a landmark of Brazilian popular literature and a highly successful 2010 film. The title of the novel refers to an afterlife destination for Brazilian spirits, a city inhabited by spirits and geographically situated above Rio de Janeiro, though on a higher spiritual or vibrational plane. The plot of Nosso Lar moves from the earthly death of the protagonist (the spirit, André Luiz, who “authored” the book) through his on-going education in spiritual ideas and charitable practices, to the culminating moment when he earns citizenship in the spiritual colony. The novel thus traces the trajectory followed by spirits after their death.

Nosso Lar serves as a sort of Brazilian national heaven. It is one of several colonies located above Brazil, and one of many found throughout the world: “national and linguistic patrimonies still linger here, conditioned by psychic boundaries”; Nosso Lar is an “old foundation of distinguished Portugueses who disincarnated in Brazil in the sixteenth century”; (Xavier 2006 [1944]: 155, 157). Another example is the “spiritual city” or “colony” of Alvorada Nova, said to be situated above the port city of Santos, near Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo (Glaser 1992). This Kardecist image of (one level of) the afterlife is also found in some centres of “white,” Kardecist-influenced Umbanda.

Nosso Lar is one of two types of afterlife “colonies”: it provides a place where spirits prepare for a return to a new incarnation; a higher afterlife state exist for those who have already evolved spiritually to the point where no further incarnations are required.

Kardecism also believes in a lower afterlife destination that is very much like Catholic purgatory: the Umbral. (Kardec discussed the doctrine of purgatory in order to underline the expiatory function of the Earth [1865: Chapter 5].) André Luiz first spent an indeterminate time in this zone “situated between the Earth and the heavens, a painful region of shadows, constructed and cultivated by the human mind, as this is generally rebellious, lazy, unbalanced and infirm…” (Campetti Sobrinho 1997:877). Colonies like Nosso Lar are placed near the Umbral (in vibrational terms) in order to help the spirits who wander there. Most of these, in time, can be led up to the higher plane of the spiritual colony:

The Umbral functions … as a region for the emptying out of mental residues, a type of purgatorial zone, in which creatures burn off in phases the deteriorated material of the illusions that they have accumulated in great quantity, through their failure to appreciate the sublime opportunity of their terrestrial existence. … [I]n the dark regions of the Umbral are found not only disincarnate humans, , but veritable monsters…. Divine Providence acted wisely in allowing the creation of this department around our planet. There you find compact legions of indecisive and ignorant souls, those not sufficiently perverse to be sent to more painful colonies of reparation, nor sufficiently noble to be led to elevated planes. There gather in groups the rebels of our species. … Notwithstanding the shadows and anguish of the Umbral, divine protection is never lacking there. Each spirit remains therefore as long as is necessary. For this … the Lord raised many colonies like this one, consecrated to spiritual work and aid (Xavier 2006 [1944]:81–82, 217).

Brazilian Kardecism has developed the idea, found in Kardec’s work, that departed spirits maintains relations with those who they were close to in life. Kardec’s spirit interlocutors informed him that, after leaving its worldly existence,

the Spirit immediately reencounter[s] those that it knew on Earth and who are already dead … according to the affection that it had for them and they for it. Often, they come to meet it on its return to the world of the Spirits, and they help to clear away the bonds of matter. It also reencounters many that it had lost to sight during its sojourn on the Earth. It sees those who are in error, and it goes to visit those who are incarnated (Kardec 1860 [1857]:§160).

In Brazilian Kardecism, each spirit works on its spiritual progress over a series of lifetimes as part of a small group of related spirits; the roles may change, but the small ensemble cast remains intertwined, lifetime after lifetime. The popular Brazilian idea of twin souls (almas gêmeas) is related to this: each spirit has an ideal romantic partner, and multi-incarnational romances are a staple of the best-selling genre of Kardecist novels (romances espíritas).

This shift toward the personal in Brazilian Kardecism is visible in the domestication of the religion:

primarily since the 1950s … a Kardecism was constructed that had its anchor not only in the Centre [the public space of ritual and study], but also in the home as an existential, ritual and moral space: a Kardecism no longer restricted to elite urban men, but one that incorporated aspects of a popular, family-centred and maternal religiosity; a Kardecism destined to captivate a public accustomed to the more oral and popular style of Catholicism, cultivating personal saints, believing in the force of prayers and simpatias [magic spells, primarily used to affect romantic relationships], and often reserving these practices for the domain of mothers. (Lewgoy 2004:42; original emphasis).

In contrast to French Spiritism (still a small quasi-philosophical/quasi-scientific movement)  Brazilian Kardecism has become a large and thriving religion. The key difference between the two is the latter’s emphasis on spiritual therapy. This is especially pronounced if we consider Brazilian Spiritisms like Kardecism and Umbanda as belonging to a single “mediumistic continuum” (Camargo 1961:94–96, 99–110; See Bastide 1967:13–16; Hess 1989). Yet many Brazilian Kardecists, like French Spiritists, see their tradition as more philosophy and science than religion. That said, a dramatic increase in the size of Kardecism between the censuses of 2000 and 2010 (from 1.3 percent to 2 percent of the Brazilian population) reflects, in part, a shift away from a historical trend in which many Kardecists self-declared as having “no religion,” given their view that they practice a philosophy and a science, not a religion: Kardecists seem to increasingly see themselves as belonging to a religion (Lewgoy 2013:196–98).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The most common Kardecist activity is group and individual study of classic Spiritist texts, especially those of Kardec, along with public lectures and discussion of related themes. Many religious traditions have been influenced by Kardecism, and the extent to which Kardec’s books remain important is a key marker of the degree of that influence. For example, in Umbanda (an Afro-esoteric Brazilian spirit-incorporation tradition) Kardecist doctrine is central to all groups (and a minority have no African elements) (Engler 2020). At the Kardecist end of the spectrum of Umbandas, mediumship training begins with months of study of Kardec’s books.

Trained mediums work in closed sessions (often through automatic writing) with highly evolved spirits who (1) give advice to help in the spiritual evolution of those incarnate in the less evolved material realm or (2) bring specific messages from recently departed individuals. The most common type of Kardecist publication consists of collections of the former type of communications. All people have a natural capacity to communicate with the spirits that surround us, and Kardecism offers means to perfect one’s mediumship, allowing for more controlled and uniformly positive interactions with the spirits. Dedicated mediums generally establish working relationships with specific spirits, including important mediums of previous generations. Afro-descendent and indigenous spirits have generally been considered relatively unevolved and continue to play only a small role in orthodox Kardecism (that most strongly rooted in Kardec’s works).

Public meetings generally end with those attending receiving passe from advanced practitioners. [Image at right] In this ritual (derived from Mesmerism and comparable to reiki) the recipient sits in a quiet low-lit room and a medium stands in front of them, passing their hands above the recipient’s head and upper torso without contact. This is believed to transfer positive magnetic fluids or energies either from the medium or from the spirits via the medium (these being two distinct forms of passe). Passe is also given to groups. The ritual is used as a healing technique, with mediums visiting patients in homes and hospitals in order to “give passe as an act of charity. In Brazil, items of clothing (belonging to those who are ill or in need of protection from potential negative energies) are brought to Kardecist centers and imbued by passe with positive magnetic fluids or energies. What is in effect the same ritual (blessing of clothing as a form of healing and protection) is found in Umbanda, popular Catholicism and Neo-Pentecostal churches.

There are no exorcism rituals, because there is no spirit possession. However, unevolved spirits are believed to cause “perturbation”: they interfere with living individuals, through maliciousness, vengefulness, ignorance or confusion. Their presence results in negative magnetic fluids, with consequences that range from mild emotional disturbance (easily handled when the person affected has some training as a medium) through “fascination” (serious distortions of thought that are not recognised as caused by a spirit) to “subjugation” (in which the spirit deprives their victim of autonomy). The cure is ritual “disobsession,” which involves treating both the victim and the offending spirit, primarily helping the latter to understand that their negative actions are standing in the way of their own spiritual development. Disobsession is also found in some centres of “white” and esoteric Umbanda.

This view of encumbering spirits is related to a more general cultural beliefs in spirits. In Brazilian popular religiosity for example,, an encosto is a somewhat malignant spirit that ‘leans’ on a person, e.g. causing them to become confused and forgetful. ‘Encosto’ is also used to refer to the resulting state of quasi-possession. Disobsession is also known as ‘desencosto’ in some Kardecist contexts.

Mediums also receive (horizontally-oriented) messages from recently disincarnated spirits (dead people). In Brazil, for example, those mourning recently diseased family members might receive a visit from a Kardecist with a psychographed message received in a recent session from the departed loved one. I have interviewed people in Brazil who rejected this initial message as false and received no more, and to others who accepted it as true and continued to received messages from their loved one. One family showed me a binder filled with letters from a departed child: the parents felt they were able to accompany their child’s growing up in the afterlife, year after year, and preparing for their next incarnation.

Two letters from dead murder victims, psychographed by Chico Xavier, played key roles in Brazilian legal cases in the 1970s. In the first case, a posthumous letter from the victim led his mother to drop an appeal; and the judge stated that the letter had provided additional support for his judgment that the accused was innocent (Souza 2021:47). In the second case, a posthumous letter from the victim was considered so accurate in its details of the crime that it was accepted as part of official court documents. The judge’s sentence, finding the death to be accidental, stated the following: “We must give credibility to the message…, although legal circles have not yet acknowledged anything of this sort, in which the victim himself, after his death, reports and provides data to the judge, and so informs sentencing” (Souza 2021: 50).

Material charity is a central practice in Kardecism: members support and volunteer at hospitals, homes for the elderly, orphanages etc. This charitable work, like many aspects of the religion, reflects, to an extent, its middle- to upper-class social location. From a critical perspective, “the fact that charity focuses especially on the poorer classes signifies not an emphasis on potential expansion but a moment for the affirmation of social distance” (Cavalcanti 1990:151–52, translated).

Kardecism shapes a wide variety of spiritual healing practices in Brazil, notably psychic surgery (Greenfield 2008). For example, the medium Zé Arigó (José Pedro de Freitas: 1922–1971) [[Image at right] became world famous for psychic surgeries and other treatments, all performed (while the medium was in a trance) by the spirit of a German physician and surgeon, Doctor Fritz (Comenale 1968). Since Arigó’s death, Doctor Fritz continued his healing work through other mediums (Greenfield 1987). This emphasis on healing also visible in the many new religious movements that draw on Kardecist ideas.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

In organizational terms, Kardecism is a series of local voluntary associations as opposed to a hierarchical church-like institution. In 1858, Kardec founded both the key Kardecist publication, La Revue Spirite, and the Société Parisienne des Études Spirites (SPEE). The SPEE model was taken up in other countries: it was a clearing house for information and a willing partner, but it did not manage the operations of federated member groups. National Spiritist associations (often more than one in each country) continue to provide educational resources and support the distribution of publications. Informal on-line research strongly suggests that the number of such organizations has increased dramatically in the past twenty years.

Kardecism has remained relatively stable in its beliefs and practises, granted the shift to a greater focus on healing in Latin America, especially in Brazil. Overall coherence and continuity results primarily from three factors. First, a shared emphasis on the texts of nineteenth-century French Spiritisme, especially Kardec’s works, constitutes a de facto normative orthodox core. Second, Kardecism shares socially conservative values with many societies, especially in Latin America, which leads to a valuation of tradition (Betarello 2009:124). Third, Kardecism has a tendency to hybridize with other traditions, especially with esoteric and Afro-diasporic traditions in Latin America.

This third factor helps us understand Spiritisms in Latin America more generally. Orthodox Kardecism reinforces its traditionalism in an ongoing effort to distinguish itself from emerging hybridized traditions. Mexico illustrates this tension. The first Congresso Nacional Espírita, rooted in Kardec’s works, gathered 2010 people in 1906 (Garma 2007: 100). Seventy years later, a president of the Mexican National Spiritist Centre, writing as a “kardeciano,” underlined that Spiritism is rooted in Kardec’s texts and argued that it is a scientific, philosophical and moral system, not a religion (Alvarez y Gasca 1975). El espiritualismo trinitario mariano (Marian Trinitarian Spiritism) is a far more popular hybrid Spiritism that mixes indigenous and Catholic elements and focuses on therapeutics: it began in 1866 and continues strong today (Echániz 1990). In the 2000 census, 60,657 people (0.07 percent of the Mexican population, with members in all states) self-identified as “spiritualistas” of this tradition (Garma 2007:102). Other countries offer comparable examples. Kardecism arrived in Cuba in the 1860s and Kardecist Espiritismo cientifico soon became distinct from Espiritismo cruzado (“crossed” with Afro-Cuban traditions) and Espiritismo de cordon (with strong Catholic influences) (Espirito Santo 2015; Palmié 2002; Millet 2018). Puerto Rico offers a contrasting example, in which Mesa Blanca (“white table” Kardecism) blurs into popular brujería (healing magic), Catholicism, and Yoruba-rooted Santería of Cuban origin (Romberg 2003). In Brazil, Umbanda (a closely related but distinct type of Spiritism) has taken on the role of site of hybridization with other traditions (Engler 2020). This is correlated with Kardecism’s emphasis on normative orthodoxy in that country.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Since its advent in Latin America, Kardecism has been associated primarily with white, literate, upper-class segments of national societies. In Brazil, for example, it remains a primarily urban phenomenon, and its members have the highest literacy and education rates and the highest average incomes, after Jews and Muslims, of any religious group in the country: the number of Kardecists in the top income brackets and with post-secondary education is almost two-and-a-half times the national mean; the number of those working in administration or public service or who are themselves employers is twice the mean (Jacob et al. 2003:105).

Kardecism’s vision of universal human spiritual progress embeds socially contingent ideological presuppositions. There is a correlation between Kardecism’s class positioning and its discomfort with indigenous and Afro-descendent spirits. (Relations between race and class are especially complex in Brazil [Fry 1995–1996; Sansone 2003; Magnoli 2009].) This discomfort was linked to the emergence of Umbanda in the 1920s, when spiritually evolved, racialized spirits are said to have been rejected by Kardecists, leading to Umbanda’s becoming the tradition in which they play leading roles.

Kardecism continues to express socially conservative views, reflecting in part its members’ divergence from demographic norms. For example, attitudes toward sexuality in Brazil reflect the dominance of heteronormative views: e.g. in one of many recent meditations on Nosso Lar, sexuality independent of the goal of reproduction is considered to be devoid of meaning and homosexuality a lack of “equilibrium” (Baccelli and Ferreira 2009:255, 302). Attitudes toward homosexuality constitute one of several dimensions along which spirit possession religions in Brazil present a spectrum (Engler 2009: 561): Afro-Brazilian traditions, most notably Candomblé, usually offer a hospitable environment for alternative sexualities; Umbanda varies from more accepting at the Afro- Brazilian end of its range to much less so at the Kardecist end; Kardecism generally sees homosexuality as abnormal, with charitable tolerance the norm (many leaders and mediums are gay men); Neo-Pentecostal churches tend to see non-heterosexual desire as pathological and demonic (Landes 1947; Fry 1982; P. Birman 1985, 1995; Natividade 2003; Natividade and Oliveira 2007; Gárcia et al. 2009).

Reflecting these facts, Brazilian Kardecism has experienced significant internal tensions in recent years, between a majority of political and social conservatives and a minority of progressives (Arribas 2018; Camurça 2021). The initial division echoed tensions that sharpened in Brazilian society after the decisive victory by social conservative, not “far right,” Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. It was sparked by leading medium Divaldo Franco’s response to a question on “gender ideology” at the 34th Congresso Espírita do Estado de Goiás in February, 2018, which was posted on YouTube (Franco 2018).

IMAGES

Image #1: Allan Kardec.
Image #2: The Spirits Book.
Image #3: “The Brazilian Kardec,” Adolfo Bezerra de Menezes (1831–1900).
Image #4: Brazilian medium Divaldo Pereira Franco (1927-).
Image #5: Brazilian medium Chico Xavier (1910–2002) in a session of automatic writing.
Image #6: The Kardecist ritual passe (non-contact form of manipulation of “energies” or “magnetic fluids”).
Image #7: Brazilian medium and psychic surgeon Zé Arigo (José Pedro de Freitas: 1922–1971) treating a patient, with the assistance of the spirit Dr. Fritz.

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Publication Date:
6 April 2022

GRACE HOLMES CARLSON TIMELINE

1906 (November 13):  Grace Holmes was born to Mary Nuebel Holmes and James Holmes in St. Paul, Minnesota.

1906 (December 9):  Holmes was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church at St. Peter Claver in St. Paul, Minnesota.

1922:  Holmes’ father, James, participated in the Railroad Shopmen’s strike.

1924–1929:  Holmes attended College of St. Catherine in St. Paul.

1926 (May 11):  Holmes’s mother, Mary, died.

1929–1933:  Holmes attended the University of Minnesota and earned a Ph.D. in 1933.

1934 (summer):  Holmes witnessed the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes.

1934 (July 28):  Holmes and Gilbert Carlson were married.

1935–1940:  Grace Holmes Carlson was employed as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the Minnesota Department of Education.

1937:  Carlson left the Catholic Church and separated from Gilbert.

1937 (December)–1938 (January):  Carlson served as a delegate at the founding convention of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Chicago.

1940 (September 1):  Carlson resigned from the Department of Education and ran for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.

1941 (July):  Carlson and twenty-eight other Trotskyists were indicted in Minneapolis for violating the Smith Act.

1941 (December):  Carlson and seventeen other defendants were convicted and sentenced to prison.

1942:  Carlson ran for mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota.

1944 (January)–1945 (January):  Carlson served her sentence at Alderson Prison.

1945 (June–September):  Carlson conducted her nationwide “Women in Prison” speaking tour and published articles on working women’s struggles in The Militant.

1946:  Carlson ran for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.

1948:  Carlson ran for U.S. vice president with Farrell Dobbs who ran for president in the SWP’s first national campaign.

1950:  Carlson ran for the U.S. Congress from Minnesota.

1951:  Carlson’s father James Holmes, a large influence in her life, died.

1952 (June 18):  Carlson resigned from the SWP, returned to the Catholic Church, and reunited with Gilbert.

1952 (November)–1955 (August):  Carlson worked as a secretary in the pediatrics department of St. Mary’s Hospital in Minneapolis and engaged in various charitable endeavors.

1955 (August)–1957 (April):  Carlson worked as the social director for St. Mary’s Hospital’s School of Nursing; Carlson delivered public speeches before Catholic groups on topics such as “The Return to God” and “The Paradox of Communism.”

1957 (April):  Carlson was hired as an instructor in the Department of Nursing at the College of St. Catherine.

1957–1965:  Carlson delivered speeches to various Catholic and secular audiences on the importance of the Catholic lay apostolate as well as on women’s career paths.

1964:  Carlson and Sister A. J. Moore, CSJ, released the St. Mary’s Plan, the founding plan for the new St. Mary’s Junior College (SMJC) in Minneapolis where Carlson was hired as a professor of psychology.

1968:  Carlson delivered her speech, “Review of Catholics and the Left.”

1979:  Carlson retired from teaching at SMJC and began her “Carlson’s Continuing Commentary” column in the college’s newspaper Good News.

1980–1984:  Carlson worked in the SMJC alumnae office.

1982:  Carlson established the Grace Carlson Student Emergency Loan Fund to assist SMJC students with small, no-interest loans.

1984:  Carlson left her alumnae and newspaper work at SMJC to care fulltime for Gilbert who died on May 13.

1988:  Carlson moved to Madison, Wisconsin.

1992 (July 7):  Grace Holmes Carlson died at the age of eighty-five.

BIOGRAPHY

Grace Holmes Carlson [Image at right] was raised a Catholic in St. Paul, Minnesota, but left the Church in the late 1930s at the end of the Great Depression to pursue a career in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP). For more than a decade, as an organizer, political candidate, and contributor to the party’s newspaper, The Militant, she dedicated her life to the SWP. When she returned to the Catholic Church in 1952, Carlson did not shed her Marxist understanding of the need to eliminate exploitative capitalism. She viewed her commitment to pursuing social justice through that Marxist lens but, as a Catholic once again, she also understood that commitment as a gospel mandate to involve herself in worldly affairs to “restore all things to Christ” (Carlson 1957). Carlson engaged in this work as an active laywoman in her parish, as an educator at St. Mary’s Junior College (SMJC), and as public speaker. Unlike well-known figures of the Catholic Left, like Dorothy Day, Carlson did not take a personalist approach to faith and social reform. Nor did she believe in individual acts of witness as resistance, as famously engaged in by Fathers Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Instead, she remained committed to effecting social and economic change through what she called the slow and “laborious process of educating and propagandizing” (Carlson 1970) in her public speaking and in her work at SMJC.

Grace Holmes was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1906 into an Irish and German working-class Catholic family. The women religious who taught her at St. Vincent’s parish school, St. Joseph’s Academy high school, and the College of St. Catherine (CSC)  [Image at right] were a formative influence. Through religious instruction and extracurricular activities, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet taught Carlson that serving all people without distinction was a way to serve God. Their communication of this gospel mandate of service was informed both by scripture and by the sisters’ founding mission. These women religious, along with parish priests who were trained by Father John Ryan at St. Paul Seminary established by Archbishop John Ireland, also exposed Carlson to the Catholic Church’s social teachings on the dignity of work, the legitimacy of workers’ associations, and the need for a just wage to support a decent life for laborers. Among the many texts Carlson read as an undergraduate at CSC was Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which advanced these social teachings. She was thus aware of the Church’s arguments for workers’ assertion of their human dignity through the cooperation of labor and capital. But Carlson was also educated in worker solidarity and class conflict when her father, James Holmes, who was a boilermaker on the Great Northern Railway, joined his fellow railroad shopkeepers on strike in 1922. Carlson recalled other, purely secular, influences on her maturing working-class and social-justice oriented consciousness, including her maternal uncle who read the Socialist Appeal.

When Carlson began her graduate study at the University of Minnesota in 1929, she already was committed to helping the exploited and had a strong working-class identity. After earning her Ph.D. in psychology in 1933, she became politically active and supported the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party campaign of Floyd Olson for governor. But during the summer of 1934, as she witnessed the momentous Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, she became attracted to the revolutionary Marxism that the Trotskyist leaders of that work stoppage advocated. Carlson began attending the weekly Sunday Forums of the Communist Left Opposition (as the followers of Leon Trotsky, who had been ousted from the Communist Party in 1928, had come to be known) and learned about their commitment to international revolutionary socialism. The 1934 strikes were a seminal moment in her evolving political identification, as were her years working as a vocational rehabilitation counselor (1935–1940). While she struggled to help disabled clients find work in a crashing economy and as she attended the Trotskyist Sunday Forums, she came to believe that only socialism would meet people’s economic needs. As Carlson and her sister Dorothy became more deeply committed to the Trotskyists, Carlson’s husband Gilbert, a law student whom she had married in July 1934, became wary. Warned off by a local priest that one could not be a good Catholic and a socialist at the same time, Gilbert Carlson did not become a formal member of the Left Opposition. Grace Carlson, however, did: she joined the Trotskyists in the Workers Party in 1936. At some point during this period, Grace and Gilbert separated and Grace left the Catholic Church. Carlson became a delegate to the convention in Chicago where the Trotskyists founded their own revolutionary socialist party, the Socialist Workers Party, in January 1938.

For the next fourteen years, Carlson was an important figure in the SWP, serving as a state organizer in Minnesota and becoming the first woman to serve on the party’s National Committee. In 1941, Carlson gained notoriety as one of the twenty-nine Trotskyists who were indicted by a federal grand jury for violating the 1940 Smith Act. She was one of the eighteen defendants who ultimately was convicted of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the government because of her political beliefs. On December 8, 1941, she was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison. After a failed appeal, Carlson served just over a year in Alderson Prison and was released on parole in January 1945. She remained active in the SWP, conducting a nationwide
speaking tour on “Women in Prison,” writing for the party’s newspaper, The Militant, working as a party organizer in Minnesota and New York City, and running for office in various campaigns, including for vice president of the United States in 1948. [Image at right] Carlson almost ran for vice president again in 1952 but pulled out of the race in June when she announced that she was leaving the SWP and returning to the Catholic Church.

Carlson’s departure from the SWP stemmed from personal, not political, reasons. Her father, James, died in September 1951 and his passing led Carlson to realize that she needed God back in her life. Marxism no longer seemed to have all the answers, yet it was difficult for her to acknowledge the call of her faith. She later explained how “I thought I was seeking personal satisfaction and betraying the movement” (Romer 1952:8). She spent months struggling with her feelings. In her conversations with Father Leonard Cowley, the priest who guided her in her return to the Church, he explained that she did not have to choose between her God and her “opinion on social problems so long as it doesn’t conflict with moral principle” (Romer 1952:8). With this reassurance, Carlson left the SWP in June 1952 and rejoined the Catholic Church with her Marxist viewpoints largely intact. She also reunited with her husband Gilbert at this time.

As a Marxist, Carlson’s return to the Catholic Church during the McCarthy period was not an easy one, but she soon found more progressive circles within which she could simultaneously pursue her spiritual devotions and her political activism. These included St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis. After she left the SWP in 1952 it was hard for Carlson to find employment because she had been blacklisted. Sister Rita Clare Brennan, one of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, helped her secure secretarial work at St. Mary’s Hospital. By 1957 Carlson was hired to teach in the hospital’s nursing program and became an indispensable member of the faculty at what became St. Mary’s Junior College (SMJC). She relished the opportunities to “teach and practice social justice” until she retired in 1979. With Sister A. J. Moore, CSJ, Carlson co-wrote the founding plan for the college in 1964 that called for a broad-based liberal arts education to complement the technical training for the nursing students so that they could use their talents to serve others as a means of serving God. Carlson incorporated this mission into her many volunteer activities on and off campus. She became a mentor to countless female students, delivered numerous public speeches during the late 1950s and 1960s in which she articulated her vision of an activist Catholic lay apostolate, volunteered at a home for at risk women in Minneapolis, and served on her parish’s liturgy committee. Carlson found the Catholic lay apostolate (the Church teaching that all laypersons are entrusted by God with a common vocation through their Baptism and Confirmation to build up the Church and sanctify the world in their actions in everyday life) to be an inspiration and guide to her work in this new phase of her life.

Carlson remained engaged with the SMJC community after she retired from teaching in 1979, working as an alumnae officer, setting up an emergency fund for students, and publishing a weekly column in the campus newspaper. In 1984 she focused her attention on Gilbert, becoming his primary caretaker in the last year of his life. In 1988 she moved to Madison, Wisconsin to be closer to her sister Dorothy. Grace Holmes Carlson died in Madison on July 7, 1992.

TEACHINGS/DOCTRINES

Carlson’s lay apostolate was rooted in her Catholic faith that was nurtured in the Church during her childhood and young adult years and during her late adulthood after she responded to the call of her faith again in 1952. Early in her life, her faith was shaped by the instruction she received from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and by her exposure to the Catholic Church’s social teachings. She undoubtedly was also familiar with the liturgical movement of the late 1920s that called for greater participation of congregants in forms of worship, particularly in the Mass. Carlson’s time at St. Joseph’s Academy and CSC included monthly adorations of the Blessed Sacrament and weekly reception of the Eucharist. Through these practices Carlson probably was exposed to the Church’s teaching on the Mystical Body of Christ, which held that through the Eucharist, Catholics’ union into a spiritual body with Christ as their head was strengthened. She was most likely taught that this mystical union with Christ also connected Catholics to one another in the Church and necessitated a duty to act in the world to serve Christ in one another (Ephesians 4:4-13; John 15: 5-12; 1 Corinthians 10:17). This doctrine influenced the Catholic Action movement of the 1930s that, albeit under the direct supervision of the bishops, called on Catholic laypersons to “engage in their faith in socially-oriented ways” (Harmon 2014:52). By this period, Carlson was on her way out of the Church, but the concept of a socially oriented engagement of one’s faith (and the Catholic organizations that mushroomed in its soil, like the Catholic Worker Movement) remained and provided a touchstone for Carlson when she returned to the Church in 1952.

In the many speeches she delivered from the late 1950s through the early 1960s, in the period immediately before Vatican II, Carlson repeatedly called for a Catholic lay apostolate that engaged with the concerns of the secular world and became “propagandists for Christ” (Carlson 1957, 1958). In speeches like “Nurse and the Parish” and “The Lay Apostle,” Grace grappled with an understanding of the Catholic faith that was at once focused on both the transcendent and the temporal, on loving and serving and uniting with God and humanity through lay Catholic activism. She argued that when it came to “contest for minds of men . . . atheism must be opposed,” but “as to Marxist economics” there could be a more “complex approach” in which there could be a “union and communion with God and with each other” (Carlson 1965). She made the case for an incarnational Christian response to the needs of the people by quoting Rev. Peter Riga, a professor of theology at St. John Vianney Seminary in East Aurora, New York, that “To be a Christian is not purely to serve God, but it is also a dynamic social ethic, a service to mankind; it is not merely a theology, but also an anthropology” (quoted in Carlson 1965).

Carlson had tapped into broader currents flowing in the Catholic Church before Vatican II (1962–1965) that stressed the importance of the laity as brothers and sisters in Christ who had a mandate to do God’s work in the world. Those currents (including the liturgical movement, the Catholic Action movement, and the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ that had been further developed in Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi) “sowed the seeds for the frenzied activity that followed the Second Vatican Council” (Bonner, Burns and Denny 2014:17). But that activity was later nurtured by the decrees that emerged from the Second Vatican Council, especially Lumen Gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church) and Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World Today). Lumen Gentium “stressed that the church is a pilgrim people, not an unchanging institution.” It developed the notion of the Church as the People of God based on the belief that “by virtue of baptism, every Christian is called upon to minister in the name of Christ” (Gillis, 1999:86–90). Gaudium et Spes stressed that the faithful had to “decipher authentic signs of God’s presence and purpose” in the world and become “witness to Christ in the midst of human society” (quoted in McCartin 2010:114).

LEADERSHIP

As a laywoman, Carlson repeatedly called on others (and took action herself) to be a lay apostle, a “propagandist for Christ,” in the world even before Vatican II issued decrees acknowledging that baptismal call to ministry. In addition to the many speeches in which she made the case for such work, Carlson’s efforts in crafting the curricular plan for what became SMJC in 1964 advocated this lay apostolate. Carlson and Sister A. J. Moore [Image at right] designed the new junior college as a place where the “students in technical programs are urged to develop a sense of social responsibility” not just their own self advancement and “To develop a person assured of the significance of spiritual values strongly imbued with a desire to serve God and his neighbor” (Carlson and Moore 1964). To help SMJC students complete their education so that they could undertake this mission, Carlson also established an emergency fund out of her own pocket in 1982 that provided small, no-interest loans to students in need.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Her work at SMJC was not the only way that Carlson was a propagandist for Christ. So too was her protest against America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam and her support for the anti-nuclear movement. Although Carlson cared about causes that were central to the New Left, she diverged from that movement because of her unique Catholic and Old Left Marxist approach to the issues, a position that she articulated most clearly in her 1968 speech, “Review of Catholics and the Left.” As a self-defined “propagandist for Christian socialism,” she explained that she was “prejudiced against those who muddy the waters by individualistic acts: demand dialogue in churches undemocratically; offend sensibilities by vulgar language; burn draft records or pour blood on them” (Carlson 1968). In her denunciation of what she saw as the New Left’s vulgarity she found common ground with Dorothy Day, who also disliked “the rage and obscenities, the irreverence and smugness, the lack of humility” of many of the anti-war protestors (Loughery and Randolph 2020:316). Day, however, made her objection on moral grounds. For Carlson, it was a political objection. She argued that the “basic error of New Left—Catholic or not is anti-intellectualism. . . ‘I feel therefore I am,’” and contrasted that new movement to the Old Left of which she had been a part in which “not to ‘do your thing’ but to do the thing that will advance the movement” was the focus in order to bring “an end to racial and social and economic oppression of man by man” (Carlson 1968, punctuation as in original). For Carlson, social reform—indeed a revolutionary reordering of the existing socio-economic system—was the paramount concern. By contrast, Dorothy Day, influenced by Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, focused on “the little way,” in which it was about bringing about a “revolution in thought, not an adjustment of an economic system” (Loughery and Randolph 2020:139). The difference here was not just that Day’s activism was rooted in her pacifism and the Church’s prophetic tradition geared ultimately to an eschatological end, but that Carlson’s was still so grounded in Old Left Marxism. They both believed in changing hearts and minds; but for Day, that was the revolution, whereas for Carlson, it was the application of that change to the social and economic system that was so needed in the modern world.

Carlson’s Old Left perspective blended with her Catholic activism to produce the hybrid Catholic Marxist approach that she took to contemporary issues during the 1960s and beyond. It is also what attracted her to Slant, a left-wing Catholic group in England. Slant (the name was always italicized) was a movement that was formed in 1964 among “a group of undergraduates at Cambridge University and their clerical advisors” who launched a journal of the same name and “whose purpose was a radical examination of traditional Catholic theology so as to promote the social goals of the Gospel.” For Slant members those “goals implied a socialist revolution” (Corrin 2013:216). They expressed ideas that were “decidedly radical, in drawing imaginative connections between Christian theology and revolutionary Marxism” (Corrin 2013:224). Carlson began “a discussion with a number of selected students” and initiated a branch of Slant at SMJC among them and some faculty members. In so doing she practiced what she had preached: working to effect social change “through the more laborious process of educating and propagandizing” (Carlson 1970).

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGION

Carlson’s lay apostolate reveals the diversity of Catholic laywomen’s witness in the mid- to late-twentieth-century United States. But it also was unique to her somewhat unusual life path. Part of her focus on effecting social change included a particular feminist agenda that had its roots in her years at the College of St. Catherine, where she learned from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet the importance of developing her intellectual talents to put in the service of God by serving others. This service included pursuing graduate education and a career outside the home through which she could minister to others, as she did in her role as a vocational rehabilitation counselor from 1935 to 1940. During her years in the Socialist Workers Party, Carlson developed her feminist identity further and solely through her engagement with secular Marxist influences. She approached the “woman question” as a Trotskyist, seeing the class struggle as central to women’s liberation from capitalism, which she understood as the source of all oppression. When she returned to the Catholic Church in 1952, Carlson maintained these positions but integrated them with her renewed Catholic faith. Drawing on certain facets of Catholic social teachings and the liturgical and Catholic Action movements, Carlson argued in “The Catholic Woman Apostolate” that the “creator must have endowed women with qualities of mind and soul to do his work,” which included work outside the home that made a difference in society (Carlson 1959). In this way her feminism resonated with some of the Catholic laywomen who redefined Catholic womanhood to include an affirmation of their calls to work in the world that have been studied by historian Mary J. Henold (2008). But Carlson diverged from these women almost as much as she did from her former Trotskyist sisters. She did not root her understanding of Catholic womanhood in essentialism or complementarity (a doctrine promulgated by twentieth-century popes beginning with Pope Pius XII that asserts the essential difference yet equality of the sexes); nor did she base it solely on a Marxist view of the primacy of the class struggle. Instead, she combined the Catholic influences from her childhood with her working-class experiences and Trotskyism as she worked for social justice in her years at St. Mary’s Junior College. [Image at right] The result, in Carlson’s case, is a woman who challenged both capitalist oppression and patriarchal structures in the pursuit of liberating women and serving God.

Carlson’s lay activism also reveals some of the diversity that existed in the American Catholic Left during the Cold War era, specifically Marxist Catholic alternatives that rejected violence while demanding, as a gospel mandate, revolutionary social and economic change. Through her speeches, correspondence, and campus organizing work, Carlson attempted to bring something to the American Catholic context that was, according to historian David J. O’Brien, largely missing—a way “to develop the social and political dimensions of the [then] present revolution in the church” (O’Brien 1972:213). By blending her Old Left perspective with her Catholic activism, Carlson created the Catholic Marxist approach that she took to this work.

IMAGES

Image #1: Grace Holmes Carlson, Minneapolis, 1941. Photo Acme 10-29-41, courtesy of David Riehle.
Image #2: Grace Holmes and her fellow graduates, College of St. Catherine, 1929. Graduates of the Class of 1929, Photo 828, f. 7, box 166, University Archives Photograph Collection, Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Image #3: Grace Holmes Carlson campaigning for vice president in 1948. Photo of Grace Carlson at podium, f. 1948 Presidential Campaign—Aug. 1948, box 1, Grace Carlson Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Image #4: Grace Carlson with Sister Anne Joachim Moore, 1981. St. Mary’s School of Nursing, Series 8, Photographs, Box 11, Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Image #5: Grace Carlson in her office at St. Mary’s Junior College, 1983. Grace Carlson, 1983, St. Mary’s School of Nursing, Series 8, Photographs, Box 11, Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota.

REFERENCES

Bonner, Jeremy, Jeffrey M. Burns, and Christopher D. Denny. 2014. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-17 in Empowering the People of God: Catholic Action before and after Vatican II, edited by Jeremy Bonner, Christopher D. Denny, and Mary Beth Fraser Connolly. New York: Fordham University Press.

Carlson, Grace. 1959. “The Catholic Woman’s Apostolate.” January. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 2, box 1. Grace Carlson Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota (hereafter cited as CP, MHS).

Carlson, Grace. 1965. “Confrontation between Communism and Christianity.” November. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 3, box 1. CP, MHS.

Carlson, Grace. 1958. “The Lay Apostle.” January 20. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 2, box 1. CP, MHS.

Carlson, Grace. 1970. Letter to Emeric Lawrence, OSB. August 31. f. Gen. Correspondence and Misc., box 2, CP, MHS.

Carlson, Grace. 1957. “Nurse and the Parish.” October 10. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 1, box 1. CP, MHS.

Carlson, Grace. 1968. “Review of Catholics and the Left.” November 13. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 3, box 1. CP, MHS.

Corrin, Jay P. 2013. Catholic Progressives in England after Vatican II. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Gillis, Chester. 1999. Roman Catholicism in America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Harmon, Katherine E. 2014. “The Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action: Women Living the Liturgical Life in the Lay Apostolate.” Pp. 46-75 in Empowering the People of God: Catholic Action before and after Vatican II, edited by Jeremy Bonner, Christopher D. Denny, and Mary Beth Fraser Connolly. New York: Fordham University Press.

Henold, Mary J. 2008. Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Leo XIII, Pope. 1891. Rerum Novarum. Encyclical Letter, May 15. Accessed by https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html on 25 March 2022.

Loughery, John, and Blythe Randolph. 2020. Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century. New York: Simon & Schuster.

McCartin, James P. 2010. Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

O’Brien, David J. 1972. The Renewal of American Catholicism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Romer, Sam. 1952. “Grace Carlson, Plagued by Faith, Returns to Catholicism.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, July 1:1 and 8.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Carlson, Grace. 1958–1959. “Christianity and Communism in the World Today.” Note cards for speech delivered in November 1958, January 1959, and February 1960. f. SMJC Speech and Lecture Notes 2, box 1, CP, MHS.

Carlson, Grace. n.d. Papers. Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul, Minnesota.

Carroll, Jane Lamm, Joanne Cavallaro, and Sharon Doherty, eds. 2012. Liberating Sanctuary: 100 Years of Women’s Education at the College of St. Catherine. New York. Lexington Books.

Case, Mary Anne. 2016. “The Role of the Popes in the Invention of Complementarity and the Vatican’s Anathematization of Gender.” Religion & Gender 6:155–72.

Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. 2021. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist. New York: New York University Press.

Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. 2021. “A Marxist Catholic in Cold War America: Grace Holmes Carlson and the Catholic Left Reconsidered.” Catholic Historical Review 107:78–118.

Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. 2013. “‘Punishment of Mere Political Advocacy’: The FBI, Teamsters Local 544, and the Origins of the 1941 Smith Act Case.” Journal of American History 100:68–93.

McGuinness, Margaret M. 2013. Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America. New York: New York University Press.

Murphy, Laura. 2009. “An ‘Indestructible Right’: John Ryan and the Catholic Origins of the U.S. Living Wage Movement.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 6:57–86.

Pius XII, Pope. 1943. Mystici Corporis Christi. Encyclical Letter, June 29. Accessed from https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html on 25 March 2022.

Raasch-Gilman, Elizabeth. 1999. “Sisterhood in the Revolution: The Holmes Sisters and the Socialist Workers’ Party.” Minnesota History 56: 358–75.

Publication Date:
30 March 2022

THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND TIMELINE

1752 (November 29):  Jemima Wilkinson was born into a Quaker family in Cumberland, Rhode Island Colony.

1775-1776:  Wilkinson began attending New Light Baptist meetings.

1776 (July 4):  The United States declared independence from England.

1776 (September):  The Smithfield monthly meeting of Quakers expelled Wilkinson from the congregation as punishment for her New Light association.

1776 (October 5):  Wilkinson fell ill with a fever.

1776 (October 11):  Wilkinson recovered from the fever as The Public Universal Friend.

1777:  The Friend expanded public preaching from local venues to other locations in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

1777 (September):  The Smithfield Quakers disowned Jeremiah Wilkinson, The Friend’s father.

1778:  The Friend and Sarah Skilton Richards met in Watertown, Connecticut.

1779:  The Friend established a ministry at Little Rest, Rhode Island and began preaching in Connecticut, establishing greater influence and a sizeable following.

1779:  The Friend published Some Considerations, Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects of Professors of This Age, the first written teachings.

1779:  Captain James Parker and Abner Brownell became followers of The Friend.

1780:  Judge William Potter became a follower, along with nine of his thirteen children.

1782 (October):  The Friend visited Philadelphia in order to win more converts and was attacked by a mob.

1782 (October):  Abner Brownell published Enthusiastical Errors, Transpired and Detected, purporting to expose The Friend as a fraud.

1783 (September 18):  Society of Universal Friends was formally established.

1784 (August):  The Friend again visited Philadelphia, returned after a short time to New England, and began planning the establishment of a colony in western New York.

1784 (November):  The Universal Friend’s Advice, to Those of the Same Religious Society, outlining The Friend’s doctrines, was published.

1785:  The Friend’s brother, Jeptha Wilkinson, dispatched to the western New York wilderness to explore the prospect of land purchase.

1786:  The Society of Universal Friends established a fund to purchase land, and decided upon the Genesee area in western New York as the site for their new community settlement.

1786:  After the death of her husband, Sarah Richards, a close associate of The Friend, became a member of The Friend’s household, serving as its practical and financial manager.

1787:  A small party began exploration of the area known as Genesee Country in order to find suitable property for settlement

1788: William Parker, who joined the Society of Universal Friends in 1779, purchased land from a New York consortium known as The Lessees, unaware that their rights to make such a sale were disputed on multiple fronts.

1788 (June):  Twenty-five Universal Friends, led by James Parker, arrived to begin settling on the land in Genesee.

1788 (July):  Survey of the Preemption Line started. Upon completion of the survey, it was discovered that the Universal Friends had located their settlement on land that belonged to New York State.

1789:  The Universal Friends group was large enough to gain official recognition as a religious denomination in Rhode Island. Settlers continued migrating to the Friends’ settlement in western New York.

1790: The Friend arrived at the settlement with a handful of followers. The population grew to around 260, becoming the largest white community in western New York.

1791 (Spring):  James Parker traveled to New York City in order to petition Governor George Clinton to resolve the land ownership issue.

1791:  The Society of Universal Friends gained legal recognition as a religious denomination from New York State.

1791 (December):  The United States concluded its war of independence against England.

1792 (October 10):  New York State granted clear title to William Potter, James Parker, and Thomas Hathaway for the property in Genesee.

1793 (November 30):  Sarah Richards died.

1794 (February 20):  The Friend moved to a new house on a new property called Jerusalem, about twelve miles west of the Society of Universal Friends settlement in Genesee.

1796:  Eliza Richards, Sarah’s daughter, eloped with Enoch Malin, the brother of two close associates of The Friend, Rachel and Margaret Malin.

1798:  In an attempt to lay legal claim to The Friend’s property, Enoch and Eliza Malin brought an ejectment suit against The Friend. Claiming that the marriage conferred ownership of all the property held in Sarah’s name, Enoch began selling off The Friend’s property.

1799 (June):  Trial was held in the Ontario County Circuit Court. The Friend was found not guilty of trespassing.

1799 (September 17):  James Parker issued a warrant for the Friend’s arrest, on charges of blasphemy.

1800 (June):  The Friend went to court in Canandaigua, the county seat of Ontario County, to face charges of blasphemy. As blasphemy was not a crime in New York State, the case was rejected.

1819 (July 1):  The Friend died at home in Jerusalem.

1840:  The Society of Universal Friends ceased functioning.

BIOGRAPHY

Jemima Wilkinson, the eighth child of Quaker farmers Jeremiah and Amey Wilkinson, was born November 29, 1752 in Cumberland, Rhode Island Colony. The Public Universal Friend came into existence on October 11, 1776, when Jemima was not quite twenty-four.

Jemima’s early life was shaped by the massive social and spiritual upheaval generated by the American Revolution (1765–1791), and the persistent enthusiasms of the First Great Awakening (1730–1740s). Three of Jemima’s brothers were expelled from the Society of Friends for joining the War for Independence, directly counter to the core Quaker principle of pacifism. Her older sister Patience was also ousted for giving birth to a child out of wedlock. Jemima herself was disciplined “for not attending Friends meetings and not using the plain language” (Wisbey 1964:7), and in September 1776 was expelled entirely from the Smithfield meeting for attending meetings of the New Light Baptist Congregation in Abbott Run. The then-radical and revolutionary embrace of evangelism, emotional fervor and conversion experiences of the so-called New Lights separated and alienated them from the more staid and comparatively more authoritarian “Old Light” Baptist and Congregationalist denominations. Besides the fact that Jemima had been failing to attend Quaker meetings, the evangelical excitement of the New Lights ran counter to the Quaker value of Quietism, further justifying the expulsion. Moreover, the evangelical fervor driving the New Lights and other schismatic movements within mainstream Protestantism was also beginning to affect the Quakers, as “Separators” began to break away from established meeting “and rejected church doctrine in favor of individual conscience” (Moyer 2015:17).

Shortly after her expulsion, on Tuesday, October 5, Jemima became seriously ill from a fever, possibly typhus. The following Friday, upon a sudden recovery, the person formerly known as Jemima announced that she was dead, in heaven, and that God had reanimated the body with a divine spirit. [Image at right] This spirit was neither male nor female, no longer Jemima, but identified as The Public Universal Friend. The Friend refused to answer to the name Jemima or to any female pronouns, preferring any variant of the title that avoided pronouns. (Respecting that desire, scholars today either refer to The Friend in the third person plural, or avoid pronouns altogether.) The Friend’s followers did the same, referring to their leader variously as The Dear Friend, Dearest of Friends, Best-Friend, The Friend, All-Friend. The Friend often self-identified as The Comforter, an allusion to John 14:16 and 15:26 implying that The Friend’s nature was the Holy Spirit sent from God to warn humanity of Christ’s return and offer a path to salvation. Available sources do not say why the Spirit chose the specific title “Public Universal Friend.”

Presumably the “Friend” designation derives from the Quaker term for themselves, in keeping with the nonhierarchical nature of their faith and their view of their personal relationship with God: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,” said Jesus (John 15:15). The “Public Universal” aspect emphasized the more strongly evangelical nature of the Spirit’s mission, whose primary message was the availability of salvation for everyone.

The following Sunday, after attending a meeting at the old Elder Miller Baptist Meeting House at Abbott Run, The Friend delivered the first public sermon under a large tree in the churchyard (Wisbey 1964:14–15). By early 1777, The Friend was attracting followers, speaking by invitation at churches and meeting houses, inns, or in the homes of the new faithful. In September 1777, after the Smithfield Quakers expelled Jeremiah Wilkinson for his association with The Friend, he joined The Friend’s following. Five other family members eventually also converted.

Among the hundreds of followers The Friend began to amass, several individuals emerged who were to become key to the movement. Two women were particularly important in the Universal Friend’s community early on. Ruth Pritchard, who joined in 1777, eventually became official record-keeper and chronicler for the Society of Universal Friends established in 1783. Sarah Richards, who began following The Friend in 1778, became such a close companion that followers came to refer to her as “Sarah Friend.” Eventually fully managing their Friend’s finances, business dealings, and household affairs, Sarah was generally accepted within the community as “mistress of the household,” but was sometimes referred to as “the prime minister” by detractors (Dumas 2010:42). William Parker, who had served as a captain in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, surrendered his commission when he joined the Universal Friends in 1779. Judge William Potter, who joined in 1780, likewise sacrificed his considerable political standing, but brought a great deal of wealth and respectability to the community, as well as nine of his thirteen children as converts.

As The Friend’s ministry expanded through Rhode Island and Connecticut, focus turned next to Philadelphia, then the capital city of the new nation. The unusual appearance of The Friend and the women in the company, who tended toward androgynous apparel, caused a sensation, stirred up by the newspapers of the time. Shortly after The Friend arrived in the capitol city with a small retinue, the boarding house where the company was staying was attacked by a mob throwing stones and bricks. Although The Friend made only one convert during this disastrous visit, the group made two return visits, one for nine months in 1784, where they were welcomed by the community of Free Quakers. In addition to disaffected Quakers, The Friend drew a few converts from the Pennsylvania Schwenkfelders, followers of the Protestant mystic Kasper Schwenkfeld (1490–1561). Among these was the Wegener family. Abraham, one of the sons, eventually founded the village of Penn Yan, New York.

The difficulty of attaining new followers, frustration at the unlikely prospect of saving the world from its apocalyptic fate, and increasingly sensationalized coverage by a press that had no idea what to make of The Friend’s unusual manners or ministry, all led to The Friend’s decision to create a private community in a less populated area. While the Ephrata colony and the Shakers may have served as models, the Universal Friends did not aim to operate communally. They intended to retain individual ownership of their homes, land, and possessions, serve The Friend, and advance their mission of creating a new Jerusalem solely for themselves.

To this end, Jeptha Wilkinson, The Friend’s brother, was sent to western New York in order to explore the feasibility of purchasing land. The plentiful, fertile land in the area between the Genesee River and Seneca Lake, then referred to as the Genesee Country, initially seemed promising. General John Sullivan’s genocidal campaign of 1779 devastated the Haudenosaunee native inhabitants. While the campaign created opportunities for land speculation and white settlement, multiple parties claimed ownership. Both New York and Massachusetts did so by presumed right of colonial charter. British Canada had an interest as well, which it sought to advance with its now much-diminished indigenous former allies, who up until Sullivan’s campaign had unquestionably been the rightful occupants, and still retained land ownership throughout much of the region.

As part of a compromise agreement between New York and Massachusetts in December 1786, the two states established a boundary line in the disputed territory, referred to as the Preemption Line. The official survey of the Preemption Line was not conducted until 1788, however. Moreover, although New York State law prohibited individuals from buying land directly from the Native Americans who still actually owned it, a group of New York speculators, allied with some Canada-based British officials and led by John Livingston, a prominent Hudson Valley landowner, endeavored to profit from the situation. They did so by forming the New York Genesee Land Company and the Niagara Genesee Land Company sometime in 1787. Their aim was to strike an agreement with the Seneca allowing the Land Company to lease Seneca-owned land to unwary potential settlers in search of a bargain, under the name The Lessee Company, typically referred to as The Lessees. One such unfortunate individual was James Parker, one of The Friend’s most trusted community members, who had been commissioned to acquire land for the planned community.

Parker had invested a great deal of money toward this purchase, as had several other Friends. While each one who contributed did so with an understanding that the portion of the land they received would be proportional to their contribution, this understanding was never codified as a written contract. Individuals unable to contribute to the fund apparently also expected, again in absence of any kind of clear written agreement or contract, that other Friends would assist them so they too could have some share of the property. Consequently, through a combination of fraud, conflicting legal claims, poor planning, poor communication, and outright confusion, the parcel of land Parker finally managed to obtain on behalf of the community (a narrow strip of approximately 1,100 acres) was considerably less than the 14,000 acres he and the Society of Universal Friends thought they had purchased from The Lessees. Community members who had invested large sums found themselves with drastically reduced acreage as their share, and the poorer members could not be accommodated at all.

In 1790, after difficult travel, The Friend arrived at the settlement, along with several companions. The population, now at 260, represented the largest settlement in western New York, and about twenty percent of the White population in the region. Faced with food shortages due to bad harvests, the community erected a grist mill which, along with government aid, alleviated the worst hunger issues. They also erected a meeting house and a home for The Friend, and in 1791, received recognition as a religious organization from New York State, which the community assumed would solidify their claim to the land and enable them to more easily acquire more. [Image at right]

Once established, the settlement began to prosper, until a second survey of the Preemption Line revealed that the land actually belonged to the State of New York, and not The Lessees or any other of the land companies involved in the deal. In 1791, James Parker on behalf of the Society directly petitioned George Clinton, then the governor of New York, for resolution. Based on the fact that the Society had extensively improved the land, the petition succeeded. Parker’s was the only name on the title, however, and the fact that the original land had been sold and resold several times made matters worse. In the meantime, several Society members, frustrated by what they regarded as Parker’s mishandling of the situation, appointed two other members, Thomas Hathaway and William Potter, to resolve the ongoing title issues.

On October 10, 1792, Governor Clinton deeded 14,040 acres to Parker, Potter, and Hathaway, as tenants in common. Given that other Society members had paid an original share for the purchase and that all who had settled there had put in hard labor that improved the value of the land, the situation became intolerable. After a series of meetings in summer 1793, the entire tract was divided into twelve sections, with shares distributed in a way that did not take into account either the existing homes and farms of the current settlers or the financial stake of any of the original contributors. As a result, Parker emerged as owner of nearly half the share. Only seventeen people total received shares, not all of whom were original settlers or early financial contributors. As a result, many people received either no land after all their efforts, or lost the value of their improvements.

The Friend, who had only just arrived to the settlement in 1790, became quickly dismayed by the perpetual conflict and secured an entirely different parcel of land. Because The Friend refused to use a birth name or sign it on any legal document, already complex property transactions became even more byzantine. Followers Thomas Hathaway, Benedict Robinson, and a few others obtained another parcel of property west of the original settlement. The Friend in turn purchased a sizeable portion of this parcel from Hathaway and Benedict. Sarah Richards, acting as agent and trustee, obtained the property on behalf of The Friend in her own name. The Friend took up residence in this new settlement, called Jerusalem, in 1794, soon joined by several other families wishing to escape the perpetual conflict that had beset the original community. Unfortunately, Sarah Richards, who had been The Friend’s close companion, business manager, and trustee, died in 1793 of an illness, before she could move into the house they had planned to live in together. [Image at right]

Besides the emotional loss of a close companion and most trusted ally, Sarah’s death left The Friend bereft of her considerable business and household management skills as well. While Rachel Malin and her sister Margaret took over many of Sarah’s responsibilities, the fact that The Friend was besieged with a series of personal and legal attacks shortly thereafter suggests that the sisters may have been less than effective.

The Friend’s move to Jerusalem shifted personal and political dynamics within the community in several significant ways. Several families who had suffered losses from Parker and Potter’s arguably unscrupulous land dealings followed The Friend to Jerusalem, establishing property and building homes near to The Friend’s own home. Several other families, many of them former Quakers, established homesteads there as well. A number of smaller houses surrounded The Friend’s home, the vast majority of them female-headed households, occupied by widows, single women, and their families. Somewhere between sixteen and eighteen people, again mostly women, resided in The Friend’s home, generally referred to as The Friend’s family. These women who lived close to The Friend or in The Friend’s house, about forty-eight in number, were called “The Faithful Sisterhood,” and remained The Friend’s most loyal followers.

Although several families in the old settlement remained on good terms with The Friend, James Parker and William Potter, whose unscrupulous land dealings kept many Society members from receiving their fair share, retained positions of considerable power and influence both within and outside the Society of Universal Friends. They, along with a growing number of once loyal followers, broke away from The Friend, becoming actively hostile. Significantly, the apostate faction was comprised almost entirely of men, many of them, like Parker and Potter, wealthy, influential, politically connected to mainstream institutions of power and government, and aggrieved by what they regarded as the usurpation of their natural authority by The Friend and the most loyal female followers.

On September 17, 1799, Parker, who six years prior had been appointed Justice of the Peace for Ontario County, issued a warrant for The Friend’s arrest, on the charge of blasphemy. After two unsuccessful attempts to apprehend The Friend, a posse of around thirty men, most of them apostate followers, broke violently into The Friend’s home. A doctor who had accompanied the men determined that The Friend, aging and chronically ill, was too unwell to be brought to jail in the middle of the night, so the mob agreed that The Friend might appear voluntarily before the Canandaigua County court.

The Friend did so in June of the following year. The charge of blasphemy was supported by the accusation that The Friend had claimed to be Jesus Christ. Moreover, the argument ran, the level and degree of authority supposedly claimed over the Society indicated that The Friend presumed to be exempt from the laws of the state. Further testimony, implying that The Friend “actively worked to undermine the institution of marriage,” along with a social order built on gender and class hierarchies, revealed the extent to which the legal action served primarily to undermine The Friend’s authority (Moyer 2015:173). Since blasphemy was not, in fact, a crime in the State of New York, however, The Friend could not be prosecuted on those charges, and the case was thrown out of court.

Unsuccessful in this attempt to undermine The Friend’s authority, the antagonistic faction returned to the perennial issue of property ownership claims. In this they were more successful, and the attack much more personal. In 1793, three years after Sarah Richards died, her sixteen-year-old daughter Eliza eloped with Enoch Malin, Rachel and Margaret’s younger brother. As Eliza’s husband, Enoch now owned all of the property she inherited from her mother. Although Sarah Richards did own some property on her own, most of it she had bought as a trustee on behalf of The Friend, who refused to sign any name but The Public Universal Friend or a cross-mark on any legal document. Sarah had described this arrangement in her will, but with apparently enough ambiguity that Enoch Malin attempted to seize control of all the land originally purchased in Sarah Richards’ name, first by attempting in June 1799 to evict The Friend for trespassing with an ejectment lawsuit, a legal action in civil court to recover possession or title to land against someone supposedly trespassing or otherwise occupying it illegally. When this failed, he began selling off parcels of The Friend’s land in his own name.

In 1811, Rachel Malin, on behalf of The Friend, countered with an ejectment lawsuit against Enoch and Eliza Malin, and everyone who had bought property from Enoch. By the time this suit was finally taken up in the Court of the Chancery five years later, however, Enoch and Eliza had bowed out of their original lawsuit, sold their rights to any claim, and moved to Canada in 1812. When Enoch died shortly after the move, Eliza moved to Ohio with their two children, where she also died three years later.

In the meantime, Elisha Williams, an outsider and a lawyer who had been an associate of the New York Lessees that had defrauded James Parker on the original property deal, took up the lawsuit. The legal battles continued until 1828, when the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and the Correction of Errors, commonly called the Court of Errors and at that time the highest appellate authority in New York State, decided in favor of The Friend. Unfortunately, this final victory occurred nine years after The Friend’s death in 1819, most likely of congestive heart failure. The prolonged battle had drained the Society of most of its finances. Rachel and Margaret Malin eventually were forced to sell off much of the property before they both died in the 1840s. What property remained was distributed to their own families rather than to surviving Society members. While several descendants remain in the area (now the village of Penn Yan, New York), neither the religion nor the movement survived the death of The Friend’s most devout followers, particularly the Malin sisters who had replaced Sarah Richards as managers, trustees, and closest confidantes.

TEACHINGS/DOCTRINES

Strictly speaking, The Friend’s ministry occurred between the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s and the Second Great Awakening (c. 1790-1840). Historian Paul B. Moyer argues, however, that the radical unrest of the American Revolution amplified and continued the earlier religious upheavals, and that the ministry of the Universal Friend “confirms that the years between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries represent an unbroken era of religious ferment” (2015:5). In further support of this thesis, he points out that “Insurgent denominations like the Methodists and Baptists had their roots in the colonial period, but rose to prominence during the Revolution, while even more radical sects such the Shakers, Society of Universal Friends, Free Will Baptists, and Universalists also came into being” (2015:6).

As far outside the mainstream as an emergent religious movement led by an adamantly genderless prophet may have been, The Friend’s ministry was not, in terms of doctrine, belief, or practice, particularly unusual or original. The first publication of those teachings attributed to The Friend, Some Considerations, Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects of Professors of This Age, was overtly plagiarized, apparently by Abner Brownell, a follower who later became a detractor (Brownell 1783). His sources were two well-known Quaker texts: the 1681 The Works of Isaac Pennington and William Sewel’s 1722 The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers.

The Friend’s essential message was drawn largely from Jemima Wilkinson’s Quaker upbringing, combined with elements of the New Light Baptist teachings that had originally drawn the young Jemima away from Quakerism. The Quaker aspects included a strong emphasis on free will and the promise of salvation for every human who led a righteous and penitent life and served the Lord. Human beings, according to The Friend, “came pure from God, their Creator, and have remained so till they reached the years of understanding, and became old enough to know good from evil” (Cleveland 1873, cited in Dumas 2010:56). This message of innocence at birth, free will, and universal salvation put The Friend’s teaching squarely at odds with the then-predominant Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In keeping with Quaker principles, The Friend opposed slavery. Some teachings, such as the value of inspired speech, the perils of sin, the importance of righteous behavior, and the availability of God’s grace outside of established religious structures, as well as the overall evangelistic approach, were informed by New Light theology. The Friend’s self-positioning as an inspired prophet through whom God spoke and thus claiming divine authority over followers, however, differed from the emphasis on direct individual experience of God that characterized most evangelical Protestantism of the time.

The teaching had an apocalyptic focus, with a premillennial emphasis on the Final Judgment as divine punishment, and apparently regarded the Universal Friend’s emergence into the world after the purported death of Jemima Wilkinson in 1776 as evidence not only of the coming apocalypse, but that The Friend and the Society had a key role in the anticipated battle. As chronicler turned apostate Abner Brownell describes, “she has advanc’d something in a prophetic manner of the fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel, and what is told of in revelation, that the time began when she began to preach of the thousand two hundred and ninety days . . . and that she seem’d to have an allusion that she was the woman spoken of in revelations, that was now fled into the wilderness. . .” (Brownell 1783:12–13; see Rev. 12).

If the mission of salvation was straightforward, free-will Protestantism, the nature and source of The Friend’s spiritual authority, remained notably ambiguous. Detractors accused The Friend of claiming to be the Messiah, the Second Coming of Christ. Although some of their followers may well have believed it, The Friend never made this claim. The most specific role The Friend would claim was as “Comforter” or Holy Spirit sent from God in aid of all humanity. The most direct statement The Friend would make to address the question, according to an anonymous letter published in The Freeman’s Journal of March 28, 1787, was “I am that I am” (cited in Moyer 2015:24). At the very least, acceptance and membership into the Society required acknowledgment of The Friend’s authority as a prophet.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Certain surface similarities exist between The Friend and Mother Ann Lee (1736–1784), leader of the Shakers, with whom she was a contemporary. The roots of both communities were in Quakerism, feature leaders who were biologically female, and granted equal leadership authority to men and women, in accordance with Quaker teaching. Both at various points in their histories suffered attacks (occasionally physical) for transgressing socially prescribed gender roles. There were, however, some important differences. The Society of Universal Friends was never intended to be a communal society, nor were they particularly utopian. Family members remained together, maintaining individual households, finances, and property. Members lived with as much material comfort as their means could afford.

The Universal Friend “accepted the principal doctrines of the Christian faith, but rejected the formalities and ceremonies generally practiced. With more zeal for the spirit than the form of faith, [The Friend] inculcated sobriety, temperance, chastity, all the higher virtues and humility before God as necessary to the new life, and entrance into a better world” (Cleveland 1873:42). Like Quakers, they conducted meetings that mostly involved members sitting silently, unless the Holy Spirit moved one of them to speak, and then only after The Friend had spoken first. The meetings began at 10:00 a.m., continued for several hours, and were held most days of the week. Members also gathered regularly for more informal prayer meetings. The Society’s members kept the Sabbath, regarding Sunday as a day of rest, but later also observed Saturday Sabbath.

The Friend typically dressed in long clothes: capes, gowns, and shirts that appeared masculine to observers, a large plain hat of the sort more typically worn by Quaker men, and long, loose hair in the style of male ministers of the time. [Image at right] The Friend usually wore women’s shoes, however. Though there was no specific dress code, many of the followers dressed in a similar, somewhat androgynous manner, with long robes and long, loose hair. The style presumably derived from the Quaker emphasis on modesty, simplicity, and plainness, but struck onlookers as peculiar. As a further departure from Quaker plain style, The Friend also adopted a personal seal. Emblazoned on the side of The Friend’s carriage as well as many personal possessions, the seal represented a noteworthy early awareness of the power of brand recognition.

Modesty in personal conduct and speech were similarly required. [Image at right] Wine was to be consumed in moderation if at all. While smoking was not explicitly forbidden, it was discouraged. While not forbidden, sexual relations were discouraged as well. The Friend practiced lifelong celibacy, and encouraged, but did not require, followers to follow suit. Followers could marry if they wished.

Communicating with God through dreams was a common practice. Several of the followers kept dream journals, regularly sharing and interpreting each other’s dreams in order to better apprehend divine messages. Early in the mission, The Friend occasionally practiced faith healing, but was known to heal the sick also through practical means such as bone-setting, herbal medicines, and folk remedies familiar to frontier communities.

LEADERSHIP

As God’s emissary on earth, The Friend exercised absolute spiritual authority over the Society, and supervised various facets of their everyday life as well. The Friend settled disputes, maintained discipline among the followers, advised on household and other matters, and was materially supported by followers in matters of food, clothing, and shelter. During Sabbath meetings, The Friend was the first to speak, and the first to be served at meals; no others were served until The Friend had finished eating.

The Society was noteworthy, relative to similar sects of the time, for maintaining an unusual degree of gender equality. In the early itinerant phase of the ministry, The Friend typically traveled with a gender-balanced retinue of three or four each of men and women. Once the Society formed its New York settlement, power struggles ensued. Clearly gendered in nature, they also played out geographically. A close community consisting of several dozen mostly single and celibate women developed in service to The Friend. Dubbed “The Faithful Sisterhood” by later chroniclers, these women, some four dozen, attained a great deal of spiritual authority within the community, speaking and praying at meetings and serving The Friend in various capacities. Avowed to lead celibate, single lives, most of them lived within The Friend’s household; a few others lived in small houses closest to the main house. Some women, such as Sarah Richards and the Malin sisters, wielded power as intermediaries between The Friend and the outside world and served as business managers, property agents, and advisers as well. Furthest from The Friend, emotionally, spiritually, and geographically, were men such as Judge William Potter and James Parker, who were wealthy and well-connected with the political structures of the outside world. These men and their cohorts remained in City Hill, the original settlement, where their financial maneuverings left them majority landowners. They worked actively to undermine The Friend’s spiritual and financial authority. The fact that Enoch Malin, whose sisters had settled in Jerusalem and were among The Friend’s closest confidantes, collaborated with Parker and Potter and others against The Friend indicates, however, that tensions existed within the Jerusalem settlement as well as outside it.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Two major issues persisted throughout The Friend’s ministry: non-adherence to contemporary gender norms, and whether or not the prophet was actually Christ returned for the Second Coming. The Friend’s refusal to acknowledge either an original birth name or assigned gender, including signatures on legal documents, requiring others to purchase property and sign on the prophet’s behalf, left property rights disastrously open to legal challenge, as evinced by the fact that the legal challenges to Sarah Richards’ will continued for a decade after The Friend’s death. In order to avoid similar issues with The Friend’s own Last Will and Testament, [Image at right] the compromise was to allow someone else to write the name “Jemima Wilkinson” above The Friend’s characteristic cross-shaped mark, and to specify in the document: “Be it remembered that in order to remove all doubts of the due execution of the foregoing Will and Testament, being the person who before the year one thousand one hundred and seventy seven was known and called by the name of Jemima Wilkinson, but since that time as the Universal Friend. . . .” Although The Friend’s refusal to claim or disavow messianic status, the will claimed divine justification for disavowing the birth name in the very first paragraph: “who in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy six was called Jemima Wilkinson and ever since that time the Universal Friend a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named” (Public Universal Friend’s Will 1818).

While The Friend never claimed messianic status, detractors justified their denunciations by seizing on the fact that the prophet did not directly refute the perceptions of followers who may have held such beliefs. Both of these factors, along with the continuing property disputes within the New York settlement, led to irreconcilable tensions within the community, defection of some key members, and internal attacks directed against The Friend, particularly launched by male community members who had held positions of trust and authority. In Moyer’s analysis, the key issue was that The Friend’s detractors found the high degree of female authority and independence that characterized the Society, as well as the Friend’s sustained gender ambiguity, to be “unsettling” (2015:164). The property disputes that beset the New York frontier community from its inception, along with the sustained challenges to The Friend’s authority from within the Society itself, were the main reasons that it failed to survive beyond their lifetime.

SIGNIFICANCE TO THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN RELIGIONS

The Friend’s theology was not particularly original, nor, within the various communal experiments of the time was the Society of Universal Friends all that unusual in providing a space and voice for women in religious life. What the ministry did provide is a space within religious life for gender expression radically outside the norm.

Women certainly participated within the movement in significant and unusual ways. The preponderance of women in positions of authority within the community, along with the high percentage of female-led households in the settlement is noteworthy. Scholarship has yet to fully analyze or properly interpret the clear same-sex partnerships the movement accommodated, as exemplified by The Friend and Sarah Richards. It is impossible to say whether the Society represented a refuge for lesbian couples. Most of the unmarried women outwardly followed The Friend’s model of celibacy. The concept of gay or lesbian persons did not exist in the colonial era, and the existence and presence of same-sex sexual partnerships as we understand them were never documented.

Paul Moyer’s definitive study of The Friend’s life and work demonstrates that the American Revolution and the various religious movements of the early- to mid-eighteenth century allowed for a degree of participation by women in every level of public, private, and religious life that “pushed the boundaries of the gendered status quo” (2015:199). Within this context, The Universal Friend’s life, work, and self-presentation, “provided a space for a renegotiation of what it meant to be a man and a woman,” particularly for female followers who enjoyed within their community a degree of autonomy and authority far beyond the typical roles of wife and mother (2015:200).

But The Friend’s lifelong refusal to acknowledge gender in writing, speech, and legal affairs, mixed-gender self-presentation in clothing choices and leadership style described by contemporaries as masculine, “presented a far more radical challenge to the status quo [and] called into question the very distinctions between man and woman” (Moyer 2015:200). Though detractors were quick to refer to The Friend derisively as “Jemima” and to apply female pronouns, followers themselves avoided using gendered pronouns when referring to the prophet (Brekus 1998:85). Ultimately, The Friend attracted followers not because of the message or as a woman leading a religious movement, but because a person whose presentation of a religious message involved the complete rejection of gender signifiers was so unfathomable as to seem otherworldly. As religion and gender studies scholar Scott Larson observes, “Otherworldliness was an embodied theological practice, and as a resurrected spirit, the Friend performed overlapping, conflicting, and multiple categories of being and, by mixing gender signifiers, indicated divine presence and power within the world” (Larson 2014:578).

The Friend’s self-presentation continues to challenge contemporary discussions of gender,particularly the ways gender is produced and reproduced within language. Until recently, scholarly works on The Friend bypassed the problem entirely, simply referring to The Friend as Jemima Wilkinson, with feminine pronouns. Among the first to address the issue directly, Moyer opted, uneasily, to use the pronoun “she” when referring to Jemima Wilkinson, and “he” when referring to The Friend. Following understandings advanced by current gender scholars, particularly those whose focus is on trans identity, but also reflecting The Friend’s well-documented refusal of gender, historian Scott Larson uses no gendered pronouns in his discussion in order to “practice new grammatical structures out of the recognition that grammars of gender are themselves historical,” in order to “unsettle the ease with which gender seems to translate across time and across radically different structures of belief” (2014:583). It is in this radical unsettling of language, the structures by which humans comprehend and organize their world, that The Public Universal Friend’s life, ministry, and self-definition may well have opened a space for comprehension beyond the ordinary framework of being, thus potentially redefining the very work of religion.

IMAGES

Image #1: Portrait of The Public Universal Friend.
Image #2: A document from 1791 in which the signatories describe themselves as a religious body with trustees entrusted to carry out legal affairs and property transactions on behalf of the Society. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Hamilton College.
Image #3: Home of The Public Universal Friend, Town of Jerusalem, northwest of the Village of Penn Yan, New York.
Image #4: 1815 portrait, depicting The Friend’s characteristic mode of dress.
Image #5: The Friend’s seal.
Image #6: The second page of The Friend’s Will, bearing the “x or cross” mark and the title “Universal Friend.” Courtesy of the Yates County History Center.

REFERENCES

Brekus, Catherine. 1998. Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Brownell, Abner. 1783. Enthusiastical Errors, Transpired and Detected in a Letter to His Father, Benjamin Brownell. New London, CT: self-published.

Cleveland, Stafford C. 1873. History and Gazetteer of Yates County. Penn Yan, NY: self-published.

Dumas, Frances. 2010. The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier. Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project.

Larson, Scott. 2014. “‘Indescribable Being’: Theological Performances of Genderlessness in the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776-1819.” Early American Studies. Special Issue: Beyond the Binaries: Critical Approaches to Sex and Gender in Early America 12:576–600.

Moyer, Paul B. 2015. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

The Public Universal Friend’s Will. 1818. Penn Yan: Yates County History Center. February 25.

Wisbey, Herbert A. 1964. Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Hudson, David. 1844. Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson, a Preacheress of the Eighteenth Century; Containing an Authentic Narrative of her Life and Character, and of the Rise, Progress, and Conclusion of her Ministry. Bath, NY: R.L. Underhill.

Publication Date:
24 March 2022

PREPPERS AND SURVIVALISTS TIMELINE

1973:  The oil shortage crisis took place.

1975:  The term “survivalist” was coined by Kurt Saxon in his newsletter The Survivor.

1985 (April 16):  The FBI siege on the compound run by The Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord group took place.

1992 (August):  The eleven-day siege and shootout between federal agents and the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho took place.

1993 (February-April):  The siege and destruction of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas took place.

1995 (April 19):  The Oklahoma City Bombing took place.

1999:  The Y2K bug scare took place.

2014:  The standoff at Bundy ranch in Nevada took place.

2016:  The occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Range took place.

2020:  The Covid-19 pandemic began.

2021 (January 6):  The siege of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC took place.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

While not a religion in a formal sense, survivalism, or prepping, is a practice that occurs among groups that wish for various reasons to live outside of the modern state apparatus. Many of those reasons cooccur with the concerns of minority religions, particularly heterodox Christianity, and far-right politics. Survivalism is a way of living that emphasizes self-provision, either on one’s own, or those of a small cooperative group, and minimal reliance on complex supply chains or government-regulated infrastructure. The rejection of state provision leads to creating new, alternative networks that are at less risk from large-scale catastrophes and provide more acceptance of heterodox beliefs that are often at odds with, or even offensive to, the rest of society. It also implies the belief that the ability of the state to provide adequate resources is limited and will soon collapse entirely.

At its core, survivalism is the practice of preparing for the imminent collapse of society by stockpiling resources and acquiring skills for self-sufficiency. Survivalists are also known as “preppers” because of this focus on preparation for catastrophe. It is a modern American phenomenon that has spread beyond the U.S. to Europe, Australia, South Africa, and other parts of the world. Sociologist Philip Lamy (1996:69) traces the origin to the aftermath of the destruction of World War II and the advent of the nuclear age. The Cold War and the military conflicts in Korea and Vietnam spurred interest in disaster preparedness, from the simple “duck and cover” strategy to the more complex recourse of building nuclear bunkers. Yet survivalism goes a step beyond emergency management, predicting the imminent collapse of a functioning social order altogether.

As the complexity of society increased, particularly in supplying everyday needs, survivalism and prepping grew as a counter strategy. People wanted to know what to do if all the benefits and conveniences of society went away. Howard Ruff, John Wesley Rawles, and Jeff Cooper were among the writers producing pamphlets and other literature promoting a do-it-yourself approach to survival in the 1970s. Kurt Saxon coined the term “survivalist,” with the contemporary meaning of practicing survival skills in anticipation of the apocalypse or in fear of the government (Saxon 1980).

From the 1980s, survivalism has developed into a multibillion-dollar industry. Specialist publications such as Soldier of Fortune magazine and later websites were released. Expositions of survivalist equipment began to be held for those interested in amassing resources. With the emergence of the internet, online retailers sold survivalist gear to a worldwide consumer base. [Image at right] In 1983-1984 the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord group established a survivalist commune and tried to start a race war using guerrilla tactics until they were disarmed and disbanded after an FBI raid (Barkun 2011:655).

From the 1990s, survivalism became even more associated in the popular imagination with the militia movement and far-right radical politics. This association was born from incidents such as the eleven-day siege and shootout between federal agents and the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and the siege and destruction of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas. Those who died at Waco and Ruby Ridge were seen as martyrs for survivalism by some on the far right. They felt the government was attacking those who chose to fend for themselves, who then had to counter-attack (Lamy 1996:19-21). This spurred the organization of militias, such as the Montana Freemen, particularly in rural areas of the Western U.S. (Wessinger 2000:158-203). Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City Bombing on the anniversary of the end of the siege at Waco, claiming he was fighting back against the government for this event through destroying a federal building and killing 168 people (Wright 2007).

There are still many groups of racist right-wing millenarians who practice survivalism, especially those holding beliefs related to Christian Identity, Neopaganism, and Odinism (Barkun 1994, 2003, 2011). Among the most recent far-right survivalist groups to emerge since the 2008 American election are the Three Percenters, the name referring to the number of gun owners who would refuse to disarm if required by the government, and the Oath Keepers, a group of former and current law enforcement officers. Both are antigovernment and pro-gun ownership (Tabachnick 2015; Sunshine 2016). The Oath Keepers and Three Percenters were both present at the January 6 attack and siege of the U.S. Capitol Building, alongside new militia groups that practice survivalism, such as the Boogaloo Bois, who predict and prepare for a second American civil war (Diaz and Treisman 2021).

However, survivalists can also hold left-wing politics. Many of these come from a New Age rather than Christian background, especially those primarily concerned about potentially apocalyptic effects of climate change. Survivalism in this context has its origins in the 1960s-1970s’ communitarian movements of back-to-the-landers and voluntary simplicity. Survivalists inspired by these historical roots tend to place greater emphasis on ecology and sustainability, and less on stockpiling resources. Helen and Scott Nearing were the founders of the “modern homesteading movement.” They were vegetarians and socialists with a background in Theosophy; they set up an off-the-grid homestead in New England and aimed to provide for all their needs self-sufficiently (Gould 1999, 2005).

A notable New Age group practicing survivalism is the Church Universal and Triumphant, whose beliefs combine Theosophy, Christianity, and Eastern religions. In 1990, their leader, Elisabeth Clare Prophet, prophesied nuclear war, and so the group stockpiled weapons and resources in their Montana ranch as preparation (Lewis and Melton 1994; Stars and Wright 2005; Prophet 2009). The predicted attack failed to come about; the group was subsequently raided by federal agents but has continued as a church.

Like more religiously oriented millenarians, survivalists read current events as signs of impending catastrophe. At the turn of the century, the Y2K bug scare provided fresh impetus for survivalism, highlighting the reliance of modern society on computers, as it was feared that a coding glitch would cause all computers to cease functioning. The 9/11 attacks renewed the threat of external enemies that had diminished since the end of the Cold War, whilst the responses of official agencies to Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami led some to perceive governments as poorly prepared for large-scale disasters.

Recent events have exacerbated fears of terrorism, climate change, and nuclear war, all of which feature as imminent existential threats to society in the minds of survivalists. Since the 2016 American election, groups of “Liberal Preppers” emerged who feared the Trump administration would bring on an end of the world scenario (Sedacca 2017).

In the U.S., the first settlers are seen as “survivalists,” although they themselves did not use the term. They are the inspiration for modern survivalists (Lamy 1996:65-66). Being American is associated with self-sufficiency and self-reliance; the early pioneers epitomized this in popular culture. This idea is an imaginative reconstruction rather than an evidence-based assessment of what life for the early American settlers was like. It provides the mythological history of contemporary survivalists, what sociologist Richard G. Mitchell calls ‘the romantic notion of autonomous frontier life’ (2002:149). Early American settlers are assumed to have lived without recourse to complicated networks of supplies for their subsistence. Settlers on the American frontiers were largely responsible for growing their own food and protecting their own land.

Contemporary survivalists are anxious about modern dependence on social networks of supply for subsistence. If supply chain networks are disrupted, there will be significant problems in ensuring safety and food for large populations. Survivalism becomes a way to buttress against this potential calamity. Survivalists try to be prepared for the impacts of changes to networks beyond their control. It is a reaction to the interdependence and complexity of modern society. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 disrupted supply chains globally and sparked incidences of “panic buying” and stockpiling resources as lockdown orders were imposed in various jurisdictions (Smith and Thomas 2021)

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Survivalists prepare for a future where governmental and civic infrastructure fails. In most imaginings, this failure might be caused by ecological disasters, economic collapse, civil war (especially along racial lines), nuclear attack, and foreign invasion. The focus in survivalism is most often on practical steps required for surviving disaster without functioning infrastructure. The survivalist focus is on how to survive these events through stockpiling resources, planning escape routes, and buying remote properties in which to “bug out.” Some survivalists have already moved to remote locations and live “off grid.” Others continue with mainstream lifestyles but invest in different levels of preparation for a future apocalypse.

The focus on preparation for and survival of the end of the world (as we know it) leads sociologist Philip Lamy to categorise survivalists as “tribulationists” (1996:5). This means that they focus on the catastrophe preceding the millennium and their ability to survive it through physical and spiritual preparedness. Some survivalists have a specific theological eschatology, most often Christian. This suggests the world is currently, or soon will be, in a period of Tribulation. The Tribulation is the period of hardships and troubles suffered by believers preceding the Millennium, the return of Christ and 1,000 years of his peaceful rule on Earth. However, there are also many secular survivalists.

The central unifying belief of survivalism is that social collapse is likely and imminent. Society will break down and then it is up to individuals or small groups of individuals to fend for themselves. Since the breakdown of the current social order is on the horizon, it is necessary to prepare for life without it through various practical steps.

Survivalism has developed to a large extent through online communities; as such, there are numerous acronyms and abbreviations used to sum up the main premises. TEOTWAWKI means The End Of The World As We Know It; the frequently used term by survivalists as a catch-all for imminent social collapse. WTSHTF is When The Shit Hits The Fan, and refers to the same idea. WROL, Without Rule of Law, refers more specifically to post-apocalyptic scenarios when the legal system and law enforcement functions of society have ceased.

Survivalist beliefs revolve around end of the world scenarios that are survivable, and so they refer to the end of the world as we know it, which is not the same as total destruction of the world or the end of the world in certain forms of Christian eschatology. Their beliefs suggest fear of dependence on the modern nation state and urbanism, the associated amenities and supply chains, without which there would be chaos. They focus on a way to cope with this chaos. Much of the discussion among survivalists focuses on what to do when the post-apocalyptic chaos occurs.

The main strategies are termed as either “bug out” or “bug in.” Bugging out is escaping, often retreating to a rural or sparsely populated area where a safe place has been established. Bugging out requires a means of escape, referred to in online communities with the acronyms BOB, BOV, BOL standing for bug out bag, bug out vehicle, and bug out location. Bugging in is staying in one’s own home, which requires amassing stockpiles of resources and potentially setting up fortifications. [Image at right]

Survivalism is focused on individual salvation, there is not a messiah coming to save anyone. This emphasises self-reliance; survival lies in one’s own hands. There is a focus on anthropogenic apocalypses, especially economic collapse, ecological disaster, and race war. Each of these eventualities is believed to cause the partial or total breakdown of the social order resulting in chaos. The idea of an “ecoapocalypse” has become a particular focus due to projections of catastrophic climate change undermining the current economic configuration of society (Lamy 1996:84).

Survivalism rests on a philosophical basis of autarky, political and economic self-sufficiency, where an entity survives without recourse to outside assistance or trade. In the U.S., the focus is on land use disputes, distrust of federal government, self-reliance, importance of local governance over federal, and a general anti-statism.

Survivalism is inherently millenarian because it proposes the imminent collapse of society, the end of the world as we know it, and emphasises the importance of preparing to survive this. This is why Lamy defines survivalists as Tribulationists because they are preparing to survive the end times or believe themselves to be already living through times of suffering prior to the final destruction of this world (1996:6).

Lamy calls survivalists “secular millenarians” because the focus is on a human-made apocalypse and survival of it is also in their own hands (1997:94-95). Unlike in Christian eschatology, there is no elect who will be saved by divine intervention in the Rapture. It is every person for themself in a brutal form of social Darwinism. The survival of the fittest in this context meaning those with the foresight and best preparations will survive.

By contrast, those who do not prepare are called “zombies,” everyone who thinks some wider social system will come to save them during a crisis. [Image at right] These are the “non-believers” in this context. This separation of the prepared from the non-prepared, zombies from awakened preppers, can slip easily into chauvinistic Aryan philosophy: that those who prepare are superior to those who do not. This is perhaps one of the reasons survivalism appeals to so many on the far-right.

However, historian Eckard Toy suggests that survivalists and right-wing political extremists are separate subcultures that share some common ground, such as paramilitary training, interest in secrecy, and apocalyptic beliefs in the inevitable destruction of modern society (1986: 80). There are many different ideologies within the rubric of survivalism. It is an open question as to how to categorise survivalists in relation to “religion;” since survivalism is decentralised and non-institutionalised, it is not linked to any specific religion in a formal way. However, it is more common amongst Christian sects, especially those that espouse a far-right political philosophy.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Survivalism is above all a practice, arguably more than it is a movement or even a system of beliefs. Survivalism is something groups and individuals do; a way to prepare for the end of the world, summed up as a verb: “to prep” and “prepping.” If a movement as such does exist, it flourishes most strongly in online communities; many are merely interested, reading articles and blogs, and/or commenting on forums, whereas others take practical steps to prepare, sometimes making substantial financial investments.

For those who do begin investing in survivalism, the first step is buying, storing, amassing, and even concealing supplies such as fuel, medicine, food, tools, and weapons. This may be simply packing a “bug out bag” with essentials like a first aid kit, compass, Swiss army knife, and some MREs (meals ready to eat). Storage of essentials can expand to fill available space, a spare room, the garage, a shed in the garden.

Some survivalists are concerned with protecting their cache from “zombies,” the unprepared masses who will be a threat after a catastrophe, and so they go to elaborate lengths in creating hiding places for their stashes. The concern is that food stores, hospitals, and petrol stations will only have reserves for around three days, so even a small disaster could result in lack of access to necessities. Survivalists often try to maintain a certain amount of resources through calculating how much they will need, twenty-four hours, seventy-two hours, three weeks, or more, depending on the space they have to stock it. Survivalist stores sell “bundles” advertised as containing essentials for a specified amount of time.

Stockpiling resources is predicated on having space to store them. Increasing storage can segue into building emergency shelters or bunkers that also provide a safe place to which to escape, a transition from “bugging in” to “bugging out.” Some survivalists buy retreats in isolated rural locations; this is the somewhat stereotypical image of the prepper hiding out in a cabin in the woods. However, properties can be bought as tax write-offs, rental or vacation use, retirement homes, and then double as retreats. Some buy whole tracts of land for communal shelters or selling bunkers, such as the Survival Condo Project in Wichita, Kansas, a fifteen-storey apartment complex built in a converted underground missile silo where units were sold for between $1.500,000-3,000,000 (Osnos 2017).

Religious groups that practise survivalism, such as the Church Universal and Triumphant and the Branch Davidians, built whole retreats in isolated locations to live as a group and communally share resources, providing a feeling of safety in numbers and a survivalist community of like- minded believers.

In the U.S., survivalism dovetails with rural living off-grid, practising self-sufficiency without recourse to government services or utilities in areas where they are already limited. The sociologist Richard G. Mitchell suggests this is the reason for the popularity of survivalist retreats in Southern Oregon (2002:33). For those who are unable to move to a remote, rural location, urban prepping has now increased in popularity, bringing different considerations of bugging in vs bugging out, what to stock and where, and likely dangers in case of societal collapse (Bounds 2021).

Alongside shelter and resources, financial preparedness is another important aspect. Dislike of dependence on social institutions and distrust of banks in particular leads many survivalists to avoid indebtedness. As well as storing foodstuffs, some have three months’ worth of outgoings in savings, or one month’s expenditure in cash on hand. For some, having gold or silver is important in case of sudden and massive devaluation of paper money in an economic collapse. However, this is worthless in the case of a total social collapse. Mitchell reports that some survivalists try to establish alternative monies and economies, particularly barter and trade, in order to obtain essentials that they cannot make themselves or have stored (2002:38).

The ability to prepare is mediated by access to economic resources. The very rich can buy land in New Zealand or the Pacific Northwest, have a private plane or boat ready as a “bug out vehicle,” and store months’ worth of supplies in a special purpose location as reported in a New Yorker article about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were also survivalists (Osnos 2017). The poor are more limited in their means to prepare. Furthermore, prepping is itself an economic activity; it requires a job in society to pay for buying and storing rations. Sometimes prepping can become a means of subsistence, but for most continued engagement in the economic life of society is required.

As well as amassing resources, survivalists emphasise developing skills. This can involve learning basic first aid, wilderness survival skills such as fire-starting, navigating without maps, hunting, building shelters, taking courses in bush craft and other skills for surviving without society. Courses offering these skills are places preppers congregate, as well as prepper “fests,” military equipment auctions and expos, “war games,” or training exercises (Mitchell 2002:57). There is a focus on firearms and paramilitary training in media accounts of survivalism.

However, it has been argued that the vast majority of survivalists tend to be law-abiding and conformist (Mitchell 2002:149). Much of the talk about weapons and survival skills is dependent on society ending; it is what they would do after society is gone, not before. Mitchell emphasises the creativity and crafting of survivalists; they are not reactionary. They are trying to create new economic and social spaces. In rejecting passive consumerism, they have an active, entrepreneurial form of association and sociality. Due to the strong connection with paramilitary groups and extremist violence in the media and popular imagination, some will go to lengths to try to emphasise that this is what they are not.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Survivalism is a loose network of practitioners. While there are some militia-style groups with formal leadership structures, many preppers stay by themselves and connect with others primarily online, especially through forums for sharing tips and tactics. Exchange networks of preppers operate through websites, expos and niche publications that allow them to purchase goods from each other. [Image at right] Survivalism is not a coherent movement with a leadership hierarchy but rather a loosely structured set of philosophies, beliefs, and practices that individuals and groups engage with to varying extents. It is most common in the United States of America but has also spread to Europe, South Africa, and Australia. Numbers are therefore hard to estimate. There are few organisations related to survivalism and no formal membership to count. Moreover, for most survivalists, privacy and secrecy are central in order to protect caches of stockpiled resources and deflect prejudice against what is often perceived as a marginal and suspicious practice.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

There are in-group differentiations between preppers and survivalists. Survivalists may claim that they focus on skills, whereas preppers just stockpile resources without knowing how to use them. A common claim among self-identified survivalists is the more skills learned, the fewer resources and tools are required. All they need can fit in a backpack. On the other hand, preppers argue that “survivalist” is a pejorative term with associations of violence and white supremacy. Preppers are more likely to form groups or at least work cooperatively with other preppers, whereas they see survivalists as more individualist. However, others can use the terms survivalist and prepper interchangeably, especially those writing from an external viewpoint. There are broad similarities between preppers and survivalists in terms of a self-reliant lifestyle that rejects the premise of collective governance as a useful form of social organisation, particularly in emergencies, that make the differentiations seem minor. It can be confusing to understand the terminology used without first understanding the position of the person deploying terms within the discourse on survivalism.

Survivalists are closely associated with violence in the public imagination because of the historical connection with militia movements and far-right groups. More broadly because non-governmental entities amassing large amounts of weapons are treated with suspicion, and often subjected to raids and surveillance by government agencies. While most survivalists focus on waiting and preparing for the end, some decide to act upon their expectations as “forcers of the end” and bring about the apocalypse by, for example, not only stockpiling weapons but also taking up arms against the government or trying to start a race war (Barkun 2003:60). Sociologist Richard G. Mitchell suggests that the media over-reports the actions of a violent few, who are taken as representative of “all” survivalists, and the crucial “what if” proposition is left out (2002:16).

Survivalists are collecting weapons and other resources so that they are prepared for what happens if society falls; very few move towards trying to actively make society fall through violence. [Image at right] The overrepresentation of violence mirrors the media and public attitude towards millenarian groups more generally, where the violent few stand metonymically for the whole. In the U.S., stockpiling guns in order to defend oneself from the federal government can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The act of acquiring the guns causes federal agencies to pay attention to individuals and groups and even raid them for this reason, which was the scenario with both the Branch Davidians and Church Universal and Triumphant.

IMAGES

Image #1: A Prepper shop in the United Kingdom.
Image #2: Prepping and Survivalist resources.
Image #3: A Zombie Apocalypse tee shirt.
Image #4: Books in a Prepper/Survivalist shop.
Image #5: Knives in a Prepper/Survivalist shop.

REFERENCES

Barkun, Michael. 2011. “Millennialism on the Radical Right in America.” Pp. 649-66 in The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism, edited by Catherine Wessinger. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barkun, Michael. 2003. “Religious Violence and the Myth of Fundamentalism.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 4:55–70.

Barkun, Michael. 1994. “Reflections after Waco: Millennialists and the State.” Pp. 41-50 in From the Ashes: Making Sense of Waco. Lanham, MD; Rowman & Littlefield.

Bounds, Anna Maria. 2020. Bracing for the Apocalypse: An Ethnographic Study of New York’s ‘Prepper’ Subculture. New York: Routledge.

Coates, James. 1995. Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right. New York: Hill and Wang.

Dias, Jaclyn, and Rachel Treisman. 2021. “Members of Right-Wing Militias, Extremist Groups are Latest Charge in Capitol Siege.” NPR. January 19. Accessed from   https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/2021/01/19/958240531/members-of-right-wing-militias-extremist-groups-are-latest-charged-in-capitol-si on 20 February 2022.

Faubion, James D. 2001. The Shadows and Lights of Waco: Millennialism Today. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gould, Rebecca Kneale. 2005. At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Gould, Rebecca Kneale. 1999. “Modern Homesteading in America: Negotiating Religion, Nature, and Modernity.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 3:183–212.

Hall, John R., and Philip Schuyler. 1997. “The Mystical Apocalypse of the Solar Temple.” Pp. 285–311 in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, edited by Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer. New York: Routledge.

Hoggett, Paul. 2011. “Climate Change and the Apocalyptic Imagination.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 16:261–75.

Kabel, Allison, and Catherine Chmidling. 2014. “Disaster Prepper: Health, Identity, and American Survivalist Culture.” Human Organization 73:258–66.

Kaplan, Jeffrey. 1997. Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Lamy, Philip. 1996. Millennium Rage: Survivalists, White Supremacists, and the Doomsday Prophecy. New York: Plenum Press.

Lewis, James R., ed. 1994. From the Ashes: Making Sense of Waco. Rowman & Littlefield.

Lewis, James R., and J. Gordon Melton. 1994. Church Universal and Triumphant: In Scholarly Perspective. Stanford: Center for Academic Publication.

Linder, Stephen Norris. 1982. Survivalists: The Ethnography of an Urban Millennial Cult. PhD Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles.

Mitchell, Richard G. 2002. Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Osnos, Evan. 2017). “Doomsday prep for the super-rich.” The New Yorker, January 30. Accessed from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich on 20 February 2022.

Palmer, Susan J. 1996. “Purity and Danger in the Solar Temple.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 11:303–18.

Peterson, Richard G. 1984. “Preparing for the Apocalypse: Survivalist Strategies.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 12:44–46.

Prophet, Erin L. 2009. Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet inside the Church Universal and Triumphant. Lanham, MD: Lyons Press

Saxon, Kurt. 1988. The Survivor. Atlan Formularies.

Sedacca, Matthew. 2017. “The new doomsayers taking up arms and preparing for catastrophe: American liberals.” Quartz, May 7. Accessed from https://qz.com/973095/the-new-doomsayers-taking-up-arms-and-preparing-for-catastrophe-american-liberals/ on 20 February 2022.

Smith, Nina, and Thomas, Susan Jennifer. 2021. “Doomsday Prepping During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Frontiers in Psychology 12:1-15.

Publication Date:
13 March 2022

PATRIOT CHURCHES TIMELINE

 2018:  “The Church at Planned Parenthood” began holding monthly worship services outside Planned Parenthood in Spokane, Washington.

2020:  Ken Peters and his wife, Valencia, founded the first Patriot Church (Campus) in Knoxville (Lenoir City), Tennessee. It was followed by churches (campuses) in Spokane, Washington (Peters’s previous church), and Lynchburg, Virginia, joining the movement.

2021:  Moses Lake Covenant Church in Washington became a Patriot Church.

2022:  Campuses in Houston (Magnolia, Texas) and Orlando, Florida, opened and held their first worship services.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Ken Peters is a fifth-generation preacher who started Covenant Church in 1998 at a Super 8 Motel in Spokane, Washington, along with his wife, Valencia. [Image at right] He spent twenty-one years serving as the church’s pastor. He also started the Covenant Christian School with campuses next to his church in Spokane and its sister church in Moses Lake, Washington.

In October of 2018, Peters and members of Covenant Church in Spokane, Washington, began holding monthly worship services on a lawn outside of the local Planned Parenthood (Lea 2019), calling itself “The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP).” The experience, at least in part, inspired Peters and his wife, Valencia, to start the Patriot Church movement. Peters was also motivated by his belief that the U.S. is moving away from its Christian origins, and President Trump played an inspirational role:

I think Trump exposed some of the silent culture war that was going on. When he came into the presidency, I think he exposed what was happening underneath. And so I think President Trump was a part of me establishing this movement called Patriot Church (Gilbert 2021).

In September of 2020, Peters founded the first Patriot church/campus in Knoxville (Lenoir City), Tennessee, where he is the pastor. Peters chose Knoxville in response to encouragement from his friend, Greg Locke, a pastor of theGlobal Vision Bible Church near Nashville and an advisor to President Trump (Bailey 2020; Kuznia and Kamp 2021). Locke also donated $20,000 to the movement because he believes Christians are in a war with the government. “They have us cowered down in a basement with our masks and require our churches to be closed… That’s not Christian or American. We’re in the fight for our life” (Bailey 2020).

When Peters left for Tennessee, he chose Matt Shea to take over his church in Spokane. Shea is a former Washington State representative, who the Washington House of Representatives accused of domestic terrorism:

Independent investigators commissioned by the Washington State House of Representatives found that Shea, as a leader of the Patriot Movement, “planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States government” between 2014 and 2016… The report also concluded that Shea was involved in training young people to fight a “holy war.” He created a pamphlet called Biblical Basis for War and advocated replacing the government with a theocracy and “the killing of all males who do not agree” (Romo 2019).

Shea has ties with Ammon Bundy, the anti-government activist who led the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 (Bailey 2020). Shea also has ties to the Patriot Movement, but Peters says he has no connections to it or any other anti-government militant groups. Shea’s tenure at Covenant Church was short-lived, however. He and Peters had a falling-out in 2021, the details of which are unknown (Vestal 2021).

Twenty people followed Peters from Spokane to Knoxville (Bailey 2020), including (apparently) Iranian-born Shahram Hadian, a former Muslim who is the founder of “The Truth in Love Project” (2022) and a former candidate for governor in the state of Washington in 2012.

Unsurprisingly, Peters’s former church in Spokane joined the movement, and a third church was founded in Lynchburg (Bedford), Virginia, in 2020. In 2021, Moses Lake Covenant Church joined, and a Houston campus in Magnolia, Texas, reportedly opened in 2022. According to a Facebook post, a campus in Orlando, Florida, will also open in 2022. [Image at right]

The Patriot Church movement describes itself as “a spiritually active, governmentally engaged and grassroots effort designed to take back our communities from tyranny.” It believes that demonic forces are attacking “the cultural and religious fabric that makes the USA so special.” It contends that these forces reflect Marxist leanings as evidenced by their call for open borders, ending racism, and the redistribution of wealth. As such, the movement argues that Christians are called by God “to resist [this] tyranny wherever it exists” (Patriot Church 2022c).

The movement first attracted national attention after an article about them appeared in the Washington Post (Bailey 2020). It can be seen as part of the much larger Christian nationalism movement, a loosely-connected network of churches and organizations that believe the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and that they are called to restore the U.S. to its Christian roots (Stewart 2020; Whitehead and Perry 2020). Peters does not refer to himself as a Christian nationalist (Bailey 2020), but he does not appear to entirely reject the term either:

Christian nationalist is such a — it has really bad vibes to it, if you will. It sounds horrible. But if you want to break it down, yes, I’m a Christian. And yes, I love my nation. And I’d rather be a Christian nationalist than a secular globalist. You know, I hate the term because it just sounds like a racist, or mean or evil. But it’s not. It’s just — I’m a Christian. I love my country (Kuznia and Kamp 2021).

Along with Greg Locke, Peters identifies with the Black Robe Regiment, a group of influential eighteenth-century American clergy who reportedly lent their support to the American revolution. “They led their congregations in the American Revolution. It is now our turn to preserve what they so bravely fought to create. NOT violently, but peacefully by leveraging our vote and influence” (Patriot Church 2022c). It is worth noting that the regiment is more legend than fact. “No one at the time spoke of a black robe regiment… the phrase is a modification of an insult used by the Loyalist Peter Oliver years after the Revolution. Oliver, who had lost home and position, denigrated New England ministers opposed to royal authority as a ‘black regiment.’ The very usage of the term black robe regiment is itself a misquotation” (den Hartog 2021).

Peters backed the “Stop the Steal” movement and, along with Greg Locke, spoke at a rally in Washington D.C. the day before the U.S. Capitol was breached by Trump supporters (Kuznia and Kamp 2021). He flew there on a private jet owned by Michael Lindell, CEO of My Pillow, Inc., an ardent Trump supporter. Peters also attended Trump’s rally the day of the riot and was visibly disappointed when Vice President Pence certified President Biden’s election (Leslie 2021). Although Peters did not participate in the riot, he did watch from afar. He has since condemned the violence (Kuznia and Kamp 2021).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Patriot churches hold beliefs typically associated with conservative Protestant movements. For example, they affirm a belief in the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirt), the Virgin Birth, the physical Resurrection of Jesus, that the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God, Original Sin, that Jesus’s crucifixion atones for the sins of individuals who repent and believe, the Second Coming, and eternal life for believers and eternal damnation for unbelievers.

The Patriot movement also reflects the influence of the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions. In particular, it affirms the sanctification of believers and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. After someone becomes a believer, it holds that “there is a gradual or progressive sanctification as the believer walks with God and daily grows in grace and in a more perfect obedience to God.” This continues for the rest of one’s life or until Christ’s return. Like other Pentecostal groups, the Patriot movement believes that the Holy Spirit continues to act as it did at the first Pentecost (i.e., fifty days after Christ’s resurrection), and thus acts of healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues continue to occur and are available to the sanctified. This puts them at odds with many theologically conservative Protestant groups, specifically those who believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased being available with the Apostolic Age (i.e., the end of the first century when the last of Jesus’s twelve disciples died). Patriot churches believe that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s gifts need to be evaluated in terms of whether they edify the church “and not by the ecstasy produced in the ones receiving them.”

Patriot churches also hold that “man’s” purpose is to glorify God through one’s obedience to God. Individuals need to “order all their individual, social and political acts as to give to God entire and absolute obedience, and to assure to all the enjoyment of every natural right, as well as to promote the fulfillment of each in the possession and exercise of such rights.” Central to this understanding of obedience, is the belief that the only appropriate expression of human sexuality is “a monogamous lifelong relationship between one man and one woman within the framework of marriage.” It sees “sexual relationships outside of marriage and sexual relationships between persons of the same sex [as] immoral and sinful.”

Patriot churches are pro-life. They believe that America could lose favor in God’s sight if Roe v. Wade is not overturned, and they promote the work of TCAPP. Peters, in fact, founded a TCAPP in Tennessee that meets across the street from Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood. It held its inaugural service on December 29, 2020. The following January, “on the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision — a man with a shotgun… [blasted] …the front door of the clinic before it opened for the day” (Kuznia and Kamp 2021). Police have not identified the shooter, and there is no evidence that he attended the TCAPP service. Peters believes that the media unfairly linked him to the attack. “The wonderful mainstream media and news reporters try to tie me to that, which is horrible. I would never — I’m a pastor. I’m a pastor’s kid. I have four children. I am the most nonviolent person on the planet” (Kuznia and Kamp 2021).

Perhaps, but Peters does not shy away from using militant language, and he believes that a civil war may be coming, one that will be “a battle of good versus evil where they fight back against what they see as the tyranny of the left.”

If the truth is suppressed and covered up, then that ultimately will lead to violence. It could end up bad, you know, a lot of things end up rough and violent. We hope it doesn’t, but we can’t be so afraid of a violent outcome that we allow the left to cheat their way to destroying this country (Gilbert 2021).

Patriot churches oppose LGBTQ rights, arguing that they are unbiblical and against God’s will for human sexuality (Patriot Church 2022b). They are also critical of the 1619 Project (New York Times Magazine 2019) and critical race theory, contending that both “falsely characterize white or conservative Americans as racists.” They also believe that religious freedom is under attack and that it is their duty to resist it. For example, they complain that although churches were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, “many bars and big-box stores remained open. Pastors and parishioners were fined for worshipping during a pandemic that had a 99.8% recovery rate” (Patriot Church 2022c).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Patriot churches worship weekly on Sundays and practice baptism by immersion in water and the Lord’s Supper. Like many churches, they hold special events featuring guest speakers. They also have a small group ministry, which they see as vital to the community’s life. In March of 2022, they held a men’s Bible camp in Cusick, Washington. [Image at right]

Patriot churches seem to focus their political efforts on city and county governments, school boards, law enforcement agencies, and the like: “Sheriffs, Mayors, City and County Council members and Commissioners, School Boards and Judges need to be reminded to honor their oath of office. If they refuse, we must run against them in the next election and defeat them!” The movement’s goal is to use Patriot churches to “create 5,000 sanctuary cities and counties that outlaw abortion and [critical race theory] and protect our God given rights. They will rebuke the evil mandates that will be coming from State and Federal Governments”

This is not to suggest that Patriot churches are uninterested in national politics. They are. Passionately. National issues are front and center in their worship services (Leslie 2021), and they regularly express support for former President Donald Trump. For instance, when Sarah Bailey (2020) visited Peters’s church in Knoxville, after worship, Peters and his family headed to a nearby highway overpass where they waved huge American and Trump flags at passing cars. More recently (February 26, 2022), the Facebook page of the Knoxville church posted a video of the former President referring to himself as “your President” along with the comment, presumably written by Ken Peters: “I love this Moment! Trump sounds like he said he’s our President now. The people went nuts. He’s my true President.” Peters, in fact, believes that Trump will return to the White House before Biden’s term is up:

Very soon the whole country is going to find out that Trump actually won, and he’s actually the legitimate president of the United States. We’ll see Trump back in the White House before Biden’s four-year term is done (Gilbert 2021).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The movement is a network of churches that affirm its beliefs and agree with its political activism. [Image at right] The leadership structure is sparse, with Peters sitting at its head (Patriot Church 2022a). It is difficult to separate the Patriot Church movement from Peters’s beliefs and actions. He clearly drives what the Patriot churches believe and do. Given that he essentially fired Matt Shea as the pastor of the Spokane church, it appears that Peters has “veto rights” on who pastors Patriot churches. Only time will tell whether the movement takes on a life of its own that can survive without Peters’s inspiration and influence.

It is probably a mistake to equate the Patriot Church movement with “white” Christian nationalism, at least demographically. Although from its webpage and Facebook posts, it appears that most members are white, people of color do attend, and at least one of its pastors is Hispanic (Ben DeJesus of the Houston campus). More importantly, white Americans are not the only ones who affirm Christian Nationalist views. Consider, for example, the following figure. [Image at right] Drawing on the same data used by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry (2020) to construct a Christian nationalism scale, the graph plots the average score on the scale by race/ethnicity. As it shows, other racial and ethnic groups (e.g., Black, Latinx) score higher than white Americans.

Instead of race and ethnicity, theological conservatism appears to be a primary driver of Christian nationalism beliefs. The figure below captures this relationship. It plots the average Christian nationalism score Baylor Religion Survey, Wave 5 (2017)by religious tradition. As one can see, White evangelical Protestants, Black Protestants, and Roman Catholics score highest among religious traditions. Importantly, these associations hold after controlling for other potentially confounding factors (multivariate results available upon request (See also, Whitehead and Perry 2020:179-10)).

One can get a sense of the movement’s priorities from the questions that appear on the application to join the movement located on the Patriot Church website (Patriot Church 2022d):

What is the name of your church?What is the name of the pastor of the church?
What is your denominational affiliation if any?
How many members are in your church?
Average Sunday Attendance Pre-Pandemic?Average Sunday Attendance Now?
Is your church accredited by ECFA? (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability)
Percent of congregation that is conservative?
Does your church do voter registration?
Is the pastor politically active?
How does your church create community influence?
Does the church partner with other churches to create political influence?

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Perhaps the most critical issue facing the Patriot Church movement is growth. There are currently only between four and six churches affiliated with it. That said, a significant portion of the American population is sympathetic to Christian nationalist beliefs it espouses. For instance, Whitehead and Perry (2020) sorted Americans into four categories based on a Christian nationalism index based on six survey questions: Ambassadors, Accommodators, Resisters, and Rejecters. Ambassadors are “wholly supportive of Christian nationalism” (2020:35). Accommodators lean toward the belief “that the federal government should advocate for Christian values,” but they are “undecided about the federal government officially declaring the United States is a Christian nation” (2020:33). Resisters “lean toward opposing Christian nationalism” but “may be undecided about allowing the display of religious symbols in public places” (2020:31). And Rejectors “generally believe there should be no connection between Christianity and politics” (2020:26). Whitehead and Perry found that Ambassadors account for 19.8% of Americans, while Accommodators account for 32.1 percent. In other words, approximately 52 percent of Americans express some support for Christian nationalism. This suggests that the target audience of the Patriot Church movement is potentially quite large.

That said, the political activism of Patriot Churches is somewhat out of step of other theologically conservative churches. Analyses of the National Congregation Survey found that unlike Roman Catholic and Black Protestant congregations, which engage in a wide array of political activities, theologically conservative churches tend not to (Beyerlein and Chaves 2003, 2020; Everton 2021). Peters believes this is because most evangelical pastors are afraid to speak up:

I think most preachers are weak and spineless, and they should be leading the Girl Scouts and not being behind pulpits. I think today is the day where we need preachers with a backbone, with the courage to say what we believe, the foundation of our nation was based on Judeo-Christian values, and we let that slip away, I think much in part because of spineless, weak, and fearful cowardly preachers (Gilbert 2021).

However, Pentecostal churches tend to be more politically active than evangelical ones. Take, for instance, the following figure, which plots the political activism of U.S. congregations by religious tradition from 1998 to 2018. [Image at right] Political activism is the aggregate of eight activities (See, Everton 2021 and Beyerlein and Chaves 2003, 2020. Unlike Beyerlein and Chaves (2003, 2020), it separates Pentecostal congregations into their own category. As it shows, Pentecostal churches have consistently been more active than evangelical ones. This was especially true in 2018 when over fifty percent of Pentecostal churches engaged in one or more political activities. Thus, given the Patriot Church’s Pentecostal leanings, its political activism may find a larger audience than a typical theologically conservative congregation.

Damon Berry’s (2020) analysis of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) may be of relevance here. The NAR is a network of independent Pentecostal leaders and churches that believe that the New Testament office of apostle is still operative today and that God is calling on believers to establish God’s kingdom on earth. An “apostle” is seen as someone “whom God has called for the work of ‘planting and overseeing new churches,’ who demonstrates a prophetic anointing confirmed by ‘a word from the Lord,’ approved by the congregation for the position, and who exhibits godly character and spiritual maturity” (Berry 2020:74). Many involved with the NAR believe that God has anointed Trump to help accomplish this. Furthermore, they believe “that Trump’s political adversaries [are] inspired by demonic spirits under the guidance of the Devil to destroy Trump and the United States, and thereby prevent the full realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth (Berry 2020:71-72).” Berry calls those aligned with the NAR “prophecy voters” and distinguishes them from “nostalgic voters” (e.g., white Christian nationalists) and “values voters” (e.g., those who support Trump because of his pro-life policies). Although there does not appear to be an explicit tie between the Patriot Church movement and the NAR, Matt Shea, who, as noted earlier, briefly took over for Ken Peters’s former church in Spokane, does. He and Tim Taylor, an apostle in the NAR, are acquaintances and see themselves as fellow patriots. “I liked Matt right away… He is an army officer, a combat veteran, an attorney and a Christian… I remember the oath I took to defend the constitution [sic] of these United States and from watching him over the last three years, I’d say he remembered that oath too” (quoted in Clarkson and Cooper 2021).

IMAGES

Image #1: Ken and Valencia Peters.
Image #2: The Patriot Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Image #3: Christian Nationalist Views by race/ethnicity. Baylor Religion Survey, Wave 5 (2017).
Image #4: Christian Nationalism Views by religious conservatism. Baylor Religion Survey, Wave 5 (2017).
Image #5: Political activism of U.S. congregations by religious tradition from 1998 to 2018. National Congregations Survey, 1998-2018 (Chaves et al. 2020).

REFERENCES

1619 Project. 2019. New York Times Magazine, August 14. Accessed from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html on 10 March 2022.

Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. 2020. “Seeking Power in Jesus’ Name: Trump Sparks a Rise of Patriot Churches.” The Washington Post, October 26. Accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/10/26/trump-christian-nationalism-patriot-church/ on 13 November  2020.

Baylor University. 2017. The Baylor Religion Survey, Wave V. Waco, TX: Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion: data downloaded from the Association of Religion Data Archives, www.TheARDA.com.

Berry, Damon. 2020. “Voting in the Kingdom: Prophecy Voters, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Christian Support for Trump.” Nova Religio 23:69-93.

Beyerlein, Kraig, and Mark Chaves. 2020. “The Political Mobilization of America’s Congregations.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59:663-74.

Beyerlein, Kraig, and Mark Chaves. 2003. “The Political Activities of Religious Congregations in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42:229-46.

Chaves, Mark, Shawna Anderson, Alison Eagle, Mary  Hawkins, Anna Holleman, and Joseph Roso. 2020. National Congregations Study: Cumulative Data File and Codebook. Durham, NC: Duke University: data downloaded from the Association of Religion Data Archives, www.TheARDA.com.

Clarkson, Frederick, and Cloee Cooper. 2021. “Convergence of Far-Right, Anti-Democratic Factions in the Northwest Could Provide a Model for the Rest of the Nation.” Religion Dispatches. Accessed from https://religiondispatches.org/convergence-of-far-right-anti-democratic-factions-in-the-northwest-could-provide-a-model-for-the-rest-of-the-nation/ on 28 February 2022.

den Hartog, Jonathan. 2021. “What the Black Robe Regiment Misses About Revolutionary Pastors.” Christianity Today, January 20. Accessed from  https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/january-web-only/black-robe-regiment-revolutionary-war-pastor-election-trump.html on 7 March 2022.

Everton, Sean F. 2021. “For God and Country: The Political Activism of Religious Congregations in the United States.” SSRN. Accessed from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3859035 on 7 March 2022.

Gilbert, David. 2021. “These Pastors Are Telling People Trump Is Still President and Are Ready for War.” Vice News, October 25. Accessed from  https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vmnb/these-pastors-are-telling-people-trump-is-still-president-and-are-ready-for-war on 7 March 2022.

Kuznia, Rob, and Majlie de Puy Kamp. 2021. “Assault on Democracy: Paths to Insurrection: The Pastors.” CNN, June. Accessed from https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/06/us/capitol-riot-paths-to-insurrection/pastors.html on 1 March 2022.

Lea, Jessica. 2019. “The Church at Planned Parenthood? Yes, You Read That Right.” ChurchLeaders, April 26. Accessed from https://churchleaders.com/news/349435-church-at-planned-parenthood-yes-you-read-that-right.html on 13 November 2020.

Leslie, Robert. 2021. “We Went Inside the Tennessee church Whose Trump-Revering Pastor Combines Politics with Christian Nationalism.” Insider, May 10. Accessed from https://www.insider.com/patriot-church-pastor-ken-peters-knoxville-tennessee-trump-2021-4 on 7 March 2022.

Patriot Church. 2022a. Leadership. Accessed from https://patriotchurch.us/leadership on 28 February 2022.

Patriot Church. 2022b. Our Beliefs. Accessed from https://patriotchurch.us/what-we-believe on 1 March 2022.

Patriot Church. 2022c. Patriot Network. Accessed from https://patriotchurch.us/patriot-network on 1 March 2022.

Patriot Church. 2022d. Patriot Network Signup. Accessed from https://patriotchurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/279119 on 4 March 2022.

Romo, Vanessa. 2019. “Washington Legislator Matt Shea Accused Of ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Report Finds.” National Public Radio, December 20. Accessed from  https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790192972/washington-legislator-matt-shea-accused-of-domestic-terrorism-report-finds on 2 March 2022.

Stewart, Katherine. 2020. The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Truth in Love Ministry. 2022. Truth in Love Project. Accessed from https://www.tilproject.com on 1 March 2022.

Vestal, Shawn. 2021. “Matt Shea Out At Church Over Schism with Fellow ‘General’ Ken Peters, but Abortion Protests Go On.” Spokesman-Review, May 27. Accessed from  https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/may/27/shawn-vestal-matt-shea-out-at-tcapp-over-schism-wi/ on 2 March 2022.

Whitehead, Andrew L., and Samuel L. Perry. 2020. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Publication Date:
12 March 2022

SEDONA, ARIZONA TIMELINE

1300s:  Indigenous Patayan groups separated and became the Yavapai people, who occupied the land around Oak Creek Canyon that was later called Sedona.

1861:  White settlers began arriving, precipitating the Yavapai Wars between the US Army and the Yavapai and Tonto peoples.

1875 (February 27):  Exodus Day, the forced march of the Yavapai people to the San Carlos reservation took place.

1876:  The first white settler, John J. Thompson, moved to Oak Creek Canyon.

1902:  City of Sedona founded, with fifty-five residents.

1912:  Arizona became a state.

1956:   Chapel of the Holy Cross was built.

1987 (August 16-17):  The Harmonic Convergence took place.

1988:  The City of Sedona incorporated.

2012 (December 21):  The last date on the Mayan Calendar.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The area now known as Sedona was inhabited for hundreds of years by the Wipukepa band of the Northeastern Yavapai prior to their forced removal in 1875. The Yavapai called it Wipuk, the Middle of the Earth where the first humans emerged (Harrison et al 2012). The first Spanish explorers to cross the high desert area saw it as a barren wasteland, just a natural obstacle blocking the way to Californian gold (Ivakhiv 2001:151). Ceded from Mexico in the early nineteenth century, there were few white settlers until the end of that century. Then the Southwest morphed into the “land of enchantment,” a resort and tourist attraction for the affluent coastal urban centres whose residents flock there for respite, first at sanitariums offering dry air to relieve consumption and then at hotels and golf courses offering year-round sun and expanses of empty space (Ivakhiv 2001:146; Sheridan 2006:5-6).

The Southwest’s rocky deserts and parched mesas have inspired fantastical legends of human and nonhuman others. Alien mythology is rooted in Southwestern sites; New Mexico is home to Roswell, Nevada to Area 51, Arizona to mysterious lights in the sky over Phoenix (Denzler 2001). Arizona is also rich in frontier mythology as the last battleground of “cowboys and Indians.” It still has the most Indigenous reservation land in the continental U.S.; the forced removals and marches of the prior occupants are a recent historical memory (Ivakhiv 2001:152). It stood as the cinematic backdrop for Westerns, living on as the frontier in the Hollywood imaginary (McNeill 2010: Ivakhiv 2001:156-57). Sedona was founded in the late nineteenth century after the forced removal of the Yavapai.

Sedona sits inside a network of red rock canyons and along the banks of Oak Creek, one of the few freshwater sources in Northern Arizona. The contrast of the bright sandstone against the open blue skies of Arizona and the verdant green trees growing creates a spectacular vista, particularly when approaching from the surrounding barren high desert landscapes. Sedona is a sacred site of new age spirituality. Its centrality is evidenced by its comparison in the literature to Mecca (Ivakhiv 2001:147).

The notion that Sedona is a maelstrom of invisible, yet potent spiritual energy is relatively recent and can be traced in historical accounts to the second half of the twentieth century. It became known for “vortexes,” red rock formations said to have spirals of special energy flowing through them. From the 1980s onward, it drew people involved in new age spirituality who claimed it was a sacred space. Local people claim that the vortexes were known to Native Americans, who held the whole area sacred (Ayres 1997:4-5). Ayres describes the emergence of new age activities in Sedona through the support of a realtor called Mary Lou Keller who had a building on Hillside in the 1960s where she let people hold spiritual activities for free. In Keller’s own account, the vortexes were known to the Native Americans and then Ruby Focus, a group now called Rainbow Ray Focus that is still present in Sedona, came with channelled information about the vortexes and bought property adjacent to the Airport Mesa vortex through Keller in 1963 (Keller 1991:xvi). She says this is the origin despite other claims.

The usual attribution in vortex guidebooks is to Dick Sutphen and Page Bryant, a pair of psychics who claimed to feel the vortexes in the 1980s (Andres 2002:14; Sutphen 1986:21). Sutphen has made a career out of psychic workshops held on Sedona’s vortexes aimed at developing psychic abilities, and publishing books about the vortexes and their powers. According to Ayres, Sutphen and Bryant only “publicized” the vortexes, along with Pete Saunders, another well-known Sedona psychic (1997:7). The claim that Native Americans knew about the vortexes is part of a strategy of legitimation (Hammer 2004:134-38). If the special energy is an inherent property of the earth, then it would have been known to the previous inhabitants, who are considered more spiritual by new agers.

Tourism has long since replaced Arizona’s three c’s: cattle, copper, and cotton (Sheridan 2012). Sedona is a shining jewel in this industry, drawing 3,000,000-4,000,000 visitors per year. New age spirituality is a significant part of this tourist draw. At first, the Sedona City Council and Chamber of Commerce disdained the influx of spiritual seekers, for example banning camping within the city limits so as to drive itinerant newcomers out of the town. Now the Chamber of Commerce gives out maps of the locations of vortexes. Sedona’s reputation as a metaphysical or spiritual destination is part of its appeal to visitors, with the vortexes playing a part alongside spas, resorts, and hotels offering massage, meditation, and yoga in wellness vacations. The well-heeled Uptown shopping district is dotted with stores offering crystals, psychic readings, and healing modalities. [Image at right] Tour guides offer trips round the vortexes, UFO sighting tours, and hikes in nature. This is part of the well-attested overlap between new age spirituality and business (Heelas 2008).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

New age spirituality is a secularised and democratised esotericism for late modernity (Hanegraaff 1996:517). Sedona is a site that draws spiritual seekers of various levels of commitment, a location of both pilgrimage and migration. It is said to have special energy, which is the central organising concept of new age spirituality. Energy is everything, in that everything vibrates at specific frequencies (Albanese 2006:495-99: Kripal 2007:19; Prince and Riches 2000:91-92; Ivakhiv 2001:24-30; Bender 2010:115; Hanegraaff 1996:175). Sedona has a particularly high vibration; it is sacred within the cosmology of new age spirituality. Its high vibration is created by its position at an intersection of ley-lines, energetic lines of high vibrational frequencies that crisscross the earth (Ivakhiv 2001:24-30, 185-92). These intersection points are marked by vortexes, also sometimes called the earth’s chakras or circulatory system. This links Sedona to other sacred sites in new age spirituality such as Mount Shasta, California, and Maui, Hawaii, through the invisible yet potent force of energy.

The whole area where Sedona is located is said to be a vortex; there are also specific vortex sites. The four main ones in Sedona are Cathedral Rock, [Image at right] Bell Rock, Airport Mesa, and Boynton Canyon. These rock formations are among some of the most photographed sites in Arizona (Ivakhiv 1997:377). Spiritual seekers report feeling different at vortex sites; energy is felt or intuited rather than seen or heard. The energy at vortex sites is amplified and this means that seekers go there to have spiritual experiences. Practices such as meditation, psychic readings, and channelling are common. The sacredness of Sedona is felt by those who do not fully subscribe to the new age concept of energy but who nonetheless feel that its aesthetically pleasing and sublime landscape imbues it with the presence of the divine. This is a broader phenomenon of nature religion that overlaps with contemporary esotericism particularly in the U.S. (Albanese 1990, 2002). The landscape of Sedona combined with its proximity to the Grand Canyon and San Francisco Peaks creates a stunning visual aspect of “big nature” that contributes significantly to the spiritual elaboration of Sedona. The vortexes draw the spiritual seekers, but the landscape has a much broader appeal.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

On August 16-17, 1987, the Harmonic Convergence was announced by new age author and artist José Argüelles (Ivakhiv 2001: 48). It was a simultaneous and synchronised act of prayer in different “power spots,” such as Sedona and Glastonbury, around the world. Argüelles claimed it would launch the final twenty-six year period of the Great Cycle of the Mayan calendar, and if enough people prayed, chanted, and channelled at the same time it would launch the twenty-five year transition to the New Age of peace and harmony. People gathered in Sedona expecting, among other things, a spaceship to come out of Bell Rock. A number of the spiritual seekers who came to Sedona at that time stayed on and became the nucleus of the growing spiritual community in the town.

December 21, 2012 was meant to mark the end of the transition cycle to the New Age, and the end of the Mayan calendar’s Great Cycle. Fewer people gathered in Sedona than in 1987. However one Sedona resident, Peter Gersten, gained local and national renown for his prediction that a portal would open on December 21 at Bell Rock, [Image at right] one of the vortexes (Crockford 2021:64-93). He claimed he would step through the portal to save the world from the virus of technology. He went to the top of Bell Rock with a small group of people on December 21 and waited for fourteen hours for a portal to open. When it did not, he climbed back down without jumping as many locally and in the media rumored he would.

Many smaller events are held in Sedona inspired by the understanding that it is a sacred place with special energy. The date 11/11/11 was considered numerologically significant and was marked by rituals and ceremonies in Sedona, such as a performance held at the Sedona Creative Life Center of dancing, chanting, and drumming. Monthly drum circles are held at the Cathedral Rock vortex, where local people and tourists gather to dance and drum during the full moon.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Sedona draws individual figures involved in spirituality, such as Drunvalo Melchizedek, an author and populariser of the concept of sacred geometry who lives in Sedona and held retreats there. Many individuals move to Sedona to follow their spiritual path, opening the small businesses which populate the spirituality-oriented sector of the economy (Ivakhiv 2001:175). Groups have set up centres in Sedona, such as Dahn Yoga, a Korean new age group with international range. There are also thirty Christian Churches, a Jewish Synagogue, and several spiritual centres such as a branch of the New Thought influenced Unity Church and the Church of the Golden Age.

Sedona is an enclave of new age spirituality, in that it draws spiritual seekers who explicitly describe themselves as drawn there by its special energy or “vortexes.” It is well-known within spirituality as a “power spot” or sacred site. However, although Sedona is a sacred site for new spirituality, it does not have the status of an established and institutional centre for a religion, like Mecca does in Islam. The spiritual community does not hold political power in Sedona and is often ignored or disdained by those who do hold power locally, such as the City Council and Chamber of Commerce. These institutions are dominated by property owners in Sedona and tend to be older members of the community who have been there for many decades or have significant assets in the area.

There are some small, private educational institutions in the town that train visitors in spiritual practices such as yoga, massage therapy, and esoteric philosophical ideas. For example, the University of Sedona is an unaccredited distance learning college providing instruction in what it calls “metaphysical” studies. It is based in a strip mall in West Sedona. New age spirituality is more conspicuously incorporated into the town’s economy through the tourist industry. There are numerous businesses that cater to visitors seeking to engage more with new age spirituality. The most apparent form of these businesses are the stores in the Uptown area that sell spiritual items and services, [Image at right] such as crystals, sage bundles, oracle cards, psychic readings, aura photography, and vortex tours. There are also independent spiritual businesspeople, who sometimes call themselves conscious entrepreneurs, that sell services such as holistic pedicures, yoga instruction, or massage therapy. Some have grouped together in the Sedona Metaphysical and Spiritual Association (SMSA), which members pay a fee to join and in return advertise their services collectively through a website that lists categories of services such as retreats, tours, readings, ceremonies, teaching, and healing. Membership of the SMSA is intended to give established spiritual practitioners in the town some level of respectability. One of the recurrent criticisms from other residents is that people involved in new age spirituality are simply “grifters” selling “fake” services to take advantage of gullible tourists.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The spiritual activities held in Sedona have on occasion attracted controversy. A member of a hike organised by Dahn Yoga died of exhaustion in 2003. A group led by Gabriel of Sedona lived in an intentional community, called Global Community Communications Alliance, that was the subject of a Dateline exposé and a series of inflammatory editorials in the local paper, the Sedona Red Rock News, for being a “cult.” They left Sedona for Tubac because of the exposure. In 2009, James Arthur Ray led a weekend Spiritual Warrior workshop which included a sweat lodge, held at Angel Valley Retreat Center just outside of Sedona, in which three people died. It was widely reported in the national and international press and Ray received two years’ imprisonment for negligent homicide. A spiritual leader named Bentinho Massaro moved to Sedona in the mid-2010s until an attendee at one of his retreats committed suicide in 2018.

These well-publicised cases are often over-emphasised in the media. In Sedona, many people move there because they feel it has special energy, start a business or work in the local tourism economy, and pursue esoteric practices on an individual basis. A visit to Sedona is often the start of their spiritual path. They come, have an experience in the vortexes that they describe as spiritual, change their life and job to move to Sedona, and pursue their spirituality. It is often hard to stay because of the price of rent and the dearth of employment, turnover is high. However, new age spirituality remains a significant factor in the economy and social life of Sedona.

IMAGES

Image #1: New Age Center in Sedona. Photograph copyright, Susannah Crockford.
Image #2: Cathedral Rock vortex site. Photograph copyright, Susannah Crockford.
Image #3: Bell Rock and Courthouse Rock vortex sites, from the perspective of the Village of Oak Creek. Photograph copyright, Susannah Crockford.
Image #4: Sedona Psychic Wellness Center. Photograph copyright, Susannah Crockford.

REFERENCES

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Publication Date:
21 February 2022