FAMILY RADIO TIMELINE

1921 (July 19) Harold Egbert Camping was born.

1958 Camping and several other evangelical Christians established a San Francisco FM radio station, Family Radio, intended to broadcast to a conservative Christian audience.

1961 Family Radio began Camping’s call-in program, the Open Forum, in which he answered questions pertaining to biblical passages.

1970 Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History, which proposed 11,013 BCE as the date of the creation of the world and dating the Flood to 4990 BCE.

1992 Camping published 1994?, speculating that Christ would return in September of 1994.

2010 Camping predicted that the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. Family Radio launched a public campaign in support of his 2011 End Times prediction.

2011(June) Camping revised his eschatological prediction, anticipating October 21, 2011 as the correct date for the destruction of the world.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Harold Camping was born on July 19, 1921 in Colorado and subsequently moved to California. He obtained a Civil Engineering degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1942 but never had any formal religious education. He married his wife, Shirley, in 1943, and the couple raised six children. During the 1940s he worked for Kaiser Corporation and for a construction business in Oakland. In 1958 he established Family Radio in Oakland, California with Lloyd Lindquist and Richard H. Palmquist under the name Family Stations; the station’s first broadcast took place on February 4, 1959 over radio station KEAR-FM in San Francisco. Camping assumed presidency of the station and operated a call-in program, called the Open Forum, during which he interpreted Biblical scripture for listeners. Camping was an active member of the Christian Reformed Church through the 1980s. However, he resigned from Alameda Bible Fellowship in 1988 after church elders ordered him to stop his Endtime predictions (Kaleem 2011). He then left the church along with over 100 members to form a new congregation. However, he soon dissociated from the new congregation, declaring that the “church age” over (Boyett 2011).

In 1970, Camping published his book The Biblical Calendar of History, in which he offered the mathematical calculations and scriptural interpretations from which he derived his Biblical chronology. Similar calculations informed Camping’s eschatological predictions. The book asserts the date of Creation to be 11,013 BCE and the date of the Flood to 4990 BCE. In 1988, Camping declared the church age to be over, as on May 21 “Satan entered the pews,” initiating the “Great Tribulation” (Ravitz 2011:21). In 1992, Camping published 1994?, which prophesied the Second Coming would occur in September, 1994. This book also associated the year 2011 with the end of the world. In 2010 Camping issued his prediction that the Day of Judgment would be May 21, 2011. In October of that year Family Radio financed a multi-million dollar campaign in support of Camping’s prophecy, dispatching missionaries in RVs throughout the U.S. to broadcast the message that the end was imminent. When the Rapture did not occur on the appointed date, Camping revised his predictions, claiming that May 21, 2011 had been a “spiritual, rather than physical event” (Tenety 2011) and that the world will in fact end on October 21, 2011. Camping suffered a stroke in June 2011 and subsequently took up residence in a nursing home facility.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Family Radio conceives of the Bible as “a divine document passed directly from God to his followers, without human revisions or interventions” (McQuigge 2011). However, Family Radio president Camping does not advocate that the Bible be read literally; rather, he has insisted that the scripture must be interpreted according to its spiritual meaning. He has espousee the belief that the biblical texts contain clues concerning the timing of the Second Coming, the Rapture and the End Times. The former civil engineer paired mathematical calculations with his biblical interpretations in order to support his predictions. For instance, Camping’s predictions concerning the hour of Christ’s return stem from the Jewish feast days of the Hebrew Bible, the lunar month calendar and the Gregorian calendar tropical year, all of which were combined with clues from the Bible and interpreted in a modern light.

Camping’s Biblical chronology as proposed in his book, The Biblical Calendar of History, set the date of the Flood of Noah’s ark at 4990 BCE. This, along with a “calculation…derived from a bible verse equating 24 hours in God’s life with a thousand years on earth” (McQuigge 2011) led to Camping’s prediction that the end of the world would occur on May 21, 2011, exactly 7,000 years after the Flood. Similar biblical computations had previously led Camping to predict the end of the world in 1994, though he accounted for this inaccuracy on the basis that his “research was incomplete at that time” (Epstein 2011). In his more recent doomsday prophecy, Camping offered a precise, detailed forecast of the Rapture as it would occur on May 21, replete with sinister visions of a catastrophic earthquake beginning at six o’clock p.m. (drawn from Revelation 16:18), graves cracking open, the transformation of believers into “glorified spiritual bodies” (Epstein 2011), and the suffering and destruction of the rest of humanity over a span of several months. All of this would culminate in God’s obliteration of the planet on October 21, 2011. Family Radio urged believers to prepare for the end, and newspapers described adherents’ unswerving confidence in Camping’s prediction. When the expected events did not occur in the manner predicted on May 21, Family Radio issued an apology on its website. Camping has since modified his teachings: Christ’s coming on the May 21 date was “an invisible judgment day” of a purely spiritual nature, and the world will still be destroyed on October 21, 2011 (Tenety 2011).

RITUALS/PRACTICES
The group’s primary ritual activity appears to be centered around preparation for the Rapture. This effort is embodied in Project Caravan, the movement’s costly campaign to spread the message that May 21, 2011 would be the Day of Judgment. Family Radio amassed millions of dollars to purchase “20,000 billboards around the world” and subsequently “launched a convoy of caravans to canvas the U.S. and Canada and warn of the impending disaster” (McQuigge 2011). Followers contributed generously to fund the project, which is financed exclusively by donations, and the group has reportedly spent millions on electronic billboards and RVs that have crisscrossed the country. Family radio spokesperson Gunther von Harringa revealed that the group members “believe this so strongly, not only are we putting our reputation on the lines, but we’re spending all our money like there is no tomorrow, because we don’t believer there will be a tomorrow” (McQuigge 2011). Members recounted pouring their savings into Family Radio’s End Times campaign, defaulting on mortgage payments, saying goodbyes to loved ones, parading through the streets with posters, and taking to the road in caravans to spread the message of the impending Day of Judgment.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Family Radio is an Oakland, California based radio network, which operates non-commercial FM radio stations, several AM stations and two television stations. The organization broadcasts in thirty-nine states and eleven languages. The network has been valued at $120,000,000 and has employed over 300 people (Tenety 2011). Harold Camping serves as president of Family Radio, but without financial compensation, and there is also a board of directors. The radio network has no affiliation with any other religious organization or denomination and draws financial support exclusively from listeners’ donations. Camping maintains that Family Radio is not a church; in his eyes the religious institution became corrupted by Satan in the late eighties during the Great Tribulation. Camping does not consider himself a prophet, asserting that he has “no authority at all” (Epstein 2011).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Camping’s End Times predictions and Biblical chronology have generated great controversy, especially within the broader Christian community, which has rejected his biblical reasoning. Camping’s predictions have also been repudiated by many of his six children and 28 grandchildren. As he commented, “Most do not understand at all,” he said of his family. “They think I have lost it” (Kaleem 2011). A Bible teaching ministry, A Bible Answer, publicly reproached Camping and offered to purchase all of the Family Radio stations for one million dollars.There have been speculations that Camping’s apocalyptic predictions might the potential to encourage followers to commit suicide, but there has been no evidence to support such allegations. Camping has also been criticized for profiting financially from those who believed in his inaccurate doomsday prophecy, largely due to his assertion in a press interview that Family Radio would not return the donations generated in anticipation of the apocalypse. The New York Times quoted Camping as saying, “We’re not at the end. Why would we return it?” (McKinley 2011). Family Radio has been awarded a five star rating by the watchdog group, Charity Navigator. The future of Family Radio became unclear when in early June of 2011, Camping suffered a stroke following his broadcast of the Open Forum. He then entered a nursing home facility, which is financially supported by Family Radio’s board of directors, before partially resuming his work schedule. When Campings second predicted date for the world’s end, October 21, passed with only minor earthquake tremors reported in California, Camping’s church announced that a “spiritual” judgment from God had occurred ( Oleszczuk 2011). Members of the church focused on where the prediction had been in error and were waiting for the world’s end on a day-by-day basis. Camping also released a statement in which he confessed that “after decades of falsely misleading his followers, that he was wrong and regrets his misdeeds” ( Menzie 2011) . Media coverage of Family Radio declined precipitously following the failure of Camping’s October 21 predictions (Prado 2011). Subsequently, on March 12, 2012 Camping issued a statement that was posted on the Family Radio website in which he stated that he had made an “incorrect and sinful statement.” He said that “We have learned the very painful lesson that all of creation is in God’s hands and he will end time in his time, not ours!” He concludedy saying that “We humbly recognize that God may not tell his people the date when Christ will return, any more than he tells anyone the date they will die physically” (Banks 2012).

REFERENCES

Amira, Dan. 2011. “A Conversation With Harold Camping, Prophesier of Judgment Day.” New York Magazine, May 2011. accessed from http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/05/a_conversation_with_harold_cam.html on 20 October 2011.

Banks, Adele. 2012. “Harold Camping says May 21 prediction was ‘incorrect and sinful’.” Washington Post 8 March 2012. Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/harold-camping-says-may-21-prediction-was-incorrect-and-sinful/2012/03/08/gIQAlsgezR_story.html on 15 March 2012.

Boyett, Jason. 2011. “21 Things You Should Know About Harold Camping.” beliefnet, 19 May 2011. Accessed from http://blog.beliefnet.com/omeoflittlefaith/2011/05/21-things-you-should-know-about-harold-camping.html on 22 October 2011.

Brinkley, Leslie. 2011. “Rapture Billboards Make Millions for Non-profit.” East Bay News, 19 May 2011. Accessed from http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=8139534 on, 22 October 2011.

Epstein, Emily Anne. 2011. “May 21: Is the End Near?” Metro [ New York] 15 May 2011. Accessed from http://wwrn.org/articles/35453/?&place=united-states&section=other-groups on 14 September 2011.

Kaleem, Jaweed. 2011. “Harold Camping: The Man Behind ‘Judgment Day,” Huffington Post 21 May 2011. Accessed from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/20/harold-camping-judgment-day-may-21_n_864507.html

McKinley, Jesse. 2011. “An Autumn Date for the Apocalypse.” The New York Times, 23 May 2011. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24raptureweb.html on 14 September 2011.

McQuigge, Michelle. 2011. “Apocalypse How? Scholars Dismiss Judgment of May 21 ‘Judgment Day'” The Canadian Press, 14 May 2011. Accessed from http://www.680news.com/news/national/article/226569–apocalypse-how-scholars-dismiss-predictions-of-may-21-judgment-day on 14 September 2011.

Menzie, Nicola. 2011. “Family Radio Founder Harold Camping Repents, Apologizes for False Teachings.” Christian Post. 30 October 2011. Accessed at http://www.christianpost.com/news/family-radio-founder-harold-camping-repents-apologizes-for-false-teachings-59819/ on 15 November 2011.

Oleszczuk, Luiza. 2011. ‘Harold Camping Update: Some in Family Radio Church Believe ‘Real’ Judgment Might Come Very Soon.” Christian Post 25 October 2011. Accessed from http://www.christianpost.com/news/harold-camping-update-some-in-family-radio-church-believe-real-judgment-might-come-very-soon-59333/ on 15 November 2011.

Prado, Antonio. 2011. “Family Radio President Harold Camping Not Talking after Apocalypse Prediction Fails. Denver Post, 22 October 2011. Accessed from http://www.doverpost.com/features/x1606475424/Family-Radio-President-Harold-Camping-not-talking-after-Apocalypse-prediction-fails on 22 October 2011.

Ravitz, Jessica. 2011. “Road Trip to the End of the World.” CNN, 23 Mar. 2011. Accessed from http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-06/living/judgment.day.caravan_1_rvs-dish-world-ends?_s=PM:LIVING on 13 September 2011.

Tenety, Elizabeth. 2011. “Harold Camping Says May 21, 2011 Was ‘Invisible Judgment Day,’ World Will End October 21, 2011.” The Washington Post, 23 May 2011. Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/harold-camping-says-may-21-2011-was-invisible-judgment-day-world-will-end-october-21-2011/2011/05/23/AFZmc99G_blog.html on 13 September 2011.

Post Date:
22 October 2011

FEMALE MARTYRS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY TIMELINE

The era of Christian persecution and martyrdom is difficult to date exactly. Christian tradition generally ascribes the title of first Christian martyr to the disciple, Stephen, whose death in approximately 36 C.E. is recorded in the New Testament book of Acts . The earliest actual martyrology, however, describes the death of St. Ignatius of Rome sometime between 98 and 117 C.E. The period of sporadic persecution is usually considered to have ended with the rise of the Emperor Constantine and the subsequent acceptance of Christianity as a valid religion in the early to mid-fourth century. Yet, this date does not take into account the Donatist martyrs of North Africa who died at the hands of other Christians in the late fourth century. While the start and finish of the era may be inexact, it is clear that throughout the period, women and men alike chose to die rather than renounce their faith in Christ. Some died alone; others died with their male companions. The following are early female martyrs of note.

177 C.E., Lyon: Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne.
Among this group of martyrs were three women: a slave named Blandina, her mistress, and Biblis. Blandina is especially significant for the inspiration she provided to others in the midst of torture and for the manner in which the account reports her as a re-presentation of Christ in the midst of death.

180 C.E., Carthage: The Scillitan Martyrs.
Twelve men and women executed by the sword after refusing to recant their confession of Christ.

Date uncertain (either about 165 C.E. during the reign of Marcus Aurelius or 251 C.E. during the reign of Decius), Pergamum, Asia Minor: Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonicê.
After several rounds of torture, Carpus and Papylus are finally nailed to the stake and burned. As they die, the crowd exhorts Agathonicê to have pity on her child but she replies that God will care for him. Then, she too is burned.

202–203 C.E., Carthage: Perpetua and Felicitas.
Perpetua, a young Roman matron with a child, is executed along with her slave-woman, Felicitas, who had just given birth. The account is particularly important since the first portion reproduces Perpetua’s own diary, written during her captivity.

205–210 C.E., Alexandria: Martyrdom of Poamiaena and Basilides.
After enduring severe torture and repeated threats of sexual assault, Poamiaena was executed, along with her mother, Marcella. Basilides, the young soldier who had led her to death, was moved to confess Christ himself, after asserting that Poamiaena had appeared to him three days after her death. He was subsequently beheaded.

Circa 304 C.E., Thessalonica: Martyrdom of Agapê, Irenê, Chionê and Companions.
After refusing to renounce Christ and to eat meat sacrificed to the gods, Agapê and Chionê were burned. Irenê, initially spared because of her young age, was charged with hiding Christian documents. Ultimately, after being stripped naked and sentenced to time in a brothel, she too was executed.

304 C.E., Tebessa, North Africa: Martyrdom of Crispina.
Executed by the sword. She refused to renounce Christ even after an order was issued that her head be shaved bald in an effort to shame her.

304 C.E., Mérida, Spain: Eulalia.
A young Roman woman (12–14 years old) who was said to have taunted her tormentors even as she was being tortured and burned at the stake.

304 C.E., Rome: Agnes.
A young Roman noblewoman (twelve to thirteen years-old) who dedicated herself to Christ. She is said to have spurned any would-be suitors who then brought charges of being a Christian against her.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The word, “martyr,” derives from a Greek word meaning “to bear witness.” Thus, in Christian tradition, a martyr refers to one who bears witness to the suffering and death of Jesus Christ through his/her own death. Following the death of Jesus in approximately 33 C.E., communities of “Christians” began to develop and eventually to spread throughout the Roman Empire. These Christians devoted themselves to the exclusive worship of their god. They sporadically drew the ire of Roman authorities who, while not caring if they worshipped Jesus, expected that they also do their civic duty by publicly worshipping and making sacrifices to the gods of Rome.

In the clashes that ensued over Christian exclusivity to Christ, the martyrs came to be viewed by their fellow believers not as the victims that Rome had intended to make of them but rather, as victors over evil and death; harbingers of hope, ordained by none other than their god. In the bodies of the martyrs, weakness became strength, shame became honor, and earthly death became eternal life. As the stories of martyrs were recorded and spread from community to community, they fueled the growth of the church. As the second century church leader, Tertullian, declared, “the oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed” (Tertullian, Apology:50).

Echoing the view of Tertullian, modern scholars have argued convincingly that through the telling and re-telling of the stories of the martyrs, Christians constructed a group identity based on suffering as empowerment and death as victory. The crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, the incarnate Christ, served, of course, as the quintessential example of such victorious suffering. Jesus lived in the body, taught in the body, suffered and died in the body; and for Christians, it was this very human body that was understood as the conduit between God and believers. It was, then, no accident that the bodies of the martyrs became the locus of activity in the unfolding drama that transformed powerlessness into power. In the stead of Christ, the suffering martyr served as mediator between God and the world. In the body of the martyr, death was unmasked as the gateway to eternal life. As Christ’s death and resurrection were understood to redeem the world, the Christian martyr, through death, continued that work of redemption on behalf of Christ.

Thus, the body is central to this process of attaining victory; yet the martyr’s imitation of Christ through the female body is complicated: how does a female body imitate the body of a male god? It is not, as one might guess, that at some point the body ceases to matter. Rather, in the world of these early martyrologies, the body itself carried meaning that far surpassed its physical parts. Here, the ancient view of the human body and the body’s relationship to virtues are critically important. In antiquity, the human body was understood hierarchically, with the male sex representing the standard and the female the sub-standard on a continuum. Furthermore, virtues were associated with biological sex; that is, the highest (justice, self-control, wisdom and courage) were considered to be male virtues; while the lesser virtues (gentleness, modesty, chastity, beauty) were understood as female. In order, then, for the martyr to stand in the stead of Christ, s/he had to be seen as exhibiting the highest of virtues while in the midst of suffering and dying, even as Jesus himself had done while on the cross. On the hierarchical continuum, this meant moving upward toward the pinnacle, that is, toward maleness, via the taking on and display of manly virtues.

Narrators of the martyrologies depict female martyrs (like their male counterparts) as far surpassing their persecutors in terms of the manly virtues. Perpetua, [Image at right] for instance, was so courageous that she stared down her executioner and then, taking his hand, guided the dagger to her own throat. In such shows of manly virtue, males and females alike imitated Christ, the most virtuous one of all. Yet, in these re-presentations, the bodies of the female martyrs carried a double burden. Within the context of the Roman world, these women, like their Christian brothers, had to be seen as more manly in virtue than their persecutors. In relation to those Christian brothers, however, they had to be seen as the most virtuous of women as well. Thus, while Perpetua shows manly courage in taking up the dagger for herself, she also exhibits the very feminine quality of modesty in pulling “down the tunic that was ripped along the side so that it covered her thighs, thinking more of her modesty than of her pain” (Mursurillo 1972:129). Thus, in attempting to understand the place of female martyrs in early Christianity, it is not only the role of the martyr as one who imitates Christ, and who re-presents him to the world, that is critical. In addition, it is also necessary to comprehend the ancient hierarchical view of the human body, the place of men and women on that hierarchical framework, and the attachment of specific virtues to either the male sex or the female sex.

ORGANIZATIONAL ROLES 

In the act of dying as martyrs, women, like men, served as intercessors between God and their Christian communities. Standing in the stead of Christ who suffered, died, and was believed to have risen again, they made real the possibility of resurrection victory for all who believed. As depicted in the martyrologies, however, the female martyr faced the additional challenge of being and remaining female even as she moved up the hierarchical continuum toward greater and greater maleness, and ultimately to Christ. Her exhibition of great manly virtue emphasized her superiority to her male persecutors; at the same time, her show of feminine virtue illustrated that which was deemed a more proper subservient role in relation to her Christian brothers. Thus, in her body, the female martyr surpassed Roman gender norms and simultaneously reinforced them.

It should also be noted that the impact of the martyr on the world did not end with her death, but rather started there. As faithful believers whose role had been to stand in the stead of Christ, martyrs were considered holy persons. Consequently, they were highly honored. Although not always possible, Christians often sought to gather their remains after death, which led to the custom of the veneration of relics, as well as the construction of many shrines and places of worship organized around the bodies of the saints, both women and men.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES 

As seen, under the ancient paradigm of the body (and its associated virtues) as hierarchical, the female was at a clear disadvantage. In relation to the male, she was everything that was less. For the female Christian facing death for Christ, this was clearly a challenge. Yet, in the hands of the narrators of many of the martyr stories, this weakness often became the martyr’s greatest strength. In several cases, the narratives show that it is specifically because the woman martyr started out as the lowest on the hierarchy that she comes to be understood in death as having achieved a height that is perceived as equal to, or even higher, than that achieved by her male counterparts. For instance, of Blandina, [Image at right] the young slave woman, it was said, “tiny, weak, and insignificant as she was she would give inspiration to her brothers, for she had put on Christ, that mighty and invincible athlete and had overcome the Adversary…” (Musurillo 1972:75). Likewise, in his account of the terrors faced by early Christians, the fourth century Church historian, Eusebius, writes, “the women were not less manly than the men in behalf of the teaching of the Divine Word, as they endured conflicts with the men, and bore away equal prizes of virtue” (Eusebius 1982:8.14.14). The sense given is that of the difference between a competitor who starts at level seven and moves to level ten versus the contestant who starts at level one and moves to ten.

In the ancient world, the female always began at a lower level than the man. Nevertheless, the strength of the martyr, like that of Christ, was revealed in his/her weakness. In Christian martyrologies that point was portrayed most vividly in the body of the woman who died in the process of re-presenting Christ. Even so, the ancient understanding of the female body as inferior to the male body and the subsequent valorization of the female martyr’s weak body, specifically because it achieves the status of male, raises serious questions for Christians. Are the accounts of female martyrs useful as texts of resistance today; and are they still valuable in building up people of faith in our modern world? Or, are they merely paternalistic texts that gloss over and serve to reinforce the inequality between women and men that has been so dominant in Christian tradition?

Christian women have offered a variety of answers to these questions. A number of feminist thinkers have questioned the basic Christian belief that Christ suffered and died for humanity, and that his death (or any death, for that matter) can be redemptive. They assert that such a theology glorifies suffering; that it attempts to make beautiful that which is truly only hideous, and should never be viewed otherwise. These thinkers assert that the image of Christ’s death on the cross implies that suffering is good, and that such a notion only encourages attitudes and actions that victimize and abuse the least powerful within society. For women, often already culturally conditioned to sacrifice their own needs and well-being for others, this line of thinking can be especially dangerous. As Pamela Dickey Young has noted, “Jesus’ suffering as redemptive has been taken in the history of the tradition to suggest that this suffering is an example to be imitated by the faithful. But it strains credulity to suggest to the woman who is being battered that she is acting according to the example of Jesus Christ and should endure the suffering with patience. To place suffering at the center of the Christian tradition does not affect everyone equally” (Young 1995:344–45). Furthermore, while certainly less explicit in our own world than in that of the ancient martyrs, the view that women might make unusually good sacrifices specifically because they are exceptionally vulnerable, is seen by some as reprehensible; that is, as a mode of thinking that preys on the most marginalized, and even rewards their oppressors (Daly 1973). Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker state forcefully that, “To glorify victims of terrorization by attributing to them a vulnerability that warrants protection by the stronger is to cloak the violation. Those who seek to protect are guilty. Justice occurs when terrorization stops, not when the condition of the terrorized is lauded as a preventive influence” (Brown and Parker 1989:13).

Nonetheless, the conviction of redemption for humanity through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is intricately woven into the fabric of Christianity. Christian feminists who continue to believe in the redemptive power of Christ’s death emphasize that the Christ who suffered and died on the cross is a relational god, a Trinitarian god, who became incarnate and lived and died in solidarity with suffering humanity. They assert that the key point is neither the male-ness of Jesus nor his horrific death as payment for sin. Rather, the crucial factor is that God chose to redeem humanity by entering into communion with humanity, even in all of its brokenness. It is this solidarity between suffering humanity and God to which the martyr bears witness. This witness is efficacious regardless of gender since, “The image of Christ does not lie in sexual similarity to the human man Jesus, but in coherence with the narrative shape of his compassionate, liberating life in the world, through the power of the Spirit” (Johnson 1977:73). As God, Jesus, in the flesh, blurred the boundary between God and humanity. As imitators of Christ, Christian martyrs did, and continue to do, the same. As Jon Sobrino so poignantly writes in regard to four North American churchwomen killed in El Salvador:

I have stood by the bodies of Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan. . . . The murdered Christ is here in the person of four women. . . . Christ lies dead here among us. He is Maura, Ita, Dorothy and Jean. But he is risen, too, in these same four women, and he keeps the hope of liberation alive. . . . Salvation comes to us through all women and men who love truth more than lies, who are more eager to give than to receive, and whose love is that supreme love that gives life rather than keeping it for oneself. Yes, their dead bodies fill us with sorrow and indignation. And yet, our last word must be: Thank you. In Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean, God has visited El Salvador (Sobrino 1988:153–56; also cited in Johnson 1997:74; and Gandolfo 2007:41).

As imitators of Christ, the martyrs, whether female or male, were understood as participants in the drama of redemption. The body of the martyr, no matter how lowly, served as the vessel through which that martyr became one with Christ, and through which Christ, God incarnate, would then become visible in the world and empowered to touch the world. Hence, even of one so low on the spectrum as the slave woman, Blandina, it was said that onlookers beheld not the woman being brutalized on a stake but rather, “in the form of their sister, him who was crucified for them” (Eusebius 1982: 5.1.41).

For believers, such a transformation was powerful. It illustrated that in Christ, “everyone [even a slave and a woman] who suffers for the glory of Christ has fellowship always with the living God” (Eusebius 1982:5.1.41). In that possibility, hope for a new life, one free of inequity and injustice, was made available to all. Throughout Christian history, the stories of the martyrs have served as emblems of such hope. In Christ, victim became victor; and at least in the view of many, real strength was made perfect in weakness. The martyrs embodied this belief.

IMAGES
Image #1: Mosaic depiction of Saint Perpetua.
Image #2: Drawing of Blandine.

REFERENCES

Boyarin, Daniel. 1999. Dying For God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

Brown, Joanne Carlson and Rebecca Parker. 1989. “For God So Loved the World?” Pp. 1-30 in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn. New York: Pilgrim Press.

Burrus, Virginia. 2008. “Torture and Travail: Producing the Christian Martyr.” Pp. 56-71 in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature, edited by Amy-Jill Levine. London: Bloomsbury.

Burrus, Virginia. 1995. “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3:25–46.

Cardman, Francine. 1988. “Acts of the Women Martyrs.” Anglican Theological Review 70:144–50.

Castelli, Elizabeth A. 2007. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cobb, Stephanie L. 2008. Dying to be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University Press.

Daly, Mary. 1973. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Eusebius. Church History. 1982. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 1. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans, 1982.

Frend, W. H. C. 1965. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Ann Arbor, MI: Basil Blackwell.

Gandolfo, Elizabeth O’Donnell. 2007. “Women and Martyrdom: Feminist Liberation Theology in Dialogue with a Latin American Paradigm.” Horizons 34:26–53.

Goodine, Elizabeth A. and Matthew W. Mitchell. 2005. “The Persuasiveness of a Woman: The Mistranslation and Misinterpretation of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica 5.1.41. ” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13:1–19.

Hampson, Daphne. 1990. Theology and Feminism. Oxford: Blackwell.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. 1997. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad.

Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lefkowitz, Mary R. 1976. “The Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44:417–21.

Moss, Candida R . 2010. The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mursurillo, Herbert, comp. 1972. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rankka, Kristine M. 1998. Women and the Value of Suffering: An Aw(e)ful Rowing Toward God. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.

Shaw, Brent D. 1996. “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4:269–312.

Sobrino, Jon. 1988. Spirituality of Liberation: Toward Political Holiness. Translated by Robert R. Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Storkey, Elaine. 1994. “Atonement and Feminism.” Anvil 11:227–35.

Sullivan, Lisa M. 1997. “I Responded, ‘I Will Not…’: Christianity as Catalyst for Resistance in the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitates.” Semeia 79:63–74.

Tertullian. Apology. 1986. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 3. Arranged with Notes and Prefaces by A. Cleveland Coxe, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans.

Young, Pamela Dickey. 1995. “Beyond Moral Influence to an Atoning Life.” Theology Today 52:344–55.

Young, Pamela Dickey. 1986. “Christianity’s Male Saviour—A Problem For Women?” Touchstone 4 :13–21.

Young, Robin Darling. 2001. In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy In Early Christianity. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Publication Date:
30 April 2016

Feng Shui

Founder: Yang Yun-San 1

Date of Birth: 800’s AD 2

Birth Place: China 3

Year Founded: 800’s AD 4

Sacred or Revered Texts: Han Lung Ching (describes the “Art of Rousing the Dragon”), Ching Nang Ao Chih (offers guidelines for locating the dragons lair, I Lung Ching (explains the technique for finding the dragon when it is hiding).5

Size of Group: Scholars have difficulty pinpointing an exact number of Feng Shui practitioners.6 It is known that Feng Shui is widely practiced throughout the East and Southeast Asia. Although Feng Shui used to be considered a superstition, more and more people are practicing it in the West. Feng Shui is intrinsic to life in the East and growing in the West. A rough estimate would be that over 200 million people practice Feng Shui in their daily lives. Some of these millions may not realize that they are practicing Feng Shui because it is so engrained into their society. In Hong Kong, no one would buy a new home, relocate their business or move around a layout without consulting a Feng Shui expert.7

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Feng Shui means “wind and water” and deals with understanding the forces and powers that are continually around us with the hope of harnessing these forces and receiving good fortune.Many of the fundamental texts associated with Feng Shui have been around for over 4000 years. This ancient art was confined to the ruling class until during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) when Master Yang Yun-Sang wrote several books that allowed the general public to have access to the secrets of Feng Shui.8

The art of Feng Shui became classified as a pseudo-science around the twelfth century as people started looking more closely into the location of their houses, temples, graves, etc. to ensure their prosperity.

Feng Shui was used to ensure auspicious grave sites. The location of one’s final resting place is extremely important to the Chinese. Feng Shui is said to be first applied to grave sites by Kuo P’o (d. CE 324), and to house building by Wang Ch’i (11th century). Divination to determine favorable building locations goes back to the beginning of the Chou Dynasty (c. 1000 BC). In general, Feng Shui has been fundamental in China since the Sung Dynasty.9 Each year the government of China would release the Imperial almanac giving all the lists, figures, diagrams, etc. needed in Feng Shui. Feng Shui continues to be used by people of all levels of society in urban and rural communities of China.

The first mention of Feng Shui was in the Lun Heng by Wang Ch’ung a first century CE skeptic philosopher. He characterized Feng Shui as a ‘superstitious belief in aerial currents and subterranean water-courses which bring good or bad fortune.10

The Form School of Feng Shui is the original school of Master Yang’s principles.Master Yang focused heavily on the shape of the hills, mountains, direction of water flow, but primarily on finding the lair of the dragon, China’s most revered celestial creature. 11 Everything that happened in China was explained by the dragon and its moods. So it was extremely important for the Chinese to determine how to influence the dragon. The books that Master Yang wrote were all based on the dragon. So the Form School rationalized good and bad land sites in terms of dragon symbolism in hopes that their nation would become powerful through the dragon. Thus Feng Shui was born as the Chinese attempted to discover the dragon and concurrently learned about their surrounding environment.

Eventually a second school of Feng Shui emerged and viewed Feng Shui in a different light. This second school, the Compass School, stresses the Pa Kua with its triagrams and hexagrams that help calculate imbalances, and the Lo Shu Grid, which helps describe when to do such actions. There are now several different branches of the Compass School. Some branches focus on numerology while others focus on time dimension. Certain branches of the Compass School also emphasize the influence of the planets on the quality of good landscape locations.12

When the first railway was built in China, the designers did not consult Feng Shui practitioners. The railway ran from Shanghai to Wu-sung. Despite being only nine miles long, the railway was purchased and destroyed by the Chinese “on the plea that the speed of the train destroyed the Feng Shui of the thousands of people on both sides of the line.”13

In 1949 General Chiang Kai-shek fled China for Taiwan and his group took with them many valuable old Feng Shui texts. Thus Feng Shui was introduced in Taiwan and spread to more countries. Now Feng Shui is taken for granted in both China and Taiwan. Feng Shui has not been utilized in most buildings in the West, but Feng Shui knowledge is slowly crossing the waters to the West. 14 Many prosperous businesses utilize Feng Shui including Shell, Citibank, Trump Towers in New York, MGM Grand Hotel and Mirage Resorts in Las Vegas and Borders Bookstores.15

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The purpose of Feng Shui is to harness the natural forces around one so as to achieve optimum balance and harmony in the location and placement of one’s living environment. In practice, Feng Shui seeks to find suitable locations to live, away from harmful energies so the inhabitants would thrive with happy abundant lives.16

The ancient Chinese Masters achieved harmony by observing land forms, energy lines and sought the balance of Yin and Yang. They also tried to ensure that the flow of beneficial Chi was harnessed while the harmful Chi was deflected. Feng Shui is important not only during life, but in one’s burial because harmful chi can still affect you once you are dead.17

Chi is believed to be the most important influence on our lives. Chi means “life’s breath” or “energy” and is the unifying energy that links everything together. It has been likened symbolically to the cosmic breath of a dragon.18

The concept of Chi originated in the Chinese Zhou dynasty and it literally means “gas.”19 Chi is the force that creates mountains, the brushstroke of a calligrapher, the movement of a dancer and is everywhere. Chi is also with us from birth to death and without it, we cannot live. Each person has a different chi and it can influence the destiny of one’s life. Chi can be enhanced through meditation, positive human relationships and a healthy environment. Chi constantly changes and no one can escape its powers. Feng Shui helps teach you how to manipulate the chi in your life.20

There are three main forces of Chi that sustain all of life: Cosmic Chi, Human Chi and Earth Chi .

Cosmic Chi is the force of nature. It comes down on us from the planets, sun, moons, etc. This energy is similar to the way the earth is pulled by the sun and the way the tides are affected by the moon. Even stars and planets far away project cosmic chi. The existence of Cosmic Chi helps explain why the weather affects personal moods and feelings. Cosmic Chi is considered the source of abundant wealth, fortune, peace, honor, and good health. Businesses with plentiful chi will prosper and continue to grow.

Human Chi is inside each person. Each person has his or her own unique chi that flows in its own path. It affects your personality, interactions with others, general mood and much more. Feng Shui practitioners try to help adjust your environmental chi to best suit you. Human Chi can be likened to the western concept of bio energies.

Earth Chi is the way the earth affects you. The forces of mountains, streams, valleys, plains, etc all impact and influence you. In the way mountains protect us from harsh elements and also provide psychological support. We tend to feel more stable and grounded when we have mountains around. Those who live in the mountains tend to be more stubborn, loyal and honest. Like a mountain, those people are more steadfast in their values.21

Other earthly forms affect us in their own ways. Our chi is also changed by the earth’s magnetic field and its pull.

Chi can be broken into five elements or phases: metal , wood , water , fire and earth . These elements characterize all matter around us. All five elements of Chi are associated with colors , moods , seasons , body organs , times , etc. For example, water is associated with black. The deeper the water, the blacker it is.22 Also, metal is white, sometimes gold and it symbolizes the west and represents fall.

The five elements of chi are combined in different amounts and cause good and bad luck to a person. Sometimes the elements work to cancel one another out and sometimes they enhance one another.23 Feng Shui masters analyze the symbolic elements and categorize everyone under a Chinese system, which looks at the date and hour of one’s birth.

One’s chi is greatly affected by the year they are born. If a person was born in a fire year, they should not have too much water in the home because water destroys fire. The five elements are constantly interacting with one another in productive and destructive cycles,24 affecting the balance of negative and positive chi in our lives.

The concept of yin and yang is a concept if balance as well. Yin and Yang are two opposite forces that govern the universe. Together they make up all aspects of life around us. Yin is dark, yang is light; yin is feminine, yang is masculine. They need each other, can never be separated and together create harmony.25 If yin and yang are not balanced in your life, then the imbalance can be harmful to the body. Feng Shui aims at striking a balance between the forces of yin and yang.

Another premise associated with Feng Shui is the premise of the Eight Triagrams, or “Pa Kua.” The Pa Kua comes from the I Ching and is used by the Compass School approach to Feng Shui. It is used to interpret good and bad Feng Shui according to the placement of the symbolic hexagrams and triagrams in a compass shape.26 For each compass directional, there are corresponding attributes, symbols, colors, etc. One would throw wooden blocks, yarrow stalks, and later coins. Based on where these objects landed one could interpret divine omens and gain wisdom.27

Chinese history books describe how around 2005 BC, a turtle emerged from the River Lo with nine numbers arranged in a grid upon his back. The numbers were arranged in such a way that when they were added vertically, horizontally or diagonally, they always added up to fifteen. Fifteen is the number of days it takes for a new moon to become a full moon.28

The grid pattern corresponded with the Eight Triagrams of the Pa Kua around a ninth critical point. This group of numbers became known as the Lo Shu square or grid. The Lo Shu square is another important foundation in the Compass School of Feng Shui because of its relation to the Pa Kua. The Lo Shu grid is said to unlock the meanings of the Pa Kua with its added numerology. Each day, month and year has its own Lo Shu number and Masters within the Compass School look to the Lo Shu grid to decipher good and bad days for activities.

Examples of Applied Feng Shui:

A large part of understanding Feng Shui is understanding how your surroundings affect you. Practitioners have explained these effects of Feng Shui in our daily lives so people will be able to make the chi around them flow as smoothly as possible. Illustrations of Feng Shui help to show its practicality.

The foot of your bed should not face the door. The Chi’s flow will disrupt your sleep.29

Living next to a place of worship, school, hospital, or fire station can cause health risks.30

Pools with rounded corners are believed to create beneficial chi for the residents of the house.31

The ideal situation for a business is to be located on a street corner with the entrance on a diagonal, drawing in chi, customers, and money from two directions.32

Windows should not slide up and down because they only let in half as much chi as their size and occupants tend to give people a false impression.33

The closer the bedroom is to the front door, the less peace residents will feel.34

Dining Chairs should be even in number because even numbers represent luck and single chairs represent loneliness.35

Colored ribbons and wind chimes near artificial ventilation devices will flutter and make music and enliven chi.36

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

It is hard to classify Feng Shui. Some might classify Feng Shui as a religion, while others note that no worshipping happens within it. There are no elixirs or potions to solve one’s problems and it is not magic either. Rather Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese art of placement aimed at understanding and harnessing the energies for one’s prosperity. Feng Shui has characteristics of religious groups interwoven into it, especially Taoism.

Taoism is based on the Tao Teh Ching and is concerned with being one with nature through intuitive knowledge and harmony. This knowledge can be attained through meditation on the Tao. The Tao is incomprehensible, and indescribable with words, through balance one can understand it.37 Taoism focuses heavily on balance and harmony seen through the yin and yang which constitute the Tao, or “the Way.”38 In fact, all Chinese beliefs, traditions and lifestyles are based upon the principle of opposites seen in the yin and yang.39 One aspires to not go to extremes, but find harmonious balance with nature. Along with Feng Shui, Taoism recognizes the idea of chi and how everything is interrelated through it. Another concept within Feng Shui that is shared with Taoism is the Lo Shu square. This square is the basis of Taoist magical practices and rituals.40

On top of Feng Shui and Taoism exhibiting many similarities, in general, the religions of the far east share many similar premises. The religions of the far east are different than the typically monotheistic religions of the west. Religions in the east tend to be more holistic by looking at how everything around a person affects their life. These religions tend to be tied to nature and the serenity that it brings. On the contrary, religions in the west are typically monotheistic and more structured. These religions are based on a collective experience that is less related to nature and balance than religions in the east.

Considering that religions of the east are considerably different than religions of the west, it becomes increasingly difficult to classify Feng Shui using western ideas, but one classification available for Feng Shui would be as a quasi-religion. Arthur Greil discusses quasi-religions and includes in the category groups that “are deliberately ambiguous with regard to the issue of whether they are sacred or secular in nature.”41 Feng Shui is often categorized in book stores in the ‘home improvement’ category, but Feng Shui is a lot more than merely a type of home improvement plan. Quasi-religions emphasize their secular or spiritual sides, depending which is needed in any given situation. This is done within Feng Shui. One can look at it and see the religious ideas of the energy flows and their effect on all aspects of life. But Feng Shui can also be seen purely as a way to evaluate one’s environment without looking at the religious aspect of it. Therefore we could classify Feng Shui as a quasi-religion.

Another potential classification of Feng Shui is as a client cult. A client cult tends to provide specific tangible compensators for life’s problems.42 Some examples of rewards that Feng Shui offers would be: harmony with the people around you, a job, improved health, and more motivation.

In general, client cults solve people’s problems and provide solutions for a fee. The prevalence of Feng Shui “Masters” might suggest that either Feng Shui is easy to master or many people are conning people with their supposed expertise. There are thousands of people who claim to be Feng Shui “Masters” but true masters are rare. There are perhaps a half-dozen practitioners in the world who can claim mastery of the subject and none have much contact with the general public.43 One could argue that a master is a person who has studied under a master for several years and studied ancient Chinese philosophy and religion. True Masters are concerned primarily with new temple construction, consultation with builders and architectural firms, and city planning.44 There is no real way to decipher whether these “Masters” truly are masters or creating a client cult for their own personal gain.

Using the terms “quasi-religion” and “client cult” to classify Feng Shui is purely to understand Feng Shui better. These conceptualizations in no way are right or wrong, but rather they are more or less useful to someone not familiar with the practices associated with Feng Shui. Unfortunately, there are no scholarly books about Feng Shui in English so we are forced to rely upon the advice and teachings of the numerous “Masters.”45 Regardless of where the information comes from, there is something about Feng Shui that draws people and seems to provide the answers people are looking for.46

Feng Shui is spreading to the west rapidly. As more Asians move to the west, their traditions move along with them. Along with sushi, martial arts, and organic remedies, Feng Shui has crept into western society. One can go into a bookstore and find a dozen books on Feng Shui, not to mention the thousands of websites dedicated to Feng Shui. Eastern ideas have penetrated western society in the same way that western society has penetrated eastern cultures. This is evident by McDonald’s in Japan and skyscrapers in Hong Kong. This cultural exchange will continue to help people all over the world understand each other and understand each other’s beliefs. Feng Shui could lose its cultural identity and become a worldwide tradition.47
REFERENCES

Bainbridge, William Sims and Rodney Stark. 1979. “Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models.” Sociological Analysis. 40, 4: 283-295.

Brandon , S.G.F. ed. 1970. “Feng Shui.” A Dictionary of Comparative Religion. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 282, 283.

Doniger, Wendy. 1999. “Feng Shui.” Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions . Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. 350.

Field, Stephen L., PhD. 1999. “The Numerology of Nine Star Feng shui: A Hetu, Luoshu Resolution of the Mystery of Directional Auspice.” Journal of Chinese Religions . 27: 13-33.

Greil, Arthur L. 1993. “Explorations Along the Sacred Frontier: Notes on Para-Religions, Quasi-Religions, and Other Boundary Phenomena.” Religion and the Social Order. Vol 3A. JAI Press Inc. 153-172.

Hastings, James. 1908. “Feng Shui.” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Vol 5. New York: Scribner 13 vols. 833-835.

Henwood, Belinda. 1999. Feng Shui: How to Create Harmony and Balance in Your Living and Working Environment Pownal, Vermont: Storey Books.

Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui. New York: Alpha Books.

Rossbach, Sarah. 2000. Interior Design With Feng Shui . New York: Penguin Group.

Too, Lillian. 1996 The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.

Too, Lillian. 1999. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Feng Shui. Boston: Element Books.

REFERENCES

• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Field, Stephen L., Phd. Personal Email. 11 April. 2000. Stephen Field was extremely helpful in the information for this site and in conceptualizing Feng Shui in general.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Brandon , S.G.F. ed. 1970. “Feng Shui.” A Dictionary of Comparative Religion. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 282,283.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Hastings, James. 1908. “Feng Shui.” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Vol 5. New York: Scribner. 13 vols. 833-835.
• Ibid.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Rossbach, Sarah. 2000. Interior Design With Feng Shui New York: Penguin Group.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Rossbach, Sarah. 2000. Interior Design With Feng Shui New York: Penguin Group.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too, 1996.
• Rossbach, Sarah. 2000. Interior Design With Feng Shui New York: Penguin Group.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Rossbach, Sarah. 2000. Interior Design With Feng Shui New York: Penguin Group.
• Ibid.
• Henwood, Belinda. 1999. Feng Shui: How to Create Harmony and Balance in Your Living and Working Environment Pownal, Vermont: Storey Books.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.
• Too, Lillian. 1996. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness. Great Britain: Lillian Too.
• Ibid.
• Ibid.
• Greil, Arthur L. 1993. “Explorations Along the Sacred Frontier: Notes on Para- Religions, Quasi-Religions,and Other Boundary Phenomena.” Religion and the Social Order. Vol 3A. JAI Press Inc. 153-172.
• Bainbridge, William Sims and Rodney Stark. 1979. “Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models.” SociologicalAnalysis. 40, 4:283-295.
• Feng Shui Ultimate Resource http://www.qi-whiz.com/
• Ibid.
• Field, Stephen L., Phd. Personal Email. 11 April. 2000.
• Ibid.
• Moran, Elizabeth and Val Biktashev. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui New York: Alpha Books.

Created by Elizabeth Hagerty
For Soc 257: New Religious Movements
University of Virginia
Spring Term, 2000
Last modified: 04/20/01

FETHULLAH GÜLEN MOVEMENT TIMELINE

1938 or 1941 (April 27):  Fethullah Gülen was born in the northeastern city of Erzurum, Turkey. A birth year discrepancy exists throughout biographical sources.

1946-1949:  Gülen received an elementary school education in Turkey’s state-administered education system. Gülen did not complete his elementary education, but later completed an exam equivalency.

1951-1957:  Gülen studied Islam under the tutelage of several different Hanafi religious masters and community leaders, including his father, Ramiz Gülen, as well as Haci Sikti Effendi, Sadi Effendi, and Osman Bektaș.

1957:  Gülen’s first acquaintance with Turkey’s Nur Movement (Nur Hareketi, i.e., followers of Said Nursi) and with the Risal-i Nur Külliyatı (RNK, Epistles of Light Collection – the collected teachings of Said Nursi).

1966:  Gülen moved to İzmir, Turkey where he worked as a religious teacher at Kestanepazarı Mosque as an employee of Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

1966-1971:  Gülen’s popularity began to grow and a community of loyal admirers emerged.

1971 (March 12): Turkey’s second military coup since the establishment of the Republic in 1923. Gülen was arrested for being the alleged leader of an illegal religious community, and although released within days, he was briefly barred from public speaking.

1976:  The first two Gülen Movement (GM) institutions were established: Türkiye Öğretmenler Vakfı (Turkish Teachers Foundation) and Akyazılı Orta ve Yüksek Eğitim Vakfı (The Akyazılı Foundation for Middle and Higher Education).

1979:  The first GM periodical Sızıntı (Trickle), was published.

1980-1983:  Turkey’s third military-led coup d’état and junta took place.

1982:  Yamanlar College (high school) in İzmir and Fatih College (high school) in Istanbul became the first “Gülen-inspired schools” (GISs) in Turkey.

1983-1990: Institutional growth and expansion of GM-affiliated education movement in Turkey (private, for-profit schools and central exam preparatory centers with an emphasis on mathematics and natural/physical sciences) took place.

1986: GM affiliates purchase Zaman Newspaper.

1991-2001:  GISs opened in countries outside Turkey, throughout post-Soviet Central Asia, Russia, and post-Cold War Balkan countries. Later expansion occurred in South and Southeast Asia.

1994:  The Gazeteciler ve Yazarlar Vakfı (GYV, Journalists and Writers Foundation) was established in Istanbul following the “Abant Platform,” a GM-organized conference that brought rival public intellectuals together for several days of “dialogue.” Fethullah Gülen was made the GYV’s honorary president.

1995-1998:  Gülen was active in Turkish public life and opinion. He gave several interviews to a number of widely circulated Turkish news dailies, engaged in high profile meetings with a diverse group of political and religious community leaders, and more widely established himself as an influential religious personality in Turkey.

1994: İş Hayatı Dayanışma Derneği (IȘHAD, The Association for Solidarity in Business Life) was established by a group of small to medium, export-oriented GM-affiliated businessmen.

1996-1997:  Turkey’s Islamist Refah Partisi (RP, Welfare Party) came to power in a coalition with the center-right True Path Party. The RP’s Necmettin Erbakan became Turkey’s first “Islamist” Prime Minister.

1996:  Asya Finans (now Bank Asya) was established by a small group of capitalists affiliated with Fethullah Gülen.

1997 (February 28):  Turkey’s third military-led intervention into politics, known infamously as Turkey’s “post-modern coup,” took place. The RP was forced from power and Erbakan was banned from politics for life.

1997-1999:  There was a Turkish state crackdown on religious community activity. The GM was scrutinized for being a clandestine religious community with alleged ulterior motives.

1998-2016:  GISs opened throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States.

1998 (September 2):  Gülen met with Pope John Paul II for a discussion about world relations between Catholics and Muslims.

1999:  Gülen traveled from Turkey to the United States, according to spokespeople close to him, due to medical necessity.

1999:  Gülen took up residence in the United States, which he has maintained (most recently in Saylorsburg, PA).

1999:  A video broadcast on Turkish television showed Gülen allegedly instructing his followers to “move into the arteries of the system until you reach all the power centers.”

1999: Rumi Forum established in Washington, DC as the first (of many) interfaith and intercultural GM-affiliated outreach and public relations institutions in the United States.

2000:  Gülen indicted on conspiracy charges in absentia in Turkey and an arrest warrant was issued.

2001 (April):  The first academic conference organized by GM-affiliates about Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen Movement took place at Georgetown University.

2002 (November): The “Islamist-roots” Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party) came to power in Turkey.

2002-2011:  An unofficial alliance between the AKP and the GM formed that constituted Turkey’s “conservative democratic” coalition.

2003-2016: A countrywide expansion of GM-affiliated public charter schools took place in the United States. As of July 2023, there were approximately 150 publicly chartered GISs in twenty-six states and in Washington D.C.

2005:  Türkiye Işadamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu (TUSKON, The Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists) was established under the leadership of the GM-affiliated IȘHAD. It became Turkey’s largest business-related non-governmental organization.

2006:  Gülen was acquitted of conspiracy charges in Turkey

2007 (January):  The GM-affiliated Today’s Zaman was first published as Turkey’s third English-language news daily and immediately became its largest in circulation.

2007 (January):  A weapons cache of military-issued arms was found in an apartment in Istanbul. The “Ergenekon investigation” eventually led to an alleged network of retired and active military personnel and social/business elites who conspired to topple the AKP government.

2007-2013:  The Ergenekon trials took place in Turkey, with 275 people, including several retired Turkish generals, issued sentences.

2007:  The Gülen Institute was established at the University of Houston in Houston, TX.

2008:  Fethullah Gülen was named Prospect and Foreign Policy Magazine’s “World’s Most Influential Public Intellectual” via the results of an online poll.  Editors at the two magazines ran series of articles attempting to explain how and why Gülen won.

2008 (November):  Gülen won a long legal battle over his immigration status in the United States and was granted permanent residency (i.e., “green card”).

2011:  A schism between the GM and Turkey’s governing AKP began.

2011(January):  The State Senate of Texas passed Resolution Number 85 recognizing Fethullah Gülen “for his ongoing and inspirational contributions to the promotion of peace and understanding.”

2013 (June-July):  The popular protest known as the “Gezi Park Uprising,” which began in Istanbul, spread to over sixty Turkish cities. Turkish police forces put the protest down with heavy force, which received international condemnation.

2013 (November):  The GM-affiliated Zaman Newspaper reported on the AKP’s intention to reform Turkey’s education system by closing all standardized examination prep schools. The widespread perception was that this was an AKP-led attack on the GM whose affiliates control many of these institutions.

2013 (December 17 and 25):  Arrests of family members of high-ranking AKP officials on charges of bribery, corruption, and graft occurred. These events were framed by Prime Minister Erdoğan and interpreted by Turkish public opinion as a retaliation by GM loyalists in Turkey’s police forces against the AKP.

2014 (January):  Erdoğan rebranded the GM the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETO).

2014 (January)-2016 (July):  Erdogan and the AKP-led Turkish government more forcibly cracked down upon GM-affiliates, individuals, and institutions.

2014 (January):  TUSKON, the GM’s business consortium, collapsed.

2015 (October)-2016 (September):  GM-affiliated Koza-Ipek Holding (cross-sector firm valued in the billions of dollars) was raided, placed under stated control, and eventually seized by Turkey’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (Tasarruf Mevduatı Sigorta Fonu, TMSF).

2015:  All state contracts with GM-affiliated Bank Asya were terminated. Mass divestment from the bank ensued, resulting in seismic losses.

2015:  GM-affiliated Kaynak Corporation was seized by the TMSF and placed under the control of trustees.

2016 (March):  GM-affiliated Feza Media (including Zaman and Today’s Zaman newspapers) was raided and ultimately seized by the TMSF.

2016 (July 15):  Turkey experienced a failed coups d’état when alleged Gülenist actors in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) briefly seized Ataturk Airport, tool over a handful of news organizations, and commenced an airstrike on the Turkish Parliament building.

2016 (July 15)–2018 (July 15):  Turkey implemented a State of Emergency following the coup attempt that temporarily lifted Turkey’s responsibilities to protect the human rights of suspected “terrorists.” Erdoğan’s aim to destroy the GM in Turkey received legal cover to forgo due process for the accused.

2016 (July 18):  Bank Aysa’s assets frozen and all depositors designated “aiders and abettors to terrorists.” Bank Asya’s banking license revoked on July 22, and all remaining assets fell under the authority of the TMSF.

2016 (August):  GM-affiliated Dumankaya Holding was seized by the TMSF (and then liquidated in 2018) along with the Naksan Holding (liquidated in 2021). By the end of 2016, approximately 500 allegedly GM-affiliated companies had been seized by the Turkish state and placed under the authority of TMSF.

2017 (April):  Referendum held to facilitate a shift in Turkish governance from a Parliamentary system with executive power divided between a Prime Minister and a President, to a “presidential system” that united the powers of these two offices. The referendum narrowly passed setting the stage for a Presidential election in 2018.

2018 (June):  Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won the Presidential elections to become Turkey’s twelfth president since 1923, but the first to wield consolidated executive power since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died in 1938.

2022 (January):  All Kaynak assets were sold and liquidated by TMSF.

2016 (July)–2023 (July):  Over 170 media outlets in Turkey closed.

2023 (June):  Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a second five-year presidential term.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

For years, actors associated with the community of Fethullah Gülen [Image at right] referred to themselves by the moniker Hizmet, the Turkish word for “service” [to/for others]. Individuals were designated “hizmet ihasanları” (people of service). Critical observers, by contrast, preferred to designate Gülen’s followers as “the Cemaat” [Jamaat], an Arabic-derived term meaning community or assembly. More polemical titles for affiliated individuals included, Gülenciler (“Gülenists”), “Fethullacılar” (Fetullahists).

Due to the loaded connotation of these terms, before the GM’s great fall, between 2012 and 2018, dispassionate observers (academicians, journalists, politicians, or policy analysts) preferred a more general term, “the Gülen Movement” (GM). Notwithstanding how it was referred, before 2012, Hizmet/the Cemaat/the GM signified thousands of institutions and millions of individuals in Turkey, together with affiliates in over 120 countries throughout the world. Although anchored upon a foundation of math and science-focused private (or privately managed) education, the GM also comprised initiatives in mass media, international trade, finance, information communication technologies, construction, legal services, accounting, and outreach/public relations. Before what GM apologists refer to as Erdoğan’s and the Adalet ve Kalkınma Parti’s (AKP, Justice and Development Party) post-2012 “witch hunt” against GM enterprises and affiliates, this Islamist community, with modest beginnings in the late 1960s, grew to become Turkey’s largest and most influential collective mobilizations.

The GM began as a splinter group of a pre-existing community, the Nur, followers of “Bediüzzaman” (“Wonder of the Age”) Said Nursi (d. 1960). [Image at right] As a teenager, Fethullah Gülen was exposed to Said Nursi’s commentary on the Qur’an, the Risale-i Nur Külliyatı (RNK, Epistles of Light Collection). Composed of essays and answers to questions written in the form of letters to his students, the RNK espoused a modernist interpretation of Qur’anic teachings. Among the most central of these teachings was an articulation about the inherent harmony between Islam and modern science, together with an emphatic plea for Muslims to become educated in modern knowledge, albeit with grounding in Islamic morality (Mardin 1989). Thousands of pages long, the RNK became a central source of knowledge for millions of pious-minded Turks who were subjected to Turkey’s process of social secularization during the formative decades of the Republic (1923-1950). By the time of Nursi’s death in 1960, the Nur represented millions of people in several major cities. In the RNK, and in the social networks created by Nur reading groups (dershane), followers of Nursi forged a collective source of identity that allowed them to harmonize their conservative identities as rural to urban migrants with the demands of modern Turkish nationalism and a growing industrial market economy.

After Nursi’s passing, the Nur splintered into several groups, each contesting with others about how best to disseminate Nursi’s teachings. Although among the youngest of the Nur offshoots, by the late 1980s Gülen’s admirers had rearticulated much of the Nur’s organizational habits and had applied them toward the establishment of a countrywide education, business, financial, and mass media network. By the late 1990s, the GM had become, according to some observers, the largest and most influential of all Nur communities (Hendrick 2013; Yavuz 2003a; Yavuz and Esposito eds. 2003; Yavuz 2013) and according to others, a distinct socio-political entity (Turam 2006).

Known as “Hocaeffendi” (“Esteemed Teacher”) to those who revere him, Fethullah Gülen was born in 1938 or in 1941 in the Northwestern Turkish City of Erzurum. The year of his birth is under contest, as several internally produced sources indicate 1938, while others indicate 1941. Loyalists point to this discrepancy as being of little consequence by suggesting that his parents were late registering their son’s birth, and that his age is of little importance. Hendrick (2013), however, discusses this discrepancy as merely the first instance of an entrenched pattern of “strategic ambiguity” that is employed by GM activists when discussing their leader and his organization (Chapter 3 and Chapter 8). These include how and when Gülen is to be considered a community leader, how and when he is to be considered an intellectual, a teacher, a social movement figure, or simply a humble and reclusive writer whose ideas change with circumstance. Similarly, when a person, a business, a school, a news outfit, or an outreach organization is either highlighted or denied as being part of the GM depended not only upon context, but also upon who was inquiring and for what reasons. Discussed in more detail below, the ambiguity with which individuals and institutions connect with one another in a worldwide social network is at the same time one of the GM’s primary strengths as well as one of its inevitable weaknesses.

Beginning in the late 1960s as a splinter group of Nursi followers, by the late 1970s, Fethullah Gülen was attracting large crowds. Around this time, his followers operated several student dormitories in Western Turkey, and audiocassettes of his sermons were becoming more widely disseminated. Between 1980 and 1983, during modern Turkey’s longest military junta, Gülen’s followers found opportunity in private education (Hendrick 2013; Yavuz 2003). To avoid state suppression as a clandestine religious community, they restructured several pre-existing dormitories to function as private, for-profit educational institutions. In 1982, Yamanlar High School in İzmir and Fatih High School in Istanbul became the first “Gülen-inspired schools” (GISs) in Turkey. Over the course of the 1980s, dozens more institutions were opened. In addition to private elementary and secondary schools, the GM enterprise expanded quickly into the field of standardized examination preparation. Called dershaneler (“lesson houses”), the GM eventually cornered a niche in cram course curriculum (Hendrick 2013). When students at GM-affiliated dershaneler began to routinely test well on Turkey’s centralized high school and university placement exams, and when high school students began to routinely win national scholastic competitions, it became difficult for critics in Turkey to support their claims of religious brainwashing at GISs, or for them to support their accusations that the GM was nothing more than a clandestine Islamist group aiming to overthrow Turkey’s secular republic (Turam 2006).

Success in secular math/science and exam-based education created opportunities to expand into other sectors. A youth-oriented organizational model blossomed in the 1980s when hundreds of thousands of bright students were recruited into the movement through the mechanism of exam prep schools. Aspiring university students were encouraged by “ağabeyler” (“older brothers”) to dedicate much of their time toward preparation for Turkey’s centralized university entrance exam. Students with ties to the GM network had access to instruction outside class at GM-affiliated student dormitories and apartments called “işık evleri” (“houses of light”). If they scored well on the exam, students would earn a spot at a Turkish university. After doing so, students were contacted by their former cram course teachers (or perhaps by a house ağabey) about their plans for room and board while at university, wherein, they were offered subsidized living at a GM-affiliated işık evi. While living at an işık evi, university students were not only encouraged to keep up with their studies, but also to acquaint themselves with Gülen’s and Nursi’s teachings.

Connecting students to a growing network of schools, education-related businesses, media companies, information and communication companies, publishing firms, exporters, and finance sector workers allowed the GM to create for itself a growing pool of human resources from which to draw to create a vast economic network of suppliers, clients, and patrons. Collectively, the GM’s success in a variety of sectors created a successful variation of “market Islam” in Turkey (Hendrick 2013). GISs were not only outfitted with teachers via a vast social network, but also with media and IT equipment, textbooks, and stationary goods via affiliated firms. Owners of these firms maintained close social ties to the GM, and often supported the GM’s mission by subsidizing student rent at işık evleri, by providing scholarships to students to attend a private GIS, or by providing startup capital for a new GM venture. In 1986, for instance, GM-affiliates bought a pre-existing newspaper, Zaman Gazetesi, and once Turkey liberalized broadcast media in the early 1990s, the same media firm began its first television venture, Samanyolu TV. Both ventures were begun with start-up capital secured via GM social networks orbiting GM-affiliated schools, dorms, and apartments.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the GM seized upon the Turkish state’s effort to cultivate relations with post-Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Balkans. GISs were begun with Turkish start-up capital throughout both regions, and affiliated business ventures followed. To facilitate trade with these regions, an export-oriented trade association emerged, İş Hayatı Dayanışma Derneği (IȘHAD, The Association for Solidarity in Business Life) in 1994). A shipping and transport firm was established around the same time, as was an “Islamic” (interest-free, profit sharing) financial institution (Asya Finans, later Bank Asya), which was established in 1996).

With greater size and influence came a greater need to frame a public image that could be perceived as productive and worthy of social prestige. In a public relations campaign that began in 1994, another wing of the GM’s operational ethos was born in the Turkish mountain town of Abant. There, a group of GM-affiliated outreach activists gathered several Turkey’s most widely read news journalists and opinion columnists, as well as a number of academicians and writers from a variety of fields. Known thereafter as “the Abant Platform,” this meeting was envisioned as an opportunity for a diverse group of thinkers to discuss some of the more troubling aspects of Turkish political society. It spawned the emergence of the primary GM-affiliated think tank and outreach organization, The Gazeticiler ve Yazarlar Vakfı (GYV,

Journalists and Writers Foundation). Every year since, and often several times a year, the Abant Platform and the GYV have organized a variety of policy-oriented discussion forums and academic conferences on a wide range of topics. Making overtures beyond Turkey, in 1997 Gülen arranged a meeting with Pope John Paul II to discuss Muslim/Christian relations. [Image at right] Images of this meeting became a symbolic reference for Gülen’s handlers to point to when they discussed their sincerity in the fields of interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

The GM’s expansion in the 1990s came at a time when a more traditional variation of “political Islam” was on the rise under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan, who led his Refah Partisi (RP, Welfare Party) to several municipal electoral victories in 1995 and to national victory in 1996. The RP formed a coalition government with the center right True Path Party, and Erbakan became Turkey’s first “Islamist” Prime Minster. Focusing its efforts outside party politics, the GM was able to navigate RP’s rise and abrupt fall during Turkey’s “post-modern coup” in 1997. Notwithstanding, the GM did not come out of this period unscathed. In what became infamously known as “The February 28 process,” Turkey’s military forced Erbakan from power by threatening a military coup. In the two years that followed, the state cracked down on all forms of faith-based social and political organizing. In this context Fethullah Gülen fled to the United States in early 1999. According to his spokespeople, the reason was for medical treatment for a chronic condition. Whether for medical reasons or not, shortly after his departure from Turkey, Gülen was indicted in absentia for being the leader of an alleged criminal organization that aimed to overthrow the Turkish state. He has lived in the U.S. ever since.

Shortly after Gülen’s move to the U.S., GM activists created GYV-modeled outreach and dialogue institutions throughout the country. Now found throughout the world where the GM manages GISs and where GM-affiliates do business, the U.S. hosts the most influential of these institutions outside Turkey

(and the most in number). Between 1999 and 2010, the most influential of these institutions were the Rumi Forum in Washington D. C. (established in 1999), the Dialogue Institute in Houston (established in 2002), the Niagara Foundation in Chicago (established in 2004), and the Pacifica Institute in Southern California (established in 2003). Each of these organizations organized satellite efforts in smaller cities and college towns. In 2010, over forty separate GM-affiliated interfaith and outreach institutions in the U.S. consolidated under an umbrella organization, [Image at right] The Turkic American Alliance, which continues as the primary public face of the GM in the U.S.

In 2008, a federal court in Pennsylvania granted Gülen permanent residency in the U.S. in a decision that overturned a previous denial by the Department of Homeland Security. In the same year, Gülen was named “the world’s most influential public intellectual” in an online poll conducted by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. [Image at right] Although critiqued by the editors of both magazines as illustrating little more than a keen ability to manipulate the outcomes of an online poll, between the years of 2007 and 2012 the GM reached an apex in prestige and influence in Turkey and in countries around the world.

Indeed, throughout the 2000s, efforts on the part of GM activists in the U.S. and Western Europe to present Fethullah Gülen as a viable alternative to more confrontational articulations of Muslim political identity produced much reward. Employing tactics detailed by Hendrick (2013) and Hendrick (2018), GM activists visited thousands of influential people in American and European academia, mass media, faith communities, state appointment, elected politics, and private business. They organized subsidized leisure travel for groups of these people to Turkey, where professors, politicians, journalists, and religious congregation leaders toured Istanbul, İzmir, Konya, and other places rich with Anatolian culture and history.  During these trips, these “recruited sympathizers” also learned about the GM’s activities in education, media, and business.

Exemplifying a grassroots strategy to recruit sympathy from people of influence, by 2012, the GM had subsidized over 6,000 trips to Turkey from the U.S. and had organized over a dozen conferences whose contributing authors wrote essays promoting the GM’s efforts. Most of these conferences resulted in book publications (Barton, Weller, and Yılmaz 2013; Esposito and Yılmaz 2010; Hunt and Aslandoğan 2007; Yavuz and Esposito 2003; Yurtsever 2008).

This dramatic expansion of GM was soon followed by an equally dramatic fall. Following the cessation of Turkey’s Ergenekon and Sledgehammer trials[1] and the subsequent subordination of the Turkish military to civilian authority, the GM and the AKP competed to fill Turkey’s power vacuum.  In allegations that are emphatically denied by GM leaders and in GM media sources, between 2003 and 2011 GM affiliates took control of much of the Turkish judiciary and police forces throughout the country. Following the end of the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases in 2013, GM forces in both institutions are believed to have shifted their investigative attention from the old guard to the AKP. When Prime Minster Erdoğan discovered wiretaps in his office in late 2012, it was widely assumed that the GM was somehow involved.

Rumblings of tensions became deafening in November of 2013 when the GM-affiliated Zaman published a story about the AKP’s plan to close all standardized exam prep schools (dershaneler) as part of a larger education reform. As the primary source of recruitment for the GM, this move constituted an existential attack on the GM’s ability to sustain itself in the long term. On December 17, 2013, Istanbul prosecutors with alleged links to the GM retaliated by arresting the sons of three AKP cabinet ministers, as well as several state bureaucrats and businessmen on charges of graft and corruption. Also arrested was an Azeri-Iranian businessman who was accused of orchestrating a gold smuggling operation between Turkey and Iran. Evidence included shoeboxes of cash found in suspects’ homes, and phone recordings that, among other things, implicated several AKP officials, including Erdoğan’s son.

Erdoğan was quick to slam what he called “the parallel state” (referring to the GM) for attempting to subvert the AKP. Hundreds of police personnel were fired, and dozens of prosecutors were removed. Having stalled the investigation into AKP corruption, much of the audio-recording evidence that led to the December 2013 arrests was leaked to an anonymous source that posted numerous voice recordings on Twitter. AKP officials (including Erdoğan himself) were implicated in graft, bribery, and corruption. With municipal elections upcoming in March, Erdoğan proclaimed that democracy was under siege in Turkey. Erdoğan subsequently blocked Turkish access to Twitter for two weeks. Although the ban was overturned, the March 30 elections came and went, and the AKP was able to claim overwhelming victory (forty-six percent).

Immediately after the elections, Erdoğan stepped up his fight against the GM’s “parallel state.” His regime continued to purge police departments and prosecutors’ offices, encouraged public divestment from the GM’s Bank Asya, blocked state contracts with GM-affiliated firms, and canceled the state’s support for GM-sponsored events.  More personally, Prime Minster Erdoğan filed civil lawsuits against several GM-affiliated journalists for libel. For his part, Gülen responded with emphatic denials that he or his admirers had anything to do with illegal wiretappings, with stirring up public unrest, or with orchestrating criminal investigations.

Why did these two forces turn on each other? Somewhat confusing for some, it is important to emphasize that the GM and the AKP were partners in a decade-long effort of domestic and foreign policy reform. Their worldviews were so aligned that by the time of the AKP’s third term, analysts pointed to the fact that “Gülenism” had become official state ideology in Turkey (Tuğal 2013). Among their shared goals included an effort to dismantle the Turkish military’s oversight of elected governance and an effort to carve out a position for affiliated capital in Turkey’s big capital markets. Moreover, both aimed to settle old scores with secular party leaders and media moguls, and both sought to facilitate pious revivalism in Turkey’s public sphere. The fissure within Turkey’s Islamist power structure thus had little to do with ideas and everything to do with power.  What this struggle proved, however, was that however influential the GM had become in Turkey, its collective influence was no match for the institutional power of the AKP-led Turkish state.

On July 15, 2016, those who long-feared Fethullah Gülen were seemingly validated when a faction of the TSK perpetrated a coup attempt that left hundreds dead, and a country in trauma.  It is impossible, without access to evidence and years of investigation, to know the specifics of the GM’s responsibility for the horrific events of July 15, 2016. For their part, GM actors emphatically deny both their mobilization as a “parallel state,” and any role whatsoever in the coup attempt (Dumanlı 2015). Indeed, beginning over two years before July 2016, and continuing with vigor ever since, the GM’s public relations agenda outside Turkey aimed to refocus world attention to Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies, to the lack of due process for those arrested in the context of the coup investigations, and to the seizure of property, torture, and other human rights abuses (e.g., Advocates of a Silenced Turkey (Advocates of Silenced Turkey website 2023) and the Stockholm Center for Freedom (Stockholm Center for Freedom website 2017). Notwithstanding, the Turkish public widely believes the GM to be responsible for the failed putsch (Aydıntaşbaş 2016). Having targeted Gülen and the GM for several years leading up to July 2016, Erdogan was quick to assign guilt himself, and the GM has been on the run ever since.

In the two years leading up to July 2016, Erdoğan set his sights on destroying the GM.  After the successful 2014 reform of Turkey’s education system, the GM’s primary method of recruitment was dismantled. After this, the government began seizing GM-affiliated holding firms, and in turn, discrediting GM-affiliated enterprises.  In early 2014, the GM’s Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (Türkiye İşadamları ve Sanayiciler Konfederasyonu, TUSKON) collapsed because of mass divestment. Next to fall was Koza-Ipek Holding, a massive Turkish firm, and one of the largest that backed GM initiatives. Active in mining, construction, energy, and mass news and television media, on the eve of its seizure Koza-Ipek was valued in the billions. In late October 2015, Turkish authorities raided Koza-Ipek and confiscated its over twenty companies, including Bügün and Milet newspapers and Bügün TV. After the coup attempt, the Koza-Ipek Group was placed under the control of the state Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (Tasarruf Mevduatı Sigorta Fonu, TMSF).

Arguably more significant in the months before the coup attempt was the state seizure of Feza Media Group, the GM’s central media conglomerate and the parent of its flagship Zaman and Today’s Zaman newspapers, Samanyolu TV, Aksiyon (political/economic magazine) publications, and over a dozen other magazines, news agencies, periodicals, papers, and websites.  Constituting a near fatal blow to the GM’s ability to control the narrative; in March 2016 state police raided Zaman. Shortly following the 2016 coup attempt, State Decree Law Number 668 declared as follows: “the newspapers and periodicals…. which belong to, or which are connected to, or affiliated with, the Gülenist Terror Organization (FETÖ/PDY), have been shut down” (ASS 2018:18).

Following the coup attempt, over 1000 schools affiliated with the GM were seized and closed. Shortly after, Boydak Holding was seized and its leaders arrested on charges of aiding and abetting terrorism. Boydak employed over 15,000 people. In September 2016, the firm came under the control of the TMSF. In July 2018, Memduh Boydak was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Then came Bank Asya. In 2015, all state contracts were canceled leading to mass divestment. Two days after the July 2016 coup attempt, all Bank Asya’s assets were frozen, and its license revoked. Bank Asya depositors were declared aiders and abettors to terrorists. Kaynak Corporation, which included over thirty companies and was the central firm in the GM’s global education enterprise, was also assigned trustees by the Turkish government in 2015 and eventually came under the control of the TMSF. Holding, a massive conglomerate active in energy, plastics, construction, and textiles along with Dumankaya Holding also went down. Both firms were seized in 2016 and placed under the authority of the TMSF. The latter was liquidated in 2018, the former in late 2021. On the eve of the AK Party-GM conflict, the TMSF’s total assets stood at (TY) 19,726 billion (approximately $850 million). By March 2020, that number had grown to (TY) 97,573 billion ($4.2 billion) (SDIF 2021). By January 2022, over 850 companies alleged to be GM-affiliated were seized by Turkish authorities and placed under the control of the TMSF with assets totally over  $5,000,000,000 (SDIF 2021).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Gülen’s teachings are disseminated in print and online via hundreds of books, essay collections, periodicals, and websites.  Although the entirety of his teachings is available in print in Turkish, a large body of his work (although often incomplete) is translated into English, and to a lesser degree into dozens of other world languages.

The central refrain in Gülen’s teachings is his call for “volunteers,” who are “filled with love for all of humanity,” “ideal humans” who represent what Gülen calls “the generation of hope.”  This generation’s task is to cultivate a future “golden generation” (altın nesil) that will usher in a time love, tolerance, and harmony, and by default, that will create the conditions for Day of Judgment:

What we need now is not ordinary people, but rather people devoted to divine reality . . . people who by putting into practice their thoughts, lead first their own nation, and then all people, to enlightenment and to help them find God . . . dedicated spirits . . . (Gülen 2004:105-10).

GM-affiliated teachers, donating businessmen, outreach activists, journalists, and others constitute Gülen’s “blessed cadre” whose members are asked to dedicate their time, money, and efforts to create the conditions for the coming of the golden generation. Throughout his many essays on the topic, Gülen refers to the current “generation of hope” as an “army of light” and as “soldiers of truth.”

The “truth” that Gülen’s soldiers promote is parallel to the “truth” promoted by religious revivalists the world over. Gülen views humanity as having strayed from the path of morality and divinely inspired wisdom, which he views as a crisis stemming from empty consumerism (materialism), carnality, and individualism. Helping Turkish and world society recover from moral decline requires aksiyon insanları (humans of action) and hizmet insanları (humans of service) who can offer the coming generation irşad (moral guidance). Such guidance is presented at the micro level by elders (ağabeyler) and young people in the Gülen community, at the mezzo level in classrooms and in community social groups (sohbetler), and at the macro level via publishing and mass media. Collectively, the math and science-based education delivered at GISs in Turkey and around the world, the news and entertainment media published and broadcast via GM-affiliated media brands, the financial products offered by Bank Asya, the relief work provided by Kimse Yok Mu? and the thousands of services provided by GM-affiliated businesses collectively constitute hizmet (service) to humanity.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Turkey is a majority Sunni Muslim society. Underneath the state’s control of Islam, however, is a deep-rooted tradition of Sufism in Turkey. The Nakşibendi (Naqshbandi), the Mevlevi, Rifai, and others all have long histories in Anatolia. Both facets of historical Islam inform much of the worldview, organization, and ritualistic practice employed by Fethullah Gülen and the GM, but much of its collective practice is also emblematic of “invented tradition” that is somewhat unique to the GM case.

Teachers, authors, editors, journalists, businessmen, and bankers closely associated with the GM often live modern, but pious lifestyles. Most GM-affiliated individuals and institutions thrive in Turkey’s competitive market economy, and its schools have established a brand for themselves by emphasizing math, science, and business-related education. That being stated, different levels of affiliation in the community illustrate different levels of religiosity. Whether or not individuals pray five times a day (namaz; salat), whether they attend Friday prayers, avoids social vices like smoking cigarettes, or (if a woman) choose to cover varies throughout the GM community. The more “connected” someone is, however, the more likely he or she is encouraged to lead a more conservative lifestyle. Such encouragement happens but way of example set by others and typically begins when individuals are recruited to live in an işık evi while attending university. It is at these houses where someone typically attends his or her first sohbet.

In Islam, sohbet (pl. sohbetler) historically refers to a religiously oriented conversation between a Sufi sheikh and his disciple. The term has a pedagogical connotation, and the aim is typically to inculcate correct interpretations about living in accordance with Divine Will. In the GM, however, sohbet refers to the practice of meeting regularly in small groups to read the teachings of Fethullah Gülen and Said Nursi. The GM sohbet is, in many ways, a reformulation of a practice begun by followers of Said Nursi who, during the middle part of the twentieth century, would meet in small groups for reading and discussion of Nursi’s banned RNK. Not to be confused with exam prep schools in Turkey, Nur reading groups were called “dershane” and over the years became a regular identifying practice of the Nur. Continuing this practice as sohbet, the GM rationalized dershane meetings by gender and age, and repurposed them as spaces for socialization (Hendrick 2013).

Sohbetler are administered by senior students at GM işık evleri, by “spiritual coordinators” at GM-affiliated companies, and by respected ağabeyler/ablalar (elder brothers/sisters) and “hocalar” (teachers) in neighborhoods throughout Turkey and among GM communities throughout the world.  Sociologically, “the GM sohbet reproduces an alternative public sphere that links individuals in Istanbul and London, Baku and Bangkok, New York and New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Timbuktu in a shared ritual of reading, socializing, money transfer, and communication exchange” (Hendrick 2013:116).

Hizmet and Himmet: The GM aims to cultivate ihlas (approval seeking from God) among all people for all daily actions, Yavuz (2013) explains that “Gülen not only seeks to mobilize the hearts and minds of millions of Turks but also succeeds in convincing them to commit to the mission of creating a better and more humane society and polity” (2013:77). This means that GM loyalists strive to mold individuals into agents of social change in accordance with socially conservative Muslim values and ethics. Gülen teaches that such change necessitates passive engagement with the social and political world, and in so doing; he asks hizmet insanları (people of service) to convince others of the “truth” by acting as models for emulation. The Turkish concept that anchors this method of recruitment to the GM mission is temsil, which Tittensor (2014) translates as “representation” (2014:75). How best to “represent” what Gülen calls “ideal humanity” is to offer hizmet (service) to others as an actor in the GM network.

In addition to “serving” the community through hizmet, individuals are also encouraged to serve the community though himmet (religiously motivated financial donation). In a refrain uttered throughout the community, individuals “give according to their means,” which refers to the fact that a while an editor at a GM-affiliated publishing firm may donate the equivalent of $300 a month to the “spiritual coordinator” in his company, a wealthy business owner may donate ten or twenty times that amount at a himmet donation gathering (Ebaugh 2010; Hendrick 2013).

The practices of himmet and hizmet are most vividly exemplified by university graduates who “volunteer” to teach at GISs in countries around the world. Now a common option for young post grads in Turkey, GM teachers typically travel to teach for comparatively little pay and are expected to work long hours, extra hours, and on weekends, and although paid a salary, they are still expected to regularly donate himmet. Likely having received some benefit from the GM earlier in life, however, (e.g., free tutoring, subsidized rent, etc.), teachers at GISs often report that they are not only willing but honored to “serve” as teachers throughout the world and to donate some portion of their income back to the community. In his writings, Fethullah Gülen often refers to teachers as GISs in Turkey and around the world as “self-sacrificing heroes.”

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Leadership in the GM is administered via a gendered, elder-based, and ethno-nationalist system of authority that extends throughout its worldwide network. [Image at right] At the top is Fethullah Gülen who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania on a multi-house compound called the Golden Generation Retreat and Worship Center.  From here, Gülen administers the GM as a passive charismatic leader who maintains direct communication only with a relatively small number of close confidants and students. These men, together with senior figures at GM institutions around the world, constitute the core of the GM’s organization. Affectionately called hocalar (teachers) these leaders comprise the GM’s core community (cemaat), a worldwide social network of totally devoted students of Hocaefendi Fethullah Gülen.

In addition to those who remained physically close to Gülen in the Poconos, before 2012 others directed or managed one of the dozens of dialogue and outreach organizations in the U.S., Europe, or Turkey. Others were writers who authored books about Fethullah Gülen, while others, before the AKP-led destruction of the GM in Turkey (see below) organized the various efforts of the GYV in Istanbul or published regular columns in Zaman, Today’s Zaman, Bügün, Taraf, or other GM-affiliated news publications (Hendrick 2013). All were men, and most traced their connection to Gülen’s early community of loyalists in Edirne and İzmir. Since a failed coup-attempt in July 2016 that the Turkish government blames on the GM, many of these figures are now in prison in Turkey for allegedly participating in a terrorist organization or living in exile.

Although thousands of women identify with the GM, teach (or taught) at GISs around the world, and participated in various aspects of social and business services at one or another GM-affiliated institution, the cemaat level of affiliation has always maintained a strict degree of gender privilege (Turam 2006). Moreover, despite its transnational engagement and despite the thousands of non-Turkish friends and admirers, the cemaat level of affiliation also maintains a strictly Turkish and Turkic bias.

A once-removed level of affiliation consists of a wide network of GM “friends” (arkadaşlar). Before the AKP-GM fallout began in 2012, and especially before the failed coup of July 2016 and the years of investigations since, this level of connectivity included hundreds of thousands of businesses that engaged with GM institutions in the marketplace as patrons and clients. A large portion of their employees (although not all) donated regularly to the movement (himmet), and many regularly attended sohbet.  Although loyal to the movement, however, arkadaş social networks extended in unaffiliated directions thus distinguishing this level from the cemaat. Although business owners were likely to maintain very close relations with the GM, there was likely not a coordinator who collected himmet from employees. Indeed, some employees may have had very little to do with the GM at all. At this level, himmet was donated at regular collection meetings that were organized via social networks, rather than at a place of business, and hizmet was conceptualized less as a totalizing responsibility. Arkadaşlar might be businessmen, policemen, lawyers, academicians, or journalists. Some were employed in international trade, while others owned small shops or restaurants, or perhaps worked in information technologies, engineering, or government. Larger in size, the arkadaşlar level of affiliation constitutes most people who received an exam prep education at a GM cram school, who lived in GM-affiliated işık evleri while attending university, and who the GM relies upon for himmet.

Beyond arkadaşlar was a level of GM supporters and sympathizers (yandaşlar). This level of affiliation consisted both of Turks and non-Turks. Many were politicians; others were academicians. Some were journalists or appointed state bureaucrats; others were students or parents of students at GISs; some were people who benefitted from GM-facilitated foreign trade. From education to intercultural outreach/dialogue, from journalism to relief services, yandaşlar supported the GM’s efforts wherever they lived. Although not dedicated, many helped however they could. This may have come in the form of an education board member voting in favor of a charter school application in Toledo, Ohio after visiting Turkey on a sponsored dialogue tour, or it may come in the form of a labor rights attorney agreeing to write a sympathetic account of Gülen’s legal struggles in Turkey and the U.S. (Harrington 2011). Whoever and wherever they were (and wherever they remain), yandaşlar promoted the collective action of Turkey’s GM because they agreed that the service (hizmet) GM activists provide for world society is commendable.

The final stratum of affiliation was perhaps the largest, the weakest linked, and the most important for the GM’s continued expansion. This was the level of the unaware consumer. Most students at GISs in countries around the world, most readers of English language journalism produced by GM media firms, and countless numbers of Turkish and transnational consumers of products manufactured on the GM commodity chain remain completely unaware of the GM as a social entity

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Organized in a graduated network of affiliation, each of the periphery layers of GM organization (friends, sympathizers, and unaware consumers) have been dramatically reduced in number and impact since the failed coup of July 2016.  What happened?

Since the GM’s inception, many of Turkey’s news columnists, public intellectuals, and politicians have asserted that GISs function as institutions for brainwashing Turkey’s youth in the interests of Gülen’s Islamist agenda. Turam (2006) begins with an exemplary narrative of this long-standing tension in Turkish public discourse. The long-standing claim was that Gülen emphasized education because to achieve his aims, he required loyalists to infiltrate the Turkish military, the country’s police forces, the judiciary, and other strategic institutions of state to purge the Turkish Republic from the inside out.  To find their way into these institutions they needed to compete in a competitive labor market, which required an education centered network of schools, media, cross-sector service providers, and effective public relations.

Over the years, Gülen and his loyalists refuted these accusations by claiming that in a democracy anyone should be able to pursue career objectives according to their skills and interests. If policemen, lawyers, judges, and other bureaucrats personally affiliated with a religious community or social network, that should remain their personal business and should not implicate them in clandestine behavior. Despite such statements, however, arguably the most difficult challenge for Fethullah Gülen and GM leaders was to maintain a stated “non-political” identity. This task proved especially challenging when the GM formed a political and economic alliance with the AKP in the early 2000s.

In this context, it is important to emphasize that the AKP and the GM emerged as a coalition of like-minded social forces whose leaders pointed to the same historical enemies (e.g., secular Kemalists, “leftists,” etc.) as having stalled the political, economic, and social agency of their respective constituents (i.e., pious Turks). Indeed, during the first two terms of the AKP’s rule in Turkey (2002–2011), AKP leaders (even Prime Minster Erdoğan himself) regularly endorsed GM-sponsored events (e.g., the Abant Platform, The Turkish Language Olympics, TUSKON trade summits, etc.) and regularly praised the achievement of GM-affiliated “Turkish schools” on the visits to Thailand, Kenya, South Africa, and elsewhere. Likewise, until late-2013 GM affiliated media and outreach organizations regularly voiced support for AKP-led political initiatives as representing the maturation of Turkish democracy. Public companies such as Turkish Airlines became sponsors of GM-organized social and cultural events (e.g., Turkish Language Olympics, etc.), By 2011, several figures with known GM affinities ran and won as AK Party candidates (e.g., Hakan Şükür, Ertuğrul Günay, İdris Bal, Naim Şahin, Erdal Kalkan, Muhammad Çetin, among others).

After the AKP’s third electoral victory in 2011, however, overlapping interests between the GM and the AKP (e.g., conservative social politics, economically liberal development views, interests in removing the Turkish military’s oversight in Turkish politics and society) were no longer enough to hold maintain a coalition. The result was a bureaucratic, legal, and public relations war that continues. According to several observers, the beginning of the conflict extends back to 2010, while others point to one or another significant event in 2011 or 2012. Examples of tensions include Gülen’s public disagreement with the AKP’s handling of the infamous “Mavi Marmara Incident,” the 2012 subpoena of Hakan Fidan (the AKP-appointed Chief of National Intelligence) by a prosecutor with alleged ties to the GM, and public disagreement between Gülen and Prime Minster about the handling of the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013. Speculation about a brewing feud was proven correct toward the end of 2013 when these two forces more forcefully collided.

In 2023, the GM exists as a charismatic community in exile (Angey 2018; Tittensor 2018; Taş 2022; Wartmough and Öztürk 2018; Tee 2021). In countries around the world, schools have shuttered, thousands have been deported, and thousands more continue to make their way to countries still friendly to GM initiatives (e.g., the U.S., England, Australia, Sweden, others). In the United States, especially, the GM’s expansion in charter school education has continued unhindered. Originally hired directly by Erdoğan to investigate GM activities outside Turkey (with an emphasis on the US), Robert Amsterdam and Partners, LLP is an international law firm based in Canada that has published two books on the GM’s activities in the United States. Empire of Deceit (2017) and Web of Influence: Empire of Deceit Series Book 2 (2022) together present a damning critique of the GM’s use and alleged abuse of charter education funding via a pattern of self-dealing employed to create a highly valuable subeconomy that caters primarily to GM interests at the expense of students and teachers.

The GM has weathered these critiques in Utah, Georgia, Arizona, California, and elsewhere. Some schools have lost charter funding, others have endured tighter state oversight. At this writing, however, the GM continues to operate over 150 charter schools in the U.S. and is linked with dozens more affiliated enterprises in technology, engineering, law, real estate, construction, and other sectors. And much to Turkey’s dismay, two U.S. administrations have refused the Turkish state request to extradite the retired imam.

Although the movement that bears his name has been debased and defunded, many of its organizations outside Turkey are maintaining. For his part, Gülen is ill, late in years, spends most of his time inside his Pennsylvania compound, [Image at right] and survives today as a wanted man. Thus is the rise and fall of Fethullah Gülen.

IMAGES

Image #1: Fethullah Gülen.
Image #2: Said Nursi.
Image #3: Meeting between Fethullah Gülen and Pope John Paul II.
Image #4: Turkic American Alliance logo.
Image #5: Gülen Movement logo.
Image #6: Gülen’s residence, Golden Generation Retreat and Worship Center, in  Pennsylvania.

REFERENCES

Advocates for a Silenced Turkey (ASS). 2018. A Predatory Approach to Individual RIGHTS: ERDOGAN GOVERNMENT’S UNLAWFUL SEIZURES OF PRIVATE PROPERTIES AND COMPANIES IN TURKEY. Accessed from https://silencedturkey.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/A-PREDATORY-APPROACH-TO-INDIVIDUAL-RIGHTS-ERDOGAN-GOVERNMENT’S-UNLAWFUL-SEIZURES-OF-PRIVATE-PROPERTIES-AND-COMPANIES-IN-TURKEY.pdf on 1 June 2023.

Advocates of Silenced Turkey website. 2023. Accessed from https://silencedturkey.org on 15 July 2023.

Amsterdam, Robert. 2022. Web of Influence: Empire of Deceit Series Book 2, An Investigation of the Gulen Charter School Network. New York: Amsterdam & Partners, LLC.

Amsterdam, Robert. 2017. Empire of Deceit: An Investigation of the Gulen Charter School Network Book 1. New York: Amsterdam & Partners, LLC.

Angey, Gabrielle. 2018. “The Gülen Movement and the Transfer of a Political Conflict from Turkey to Senegal.” Politics, Religion, Ideology 19:53-68.

“Assets worth $11bn seized in Turkey crackdown.” 2017. Financial Times, July 17.

Aydıntaşbaş. Aslı. 2016. “The Good, The Bad, and the Gülenists: The Role of the Gülen Movement in Turkey’s Coup Attempt.” London: European Council on Foreign Relations.

Barton, Greg, Paul Weller, and Ihsan Yilmaz, eds. 2013. The Muslim World and Politics in Transition: Creative Contributions of the Gülen Movement. London. Bloomsbury Academic Publishers.

“Biden tells Turkey’s Erdogan: only a federal court can extradite Gulen.” 2016. Reuters, August 24.

Cook, Steven. 2018. “Neither Friend Nor Foe: The Future of US-Turkey Relations.” New York: Council of Foreign Relations, Special Report No. 82.

“Depositing money in Bank Asya on Gülen’s order proof of FETÖ membership.” 2018. Daily Sabah, February 12.

Dumanlı, Ekrem. 2015. Time to Talk: Gülen Answers the Question on the Association of the Hizmet Movement with the Parallel State, December 17 Corruption Investigation, and Other Critical Inquiries. New York: Blue Dome Press.

Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 2010. The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam. New York: Springer.

Esposito, John and Ihsan Yilmaz, eds. 2010. Islam and Peace Building: Gülen Movement Initiatives. New York: Blue Dome Press.

Gallagher, Nancy. 2012. “Hizmet Intercultural Dialogue Trips to Turkey.” Pp. 73-96 in The Gülen Hizmet Movement and Its Transnational Activities: Case Studies of Altruistic Activism in Contemporary Islam, edited by Sandra Pandya and Nancy Gallagher. Boca Raton, FL: Brown Walker Press.

Harrington, James. 2011. Wrestling With Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey: The Political Trials and Times of Fethullah Gülen. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Hendrick, Joshua D. 2013. Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World. New York: New York University Press.

Hunt, Robert and Alp Aslandoğan, eds. 2007. Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World. Somerset, NJ: The Light Publishing.

Mardin, Şerif. 1989. Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. Albany: SUNY Press.

Pandya, Sophia and Nancy Gallagher, eds. 2012. The Gülen Hizmet Movement and Its Transnational Activities: Case Studies of Altruistic Activism in Contemporary Islam. Boca Raton, FL: Brown Walker Press.

Reynolds, Michael A. 2016. “Damaging Democracy: The U.S. Fethullah Gülen, and Turkey’s Upheaval.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, September 26. Accessed from  http://www.fpri.org/article/2016/09/damaging-democracy-u-s-fethullah-gulen-turkeys-upheaval on 10 July 2023.

Rodrik, Dani. 2014. “The Plot Against the Generals.” Accessed from http://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/Rodrik/Commentary/Plot-Against-the-Generals.pdf on 10 July 2023.

Savings Deposit Insurance Fund. 2021. Annual Report 2021. Accessed from https://www.tmsf.org.tr/en/Rapor/YillikRapor on 1 June 2023.

Savings Deposit Insurance Fund. 2014. Annual Report 2014. Accessed from https://www.tmsf.org.tr/en/Rapor/YillikRapor on 1 June 2023.

“State fund ‘takes control of Koza-İpek Holding’s 18 companies in failed coup attempt probe.” 2016. Hürriyet Daily News. Accessed from https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/state-fund-takes-control-of-koza-ipek-holdings-18-companies-in-failed-coup-attempt-probe-10374819 on 9 May 2023.

Stockholm Center for Freedom website. 2017. Accessed from https://stockholmcf.org/ on 15 July 2023.

Taş, Hakan. 2022. “Collective Identity Change under Exogenous Shocks: The Gülen Movement and Its Diasporization.” Middle East Critique 31:385-99.

Tee, Caroline. 2021. “The Gülen Movement: Between Turkey and International Exile.” Pp. 86-109 in Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements, edited by Muhammad Afzal Upal and Carole M. Cusack. London: Brill.

Tittensor, David. 2018. “The Gülen Movement and Surviving in Exile: The Case of Australia.” Politics, Religion, Ideology 19:123-38.

Tittensor, David. 2014. House of Service: The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way. New York. Oxford University Press.

Tuğal, Cihan. 2013. “Gülenism: The Middle Way or Official Ideology.” Jadaliyya, June 5. Accessed from http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12673/gulenism_the-middle-way-or-official-ideology on 10 July 2023.

Turam, Berna. 2006. The Politics of Engagement: Between Islam and the Secular State. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

“Turkey’s president orders closure of 1,000 private schools linked to Gülen.” 2016. The Guardian, July 23.

Yavuz, Hakan. 2013. Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement. New York. Oxford University Press.

Yavuz, Hakan. 2003. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yavuz, Hakan and John Esposito, eds. 2003. Turkish Islam and the Secular State.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Yurtsever, Ali, ed. 2008. Islam in the Age of Global Challenges: Alternative Perspective of The Gulen Movement. Washington D.C.: Rumi Forum/Tuğhra Books.

Publication Date:
22 August 2014
Update:
22 July 2023

THE FIRST CHURCH OF CANNABIS TIMELINE

1955:  Bill Levin was born in Chicago, Illinois.

2011:  Levin ran unsuccessfully as a Libertarian for the Indianapolis City Council.

2014:  Levin ran unsuccessfully as a Libertarian for the Indiana House of Representatives.

2015 (March 26):  Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

2015 (May 21):  The First Church of Cannabis received a letter stipulating that it was officially established as a 501 (c) (3), non-profit charitable organization, by the Internal Revenue Service.

2015:  Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson approved the church as a religious corporation with the stated intent “to start a church based on love and understanding with compassion for all.”

2015 (July 1):  The First Church of Cannabis held its first service.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Bill Levin, founder of The First Church of Cannabis, was born in 1955 in Chicago. There is little known about his childhood (Hoppe, 2009). Levin reports that he was adopted by the niece (and her husband) of the navy doctor who delivered him, Marcia and Bob Levin. His adoptive father was the vice president of Kipp Brothers, a family-owned toy wholesaling business where Levin gained experienced in merchandise sales as a youth. Although Levin got along well with his father, his relationship with his mother was much more turbulent. Levin reports that he “ kept turning to the left ” while his mother wanted him to live a more conservative lifestyle. This lead to what Levin has characterized as an “ oil-and-water situation ” between the two. Levin was placed in the Hyde Academy for Men in Bath, Maine by his parents but was expelled within six months for misbehavior. After multiple attempts to run away from home, he was sent to another boarding school in Cleveland, where he continued to be something of a troublemaker. For example, Levin recounts that at one of the schools parties, he and a group of friends spiked the punch with LSD leading to, by his account, “ three-quarter of [the] campus tripping. ” Ironically perhaps, the next year Levin was elected campus council president.

Through his life, Levin dabbled in a variety of jobs. He worked for a time as a band representative, scheduling band performances in Broad Ripple, Indianapolis. He then moved on to do the same work for local tattoo artists. He did promotion and marketing work for the KARMA RECORDS store chain (Bryant 2012). Levin and his wife, Allison, have operated a jewelry shop, Bling of Broad Ripple, together. Levin also is CEO of a consulting firm he founded, Levin Consulting.

It was only in 2011, when he was in his fifties, that Levin began to become involved in politics, running a Libertarian Party candidate for Indianapolis City Council in 2011 and for Indiana House of Representatives as Libertarian in 2014. He lost both elections, receiving a very small percentage of the vote in both cases. His Libertarian leanings are evident, for example, in his opposition to the presence of corporate chains in Broad Ripple Village (Hoppe 2007).

Throughout his political career, Levin strongly supported marijuana legalization and supported local “ma and pa” shops. Levin hasserved on the Board of Directors of Indiana NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). He also formed a Political Action Committee, Re-Legalize Indiana, as a vehicle for promoting legalization of marijuana in Indiana (Bryant 2012).

DOCTRINES/RITUALS

Bill Levin does not claim unique doctrines or practices, acknowledging that the Church of Cannabis draws on a variety of traditions and doctrines. He does, however, assert the existence of an all loving God and states that he is very faith-driven, I’m very spiritual and I’m filled with love” (Bailey 2015). Levin is quite critical of established religions and their beliefs, and he clearly distinguishes the Church of Cannabis’ approach to religion (Bailey 2015):

“The bibles of other religions are yesteryear about the drinking out of goat skins. That doesn’t relate to people with GPS in their hand and 7,000 tunes in that same hand,” he said. “The church is very simple. The first good book we’re going to ask parishioners to read and understand is ‘The Emperor Wears No Clothes’.”

He goes on to state that “I find that most religions are misled into gross perversions of what they are meant to be. This path has led me to lead a religion that people in today’s world can relate to it. We don’t have any guilt doctrine built in. We don’t have any sin built in” (Bailey 2015; Walsh 2015).

The Church delineates seven essential themes: live, love, laugh, learn, create, grow and teach (Wenck 2015). In addition, The church has a doctrinal code that is referred to as the “ Deity Dozen. ” These twelve precepts represent guidelines for living a good life.

Don ‘ t be an a–hole. Treat everyone with love, as an equal.

The day starts with your smile every morning. When you get up, wear it first.

Help others when you can. Not for money, but because it ‘ s needed.

Treat your body as a temple. Do not poison it with poor quality foods and sodas.

Do not take advantage of people. Do not intentionally hurt anything.

Never start a fight, only finish them.

Grow food, raise animals, get nature into your daily routine.

Do not be a “ troll ” on the Internet; respect others without name-calling and being vulgarly aggressive.

Spend at least 10 minutes a day just contemplating life in a quiet space.

When you see a bully, stop them by any means possible. Protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Laugh often, share humor. Have fun in life, be positive.

Cannabis, “ the Healing Plant, ” is our sacrament. It brings us closer to ourselves and others. It is our fountain of health, our love, curing us from illness and depression. We embrace it with our whole heart and spirit, individually and as a group.

Beyond these basics, Levin states, the church seeks to keep their unique doctrine “ simple as f***ing possible so it translates to every language” (Wenck 2015).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Since the First Church of Cannabis is very much in the process of formation, church structure and rituals also are in the process of emerging. The first service was held on July 1, 2015, the day on which Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law. Levin’s vision for the inaugural church service is that a young harmonica player will open the service by playing “Amazing Grace” and several other songs. Levin will then present and discuss each of the seven church themes. Those in attendance will be invited to offer testimonies on life experiences relevant to the church’s themes. Following a recitation of the Deity Dozen, Levin anticipated announcing a collective smoking of cannabis (Walsh 2015; Nelson 2015). However, when local police gathered outside the church before its first service, Levin deferred smoking of cannabis for that day.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The First Church of Cannabis is an independent church and is not affiliated with any other religious group or denomination. The church is incorporated under Indiana law in 2015, which only means that it is registered as a business through the Secretary of State’s office. The incorporation document simply approved the church as a religious corporation with the stated intent ‘to start a church based on love and understanding with compassion for all’ (Wenck 2015). Incorporation does not include accreditation or approval of the church as a religious organization (Bailey 2015).

More importantly, the church was granted 501 (c) (3) non-profit charitable status in 2015. The letter sent to the church read in part (Internal Revenue Service 2015):

We are pleased to inform you that upon review of your application for tax exempt status we have determined that you are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to you are deductible under section 170 of the Code. You are also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests, devises, transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106 or 2522 of the Code.

As founder of the First Church of Cannabis, Bill Levin serves as the “Grand Poobah and Minister of Love,” and refers to members of the church as “Cannabeterians” (Klausner, 2015).

The church has funded its start-up through Go Fund Me, a crowdfunding organization and individual donations. The Church of Cannabis is implementing a membership program through which individuals will pledge approximately fifty dollars annually to the church (Walsh, 2015; Bailey 2015). One use for the funds, beyond rental space for meetings, initially was a planned permanent building. Levin envisioned constructing the building out of hempcrete, which consists of the core of hemp plants with a lime binder, although hempcrete is not a currently approved building material (Wenck 2015). However, shortly before the church held its first service, Levin announced that services would be held at the Strait Gate Christian Church and that he had secured sufficient funding to purchase the property (Hindmon and Thomas 2015).

In addition to supporters who will constitute its local congregation, the church has drawn several tens of thousands of followers through Facebook where Levin recruits followers with the following message (Tomlin 2015):

“Are other religions just not satifing [sic] your need for spirituality? Has your faith left the standard church doctrine? Well, I have an answer. I have created the FIRST CHURCH OF CANNABIS. A church based on LOVE and FAITH with the plant we know and love.”

Levin has announced that smoking of cannabis is welcome during church services because it is a sacrament: “If someone is smoking in our church, God bless them” (Bailey 2015). However, the church will not supply or sell cannabis to parishioners. Further, the church does not support alcohol or heroin use and is planning outreach programs to combat both (Wenck 2015).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The impetus for the formation of the First Church of Cannabis originated with passage of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Indiana law is modeled after the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed after the Supreme Court ruled that Native American Church sacramental peyote use did not offer constitutional protection that would trump state drug use laws. More generally, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not apply to state laws. Twenty states have passed similar religious freedom legislation. The principles underlying both the state and federal statutes are that governments may not substantially burden individuals’ exercise of religion, even if the burden is created by a general law, except when the law addresses a “compelling governmental interest” and employs the “least restrictive means” of furthering that interest.

Considerable controversy emerged over the law as it was seen by opponents as a vehicle for business owners to discriminate against sexual minorities, (by refusing to offer goods or services for same-sex weddings, for example) by making an assertion of religious belief, a charge denied by supporters of the law (Eckholm 2015; Editorial Board 2015; Easley 2015; Grant 2015).

Possession, use, production, and distribution of cannabis are illegal under Indiana law, as is medicinal prescription. Levin saw in the Indiana religious freedom statute, to which he was initially opposed, an opportunity to legally allow sacramental use of cannabis. If cannabis was used sacramentally and the state did not have a compelling state interest in regulating its sacramental use, then the formation of church in which cannabis was a sacrament might pass legal muster. Indeed, Levin states that when he realized this possibility he had a “divine vision ” and was “ born again,” leading to his creation of the First Church of Cannabis (Wenck 2015; Klausner 2015). Legal and constitutional experts remained dubious that Levin and his church would prevail in the courts, but the response of the courts and law enforcement agencies had yet to be determined at that time. When police did appear at the first church service on July 1, Levin simply deferred the smoking of marijuana so that the issue could be resolved in civil courts rather than as a result of criminal arrest. There was a small amount of controversy, however, as “some neighbors posted yellow “Caution” tape around their yards to keep people away. A group from a nearby church marched outside with signs in protest. (Davey 2015). Levin followed up by filing a civil lawsuit in Marion Circuit Court in Indianapolis asserting that the church believed marijuana to be a sacrament. The suit named both Governor Mike Pence and several state and local law enforcement officers (“Pot-smoking Indianapolis Church Sues” 2015).

In July 2018, the three year-old civil suit finally was decided. Judge Sheryl Lynch stated in her decision that “the city and state satisfied a crucial aspect of the RFRA law: showing the state had a “compelling interest” in not carving out a limited exception in marijuana laws.” She went on to assert that “permitting a religious exemption to laws that prohibit the use and possession of marijuana would hinder drug enforcement efforts statewide and negatively impact public health and safety” because “law enforcement officers have to make “case-by-case determinations during criminal investigations as to whether an individual’s religious beliefs legally justify [using cannabis].” The day after the decision was handed down, Levin responded on Facebook that “It’s far from over. We are just getting started”  (Alesia 2018). The church has announced that it intends to appeal.

 REFERENCES

Alesia, Mark. 2018. “Judge Dismisses Cannabis Church’s Case that Cited RFRA to Defend Pot as a Sacrament.” Indianapolis Star, July 7.  Accessed from https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/07/07/first-church-cannabis-loses-lawsuit-marion-circuit-court/764407002/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=b653f69ea3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_ on 9 July 2018.

Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. 2015. “The First Church of Cannabis was approved after Indiana ‘ s religious freedom law was passed.” The Washington Post, March 30. Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/03/30/the-first-church-of-cannabis-was-approved-after-indianas-religious-freedom-law-was-passed/ on 8 June 2015.

Bryant, Joe. 2012. “Meet Bill Levin Of Indiana: Registered Cannabis Lobbyist With ‘Re-Legalize Indiana’.” The Weed Blog, May 15. Accessed from http://www.theweedblog.com/meet-bill-levin-of-indiana-registered-cannabis-lobbyist-with-re-legalize-indiana/ on 14 June 2015.

Chasmar, Jessica. 2015. “Marijuana church given tax-exempt status in Indiana: ‘ Somebody at the IRS loves us’ .” The Washington Times, June 1. Accessed from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/1/marijuana-church-wins-tax-exempt-status-in-indiana/ on 8 June 2015.

Davey, Monica. “A Church of Cannabis Tests Limits of Religious Law in Indiana.” New York Times, July 1. Accessed fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/us/a-church-of-cannabis-tests-limits-of-religious-law-in-indiana.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0 on 2 July 2015.

Easley, Jonathan. 2015. “GOP Hopefuls Back Indiana Religious Freedom Law.” The Hill, March 30. Accessed from http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/237435-gop-contenders-back-indiana-religious-freedom-law on 15 June 2015.

Eckholm, Erik. 2015. “Religious Protection Laws, Once Called Shields, Are Now Seen as Cudgels.” New York Times, March 30. Accessed from
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/us/politics/eroding-freedom-in-the-name-of-religious-freedom.html?emc=edit_th_20150331&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=32729527&_r=0 on 15 June 2015.

Editorial Board. 2015. “In Indiana, Using Religion as a Cover for Bigotry.” New York Times, March 31. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/opinion/in-indiana-using-religion-as-a-cover-for-bigotry.html?emc=edit_th_20150331&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=32729527 on 15 June 2015.

Grant, Tobin. 2015. “ Why No One Understands Indiana’s New Religious Freedom Law.” Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/03/30/why-no-one-understands-indianas-new-religious-freedom-law/ on 15 June 2015.

Hindmon, Jade and Derrik Thomas. 2015.”First Church of Cannabis to Open Doors July 1. “The Indy Channel, June 10. Accessed from http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/first-church-of-cannabis-to-open-doors-july-1 on 15 June 2015.

Hoppe, David. 2009. “ Bill Levin: Chief of Mischief. ” NUVO Indy ‘ s Alternative Voice, April 8. Accessed from http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/bill-levin-chief-of-mischief/Content?oid=1271995 on 8 June 2015

Hoppe, David. 2007. “Bill Levin’s Broad Ripple: Community Development As Performance Art.” NUVO Indy’s Alternative Voice, September 12. Accessed from http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/bill-levins-broad-ripple/Content?oid=1231358 on 8 June 2015.

Internal Revenue Service. 2015. “Letter to Church of Cannabis, Inc.,” May 21. Cincinnati, Ohio: Internal Revenue Service, Department of Treasury.

Klausner, Alexandra. 2015. “ Church Dedicated to Worshipping Marijuana ‘As a Health Supplement’ Forms in Indiana (but it is still prohibited in state).” Daily Mail, June 7. Accessed from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3114398/Holy-smokes-legal-church-cannabis-sprouts-Indiana-medicinal-medical-marijuana-use-prohibited-state.html on 8 June 2015.

Nelson, Steven. 2015. “Indiana Church Plans Pot-Smoking Worship Service in Test of Religious Freedom.” U.S.News, May 12. Accessed from http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/05/12/indiana-church-plans-pot-smoking-worship-service-in-test-of-religious-freedom on 10 June 2015.

Nelson, Steven. 2015. “Indiana’s Church of Cannabis Growing Like a Weed.” U.S. News, April 2. Accessed from http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/02/indianas-church-of-cannabis-growing-like-a-weed on 10 June 2015.

Nuvo Editors. 2011. “At Large Candidate: Bill Levin, Libertarian.” NUVO Indy‘s Alternative Voice, October 5. Accessed from http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/at-large-candidate-bill-levin-libertarian/Content?oid=2358805 on 8 June 2015.

“Pot-smoking Indianapolis Church Sues Over Marijuana Laws.” Associated Press, July 8. Accessed from
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/17f212c837224847a2094fb7931085e1/pot-smoking-indianapolis-church-sues-over-marijuana-laws on 10 July 2015.

Tomlin, Gregory. 2015. “Indiana’s First Church of Cannabis Opens July 1.” Christian Examiner, May 13. Accessed from http://www.christianexaminer.com/article/indianas.first.church.of.cannabis.service.set.for.july.1/48933.htm on 14 July 2015.

Tuohy, John. 2015. “ IRS Dubs First Church of Cannabis a Nonprofit. ” USA Today, June 3. Accessed from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/02/first-church-of-cannabis/28364521/ on 8 June 2015

Walsh, Michael. 2015. “Tune In, toke Up, Smile Big: Introducing The First Church of Cannabis.” Yahoo News, June 6. Accessed from http://news.yahoo.com/tune-in–toke-up–smile-big–introducing-the-first-church-of-cannabis-155421770.html on 8 June 2015.

Wenck, Ed. 2015. “Holy Smoke: Bill Levin ‘ s First Church of Cannabis.” NUVO Indy‘s Alternative Voice, April 22. Accessed from http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/holy-smoke-bill-levins-first-church-of-cannabis/Content?oid=3116589 on 8 June 2015.

Wood, Robert W. 2015. “IRS Approves First Church of Cannabis. What’s Next For Marijuana?” Forbes, June 1. Accessed from http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/06/01/irs-approves-first-church-of-cannabis-whats-next-for-marijuana/ on 8 June 2015.

Post Date:
15 June 2015

FLORIDA OUTPOURING TIMELINE

1955 Stephen Strader was born.

1976 (January 10) Todd Bentley was born in Gibsons, British Columbia.

1977 Strader married his wife, Janice, and the couple subsequently bore four children.

1978 Strader entered the ministry.

1980 The First Assembly of God Church in Lakeland purchased the Carpenters and Joiners Retirement Home and renamed it the Carpenters and Joiners Church.

1993 Rodney Howard-Browne led a revival at Carpenters and Joiners for sixteen weeks, drawing several thousand visitors nightly.

1994 Strader took a leave from his pastoral duties to join Howard-Browne’s international revival mission.

1995 (May 22) Todd Bentley married his wife, Shonnah.

1998 Todd Bentley joined and became leader of Fresh Fire Ministries.

2005 (December) Stephen Strader formed the Ignited Church in Lakeland Florida.

2007 (October) Todd Bentley was invited to speak for one night at Ignited Church.

2008 (April 2) Bentley returned to Ignited for the Signs and Wonders Conference. The Florida Outpouring commenced.

2008 (August 11) Bentley severed his association with Ignited Church and retired from the ministry.

2008 Bentley established the Supernatural Training Center in Uganda.

2010 Bentley returned to his ministry.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The two men who most prominently involved in the events that became known as the Florida Outpouring (or the Lakeland Revival) were Stephen Strader and Todd Bentley. Each had developed religious careers independently, and both had been involved in previous religious revival events. Their religious careers converged at Strader’s Ignited Church where Bentley led what became the Florida Outpouring.

Stephen Strader was born in 1955 and reports having been “born-again” at age eight and called to the ministry at age twelve. He
earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible and Pastoral Theology from Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, engaged in graduate study briefly at Oral Roberts University in 1977-1978, and was ordained as a pastor in the Assemblies of God in 1978. Strader had just earlier married his wife, Janice, in 1977, and the couple subsequently bore four children.

At the time that Strader was completing his education, his father, Karl Strader, was Senior Pastor at the Carpenters and Joiners Church in Lakeland, which was affiliated with the Assemblies of God. Once ordained, Stephen Strader became an Associate Pastor of the church and served in that capacity between 1978 and 2005 (Poloma and Green 19xx:225). Carpenters and Joiners Church flourished as a megachurch for a number of years but began losing members in the late 1980s amid the waning of the Charismatic Movement and a financial scandal. The church lost one-third of its membership in 1989 alone (Strader 2008:28). In 1993, South African evangelist Rodney Howard-Brown led a revival at Carpenters and Joiners for sixteen weeks that featured the kind of “holy laughter” that had characterized the earlier Toronto Blessing and drew several thousand visitors nightly (Hunt 2009a).

The following year Strader and his family took a leave of absence from the church to join Rodney Howard-Browne’s national and international tour as his assistant in over three hundred revival events. Strader’s self-assigned mission was to spread revival globally. He identified with “signs and wonders” and unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit that were believed to confirm the preached Word of God. He held many extended revivals across the U.S. as well as ‘miracle crusades’ in Cuba, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ghana, Guyana, Ecuador, India, Nicaragua, Nigeria, the Panama, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Africa, the Ukraine, Virgin Islands and Zimbabwe.

The Carpenters and Joiners Church continue to experience membership decline and finally closed in 2005. That same year Strader established and assumed leadership of the Ignited Church in Lakeland in 2005. The church initially drew membership from the then defunct Carpenters and Joiners Church. Other members of the Carpenters and Joiners Church joined Lakeland’s Auburndale Life Church.

Todd Bentley was born in 1976 in Sechelt, British Columbia. He experienced a highly dysfunctional childhood and adolescence. His parents separated, and for a time he lived in a foster home. Beginning at age eleven, he had a series of illicit sexual encounters, heavy involvement in alcohol use and experimentation with a range of illegal drugs that led to several episodes of overdosing, shoplifting, breaking into cars, and arson. When he was fifteen, he was convicted and sentenced for committing sexual assault on a minor. At 17, he was hospitalized after an overdose of amphetamines and hallucinogenic drugs.

During Bentley’s youth he also reports having numerous spiritual and demonic encounters. There were several occasions, sometimes in what might have appeared to be accidents, in which he believes that Satan tried to kill him because “The enemy knew that God had a plan and purpose for me, even when I was a newborn” (Bentley 2008:40). He also was attracted to the occult through heavy metal music and underwent deliverance sessions on several occasions. Bentley subsequently had a transformative “born-again” experience that he claimed “immediately delivered me from drugs and alcohol” (Bentley 2008:76). Sometime later he recalls experiencing a visitation from the Holy Spirit in which he received spiritual powers. He recollects that “the heavens opened with a bright flash and a white dove materialized out of thin air and flew across the lake to a nearby tree. Although it was a single dove, it sounded as the flapping wings of ten thousand doves….I had received not only tongues, but also an enduement of power from on high for miracles, signs, and wonders” (Bentley 2008:83). Just prior to his entry into the ministry he claims to have received further spiritual legitimation for his ministry when the Holy Spirit took him in a vision to Mount Zion and then up the mountain where he encountered Jesus. He was told that “This is the council of the Lord. I have called you as one of many to be part of the last days’ army and a last days’ generation” (Bentley 2008:28).

Strader and Bentley first met personally in 2007 when Strader invited Bentley to speak at Ignited Church. Strader states that he was familiar with Bentley’s ministry (Strader 2008: 10):

I had heard the reports about this 32-year-old Todd – some good, some bad. Like John the Baptist, the wild man, this young evangelist faced accusers who claimed, “He has a demon.” He was quite the teenage sinner and openly admits a prison record. Like John the Baptist, Todd was in prison. He is also like Jesus in that he attracts the gluttons and drunkards, and is a friend of tax collectors, drug addicts, ex-cons, prostitutes and perverts, and all variety of “sinners.”

Bentley first affiliated with the Canadian Fresh Fire Ministry group in 1998 and soon became its leader. Fresh Fire increasingly became a revival movement, and Bentley led revivals and crusades on several continents. Leading up to the outbreak of revival in Lakeland, Bentley had initiated several healing and evangelizing campaigns throughout North America with an emphasis on generating revival fire, equipping the body of Christ in “power evangelism,” and a miraculous healing ministry. Many of these campaigns involved evangelizing meetings that were extended to last from one to two months, continuing on even after Bentley had left such events.

Bentley’s visit for evangelism and healing in Lakeland was initially scheduled for five days but due to his person charisma, claims of miraculous healing, and the unusual physical phenomena observed in the church he remained for over six months. Strader recalls “ That first Wednesday night was explosive….The second night we filled the building. The holy energy was unprecedented….Incredible miracles began to flow” (Strader 2008:32). Perceived as a significant move of the Holy Spirit, the revival claimed to have attracted an estimated 140,000 people from over 40 countries by the close of May and by the end of June 400,000 from some 100 nations (Lake 2008). This was in addition to around 1,200,000 that watched via the Internet as well as those who tuned into the broad coverage offered by GODTV. The revival was also streamed live via Ustream by the Ignited Church and received over one million “hits” in the first five weeks of transmissions.

The Florida Outpouring events changed venues on a number of occasions, starting at the Ignited Church and sister church in Auburndale, and moving to the $15,000 per night Lakeland Center and Marchant Stadium. After outgrowing its previous venues, the revival meetings moved to an air conditioned tent that seated 10,000. On August 3, the revival meetings returned to Ignited Church. The Lakeland revival did not charge for attendance, but attendees were able to contribute voluntary offerings that funded both building and staff expenses.

Following the Toronto and Brownsville revivals, further revivals were expected by those involved and prophesised to be accompanied by an increase of esoteric and ecstatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Minor revivals in fact broke out across churches in various cities of northern United State s (Poloma 2003). One prophecy appeared to have particular validity for the Florida Outpouring and was attributed to the renowned Korean Pentecostal leader, Yonggi Cho, the senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, believed to be, with a membership of 750,000, the largest congregation in the world. He predicted in 1987 that “the last great move of the Spirit will originate in Canada.” Initially this “move of the Spirit” was believed to be the Toronto Blessing, but subsequently it was re-interpreted to refer to Todd Bentley’s ministry. Prophecy and expectation of further revivals was the context that helped forge a great significance to Bentley’s visit Lakeland .

In many respects, the Florida Outpouring was similar to the Pentecostal revivals that occurred in the 1990s, in particular the Toronto Blessing (Hunt 1995; Porter and Richter 1995) in Toronto and the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola , Florida (Wójcik 2000). In addition to claims of numerous miraculous healings, the Outpouring seemed to make more extraordinary assertions, including at least thirty resurrections of the dead (Hunt 2009a). However, the Lakeland Revival was shorter than these two earlier revivals and placed a greater emphasis on evangelism and healing. Moreover, it was associated particularly with a single charismatic figure, Todd Bentley. Bentley is a controversial and unorthodox figure with a biker-punk appearance. Short, balding, tattooed, he energetically stomps the stage during revival meetings in jeans, over-sized tee-shirts and military-style jackets, which often sport a provocative slogan such as “Jesus Loves My Tattoos” or “Holy Spirit Special Corps.”

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Common to conventional Pentecostal/charismatic teaching, Bentley emphasized several core beliefs: salvation, baptism in the Holy Spirit, divine healing, and belief in the second coming of Christ. After baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit may be manifest through the believer in the form of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophesy. While subscribing to these primary beliefs, Bentley strayed into doctrines and practices regarded as unorthodox or even heretical by most mainstream Pentecostal denomination. He was influenced by such figures as the evangelists William Branham and Bob Jones, and John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard churches and associated with “power evangelism.”

Todd Bentley subscribes to the doctrine of Joel’s Army, which is based on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old
Testament Book of Joel). The doctrine prophesied an “End-Time army” that would prepare for and advanced the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ. This amounts to a doctrine earlier advocated by William Branham who spearheaded a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his followers lived in a new biblical time of the “Latter Rain.” According to this teaching, the most sinless and ardent of Christ’s flock would be called “Manifest Sons of God.” In the 1980s, Branham’s teachings took on new life at the Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), a group of self-styled apostles and prophets who promoted Joel’s Army theology. John Wimber, before his death in 1997, proclaimed that Joel’s Army would not only conquer the earth but defeat death itself (Bentley 2008:22-25).

Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults, believe that they are members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world. Joel’s Army amounts to a branch of the global, post-millenarian Dominionist movement whose followers assert that, once earthly governments are overthrown, a hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth. The movement has several significant advocates including Rick Joyner, a pastor whose books, The Harvest (1993) and The Call (2010), helped popularize Joel’s Army theology by selling more than a million copies each. Another pastor, Lou Eagle, initiated “The Call,” a twelve-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths held every summer in a major American city. Engle founded The Call based on the Joel’s Army visions claimed by the prophet Bob Jones of the Kansas City Prophets.

Bentley added to these teaching and those propounded at the Toronto and Brownsville revivals but also furthered doctrines deliberately avoided by their leaders. Most important was that of the health and wealth gospel associated with, among others, and Kenneth Copeland and the late Kenneth Hagin. During the Outpouring Bentley unashamedly advocated the prosperity gospel and in his Lakeland meetings “commanded” “financial breakthroughs,” even dedicating particular evenings to the subject. This additional aspect of the Outpouring resulted from a supernatural revelation: that personal wealth for the born-again believer was divinely sanctioned and that the Church as a whole would come to partake of the riches of the world.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The typical format of meetings during the Florida Outpouring involved the backdrop of a “soft” rock worship team, brief sermons,
accounts of spiritual experiences, claims to healing, and personal testimonies. However, the meetings were often devoid of coherent structure and dominated by spontaneous activities. Furthermore, the Outpouring appeared to be a melting pot for the range of charismatic phenomena that had been observable during the Toronto , Brownsville and other revivals of the 1990s, taking them to a greater level of esoteric manifestations. “Soaking in the Spirit,” “holy laughter,” rigorous body convulsions, “blowing” the Holy Spirit over emotionally-charged audiences, deliverance of demonic spirits, altered states of consciousness, and angelical visitations were observed or claimed by Bentley in an “open heaven” when the Spirit descended.

There was a prevailing belief during the Lakeland Outpouring that such phenomena could be transmitted to believers through touch (“impartation”), especially by Bentley. Alternatively, Bentley would partake of “Wafting” the Holy Spirit over the assembled during revival meetings (a strategy earlier associated with Rodney Howard-Browne and the evangelist Benny Hinn). Bentley would typically loudly evoke an impartation of the “fire’ of the Spirit: “Reach out and grab it! Grab it, grab it! Kabang! Kaboom boom! More Lord, more! Fire! Fire!” Testimonies of miraculous healings were common at the Lakeland Outpouring and added to its appeal since there were many first-person accounts of miracles. Indeed, the main focus of the services was on what participants believed to be divine healing of conditions (which could also be “imparted” through television networks) such as cancer, deafness, diabetes, and paralysis.

Of all the claims to supernatural experiences it was Bentley’s reference to angelic visitations that attracted the greatest attention. Angelic manifestations were also associated with the Toronto Blessing (Hunt 1995). Featuring prominently has been one particular angel named “Emma” a supernatural figure as recounted by Bentley:

I was in a service in Beulah, North Dakota. In the middle of the service I was in conversation…. when in walks Emma. As I stared at the angel with open eyes, the Lord said, ‘Here’s Emma’. I’m not kidding. She floated a couple of inches off the floor….Emma appeared beautiful and young – about 22 years old – but she was old at the same time….She glided into the room, emitting brilliant light and colors. Emma carried these bags and began pulling gold out of them. Then, as she walked up and down the aisles of the church, she began putting gold dust on people…..

The miraculous sprinkling of gold dust was earlier connected with the so-called “Gold Dust Revival,” which immediately followed the Toronto Blessing and usually associated with the late evangelist Ruth Ward Heflin (Sheflett 2000).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Following his reported “Road to Damascus” Spirit-filled conversion experience, Bentley traveled internationally holding church services and crusades in over 55 nations including Ethiopia, Malaysia, Peru and South Africa. In Uganda he established a children’s home for orphans called the Uganda Jesus Village. The endeavour to train local pastors led to the establishment of the Supernatural Training Centre in Kampala in January, 2008. In addition to these activities, Fresh Fire Ministries, which Bentley has headed up since 1998 (his home church is Global Harvest Centre), oversaw the creation of an earlier Supernatural Training Center in Abbotsford, British Columbia (Hunt 2009b).

Bentley severed his association with Ignited Church and departed the revival under controversial circumstances on August 11. He admitted to his staff in August that he and his wife were separating and resigned from Fresh Fire Ministries. The revival continued with visiting speakers at Ignited Church until October 12, 2008. Fresh Fire Ministries released a statement announcing that Bentley was taking time off “to refresh and to rest,” and their Lakeland broadcasts on GOD TV were put on hold. One week later, GOD TV announced Bentley would resume the Lakeland meetings, and the broadcasts continued. More revelations followed and were published on the Fresh Fires web-site: that Todd Bentley had entered into an “unhealthy relationship” on an emotional level with a female member of his staff, agreed to step down from his position on the Board of Directors, and to refrain from all public ministry for a period to receive counsel in his personal life. As a result of this disclosure Bentley’s international itinerary planned for such places as Kampala, Malibu, Istanbul and Jerusalem, was cancelled.

While Ignited Church continued to proclaim ongoing revival services after October 2008, the previous global interest had faded.
Stephen Strader stated that Ignited Church would launch an International Apostolic Center and Ignited Network of Ministries, designed to bring together Lakeland inspired revivals. Evangelist Hamilton Filmalter was commissioned by Todd Bentley. Within weeks Hamilton Filmalter gathered together a team that included Hearts of Fire International Ministries led by evangelist Reverend Aaron Winter who initiated the so-called Portland (Oregon) Outpouring in September, 2008, which witnessed many of the same manifestations of the Spirit that were taking place in Lakeland.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Lakeland Outpouring, and the ministry of Todd Bentley in particular, were the subject of much controversy and ridicule. The revival generated a measure of criticism among members of the Christian community, as some leaders questioned or even outrightrejected its authenticity. Besides condemnation of his extra-marital relationship, many critiques of Bentley emanated from conservative wings of evangelism. Internet postings abounded in great measure insisting that Bentley was a fraud and his movement was a “counterfeit revival” instigated by the “enemy,” Satan, to mislead the Church. In response to concerns raised over the revival, George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God USA, of which Ignited Church is a member, issued a statement on revival in June, 2008 (McMullen 2008). While not specifically mentioning Lakeland , the statement cautioned against over emphasis on charismatic manifestations and miracles, stating that “Miraculous manifestations are never the test of a true revival. Fidelity to God’s Word is the test” (Assemblies of God 2008).

There were also claims of financial irregularities, or at least exploitation. A newspaper in Vancouver reported that Bentley owned a 2007 GMC Sierra and a 2003 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Bentley stated that he would disclose his financial accounts for independent auditors (Rhee 2008). However, requests for financial disclosure from World Magazine were countered with a comment from his ministry organization that Bentley was “too busy keeping up with what God is doing” to provide financial information (Rusty and Warren 2008). During the revival, Bentley’s spokesperson stated that Bentley continued “to draw his standard salary, set by his board, from his office in Canada. It is a modest salary and is in the five-figure range” and that Fresh Fire Ministries is audited annually (Rhee 2008). In response to questions about finances, Stephen Strader and Todd Bentley stated in interviews that the Lakeland Revival had been funded entirely from voluntary donations.

Some skeptics challenged the revival on the basis of the evidence put forward for the healing testimonies and sermon content (Rhee 2008). Furthermore, criticism stemmed from some of Todd Bentley’s unorthodox practices, which included shouting “Bam, Bam!” while praying for the sick and testifying to experiencing angelic visitations. However, Bentley’s most controversial claim was that of raising the dead (Reed 2008). The lack of medical corroboration of the healings was also questioned by the mainstream media. An ABC Report concluded “not a single miracle could be verified” (Lake 2008). In an effort to confirm reported healings, Bentley’s staff said they welcomed as much documentation as people were prepared to offer, including verification from doctors (Rhee 2008).

At times, the healing services of the Lakeland Revival were criticized in mainstream media and on internet blogs for the occasional violence inflicted on the participants, in the tradition of Smith Wigglesworth, a healing evangelist and early pioneer of the Pentecostal movement. Todd Bentley was known to forcefully kick, hit, smack or knock over participants. In one incident, a man was allegedly knocked over and lost a tooth. In another, an elderly woman was intentionally kicked in the face. Bentley held that the Holy Spirit led him to such actions ( Lake 208), saying that those incidents were taken out of context and adding that miracles were happening simultaneously. Bentley claimed to have once choked a man to health and that he banged a woman’s legs “up and down on the platform like a baseball bat” until she was miraculously healed. In one typical claim, he is filmed telling an audience: “And the Holy Spirit spoke to me, the gift of faith came on me. He said, ‘kick her in the face with your biker boot’. I inched closer and I went like this – bam! And just as my boot made contact with her nose, she fell under the power of God” (Davies 2012). For such activities Bentley was banned from entering the UK by the Home Office via an exclusion order in 2012.

A committee made up of leading Pentecostal figures Rick Joyner, Jack Deere and Bill Johnson was formed to oversee the process of spiritually restoring Bentley’s family. In November, 2008, the Board of Fresh Fire announced that Bentley was not submitting to his counselling (Revival Alliance). On March 9, 2009, Rick Joyner announced that Bentley had remarried (Grady 2009). In 2010, Rick Joyner declared that Bentley was finally “restored” and he returned to preaching and leading crusades. In April, 2013, Bentley was at the forefront of a revival in Durban, South Africa. Within the first week of this revival, 3000 people were allegedly converted, and numerous healings and miracles were reported.

REFERENCES

ABC News. 2008. “Thousands Flock to Revival in Search of Miracles.” Accessed from http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaithMatters/story?id=5338963&page=1 on 4 October 2009.

Assemblies of God USA . 2008. “Statement in Revival.” Accessed from http://agchurches.org/Sitefiles/Default/RSS/AG.org%20TOP/WoodRevivalStatement.pdf on 19 January 2009.

Bentley, Todd. 2008. Journey into the Miraculous . Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image.

Davies, Lizzy. 2012. “Revivalist preacher Todd Bentley Refused Entry to UK.” The Guardian, August 21. Accessed from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/21/todd-bentley-refused-entry-to-uk on 23 August 2012.

Grady, J. Lee. 2009. “The Tragic Scandal of Greasy Grace.”Charisma Magazine. Accessed from http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/fire-in-my-bones/3975-the-tragic-scandal-of-greasy-grace on 23 March 2013.

Hunt, Stephen. 2009a. “The Florida ‘Outpouring’ Revival: The ‘Melting Pot’ of Contemporary Neo-Pentecostal Revivalism and Eschatology.” Pentecostudies 8:37-57.

Hunt, Stephen 2009b. “Charismatic Revival and Precarious Charisma: The Case of the Florida Healing ‘Outpouring’.” Australian Religious Studies Review 22:83-108.

Hunt, Stephen. 1995. “The ‘ Toronto Blessing’: A Rumour of Angels.” The Journal of Contemporary Religion 10:257-71.

Joyner, Rick.2010. The Call. Fort Mill, SC: MorningStar Publications.

Joyner, Rick. 1993. The Harvest. Fort Mill, SC: M orningStar Publications.

Lake, Thomas. 2008. “Todd Bentley’s Revival in Lake Draws 400,000 and Counting.” St. Tampa Bay Times, June 29. Accessed from http://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/todd-bentleys-revival-in-lakeland-draws-400000-and-counting/651191 on 14 November 2008.

Leonard, Rusty and Cole, Warren. 2008. “Same Old Scam.” Accessed from http://www.worldmag.com/2008/06/same_old_scam on 17 May 2009.

McMullen, Cary. 2008. “ Florida Outpouring Revival Concerns Pentecostal Leaders.”The Ledger. Accessed from http://www.theledger.com/article/20080622/NEWS/806220412 on 17 April 2009.

Poloma, Margaret. 2003. Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism. Walnut Creek, CA: Altimira Press.

Poloma, Margaret and John Green. 2010. The Assemblies of God: Godly Love and the Revitalization of American Pentecostalism. New York: New York University Press.

Porter, Stanley and Richter, Philip, eds. 1995. The Toronto Blessing – or is It? London: DLT.

Reed, Travis. 2008. “ Florida Revival Drawing Criticism – and Thousands of Followers.” Associated Press. Accessed from http://www.pantagraph.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/florida-revival-drawing-criticism-and-thousands-of-followers/article_0fe92491-afdd-51ee-9ccf-2f2d39d3b52a.html on 6 June 2009.

Rhee, Alice. 2008. “Revivalist Claims Hundreds of Healings.” MSNBC. Accessed from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2008/05/29/4377388-revivalist-claims-hundreds-of-healings on 13 March 2013.

Revival Alliance. 2008. “Public Statement on Todd Bentley from Revival Alliance.” Accessed from http://www.bjm.org/questions/11/update-what-do-you-think-about-todd-bentley-and-the-lakeland-revival.html?file=regarding-todd-bentley on 26 November 2008.

Shiflettt, David. 2000. “Gold Rush in Glory Land.” Wall Street Journal, March 31.

Strader, Stephen. 2008. The Lakeland Outpouring: The Inside Story. Windermere, FL: Legacy Media Group.

Wójcik, Krzysztof. 2000. “Awakening in Brownsville, Pensacola.” Translated by googletranslate. Accessed from http://kzgdynia.pl/artykuly/artykuly_przebudzenieBrownsville.html on 9 March 2011 .

Post Date:
8 August 2013

FLORIDA OUTPOURING VIDEO CONNECTIONS

THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM

GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM TIMELINE

 1688 (January 29):  Emanuel Swedenborg was born Emanuel Swedberg.

1709:  Swedenborg graduated from Uppsala University.

1710-1715:  Swedenborg traveled to England and Europe before returning to Sweden in 1715.

1716:  The first issue of Daedalus Hyperborus, a scientific magazine, was published.

1716:  Swedenborg was appointed to the Royal College of Mines.

1719:  The children of Bishop Jesper Swedberg were ennobled and took the name Swedenborg.

1721:  Swedenborg’s first book, Chemistry, was published.

1744-1745:  Swedenborg experienced extraordinary dreams. He recorded and analyzed them in what has come to be known as The Journal of Dreams.

1745:  Swedenborg claimed that he received a “Divine call.”

1745-1747:  Swedenborg studied the Bible and wrote a six volume interpretation of the Bible starting with Genesis. It was never published.

1757:  Swedenborg claimed that the Last Judgment took place in the spiritual world during this year.

1759:  Swedenborg made public a clairvoyant experience of the Stockholm fire that he witnessed while in Göteborg 400 miles away.

1769:  A heresy trial began in Göteborg of two Lutheran Priests who were readers of and belevers in the New Christian message revealed by Emanuel Swedenborg.

1771:  Swedenborg wrote and published a “ Pro Memoria against Ernesti.” The document contained a defense of his theological teaching and his personal character against the attacks of Johann August Ernesti (1707-1781), a renown linguist and theologian.

1771 (December):  Swedenborg suffered a stroke in London.

1772 (March 29):  Swedenborg died in London. He never made an attempt to found a church. He felt he was “called” to write and publish his revelation. 

1787:  The first formal New Church Worship Service/Holy Supper/Baptism took place.

1788:  The first priests of the New Church were ordained.

1789:  The first Conference of the New Church was held in London.

1815:  The Congregational Church structure was ratified at church conferences/annual conferences held yearly from this year to the present.

1817:  The organizational meeting of the Convention of the New Church of North America was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1867:  A theological School in Waltham, Massachusetts was organized by the General Convention.

1876:  The Academy of the New Church (precursor to General Church of the New Jerusalem) was incorporated.

1890:  A schism occurred in the North American Swedenborgian Movement between the Convention and what is now known as the General Church based on different principles of government (congregational vs. episcopal) and different interpretations of Swedenborg’s revelation (inspired vs. divine).

1897:  The General Church was established under the leadership of Bishop W. F. Pendleton and separated from the leadership of W. H. Benade.

1916:  The New Church Community of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania was officially incorporated in a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

1937:  A schism occurred in the General Church Movement with the separation of some priests and laity from the General Church. The new group was called The Lord’s New Church Which is Nova Hierosolyma under the leadership of the Rev. Theo Pticairn. The new group was based on the principle that, just as Swedenborg revealed the internal sense of the Old and New Testaments, there is an internal sense to the Writings of Swedenborg that can be revealed to “regenerate” individuals and thus can be used to develop doctrine in the church.

1972:  The Swedenborgian Church of North America began to ordain women into the ministry.

1976:  The Academy of the New Church celebrated its 100th anniversary.

1988:  An International Conference was held in celebration of the 300th anniversary of Swedenborg’s birth in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.

1997:  The Swedenborgian Church of North America determined that sexual orientation was not an impediment to ordination.

2009:  The First President of Bryn Athyn College was inaugurated.

2015:  The Theological School of the Swedenborgian Church of North American moved to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and is now called the Center for Swedenborg Studies at the GTU.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was born on January 29, 1688 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the third child and second son of Jesper Swedberg (1653-1735) and Sara Behm Swedeberg (1666-1696). The Swedberg’s had six additional children, three girls and three boys, one of whom died as an infant. Jesper Swedberg was a Lutheran priest, who had an illustrious career within the Church despite his belief in works and not faith alone. He was also known to have a strong belief in the supernatural. He was Chaplain to the King’s horse guard, Professor of Theology at Uppsala University, Dean of the Cathedral in Uppsala; he also served as Bishop of Skara, located in Västergötland, from 1703 until his death in 1735. He is remembered for his contribution to education and his many hymns, some of which are still sung in Sweden today. Sara, who came from a wealthy family with mining interests, died in an epidemic in Uppsala in 1696, as did the Swedberg’s oldest son, Albrecht. A year later Jesper married a widow, Sara Bergia (1666-1720). She was a loving mother to the remaining Swedberg children. She was very fond of Emanuel and left him a portion of her estate, when she died. Jesper Swedberg married a third time in 1720 to Christiana Arrhusia (dates unknown).

The Swedberg family moved from Stockholm to Uppsala in 1692. They lived in a simple par stuga until after the death of Sara. In 1698, they moved into a very impressive three-story house which was built on part of the property they owned. It faced the central square in Uppsala. Emanuel was tutored at home until the age of eleven, when he matriculated at the University of Uppsala, a very common practice for boys at that time. He attended the University until 1709, when he graduated with a degree in Philosophy, although his main interests were mathematics and science. His thesis, which he dedicated to his father, was titled “Selected Sentences from Publius Syrus Mimus and L. Annaeus Seneca.”

The outbreak of war between between the French and The English that year prevented Swedenborg from immediately setting off on his study trip abroad, again a very typical practice for well-to-do Swedish young men. Swedenborg spent the year in Skara in Western Sweden where his father was the Bishop. He mastered the organ and explored the region where he discovered fossils in the hills north of Skara. This discovery led Swedenborg to publish in the first edition of Acta Literaria Sueciae in 1719 an article entitled “Height of Water in the Primeval World.” This article appears to be the first one of Swedenborg’s to be reviewed in a European Journal, Neue Zeitungen, in March of 1721.

Swedenborg’s active and inquisitive mind wanted more stimulation than Skara could provide. In late spring of 1710 he traveled to Gothenburg to investigate rumors that there was a ship’s captain willing to risk sailing to London, despite the the on-going war. Swedenborg immediately found passage on the ship, and before he could inform his family, he was on his way. The trip was hazardous, and the ship was both boarded and shot at by combatants. It also ran aground on a sand bar. Arriving in London, the ship was immediately quarantined under the suspicion that there was an outbreak of the plague in Sweden. A young and restless Swedenborg, unwilling to remain on board with London so tantalizingly close, slipped overboard into a skiff when friends came to visit. He was caught and threatened with being hung, but “friends” in high places intervened and his life was spared. He never forgot this incident, with its imprint surfacing later in his life.

Swedenborg spent the next two years and a half in England. He immersed himself in his passion for mathesis, visting astronomers, observatories, and men of science, while residing with skilled craftsmen so he could learn their secrets. He developed a method of finding the longitude, and found books for the scientific community in Uppsala. He drank in the spirit of modern science, but was disappointed in the English response to his longitude methodology.

He left England in late 1712 or early 1713. He then spent time in The Netherlands and Paris, France, engaged in similar pursuits. He soaked up as much modern science as he could. In the late summer of 1714, Swedenborg traveled to Rostock in Swedish Pomerania, and somewhat later in the year he settled in Griefswalde. His focus was to record the intellectual fruit of his time abroad. This included listing various inventions that had occurred to him, among others, a submarine, an airplane, a mechanical water pump, a machine gun, and a siphon. He sent his list to his brother-in-law, Eric Benzelius.

Upon returning to Sweden in 1715, Swedenborg focused on finding useful employment. He began the first scientific journal in Sweden, Daedalus Hyperboreus, and published six issues. The journal found favor with the King, Carl XII, and eventually led to his employment as an assistant to Christopher Polhem (1661-1751) and to his appointment as an Extraordinary Assessor to the Board of Mines by the King. The death of the King on November 30, 1718 delayed Swedenborg’s appointment for six years due to the changing political climate in Sweden from the absolutism of Karl XII to the limited monarchy of Queen Ulrica Eleonora and her husband King Frederick I. The Swedberg children were ennobled in May 1719, and their name was changed to Swedenborg.

Swedenborg’s relations with Polhem became strained, and in 1720, discouraged by his prospects in Sweden, Swedenborg traveled abroad to study mining methods in Germany and to publish. Two years later he was called back from his travels by his father over family business matters. Upon his return, he continued to pursue his position on the Board of Mines, and finally in 1723 he was seated; in 1724, he was granted a salary. He continued to work on the Board of Mines until 1747, when he was asked to become President. His calling, however, had changed in the mid-1740s, and so he declined the Presidency and resigned from the Board.

When seated on the Board, Swedenborg engaged in his all the official duties of the position, which entailed inspecting mines and the ores produced, judging mining disputes between owners and between owners and workers, and writing mining policy, He began to investigate and write in the areas of cosmology, the nature of the infinite, and the investigation of the relationship between the body and the soul, as well as seeking the location of the soul in the body. Between 1734 and 1745, Swedenborg wrote on all these topics. In 1734, he published a three volume work, Opera Philosophiica et Mineralia, as well as a work called Prodromus Philosophia Ratiocinantis de Infinito.… In 1740/1741 he published his two volume Oeconomia Regni Animalis …, and in 1744/1745 he published Regnum Animale in three volumes. He also published Pars Prima de Cultu et Amore Dei. This last work was the result of a dramatic change of focus for Swedenborg. A series of deeply spiritual but troubling dreams shook his self-image led him reorient his sense of how the universe works. He began to view the world of spirit as the cause of the natural world. Previously in his philosophical endeavors, he had been seeking hidden origins and causes from effects in the natural world, using the scientific method. His dreams led him to conclude that spiritual forces animate natural reality.

Swedenborg traveled to Amsterdam and then London in order to publish his “search for the soul” through its kingdom the human body. With the publication of the third volume, he abandoned his effort and returned to Sweden in 1745. He worked for two more years on the Board of Mines, but the focus of his private writing changed dramatically as he began to seek the inner meaning of the Bible. While engaged in this effort, he wrote 5,000 pages that he never published.

What caused him to abandon his search for the soul using natural science and philosophy were powerful dream encounters with Christ. He recorded these in a journal: in one dream Christ embraced him and asked him if “he had a clean bill of health?” In another, Swedenborg handed Christ small sums of money which had fallen, and Swedenborg wrote “in such an innocent manner they seem to live together.” Also in a later entry, Swedenborg wrote that “Christ said I ought not to undertake anything without him.”

In the Spring of 1745, he had his first open and conscious experiences of the spiritual word that convinced him of its “reality.” At this time the Lord clothed in purple and arrayed in light sat next to his bed, and gave him his “commission,” which was to explain to the inhabitants of the world the spiritual or inner meaning of Scripture. It was not long after this, that Swedenborg sailed home to Sweden.

He stayed in Sweden for only two years before setting off on a journey that was marked by the first two volumes of his eight volume set, Arcana Coelestia, written in Latin. The work was published anonymously and gave a line by line, and often word by word, explanation of the books of Genesis and Exodus. After completing this work in 1756, Swedenborg identified the next year, 1757, as the Last Judgment. He claimed it was a spiritual event that occurred in the spiritual world. He published a work with that title in 1758 along with four others, including one titled Heaven and Hell. These also were written in Latin and published anonymously in London.

Swedenborg continued to publish and in1763/64 he published doctrinal works on the topics ofthe Lord, the Word, Life, and Faith. In addition he published a work on Divine Love and Wisdom, and Divine Providence. These works were published anonymously in Amsterdam. In 1766, he returned to Amsterdam to publish anonymously the Apocalypse Revealed in two Latin volumes. In 1768, in Amsterdam, for the first time he signed a book he published. It was Amore Conjugiali or Marriage Love. He signed it Emanuel Swedenborg, A Swede. In that work he also listed his previous works, and additional works he planned to publish. The three additional works were all signed. Two were published in Latin in 1769, Survey and Soul-Body Interaction , one in Amsterdam and one in London. In 1771, he published his final work, True Christianity, in Amsterdam, also in Latin; he signed it “Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.” With the publication of this work, his commission was fulfilled. He had written in this work, in §779 that he was called to write and publish. It would be up to others to found an organization.

Almost immediately after Swedenborg began to publish his religious writings, readers found them, not many, but a steady trickle. Some came, read a little, and moved on. Others read them and wondered, could this truly have come from God. Then there were those who found the spirit of truth in them, and they believed. They found them to be inspired by direct contact with the spiritual world; they learned that the Old and New Testaments contained an internal sense that was now revealed by the Lord to the world by means of Swedenborg’s writings, and they understood the Bible in a new way. It was plain to them that the Last Judgment, which Christians had long been waiting for, had taken place in the spiritual world because it clearly was a spiritual event. Finally, it was clear that the Lord’s second coming was by means of the Word, and because the Word is the Lord, he dwells there and lives within it. It is there that he reveals himself to inner human eye, to our rational sight, which is the longing of many modern hearts. To clearly see, that is, to clearly understand the nature of God, to rationally understand “the mysteries of faith,” as Swedenborg wrote in True Christianity §508, is a modern quest.

With True Christianity published, Swedenborg traveled from Amsterdam to London for the last time. In December 1771, he had a stroke and was bed-ridden. On March 29, 1772, he passed from this world into the next. Swedenborg was laid to rest in the Swedish Church in London. His remains were removed from the Swedish Church when it was scheduled for demolition early in the twentieth century. He was officially interred in the Cathedral in Uppsala, Sweden in a “homecoming” ceremony in 1908, when the whole of Uppsala filled the streets to welcome the “world famous scientist and seer.”

Author:

Post Date:
7 July 2016

GEORGE ANDERSON TIMELINE

1952 (August 13):  George Anderson, Jr. was born in Long Island, New York.

1959:  Anderson’s first visits from apparition he termed the “Lilac Lady” occurred.

1960s (Late):  Anderson underwent psychological counseling and falsely diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia.

1973:  Anderson joined a local group dedicated to psychic abilities.

1978:  Anderson realized his calling to assist grieving relatives and friends of deceased.

1980 (October):  Anderson was featured as a guest on The Joel Martin Show.

1981:  Anderson and Joel Martin began cohosting Psychic Channels on the Viacom network.

1987:  Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski co-authored We Don’t Die: George Anderson’s Conversations with the Other Side.

1990s:  Anderson began holding exclusively private reading sessions, founding George Anderson Grief
Support Programs.

1995:  Anderson was invited to Holland by surviving members of Anne Frank’s family to conduct a reading.

1997 (September 1):  George Anderson Grief Support Programs launched its website.

2001:  ABC aired a special, Contact: Talking to the Dead.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

On August 13, 1952, George Anderson, Jr. was born in Long Island, New York to parents George and Eleanor Anderson. The youngest of four children, Anderson, Jr.’s family included two half-sisters and a brother two years his senior. The Andersons werea relatively average, working-class family. His father was employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad as a baggage clerk until an accident severely disabled him and forced him to forfeit his job. He would later find employment with KLM Airlines and, despite remaining moderately handicapped throughout his life, was able to support the family. Growing up in a devoutly Catholic environment, Anderson and his three siblings attended school at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Lindenhurst, New York. A shy child with a reported indifference toward things that interested the typical child of his age, Anderson struggled emotionally, socially, and academically throughout his school years. At the age of six, he contracted the chicken pox, an event that would ultimately further separate him from his peers as well as set the course for the rest of his life. While contracting the chicken pox virus is common among young children and typically cured routinely, Anderson did not respond to treatment. As a result, he contracted encephalomyelitis, a virus which causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. As the virus coursed through his body, Anderson lost all sensation in his limbs and his family began to fear death. With treatment, Anderson was able to regain some muscular mobility shortly thereafter, but he was left unable to walk for three months. However, as Anderson now explains it, other regions of his brain separate from those utilized in leg mobility began to compensate for the brain tissue damaged by the illness, and one morning he woke up having regained use of his legs. Anderson has retrospectively used this same explanation to account for the supernatural experiences he began to undergo soon after his near-death encounter.

He recalls being awakened from his sleep one night by the figure of a woman dressed in pale purple robes standing at the foot of his bed. While the woman did not speak and disappeared after a few minutes, Anderson claims that she was able to access his soul and communicate soothing messages telepathically. The woman, who Anderson termed the “Lilac Lady,” began to appear with some regularity in the following months, and it was only then that he told his parents of these communications. Anderson’s parents initially entertained his stories as childhood fantasies, but they soon became disturbed as he insisted her tangibility and spoke of her progressively frequently. However, rather than stopping, the visions progressed, and Anderson began communicating with what he considered spirits of the deceased. He recalls telling a neighbor about a visit he had from the boy’s grandmother who had passed away. The boy’s parents became enraged and alarmed by Anderson’s account which, alongside his own parents’ disbelief, discouraged him from sharing his experiences and he made a conscious decision to keep them a secret.

Eventually, after years of visitations, Anderson reportedly convinced himself that these events were ordinary and that everyone underwent similar experiences of contact. As a young teenager, Anderson received vision in which the young Louis XVII escaped to England in the midst of the French Revolution, which was contrary to a statement in his teacher’s lecture that all of the children of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were murdered. Anderson refuted his instructor, asserting that his vision had revealed the true fate of the royal children. This incident not only further isolated an already troubled Anderson from his peers, but the school guidance counselor recommended that he receive psychiatric attention. Anderson underwent a series of diagnostic tests at the Catholic Charities Mental Health Center before receiving a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. When his visions still did not cease despite treatment, it was suggested to Anderson’s parents that he be admitted to the Central Islip State Hospital in New York, an inpatient psychiatric facility. However, upon meeting with Anderson, a psychiatrist at the hospital insisted that not only should a sixteen-year-old not be admitted to such a facility, but that he suffered from nothing more than stress responses to ordinary pressures of adolescence. It was recommended that Anderson be briefly removed from school in order to recover. After leaving school, Anderson took a job as a switchboard operator, which he held for several years; however, his communications and visions persisted. Scarred from having been met with an onslaught of disbelief, Anderson struggled to conceptualize his ability throughout his teenage and early adult years (Anderson and Barone 1999; “Meet Legendary Medium George Anderson” n.d.) . However, when Anderson reached his twenties, he began to regard his experiences spiritually, and, in 1973, he joined a local group dedicated to psychic abilities where he reportedly refined his mediumship. In 1978 his life came to a turning point when he realized what he came to consider his life’s calling. At the urging of a close friend, he began using his ability to help the family members and friends of the deceased to communicate with the spirits of their loved ones (Hornberger 2004:17; Buckland 2005:6).

With a reported accuracy rate of nearly eighty-five percent, Anderson attracted a considerable amount of attention and was soon conducting “readings” on not only scattered members of his community, but also a multitude of grieving individuals who believed in his gift and sought out his services. In 1980, Anderson’s career began to take form when he was introduced to reporter and paranormal investigator, Joel Martin. Anderson appeared on Martin’s radio talk show, The Joel Martin Show, in October of 1980 and conducted a reading on the then-skeptical Martin which he claimed was so accurate that he instantly altered his stance on the paranormal. Thereafter, Martin frequently featured Anderson on The Joel Martin Show , where he would provide readings over the air to call-in audience members. Anderson quickly became the talk show’s most popular guest and together, and the duo attracted enough attention that, in 1981, they began co-hosting a television program called Psychic Channels on the cable network Viacom (now CBS). The weekly program, which remained in production throughout the majority of the 1980s, was generally well-received. As it gained popularity, the waiting time for studio audience tickets climbed to about two years. Psychic Channels featured readings by George Anderson of audience members, many of which were transcribed and published in Joel Martin and Patricia Romanowski’s 1987 book We Don’t Die : George Anderson’s Conversations with the Other Side .

Anderson’s visibility continued to grow throughout the 1990s, largely due to the success of We Don’t Die. Martin and Romanowski authored two more follow-up books containing readings by Anderson. We Are Not Forgotten: George Anderson’s Messages of Love and Hope from the Other Side was published in 1991, and Our Children Forever: George Anderson’s Message from Children from the Other Side was published in 1996 (Hornberger 2004:17; “Joel Martin” n.d.). At this time, Anderson founded an organization, George Anderson Grief Support Programs, which made his services more widely-accessible and in 1995 he was reportedly invited to Holland by the living members of Anne Frank’s family to conduct a discernment with those who had died in the Holocaust; however, details of the encounter are scarce.

Anderson paired with the executive director of George Anderson Grief Support Programs, Andrew Barone, to coauthor three more books, including New York Times bestseller George Anderson’s Lessons from Light , in 1999. The success of the book sprung Anderson to unprecedented levels of international celebrity, and he made a number of media appearances throughout the following years, including a television special titled Contact: Talking to the Dead in 2001. The program, which aired on ABC, featured readings with celebrities such as Vanna White and Bret Hart (Vaughan and Porche 2005, 45). Anderson has gained a considerable degree of popularity throughout Europe and in South Africa and Asia as well as the United States. (Buckland 2005:7).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

At the most fundamental level, George Anderson proclaims three basic spiritual beliefs: an afterlife exists, human beings possess a soul that is separate from the body, and those still living are able to communicate with the deceased through mediums. Although many believers consider Anderson’s mediumship and all similar abilities to be God-given gifts, Anderson, acknowledging it as an extraordinary and rare ability, asserts that it resulted from the “rewiring” of certain brain regions following a childhood illness (Reed 1999; “Meet Legendary Medium George Anderson” n.d.). Furthermore, Anderson draws a clear distinction between his mediumship and other supernatural abilities, such as conjuring and clairvoyance, stating that his body is merely a tool that allows willing souls to communicate with living individuals and vice versa. While Anderson was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition and acknowledges a Christian influence, an allegorical interpretation of the Bible, and a belief in a God, he has not set forth any well-defined beliefs regarding the role and nature of the divine (Anderson n.d.). At the same time, Anderson has provided a clear-cut description of what he considers to be the afterlife; one that often diverges from the Christian tradition’s concept of Heaven.

According to Anderson, all of the information he sets forth regarding the afterlife has come directly from the souls with whom he communicates. He claims that after the death of the body, the soul passes through a tunnel into a different state of consciousness. While often experiencing a sense of being uplifted or enlightened, which many confuse with a physical lifting of the soul into a Heaven that exists above the physical realm, the spiritual realm runs parallel to the physical universe, on a different “wavelength.” The spiritual realm consists of separate levels of consciousness, the first two of which being dark levels, which many perceive as Hell or purgatory. While the majority of souls seem to pass through these levels quickly if not immediately, certain souls, typically those who performed evil acts in life or committed suicide, may linger in these two levels.

According to Anderson, the soul is subject to “judgment;” however, unlike the Christian conception, the judgment process is not passed down from God onto the soul, but is a completely individual process. Once a soul has reached the afterlife, it must acknowledge actions committed while in the physical realm, its positive and negative attributes, and seek to progress spiritually. Anderson states that, much like on Earth, spirits in the afterlife have jobs and tasks that they must perform, including helping other souls to cross over. These tasks allow one’s own soul to progress and reach higher levels of consciousness. Once entering a higher level, a soul may travel at will downward through the lower levels, and will often choose to do so in order to remain with a loved one, such as a family member or close friend from the physical realm, who has not yet achieved entrance to the higher levels.

While the soul bears no physical resemblance to the physical body, and thus does not appear in the afterlife as it did on earth, it can be recognized by other spirits by its distinct personality. Therefore, those close to someone in life can remain in contact in the spiritual realm. According to Anderson, the souls of friends and family members are often waiting to greet the newly deceased as he or she enters the afterlife. Rekindled souls will often remain together in the next realm, although the barriers of role commonly disappear or change. For example, the souls of a mother and son will no longer consider themselves as such, but rather simply as two spirits on the same “vibration” (quoted by Martin and Romanowski 1987:226). However, Anderson claims that spirits possess the capability to appear in a physical, recognizable form during a reading in order to communicate more effectively with him and those with whom they are trying to communicate.

Anderson has also acknowledged the ability of souls to re-enter the physical universe and live multiple lives. According to Anderson, while many wait until they have reached higher levels of consciousness and have progressed spiritually to enter into a subsequent life, others, particularly those who died suddenly and unexpectedly, may choose to re-enter the physical realm immediately. Furthermore, just as souls in the spiritual realm will traditionally remain with spirits with whom they were close in life, they will often embark on subsequent lives together, “coming back” as family members or friends. Finally, Anderson proclaims that although all experiences in the spiritual realm are subjective, an overwhelming majority of the spirits with whom he has communicated claim to be happy, at peace, and self-aware.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

George Anderson Grief Support Programs offers three different types of discernment sessions: private, group, and telephone sessions. Both private and group sessions are held in a conference room of a hotel in Commack, Long Island. On the day of the readings, clients are asked to wait in the lobby of the hotel until Anderson is ready to begin. A staff member meets the clients within several minutes and answers any questions before leading them to the conference room to begin the session. According to Anderson, although the time per private session varies depending on the amount of communication from the spirits, a typical reading lasts about fifty minutes to an hour. For a charge of $1,200, one or two persons may attend the private session, with no supplementary charge for children under sixteen years of age. An additional five hundred dollars admits a third person, and a family of up to six members may request a private reading for $2,000 (“Private Sessions” n.d.) Group sessions allow individuals or couples to receive a “mini-reading,” commonly lasting about fifteen to twenty minutes, within a group setting. Groups are both organized by topic, such as parents who have lost children, or convenience; therefore, group size varies based on opportunity, interest, and time allotment. Anderson charges $400 for each mini-session within a group reading, and each is limited to one or two people. Furthermore, if two people are in attendance, it is not required that they are legal relatives; however, they must seek to communicate with the same soul (“Small Group Sessions” n.d.). Telephone sessions are available for those limited in their ability to travel and may be placed internationally. These sessions are comparable to private sessions in length and cost $1,200 (“Telephone Sessions” n.d.).

Despite the organizational differences among sessions, Anderson has described and displayed a relatively uniform process in which readings occur. Prior to the session, Anderson recommends that all persons seeking to make contact first accept the loss of the person with whom they seek to communicate. According to Anderson, while spirits are able to make contact immediately after entering the spiritual realm, communication is most effective and beneficial after the bereaved has reached a degree of understanding his or her loss. Furthermore, acknowledging that, due to emotional strain, it is often difficult to fully comprehend precisely what the spirits are trying to communicate as the session is occurring, clients are encouraged to make audio recordings of the readings; however, videotaping the sessions is strictly forbidden.

Clients’ personal statements have provided some insight into the progression of a typical discernment session. Anderson will typically begin the reading by reciting a short prayer and picking up a pen and a pad of paper. He will then begin to move the pen over the paper as if scribbling rapidly on the page, but he does not actually touch the paper or leave any markings. He maintains that this allows him to better channel the spirits’ energy. He then instructs clients to only answer either “yes” or “no” to the statements made by spirits throughout the session, explaining that each soul is aware that someone in the physical realm is trying to communicate with him or her and understands what the client needs to hear to benefit from the contact. Therefore, as Anderson explains, “the only words you need to say in a session are that you understand the information that your loves ones are telling you” (“Frequently Asked Questions” n.d.; Filius 2001).

Anderson has likened the beginning of the session, in which the soul first makes contact with him, to a Polaroid photograph. Within seconds, an image of the soul trying to communicate becomes increasingly clear, to the point where he or she can be described to the client. Anderson will often begin illustrating the spirit in vague terms, such as gender or relationship to the client, until the client is able to identify the soul trying to make contact. Anderson’s descriptions will typically become increasingly specific as the session continues, often offering a name or cause of death. Sessions will often conclude with a message from the soul, the nature of which usually being one of comfort or reassurance that he or she has entered into an afterlife and is at peace.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

George Anderson began holding private reading sessions around 1978 when, after years of self-doubt and skepticism, he reportedly began to interpret his ability in a spiritual sense. He quickly gained a considerable degree of attention and hosted a television show titled Psychic Channels alongside Joel Martin throughout the majority of the 1980s. The program featured discernments with audience members and callers and featured guests in the paranormal field, such as fellow mediums, psychics, and skeptics. The show gained immediate attention and, at its peak around the mid-1980s, boasted a two-year waiting period for studio audience tickets (“Joel Martin” n.d.). After compiling years of recordings of reading sessions between Anderson and both audience members and private clients, Martin and Patricia Romanowski coauthored a book titled We Don’t Die: George Anderson’s Conversations with the Other Side. The immediate success of the book spurred a nationwide tour, with Anderson appearing on television talk shows such as Larry King Live and Live With Regis & Kathy Lee. Upon returning from the tour, Anderson stepped back from the spotlight and began holding exclusively private reading sessions through his organization George Anderson Grief Support Programs (Buckland 2005:7). Martin and Romanowski’s two subsequent books, published in the 1990s, continued to draw attention to the medium.

On September 1, 1997 George Anderson Grief Support Programs launched a website, georgeanderson.com, which made Anderson’s services more widely-available. Within the first month of activity, the website’s “Ask George Anderson” service received about one thousand queries from individuals across the globe. Within a year, the website had reportedly received over fifty thousand emails, questions, and comments from forty countries. Within five years, almost half a million people had accessed the site. Today George Anderson Grief Support Programs operates out of two offices, both located in New York, under Anderson himself and executive director Andrew Barone. It also employs a staff to respond to the reported “800 phone calls, 1,200 emails, and 200 letters” received weekly; manage the organization’s website; and offer over-the-phone grief support services to callers (“Frequently Asked Questions”). Despite his appearance on the 2001 ABC Special, Contact: Talking to the Dead , according to Anderson’s website, he does not currently make any media appearances or perform public readings. Rather he offers exclusively the private, telephone, and group sessions outlined on the site (“Contact the Programs Office” n.d.).

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Even before the onset of his career, George Anderson was met repeatedly with challenges to the legitimacy of his ability. Having been doubted by his parents, peers, and numerous figures of authority throughout his childhood and teenage years, Anderson was nearly placed in an inpatient psychological institution and treated for schizophrenia. However, his visions did not stop, and eventually they fueled a career beset by controversy and skepticism. The most common criticism of Anderson’s ability has been that his readings are often too vague, or incorrect, to be considered legitimate. Former clients as well as general skeptics have accused Anderson of obtaining information about clients before readings and, as paranormal investigator and skeptic Gary Posner states, likened his reading process to “play[ing] a version of the child’s games ‘Hot and Cold’ and ‘20 Questions’” (Posner 2006). Furthermore, although Anderson claims to have undergone and passed a series of scientific tests, many have questioned the legitimacy of the scientists and the measures used to obtain such results. In 2003, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, an organization dedicated to paranormal investigation, posted an article titled “How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments,” criticizing the method through which University of Arizona professor Gary Schwartz and colleagues tested and confirmed the paranormal abilities of several mediums, including George Anderson (Hyman 2003).

In response to skepticism regarding the legitimacy of his ability, Anderson argues that many skeptics of mediumship are all subject to the same misunderstanding: that communicating with the spiritual realm is an infallible process. On the contrary, as Anderson retorts, there is much room for miscommunication due to human error on his part and that of the client and because many of the messages he receives from spirits are in symbols, images, and visions, rather than words. Therefore, it is often difficult to relay to the client exactly what the spirit is communicating. As it pertains, Anderson has metaphorically likened his ability to that of an athlete, stating that “every time a ballplayer steps up to the plate, he doesn’t hit a home run. But that doesn’t mean he can’t play ball” (quoted by Reed 1999). Furthermore, refuting claims that he obtains information about clients prior to readings, he maintains that George Anderson Grief Support Programs takes measures to assure the complete anonymity of clients. Anderson reports that this is done by replacing names with client numbers after appointments have been booked; therefore, he does not have access to clients’ names at any point prior to, during, or after the session.

Finally, concerns have been raised regarding what some consider the inappropriately high cost of reading sessions. In response, the organization claims that due to the large number of people seeking readings from Anderson and contacting the organization with questions and concerns, it must maintain a full-time staff. Furthermore, Anderson is very limited in how many readings he can conduct per week. Although the organization states that it is currently working toward lowering the cost of private readings, the present cost per session is necessary to fund the organization (“Frequently Asked Questions,” n.d). Regardless of the numerous criticisms, skepticisms, and challenges faced by George Anderson Grief Support Programs, the organization continues to thrive as Anderson claims to have conducted over 30,000 readings throughout the course of his career (“Meet Legendary Medium George Anderson” n.d.).

REFERENCES

Anderson, George. n.d. “Previous Installments.” Ask George Anderson. George Anderson Grief Support
Programs. Accessed from http://www.georgeanderson.com/askgeorge2.htm on 17 February 2014.

Anderson, George and Andrew Barone. 2001. Walking in the Garden of Souls. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Anderson, George and Andrew Barone. 1999. Lessons from the Light: Extraordinary Messages of Hope from the Other Side. New York: Penguin Group.

Buckland, Raymond. 2005. The Spirit Book: Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit
Communication. Canton: Visible Ink Press.

“Contact the Programs Office,” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs  Accessed from
http://georgeanderson.com/contactus.htm on 17 February 2014.

Filius, Charles A. 2001. “My Reading by George Anderson.” Extralargemedium.net. Accessed from
http://www.extralargemedium.net/georgeanderson.htm on 17 February 2014.

“Frequently Asked Questions,” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs. Accessed from
http://georgeanderson.com/faq.htm on 17 February 2014 .

Hornberger, Francine. 2004. The World’s Greatest Psychics. New York: Kensington Publishing.

Hyman, Ray. 2003. “How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments.” The Committee for
Skeptical Inquiry. Accessed from http://www.csicop.org/si/show/how_not_to_test_mediums_critiquing_the_afterlife_experiments on 17 February 2014.

“Joel Martin: Best Selling Author and Paranormal Journalist.” n.d. MargaretWendt.com. Accessed from
http://margaretwendt.com/joel_martin.php on 17 February 2014.

Martin, Joel and Patricia Romanowski. 1988. We Don’t Die: George Anderson’s Conversations with the Other Side. New York: Penguin.

“Meet Legendary Medium George Anderson,” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs. Accessed
from http://www.georgeanderson.com/georgeandersonbio.htm on 17 February 2014 .

Porche, Jean and Deborah Vaughan. 2005. Psychics & Mediums in Canada. Ontario: Dundurn Press.

Posner, Gary P. 2006. “’Close Encounter of the 2nd-Hand Kind’ with ‘Psychic Medium’ George
Anderson.” Tampa Bay Skeptics . Accessed from
http://www.tampabayskeptics.org/v19n1rpt.html on 17 February 2014.

“Private Sessions,” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs. Accessed from
http://georgeanderson.com/privatesessions.htm on 17 February 2014.

Reed, J.D. 1999. “Across The Great Divide.” People. Accessed from
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20129566,00.html on 17 February2014.

“Small Group Sessions.” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs. Accessed from
http://georgeanderson.com/groupsessions.htm on 17 February 2014.

“Telephone Sessions.” n.d. George Anderson Grief Support Programs. Accessed from
http://georgeanderson.com/telephonesessions.htm on 17 February 2014.

Williams, Kevin. n.d. “George Anderson,” Near Death Experiences and the Afterlife. Accessed from
http://www.near-death.com/index.html#.UwKlXrRlp_c on 17 February 2014.

Post Date:
24 February 2014

GEORGE ANDERSON VIDEO CONNECTIONS

THE GHOST DANCE TIMELINE

1856 Wovoka, a Paiute Indian, was born in western Nevada.

1870 The early phase of Ghost Dance was initiated in NV by Wodziwob, a Northern Paiute Indian. The movement soon spread to other tribes and was practiced in CA and OR.

1870s The Ghost Dancers became disillusioned with the movement and the majority of movement disbanded although some offshoots such as Earth Lodge and Big Head continued to thrive.

1889 The second and more prominent phase of Ghost Dance was founded by Wovoka in NV and soon spread to other tribes.

1890 U.S. authorities became fearful of the movement’s rapid spread and officials tried to outlaw the practice.

1890 (Mid-December) U.S. Army officers tried to arrest Sitting Bull, a Lakota Shaman and supporter of the Ghost Dance, resulting in a gun battle which killed Sitting Bull. US officers ordered the arrest of Big Foot, a Lakota chief.

1890 (December 28) Big Foot surrendered to U.S. military forces at Wounded Knee Creek, however in the process of disarming the Lakota armies, US Army strafed the camp with gunfire killing hundreds of Lakota.

1891 The massacre at Wounded Knee ended the widespread nature of the Ghost Dance movement although it continued in isolated places in the U.S.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The original Ghost Dance appeared on the Walker Lake Reservation in Nevada in 1870. It was initiated by Wodziwob (“Gray Hair”), a Northern Paiute Indian, as a result of visionary experiences he had in the late 1860s. Wodziwob told of having gone, in trance, to another world where he was informed that an Indian renaissance was at hand. By 1870 Indian fortunes were at a low ebb; in the wake of the Civil War the United States had concentrated on controlling Indian life and assimilating Indian people into the larger culture. Indians had been moved involuntarily from place to place; many lost their traditional lands and suffered from starvation and disease. Wodziwob’s vision predicted that tribal Indian life would soon return, that the dead would come back to life, and that animals Indians had traditionally hunted (notably the buffalo) would be restored. In order to hasten those auspicious events, Indians were instructed to perform certain round dances at night. The movement soon spread beyond the Paiute to other tribes, eventually gaining adherents in California and Oregon as well as Nevada. As the movement spread it evolved and changed; the Earth Lodge religion and the Big Head religion were among the offshoots.

After a few years the Northern Paiute Ghost Dancers became disillusioned, since Wodziwob’s prophecies did not appear to be coming true, and they gave up the dance. However, some of the other groups to which the movement had spread continued to perform it to some degree.

A new and more influential Ghost Dance movement began among the Paiute of Nevada in the late 1880s and quickly spread to many other tribes. Wovoka, a Paiute shaman also known as Jack Wilson (so named by a white family for whom he worked as a farmhand) who had participated in the Ghost Dance of 1870, became ill with a fever late in 1888 and had visionary experiences that provided the basis for the new Ghost Dance. During an eclipse of the sun in January, 1889, he was purportedly taken to the spirit world and given instruction there. He was told that a reunion of the living and dead would soon take place, and that the deprivation suffered by Indians would end if his new teachings were followed. Wovoka told his people to treat one another justly, to avoid destructive and malicious behaviors (including fighting and drinking), and to perform the round dance that would bring about a social upheaval in which traditional Indian life would be restored. Wovoka and other members of the Paiute tribe began to perform the dance immediately, and within a few months it had spread to other tribes.

Indian life was just as desperate in 1889 as it had been in 1870. All hope of defeating the United States militarily was gone, grinding poverty was endemic, and assimilation was the policy of the U. S. Government. The arrival of railroads brought waves of settlers into former Indian lands. Wovoka’s message of a new golden age was therefore received with great enthusiasm, and it spread quickly among the tribes of the Great Basin and the Great Plains. Many tribes sent delegates to visit Wovoka, hear his message, and receive instructions for the dance. Throughout the year 1890 the Ghost Dance was performed, stimulating anticipation of a return of the old ways.

The Plains Indians added a new twist to the Ghost Dance message, a belief that the great changes at hand would include the eradication of whites, or at least their being driven away from Indian lands. Some, especially the Lakota, went farther yet, creating in mid-1890 “ghost shirts” and “ghost dresses,” special garments that were believed to be bulletproof–indeed, impenetrable by any kind of weapon. The shirts were decorated with symbols of religious significance–sun, moon, stars–and often adorned with eagle feathers.

The militancy of the Lakota Ghost Dancers and the increasing popularity of the dance in the fall of 1890 made U. S. authorities nervous. The movement’s rapid spread and acquisition of followers made white settlers and the military fearful, and efforts to control the ghost dancers escalated. Officials tried to outlaw the practice, but it continued unabated. The noted shaman SittingBull encouraged his people to continue the dance in defiance of the ban. In mid-November an army detachment arrived at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to suppress the armed uprising that seemed to be looming. In mid-December army officers decided to arrest Sitting Bull, the most intransigent of the militant Indian chiefs; he was killed in a gun battle between his supporters and the soldiers. Next the U. S. authorities ordered the arrest of another Lakota chief, Big Foot; he and a band of some 350 Lakota surrendered on December 28, 1890, establishing a camp at Wounded Knee Creek. The following day a scuffle broke out between the Lakota and the U. S. military forces as the latter were in the process of disarming the former, and in panic the army detachment strafed the Indian camp with gunfire, killing hundreds of Lakota, including many trying to flee, and some dozens of army soldiers who were caught in the barrage of bullets. Most of the Lakota were wearing ghost shirts, whose defensive efficacy against bullets was rather dramatically disproved. Army troops returned to the site on New Year’s Day, 1891, and buried the victims in a mass grave.

The Wounded Knee massacre put an end to the Ghost Dance as a widespread phenomenon. It was continued in several isolated places, but the expectation of the imminent return of the dead and of traditional culture was minimized. The last known Ghost Dances were held in the 1950s among the Shoshoni.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

The central precept of the Ghost Dance as preached by Wovoka involved the reuniting of the living and the dead; this doctrine of resurrection of the dead may have been inspired by Christian beliefs, to which Wovoka had been exposed. The return of the dead would be accompanied by a glorious return of traditional Indian culture; in order to achieve this grand reunion, the people had to behave meritoriously. The moral code laid down by Wovoka stipulated that people were to avoid harming anyone, avoid telling lies, avoid drinking, avoid stealing, and avoid all fighting, including war. Although the change would eventually come on its own, it could be hastened by the performance of a round dance, a traditional group dance performed in a circle, at night, for several consecutive nights. The teachings surrounding the Ghost Dance were transmitted orally among believers.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The principal ritual of the Ghost Dance religion was the dance itself. Ghost Dancers also continued to perform the rituals of their respective tribes. The Ghost Dance was a fluid religion that evolved as it spread, and several distinct movements arose as descendants of the original (1870) Ghost Dance.

In its Lakota version, the Ghost Dance circle usually had at its center a tree decorated with feathers and other symbolic ornamentsthat constituted offerings to the divine powers. After opening invocations, prayers, and exhortations, the dancers joined hands and began a frenetic circle dance. Many who were sick participated in the hope of being cured, and many fell down, sometimes unconscious, sometimes in trance, as the dance progressed. Eventually the dancing stopped and the participants sat in a circle, relating their experiences and visions. Later the dance might be repeated.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Not a membership organization; participants numbered many thousands.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Ghost Dance instilled a great deal of fear in white settlers in areas where it was performed, especially by the Lakota, whose strain of the religion was especially militant. It also portended an Indian uprising and as such was suppressed by the U. S. government. That suppression led directly to the disastrous Wounded Knee massacre.

REFERENCES

Bailey, Paul.1957. Wovoka, the Indian Messiah. Los Angeles, CA: Westernlore Press.

Du Bois, Cora. 1939. The 1870 Ghost Dance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Mooney, James. 1965. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Osterreich, Anne Shelley. 1991. The American Indian Ghost Dance, 1870 and 1890: An Annotated Bibliography. NY: Greenwood Press.

Posting Date:
December, 2011