Shiloh Youth Revival Centers
SHILOH YOUTH REVIVAL CENTERS TIMELINE
1968 The first “House of Miracles” in Costa Mesa, California was sponsored by Calvary Chapel.
1969 All Houses of Miracles “submitted” to John J. Higgins, Jr., Randy Morich, and Chuck Smith as “elders.”
1970 The Houses of Miracles moved to Oregon and took the name “ Shiloh” at the invitation of “Open Bible Standard” pastors.
1970 Rev. Wonleey Gray (OBS Pastor) gave the corporate shell of “ Oregon Youth Revival Center” to Shiloh.
1970 Shiloh bought 70 acres near Dexter, Oregon (“the Land”) to build a central commune and Bible school (the “ Shiloh Study Center”).
1971 The first communal Pastors’ Meeting was held at “the Land.”
1971 Shiloh began its “Agricultural Foundation of Ministry,” eventually buying or leasing five farms in Oregon; sociologists from University of Nevada, Reno began to study Shiloh.
1971-1978 Shiloh sent out numerous teams across U.S., U.S. territories, and Canada to open “Shiloh Houses” and “Fellowships;” members moved between the Shiloh Study Center, work parties, and evangelical teams, who made new communal “foundations.”
1974 Shiloh centralized its resources to allow for central planning and control under the rubric of “one communal pot” and began to give “personal allocations” based on rank.
1975 Shiloh abandoned full communitarianism (“one pot”) in the face of the growth of its married population and started “fellowships” (churches) for marrieds.
1978 The Study Center/Work/Team cycle was suspended; ministry “Bishop,” John J. Higgins, Jr. was suspended and fired by the Shiloh Board of Directors; members began a mass out-movement from the 37 communes open at this time. Higgins moved to Arizona to start Calvary Chapels.
1978-1982 Ken Ortize presided over the retrenchment of Shiloh to “the Land” alone. He left to start a Calvary Chapel in Spokane, Washington.
1982-1987 Joe Peterson, leader of House of Elijah in Yakima, Washington, was invited to lead Shiloh and make “the Land” a retreat center.
1986 The Internal Revenue Service sued Shiloh for unpaid “Unrelated Business Income Tax” due for income earned by Shiloh treeplanting work teams.
1987 The “Last Reunion” of Shiloh members was held on “the Land.”
1989 “Shiloh Youth Revival Centers” disincorporated.
1993 Lonnie Frisbee, one of Shiloh’s original leaders, died from complications after contracting AIDS.
1998 The “Shiloh ‘Twentieth’ Reunion” was held in Eugene, Oregon.
2002 Keith Kramis and others created Shiloh websites and discussion forums as virtual spaces for those in the Shiloh diaspora.
2010 Shiloh appeared on Facebook.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
The North American Jesus Movement of the late 1960’s through early 1980’s spawned a host of religious movement organizations
(Lofland and Richardson 1984:32-39); among them were Shiloh Youth Revival Centers, at first known as the “House of Miracles,” and later as “Shiloh” to its adherents (Di Sabatino 1994; Goldman 1995; Isaacson 1995; Richardson et al. 1979; Stewart 1992; Taslimi et al. 1991). Shiloh was one of the largest, if not the largest, in membership of the North American Christian (or any other religious) communes established during and shortly after the 1960’s hippie era. Internal estimates of those who passed through Shiloh’s 180 communal portals ranged as high as 100,000; the group claimed about 1,500 members in 37 communes and 20 churches or “fellowships” in early 1978. Bodenhausen, drawing on Shiloh’s internal records, reported 11,269 visits and 168 conversions during a five-week period in 1977. Shiloh embodied a hippie-youth vanguard of the post-war shift to Evangelical Protestantism in mid-to-late twentieth century North America.
Shiloh passed through seven major periods in its organizational history and “afterlife” (Stewart and Richardson 1999a).
The House of Miracles phase began on May 17, 1969 when John J. Higgins, Jr. (b. April 1939 in Queens, New York and raised Roman Catholic) and his wife, Jacquelyn, founded the House of Miracles in Costa Mesa, California (Higgins 1973). For the prior two years they had been members of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa under the pastorship of Chuck Smith, a former Foursquare Gospel minister. Calvary Chapel gave partial financial support to this first step (Higgins 1973).
When Higgins moved with a team of communards to Lane County, Oregon in the spring of 1969, he initiated a process that 
resulted in renaming the movement “Shiloh,” by establishing a large rural commune in Dexter, Oregon, and by working with leaders of other Pentecostal denominations (the Open Bible Standard churches, and Faith Center, a small Foursquare church in Eugene). In 1971, sociologist James T. Richardson lead a team of graduate students to Shiloh’s “Berry Farm” in Cornelius, Oregon to study the group, efforts that continued in a series of contacts over the 1970s and became fully realized in Organized Miracles (1979). One unanticipated consequence was that an article published by his team in Psychology Today stirred a wave of seekers who wrote to the sociologists asking how to join.
In 1974, all Shiloh communes became part of a centralized planned economy. During this time Higgins de-emphasized charisma and moved millenarian views onto center stage. Centralizing funds allowed Shiloh to form work teams, to bid on reforestation and other mass-work contracts, support a school operation, and to send out evangelistic teams all over the U.S., from Fairbanks to Boston and from Maui to the Virgin Islands. As individuals married and moved out of the communes during the following period, Shiloh Fellowship churches were organized along the lines of a Franciscan “third order.”
However, in the spring of 1978 Shiloh’s Board, made up primarily of old House of Miracles’ house pastors and some second generation leaders, impeached and fired its surviving charismatic founder. The movement entered a period of chaos, retrenchment, and eventual collapse as trust fractured. Several successor groups operated “rump” communes or publications, founded Calvary Chapels, or later, Vineyard Christian Fellowships. Some worked as evangelists and church planters in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the former Soviet Union.
Circa 1982, one remnant group developed new purpose in maintaining the central Shiloh commune in Dexter, Oregon, as a retreat center. This group invited Joe Peterson, a former “House of Elijah” ( Yakima, Washington) leader, to take the helm. In 1986, Shiloh was sued by the Internal Revenue Service for failure to pay taxes on unrelated business enterprises, a suit that eventually was lost. The beloved “Land” was forfeited to the tax attorneys in lieu of fees. Shiloh disincorporated in 1989.
Though the corporate shell was gone, all the people had gone “somewhere.” They had become church members and leaders of all denominational stripes, joined missionary organizations, or deconverted and become Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists. Many played significant leadership roles in the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard movements. Among them was Lonnie Frisbee, Shiloh’s most famous member and early leader, who died of AIDS in 1993. Some earned advanced degrees, studying and writing about what happened to them (e.g., Murphy 1996; Peterson 1990, 1996; Stewart 1992; Stewart and Richardson 1999a; Taslimi et al. 1991).
As they had time to process their own histories with Shiloh, Shiloh’s “afterlife” blossomed from nostalgia. Former communards organized major reunions (e.g., 1987, 1998, and 2010) and many localized ones, initiated electronic discussion lists, and set-up web sites (Kramis 2002-2013). Shiloh members labeled the first and second phases “Old Shiloh,” the third “New Shiloh,” thought of the fourth as a metaphorical “holocaust,” and denied the existence of subsequent periods. Shiloh’s “twentieth reunion” in 1998 marked the time from Higgins’s fall—a more significant event for Shiloh alumni than the founding (1968) or disincorporation (1989). This reunion also marked an effort by reunion organizers and several former Shiloh Board Members (now pastors of Calvary Chapels) to rehabilitate Higgins’ reputation, an effort that continued through subsequent reunions.
The advent of Shiloh on Facebook in 2010 allowed Shiloh alumni (or “Shilohs” as they call themselves) from all eras and locales to discover one another. Some had never understood what had happened in 1978 and sought to know the details of their own history. Others took occasion to share their old photos and wistful memories.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Shiloh ’s beliefs would coordinate well with the “Statement of Faith” for the National Association of Evangelicals. Shiloh, especially at its beginning, was Charismatic/Pentecostal in practice. However, Shiloh members ran into trouble with both Evangelicals and Pentecostals because the group permitted its hippie male members to wear long hair (a “shame” as per 1 Cor. 11:14) and held all property in common (Acts 2:44-45). Starting with the first “submission” to Higgins in 1969 and continuing with the annual pastors’ meeting from 1971 on, “Shilohs” pledged commitment to Shiloh and its elders in annual commitment meetings. This included giving property (“laying it at the apostles’ feet,” Acts 4:34-35), wages, and the like to the group. A. T. Pierson’s biography of George Muller (2008), a member of the Plymouth Brethren and orphanage founder, influenced Shiloh to depend on prayer for financial provision. Gifts from members were seen as a result.
Besides the acknowledging and privileging of charismatic gifts and total commitment to the cause, evangelical writers such as A.W. Tozer in his Knowledge of the Holy (1992) and last-day prophets such as Chuck Smith in his studies of biblical eschatology (e.g., pre-tribulation rapture; soon-coming of Christ) contributed to Shiloh’s nascent theology. During the period when Higgins consolidated his leadership (1972-1978), he de-emphasized “other voices” while stressing his own particular teaching. Among the new teachings was one based on Ecclesiastes 11:3, “where a tree falls that’s where it lies” (per a Shiloh paraphrase). At the time this meant that anyone sinning in thought, word, or deed at the (precise) moment of death would receive eternal punishment. (This teaching was later nicknamed “eternal insecurity”). Such an assertion was a giant step away from Calvary Chapel’s “Calminianism—a calque for Calvinism + Arminianism, i.e. a middle-of-the-road posture between the predestination of the believer to “salvation” and the freewill of the believer to choose and maintain “salvation.” A second novelty, concerning “the synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9; 3:9), proved controversial with movement leaders, setting the stage for the crisis of 1978.
Communal life lead to a large number of rules to ease the friction of life together. For instance, sanitary pit-privies would have a sign reminding members to toss in a scoop of agricultural lime after each use adding, “He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much” (a Shiloh paraphrase of Matt 25:21). This notion, along with the doctrine of “salvation-insecurity” above, provided a way for members “to exhort” or exercise their spiritual authority over each other. The urgency felt for the Second Coming combined with the fear of sin’s eternal consequences for an ill-timed lapse bolstered Shilonites’ submission to leaders, compliance to rules, and “commitment.” Shiloh was a “high-commitment” organization. As one member said: “Some went to Vietnam; we went to Shiloh.”
During the Vietnam War, Shiloh allowed the exercise of personal conscience as to whether one should submit to the draft or not. Consequently, some “Shilohs” sought the draft status of “conscientious objector,” making use of counseling materials prepared by the Mennonite Central Committee. In 1970, one Shiloh leader refused induction into the military and went to prison for five months. However, this early commitment to a peace position did not survive the decade.
Shiloh ’s “legalism” and rejection of “the security of the believer” was the inverse image of the classic Christian notion of “grace.” Young leaders (teenagers and twenty-somethings; Higgins in his thirties) struggled with their confusion about this (Higgins 1974a). It did not come under active theological discussion until late in the “New Shiloh” period. Indeed, all of Shiloh’s theology remained in process. Chuck Smith’s influence on Higgins did lead to an annual Bible reading program led by house pastors in “twenty-chapter studies.” The “whole” Bible, implicitly, was given authority by this read-through and its reading contributed to continuing theological development. “Shilohs” paraphrased and reified the King James Bible in speech, song, letters, publications, performances, and arts and crafts (Stewart 1992).
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
Shiloh moved from a quasi-democratic, communalist, and egalitarian movement, exemplified by free display of charismata by any
so gifted, leader teams, and Quaker-like testimony-sharing-and-prayer meetings, to “Bible Studies” led by internally-credentialed authoritarian leaders. The original leadership consisted of four married couples: John and Jacquelyn Higgins, Lonnie and Connie Frisbee, Randy and Sue Morich, Stan and Gayle Joy (Higgins 1973; 1974a; 1974b). The Frisbees, Morichs, and Stan Joy left Shiloh by 1970; Jacquelyn Higgins left in the mid-1970s. Only Gayle Joy and John Higgins continued, and both remarried. This allowed Higgins to consolidate his authority.
All of the original leaders claimed prophetic authority from visions and auditions (Higgins 1974b). Higgins, for instance, claimed that the name of the organization, Shiloh, came to him by prophecy and was based on Genesis 49:10. But by 1978 the leadership was fully hierarchical: Higgins as “Bishop” at the top; the Pastors’ Council of elders in the second rank; House pastors and patronesses, third. Women could not teach men and wives were to submit to husbands. Shiloh adopted the New Testament “Household Codes” (e.g., Ephesians 5:22-6:9) to manage its social relations. However, Shiloh did allow women to hold the offices of Exhorter, Deaconess and Patroness (the latter was conceptualized as women’s ordination, and these women typically pastored “Girl’s Houses”) in a parallel structure with men’s roles. This move evidenced a slight accommodation to the birthing feminist movement in the 1970s. In 1977, Jo Ann Brozovich, became editor of Shiloh Magazine , leading a mixed gender staff. Nevertheless, all members were to “submit” to those “above” them.
The twelve member Pastors’ Council, with no women present except a stenographer, met weekly to run things under Higgins’ aegis. These second “generation” leaders included five early House of Miracles pastors, some teachers from the Shiloh Study Center (including Ken Ortize who would take over the retrenching Shiloh in 1978), and some leaders of technical departments.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
For the early Shiloh movement, management of the hordes of nomadic youth who sought shelter represented the primary
challenge. Secondary to this was the provision of nutritious food. Twenty-something Shiloh leaders found themselves thrust into the role of caring for large numbers of people. In response, Shiloh developed its Shiloh Christian Communal Cooking Book with recipes for five, 25, and 50 servings, organized dumpster diving and produce runs to recycle food, applied for USDA surplus food, and planted community gardens. Following a “prophetic” understanding that “agriculture was to be the foundation of the ministry,” Shiloh purchased an orchard, pastures, a goat dairy and livestock; leased a commercial berry farm; ran a commercial fishing boat; and developed a cannery to provide both income and food to distribute throughout its communal system.
Financial stability was always a concern. Group work projects to support the commune followed out of early group work efforts to run a melon farm in Fontana, California in 1969; to salvage lumber from house teardowns to build “the Land” in 1970; and to pick apples in Wenatchee, Washington. The most successful Shiloh work projects resulted from Weyerhauser reforestation contracts, the eventual issue in an IRS attempt to recover taxes for “Unrelated [to Shiloh’s 501(c) (3) tax exempt status] Business Income.” Shilonites marrying and having children also became unmanageable in 1972-1973. Non-leadership couples moved out of communes to support themselves. The search for financial stability to feed, house, and care for the Shiloh membership moved from early dependence on prayer and donations to increasingly rational attempts to centralize, plan, and control.
Governmental pressures challenged, and ultimately, distorted Shiloh’s ideological positions. Zoning that prohibited “people of unrelated blood” confronted the communards in numerous cities. A typical Shiloh response to city councils and zoning boards was: “God has made of one blood all men” ( Shiloh paraphrase of Acts 17:26). That is, civil law could be nullified by divine law. Draft resistance and draft counseling offered to Shiloh conscientious objectors lead to monitoring by the FBI. Confronting the question of whether personal allowances were “pay” lead to theologizing about the nature of “sharing all things in common,” “vows of poverty,” and conscientious objection to social security. Shiloh had its attorneys draw up new incorporation papers to make it a 501(d) “apostolic communal organization” (like the Hutterites), but finally balked at following through. In this regard, Shiloh sent one of its leaders to visit and consult with Hutterite communities. In 1976, the IRS audited Shiloh leaders who had claimed vows of poverty on their tax returns; in 1978, the IRS audited the organization’s 990 return. In response to IRS pressures, Shiloh theologized all work as “spiritual” labor and placed a statement to this effect in its by-laws as an effort to speak to governmental concerns (Stewart and Richardson 1999a; 1999b). Shiloh had formalized its vision that there was no separation between secular and sacred worlds; all was sacred to the vanguard believer. In the late 1970s, two Shiloh members were kidnapped and deprogrammed when the organization was labeled by some as a “cult.” Even as Shiloh was shifting toward socially mainstream Christian practice and diluting some of its countercultural positions, it found itself accused. This lead to internal speculation that the tax audits, a fate that befell other Jesus Movement communal groups who supported themselves by work teams (e.g., Gospel Outreach; Servant Ministry), was a veiled “anti-cult” move by the government. The group now saw itself as persecuted.
The final challenge for Shiloh-as-commune/ity was what to do with its original leader. Some leaders perceived that Higgins was 
leading Shiloh in an unacceptable direction. However, the 1978 coup d’état that followed did derail the movement with the result that hundreds of communards suddenly had to find their way in the world.
REFERENCES
Bodenhausen, Nancy. 1978. “The Shiloh Experience.” Willamette Valley Observer 4/5:10.
Di Sabatino, David. 2007. Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher: A Bible Story. Jester Media.
Di Sabatino, David. 1994. “The Jesus People Movement: Counterculture Revival and Evangelical Renewal.” M.T.S. thesis. Toronto: McMaster College.
Goldman, Marion. 1995. “Continuity in Collapse: Departure from Shiloh.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34:342-53.
Higgins, John J. 1974a. “Ministry History.” Cold Waters 2/1: 21-23, 29.
Higgins, John J. 1974b. “Ministry History.” Cold Waters 2/2: 25-28, 32.
Higgins, John J. 1973. “The Government of God: Ministry History and Governments.” Cold Waters 1/1: 21-24, 44.
Isaacson, Lynne. 1995. “Role Making and Role Breaking in a Jesus Commune.” Pp. 181-201 in Sex, Lies, and Sanctity, edited by Mary Jo Neitz,. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Kramis, Keith. 2002-2013. “Shiloh Youth Revival Centers Alumni Association.” Accessed from www.shilohyrc.com/ on 27 February 2013.
Lofland, John and James T. Richardson. 1984. “Religious Movement Organizations: Elemental Forms and Dynamics.” Pp. 29-52 in Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, edited by Louis Kriesberg, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Murphy, Jean. 1996. “A Shiloh Sister’s Story.” Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living 92: 29-32.
Peterson, Joe V. 1996. “The Rise and Fall of Shiloh.” Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living 92: 60-65.
Peterson, Joe V. 1990. “Jesus People: Christ, Communes and the Counterculture of the Late Twentieth Century in the Pacific Northwest.” Master of Religion thesis. Eugene, OR: Northwest Christian College.
Pierson, Arthur Tappan. 2008. George Muller of Bristol and his Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God . Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Richardson, James T. 1979. Organized Miracles: A Study of a Contemporary, Youth, Communal Fundamentalist Organization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Stewart, David Tabb. 1992. “A Survey of Shiloh Arts.” Communal Societies 12:40-67.
Stewart, David Tabb and James T. Richardson. 1999a. “Mundane Materialism: How Tax Policies and Other Governmental Regulations Affected Beliefs and Practices of Jesus Movement Organizations.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67/4:825-47.
Stewart, David Tabb and Richardson, James T. 1999b. “Economic Practices of Jesus Movement Groups.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 14/3: 309-324.
Taslimi, Cheryl Rowe, Ralph W. Hood, and P.J. Watson. 1991. “Assessment of Former Members of Shiloh: The Adjective Check List 17 Years Later.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30:306-11.
Tozer, Aiden Wilson. 1992. Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: HarperOne.
Youth Revival Centers, Inc. 1973. Shiloh Christian Communal Cooking Book. Dexter, OR: Youth Revival Centers, Inc.
Authors:
David Tabb Stewart
Post Date:
4 March 2013
affiliate with the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church), and in 1960 the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel [Image at right] became an official member of the denomination (Moore 2009:13).
Venezuelan border. By the time the Temple signed an official lease for the land in 1976, pioneers from the group had already spent two years of back-breaking labor [Image at right] to clear jungle in Guyana in order to establish what they called the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. Guyana, a multiracial state and the only English-speaking country in South America, declared itself to be a cooperative socialist republic. Its black minority government welcomed the prospect of serving as a refuge for Americans fleeing a racist and oppressive society. Moreover, having a large group of ex-patriate Americans so close to the border with Venezuela assured U.S. interest in the area under dispute (Moore 2009:42). The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project grew slowly at first, housing only about 50 people as late as the first months of 1977, but it expanded to more than 400 residents by April, and to 1,000 by the end of the year (Moore 2009:44).
Congressman Leo J. Ryan. [Image at right] A constituent, Sammy Houston, claimed that his son Robert had been murdered by Temple members. (There is no evidence to substantiate his claim, which was investigated by the police at the time of Robert’s death, and was re-examined after events in Jonestown.)
her three children and herself in the bathroom of the Georgetown headquarters. The final death toll in Guyana that day was 918: 909 in Jonestown; five at the Port Kaituma airstrip, and four at the Temple’s house in Georgetown. [Image at right]
the bodies in Jonestown. A U.S. Army Graves Registration team bagged the remains, which the U.S. Air Force then transported to Dover Air Force Base for identification by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [Image at right] (Interviews with participants in the bodylift are available at “Military Response to Jonestown” 2020). Routine embalming of all bodies began almost immediately, but one result was that vital forensic evidence was destroyed, which prevented accurate determination of death for seven individuals autopsied by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Relatives claimed approximately one half of the number of bodies, while about 400 bodies remained unidentified or unclaimed. The majority of the unidentified were children. An interfaith group in San Francisco found a cemetery in Oakland, California willing to bury these bodies, after facing rejection by a number of other cemeteries afraid of criticism. In May, 2011 four memorial plaques were placed at the burial site in Evergreen Cemetery, listing the names of all those who died on November 18, 1978.
traditional Christianity did not exist, but a genuine God, referred to as Principle or Divine Socialism, did exist in the person of Jim Jones. [Image at right] If God is Love, and Love is Socialism, then humans must live socialistically to participate in God. Moreover, this allowed for personal deification, as Jones quoted John 10:34: “ye all are gods” (Chidester 1988:53). Thus, members of Peoples Temple practiced what they called “apostolic socialism,” that is, the socialism of the early Christian community described in Acts 2:45 and 4:34-35. “No one can privately own the land. No one can privately own the air. It must be held in common. So then, that is love, that is God, Socialism” (Chidester 1988:57, quoting Jones on Tape Q 967).
“corrective fellowship” meetings were held in which church members offered self-criticism. But catharsis as a regular part of Temple practice took root in Redwood Valley. [Image at right] Catharsis sessions required public confession and communal punishment for transgressions against the community and its members (Moore 2009:32-33). For example, if a teenager was accused of being rude to a senior citizen, the congregation would hear the evidence and vote on the teenager’s innocence or guilt, and on the punishment to be received. The penalty could be a severe spanking administered by one of the seniors. When Jones introduced the “Board of Education,” a one-by-four inch board two and a half feet long, he assigned a large woman to administer the beatings: “She was strong and knew how to whip hard,” according to Mills (1979). Adults who transgressed were punished by being forced to box with other Temple members. A diary kept by Temple member Edith Roller, for example, reported a boxing match between a young man accused of sexism, and a young woman. The woman knocked out the man, to the delight of the crowd in attendance (Moore 2009:32-33).
Violations,” that incoming and outgoing mail was censored; that travel was restricted; that family members could not visit relatives in Jonestown; and that residents put their best face forward for visitors. [Image at right] Situated in the middle of dense jungle, with only two villages accessible by road (Port Kaituma six miles away and Matthews Ridge 30 miles distant) and connected only by air or river travel to the rest of the world, Jonestown was an encapsulated community, almost completely isolated from contact with outsiders. At the same time, Jonestown did not acquire its totalistic profile apart from the agitation of its “cultural opponents” (Hall 1995). As Hall observes, anticult activists played a role in the outcomes in Jonestown and at Mt. Carmel. In their article that analyzes the endogenous (internal) factors leading to violence in new religious movements and the exogenous (external) factors, Anthony, Robbins, and Barrie-Anthony (2011) describe a “toxic interdependence” of “anticult and cult violence,” and suggest that “some groups may be so highly totalistic that they are very vulnerable to [a] triggering effect,” that is, acting out totalistic projections from the outside world (2011:82). In other words, conditions in Jonestown may have declined in response to the level of threat residents believed to exist.
whose mother, aunt, and cousins died in Jonestown, has conducted a memorial service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California [Image at right] every November 18 since 1979. Norwood raised money to construct a memorial on the site, and in 2008 unveiled two enormous granite blocks with the names of some, but not all, adults who had died in Jonestown. According to Ron Haulman, manager of the cemetery, however, the fragile hillside could not support the size or weight of the monuments (Haulman 2011). In 2010, frustrated with the slow pace of the memorialization process, three relatives of Jonestown victims (Jim Jones Jr., John Cobb, and Fielding McGehee) created the Jonestown Memorial Fund and signed a contract with Evergreen Cemetery, agreeing to create a monument consistent with environmental constraints at the hillside (McGehee 2011). In 2011 the three raised $20,000 in three weeks from 120 former Temple members, relatives, scholars, and others. In May 2011, Norwood sued to halt installation of the memorial, claiming that she had a prior claim with the cemetery. The court ruled against her, given that by the time of her suit, the new memorial (four granite plaques that list the names of all who died) was already in place.
purpose of Koinonia Farm was to live out Christianity as they found it in the New Testament. Clarence Jordan called Koinonia Farm “a demonstration plot for the kingdom of God.” (Coble 1999) Soon after the founding of Koinonia Farm, the Englands returned to missionary work abroad. Although many people came and went, and a few families lived at Koinonia Farm for many years, the Jordans were the one consistent family from 1942 until 1969, when Clarence Jordan died (K’Meyer 1997).
agriculture as an undergraduate, and he spent some of his time training local farmers to use better farming techniques. The local white community was antagonistic toward members of Koinonia Farm because black and white farm workers were treated equally. This included offering all workers the same wages and providing all workers a free noonday meal. (Coble 2002)
many people who were part of the hippie movement visited Koinonia Farm, but few people were committed to living there. Jordan and Millard Fuller developed a plan to help the poor in their community own simple, safe homes. In 1969, while working on a sermon in his little writing shack, Jordan had a heart attack and died. After Jordan’s death, Millard Fuller built on their ideas and started Habitat for Humanity, which still has its headquarters in Americus, GA, near Koinonia Farm (Fuller and Scott 1980).
pacifist. He stated that he could not reconcile Jesus’ call to love our enemies with violence and war. This included personal violence as well as military violence, and that was very unusual for a Baptist during World War II. Secondly, Jordan believed in racial equality, which was also unusual during this time among Southern Baptists. Eventually the Jordans were disfellowshipped by the Rehobeth Baptist Church in the 1950s because the Jordans were working on racial reconciliation. Thirdly, Jordan read the Book of Acts and came to believe that Christians should live in communities that shared their goods and money in common. His practice of communal living was sometimes linked by his neighbors to communism, and this created more stress with the surrounding farming communities (Coble 2002).
of the New Testament (Jordan 1969, 1970). Considered to be a very loose paraphrase, these Cotton Patch versions placed Jesus in the twentieth century in rural Georgia. Jesus was born to Mary and Joe Davidson, he was baptized by John the Baptizer who wore blue jeans and leather jacket, and he was crucified in Atlanta. Jordan applied the teachings of Jesus to the racial conflict in the South. For example, the Good Samaritan was not a Samaritan, but a Black man. (Jordan 1969, 1970) After Jordan’s death, his Cotton Patch versions were used as the basis for a musical titled Cotton Patch Gospel , with music by Harry Chapin. The actor Tom Key played the central role. The musical was somewhat controversial because Jesus was lynched instead of crucified. ( Cotton Patch Gospel 1988).
returned to Burma. Many utopian groups begin with a statement of commitment and fairly strict ideals, but Koinonia Farm had not begun that way. When Koinonia Farm developed more structure in the 1950s, the adults (both women and men) took turns being the official leaders, although Clarence Jordan remained the unofficial leader.
second son of Rulon’s fourth (and favorite) wife, Marilyn Steed. Rulon Jeffs left behind twenty-two wives, many of whom Warren married. Warren Jeffs’ leadership marked a significant shift in key FLDS practices and policies. Jeffs sought to solidify his power and authority in the new policy changes. He called for greater centralization of political and economic power in the person of the prophet. Though the FLDS had already moved to the “one man doctrine” of First Ward governance, Jeffs expanded this doctrine to a new level. Jeffs centralized finances and ordered business owners in the community to surrender ownership. He excommunicated long-term community leaders Dan and Louis Barlow and twenty other FLDS men who challenged the new rules and practices. Their property was seized and their wives and children reassigned to men loyal to Jeffs (Evans 2011). This culminated in a mass exodus of 700 members led by Winston Blackmore to another FLDS community in Bountiful in Canada (B.C.). Jeffs also ousted several hundred teenage boys (Lost Boys”) for violations of community rules. These self-aggrandizing actions created new divisions and conflicts within the FLDS. Critics charged Jeffs with blatant disregard for church law and its officers. It was in this contentious context that Jeffs set about to establish a new FLDS community in Texas.
In June, 2005, Jeffs was charged with sexual assault of a minor and with conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor for allegedly arranging a marriage between a fourteen year-old girl and her nineteen year-old first cousin. Jeffs became a fugitive to avoid arrest. Photos were later released showing Jeffs celebrating his marriage to an underage girl who was only twelve. In late 2005, Jeffs was put on the FBI’s most wanted list. Jeffs was captured in Nevada in August, 2006. He stood trial in St. George, Utah in 2007 and was found guilty on two counts of being an accomplice to rape. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. But the Utah Supreme Court later overturned the ruling and ordered a new trial due to faulty instructions given to jurors. Jeffs was still in custody when the state of Texas launched a raid on the YFZ property the following year.
over time: whether there will arise competing prophets to challenge Jeffs’ authority, whether new factions will emerge, or if out of practical necessity those who administer the day-to-day operations of the church become de facto leaders who develop their own authority. Jeffs has imposed even stricter and more rigid requirements on members since his incarceration, dissolving marriages, declaring a moratorium on sex, and attempting to purge the doubters (Dobner 2012; Hollenhorst 2011). He has also issued a series of revelations declaring God’s judgment on the nation for imprisoning him, warning of earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, storms, and floods. But it seems highly unlikely that Jeffs will ever be released from prison, given his life sentence plus twenty years. This permanent sequestration may empower some FLDS members to accept future changes in leadership.
of a plurality of wives to a select group of his followers in the 1840s. By the time of his death in 1844, according to scholar George D. Smith’s analysis, at least 196 men and 717 women had entered the practice privately (Smith 2008:573-639). His vision for the “new and everlasting covenant of marriage” became part of LDS scripture on July 12, 1843 with the 132 nd section of the Doctrine and Covenants. He positioned the uniquely Mormon interpretation of the significance of marriage, in the restoration of the model of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. According to the revelation, “Celestial marriage” was marriage for time and eternity. Men with priesthood authority had the power to seal men and women for eternity. Essential for the highest level of salvation in what Smith described as the “Celestial” kingdom, Smith interpreted plural marriage “as a uniquely exalted form of ‘celestial marriage’—the ‘further order’ of the patriarchal order of marriage mentioned in Doctrine of Covenants” (Bradley 1993:2)
again as a national issue. Smoot was not himself a polygamist, but the issue was whether he would be loyal to the laws of the United States or those of his church. In response to this new pressure, President Joseph F. Smith in April conference, 1904 announced the “Second Manifesto” that added the threat of excommunication to those who failed to follow the prohibition against plural marriages. The document decried allegations that new marriages had occurred “with the sanction, consent or knowledge of the Church” (Allen and Leonard 1976:443).
state rolled over the rocky roadbeds leading into town, Governor Howard Pyle justified the raid over the radio, announcing his fight against “insurrection within [ Arizona’s] own borders,” with the intent “to protect the lives and future of 263 children . . . . the product and the victims of the foulest conspiracy . . . . a community dedicated to the production of white slaves. . . . degrading slavery.” He elaborated further on this theme:
nine of the warrants were for individuals who lived on the Utah side of town. The charges included: rape, statutory rape, carnal knowledge, polygamous living, cohabitation, bigamy, adultery, and misappropriation of school funds (Bradley 1993:131). The raid sought to “rescue 263 children from virtual bondage under the communal United Effort Plan,” according to Attorney General Paul LaPrade. “The principle objective is to rescue these children from a life-time of immoral practices without their ever having had an opportunity to learn of or observe the outside world and its concepts of decent living” (LaPrade 1953).
difference. The Johnson meetinghouse at the center of the community in Colorado City is the size of two LDS stake centers and is the backdrop for group worship services, community dances, and community business meetings. The central meeting space holds an audience of between 1,500 and 2,500. Also, the FLDS hold worship meetings throughout the week as was true in the nineteenth century LDS church. Like the LDS, fundamentalists wear sacred priesthood undergarments and choose modest clothing over modern popular styles.
riding in the white section of a trolley, and refusing to attend segregated schools (Schaefer and Zellner 2008). By 1900, Baker was living in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked as a gardener and assistant preacher in a local Baptist storefront church. He attended the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 and experienced a major spiritual awakening as he spoke in tongues. For the first time he began to recognize his inner divinity and think of himself in god-like terms (Watts 1995:25). In 1907, Baker met a man named Samuel Morris, a preacher to whom Baker was drawn and who called himself Father Jehovia. Baker found the philosophy that Morris taught, that God is within each individual, to be compelling. According to some reports, Morris referred to himself as God. The two men began working together, and Baker began to refer to himself as “the Messenger,” while sharing the godship with Father Jehovia.
in a small house for several years. The Messenger took on responsibility for finding jobs for his followers, and they, in turn, returned their earnings to him. With those funds The Messenger paid for the rent, food, and living expenses. During this time, the group was growing slowly. Peninah, managed the house and prepared food for the group. At this time, or perhaps earlier as some sources suggest, The Messenger married Peninah despite his ban on marriage for his disciples. He stated that the marriage was spiritual and not sexual, as celibacy was required by the group’s moral code. It is not clear whether a marriage license was obtained. While living in New York, The Messenger decided to change his name once again. This time he assumed the name Major Jealous Devine, which was later abbreviated M.J. Devine. Subsequently, the name M.J. Devine evolved into Father Divine (2008).
Father Divine providing both economic and spiritual security for his followers. Eventually, the movement obtained multiple hotels and other businesses. His followers refurbished the buildings and then worked for no wages, blacks and whites together, relying on Father Divine’s leadership. The beginning of the Great Depression and the increasing hardships that poor blacks faced provided an opportunity for Father Divine to advocate for his egalitarian heaven on Earth (Miller 1995). The Peace Mission Movement expanded to 150 “heavenly extensions;” Peace Mission gatherings were held in Canada, Australia, and several European countries. Membership in New York and Long Island peaked at 10,000 around this time. The Peace Mission drew members from the poor black community impacted by the Great Depression, white members who were attracted by the New Thought doctrines, and blacks who had participated in the Universal Negro Improvement Association before founder Marcus Garvey’s deportation in 1927. Watts (1995:85) estimates overall movement membership in the early 1930s as between 20,000 and 30,000.
1930s that the group adopted the name “the International Peace Mission movement.” In 1934, Father Divine, who himself had created a type of communal socialism, forged a short-lived alliance with the Communist Party in the U.S. for a time after being impressed with its commitment to civil rights.
(the date is uncertain). Apparently, only a few of Father Divine’s inner circle knew of Peninah’s death, and she was quietly buried in an unmarked grave Father Divine never discussed her death, but in August 1946 he suddenly announced his marriage to a twenty-one year-old white follower, Edna Rose Ritchings, who was called Sweet Angel and had been one of his secretaries. Father Divine announced that Ritchings’ and Peninah’s spirits had joined together and thereby the two women had become one. Ritchings subsequently was known as Mother Divine within the movement. Father Divine once again emphasized that this marital union was spiritual and not sexual. This interracial marriage sparked public anger, shock among his followers, and some defections. However, she was accepted and revered within the movement. Father Divine and asserted that she was the incarnation of Peninah (Schaefer and Zellner 2008). The couple moved the headquarters to their current location, the Woodmont Estate, which is located outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1953. Mother Divine significantly aided Father Divine in managing the movement during her younger years, and as his health declined she took on many more duties.
recruitment, preferring to preserve its elite status. The few hundred members scattered around the U.S. and Europe have continued to abide by the strict moral code that Father Divine instituted. A small number of members remain at Woodmont, aiding Mother Divine in giving tours of the property and performing day-to-day managerial duties (Schaefer and Zellner 2008). Mother Divine has generally been accepted as the incarnation of Father Divine, and has been treated as such, though his immortal spirit continues to be honored (Weisbrot 1995).
Members were taught that they possessed an inner divinity and that Christ was present in every part of every individual’s body. Father Divine was heavily influenced by writings of Robert Collier that advocate for a universal potential in humans, and that success can be realized through the use of their inner divinity. Father Divine focused on the self-image of members. A righteous individual is one with God and this requires positive thinking and an affirmative self-image. Father Divine stated, “The positive is a reality! We dispel the negative and the undesirable…” (Erikson 1977). This positive way of thinking brings the follower closer with God, and closer to the truth. Father Divine purchased copies of New Thought works and gave them to his disciples (Watts 1995). Many white followers were attracted to his movement by the New Thought teachings. Required reading for members included both the Bible and the Divine newspapers, until their publication was discontinued in 1992.
obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, undue mixing of the sexes, and receiving gifts, presents or bribes. The restrictions on men and women were stringent. Women were not to wear slacks or short skirts and men short-sleeves. Those who stayed at the hotels owned by the Movement, such as the Divine Lorraine, were asked to abide by the code, which was said to prompt “modest, independence, honesty, and righteousness” (Primiano 2013). A plaque was posted in each room containing the rules and regulations. Guests were separated by gender. Although times have changed, the rules for modest dress remained important up until the closing of the Divine Lorraine in 1999. Women were asked to avoid wearing pants, short skirts, bare midriffs, halters, and low cut necklines, and hair curlers. Men could not wear hats, sleeveless shirts, or untucked shirts. A plaque was posted in each room stating the rules and regulations (Primiano 2013). More significantly both for members and the future of the movement, men and women were required to remain celibate. This mandate was gradually extended from Father Divine’s inner circle to all serious followers. Father Divine taught that humans born as a product of sexual intercourse were “born wrong” and that learning how not to be born was the key to learning how not to die (Black n.d.). In stipulating this code of conduct, Father Divine taught that there was no small crime, and that all crimes stem from the same evil impulses (Weisbrot 1995).
during the Great Depression to provide free meals to his followers. There were, and still are, multiple courses served by waiters. Father Divine blessed each dish before it was served. The large gatherings and various courses called for a lengthy dinner that incorporated joyful songs by the different choruses in attendance. At the end of the dinner celebration, Father Divine would stand and give his sermon. The audience would respond with exuberant shouting, jumping, and crying. These banquets, given weekly, were a sign of Father Divine’s charity as well as his wealth. To his followers, the banquets signified his support and his kindness, and they drew many people to him. These banquets are still hosted by the small groups that remain active (Schaefer and Zellner 2008).
as well as anti-lynching laws and further government involvement during the Great Depression. Father Divine led movements and events in New York with his followers. Although Father Divine and the movement participated in meetings and parades with the Communist Party USA, the movement would not be active in the Civil Rights Movement that occurred years later. During the Red Scare, Father Divine took a more anti-communist stance. Later, Mother Divine did not continue his political activity, and the movement became much less politically involved.
auxiliary groups (Weisbrot 1995). The movement also supported two publications: The Spoken Word (1934–1937) and the New Day (1936–1989). Both were available to members and the general public. These publications contained articles on issues of the day as well as world and local events.
Mission were of considerable interest. Father Divines marriage to Mother Divine, fifty years his junior and white, was scandalous during that period. One sexual abuse scandal that occurred with the movement involved an illicit sexual relationship between an adult Peace Mission member, John Hunt, who took seventeen year-old Delight Dewett across state lines for “immoral purposes” after she came to believe that she was to be the Virgin Mary and mother of the next redeemer. Although Father Divine castigated Hunt and supported his criminal conviction, public suspicion of the movement and negative publicity increased.
influenced by Father Divine (Hall 1987). He visited Father Divine in Philadelphia multiple times during the 1950s, and Divine was welcoming and warm to Jones. Both Jones and Divine had roots in Pentecostalism, advocated for racial equality and promoted an integrated church. Jones found appeal in Father Divine’s claim of his own divinity, the idea of being the “Father” within the movement, the message of the inner divinity of all humans, the promised land theme that would allow an escape from poverty and repression. Early in Jim Jones career, he modeled activities after Father Divine’s Peace Mission. He instituted a church adoption fund, which, like Father Divine’s endeavors, was funded through church dinners and businesses; opened a free social service and meals center in the Peoples Temple basement that gave away thousands of meals each month, as well as encouraging integration; and established a free grocery store, gave away clothing, and provided other social services. At the same time, Father Divine and Jim Jones took separate paths on other matters. Jones advocated socialism as the answer to most of America’s problems, while Father Divine championed Black capitalism (Chidester 1988).
During the 1940s Blighton worked as a draftsman and engineer for the General Railway Signal Company and the Rochester Telephone Company. He also helped build radio stations for the United States Navy and designed optical instruments for Eastman Kodak. Blighton invented an electrical apparatus that he called the ultra theory ray machine. By irradiating patients with a sequence of colored light, he gained some success as a spiritual healer. Ultimately, this work led to his arrest and conviction for practicing medicine without a license in 1946.
taught that the material or spiritual conditions that a person sought in their lives could be gained through the visualization of esoteric symbols on the mental plane and by speaking the “word of power” (Lucas 1995:38). Blighton thought that all things in the universe were first derived from the circle, square, and triangle. The circle represented the Godhead and “the unity of all things” (1995:39). The triangle represented the process of creation. The square represented the “material plane” (1995:39). The symbol for the order became a triangle within a circle within a square.
adult life was quite secular in nature. He graduated from an agricultural school and worked in the automotive industry before becoming a manager in the National Electric Works. In the hagiographic account of his life, however, Swami Satchidananda is described as having been intensely spiritual from childhood: “Even as a young child, he spoke truths and displayed insights far beyond his years. His devotion to God was strong, and he looked at people of all castes and faiths with an equal eye, always recognizing the same light within every being” (Perringer n.d.) While working as the manager of a Hindu temple, Grounder met and married his wife, and the couple gave birth to two children. However, five years later his wife died suddenly. Following his wife’s death, Grounder renounced the world and began his spiritual career at age twenty eight.
following year to purchase a 650 acre tract in Buckingham County, Virginia to IYI. It was in Buckingham County that construction began on the Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at the new Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville (SAYVA). LOTUS is described as a temple for all world religions where one can find the Spirit that unites everything. LOTUS held a dedication ceremony on July 20, 1986, after which SAYVA became the new headquarters for IYI.
chant “Hari Om.” His message to the assembled was to find peace within: “I still don’t understand how they are going to fight and then find peace. Therefore, let us not fight for peace, but let us find peace within ourselves first” (Satchidanda 1969). He touted Integral Yoga as a means to abandon drug use, stating that “The problem with drugs is that while they elevate you, they immediately drop you back down again” while Integral Yoga offered a “natural high (Katz 1992:377). Satchidanada subsequently attracted many wealthy and prestigious followers.
major religions, as well as two additional alters, one dedicated to other known religions and the other dedicated to those still unknown. The outside of the shrine contains fountains and gardens, many with spiritual symbolism. The interior of the shrine consists of two floors; the bottom floor houses cases that display artifacts of the religions represented in the alters, which are located on the top floor of the shrine.
diligent study he had been unable to unravel the mysteries of the biblical book of Revelation and, hence, of the time of the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus. From 1831 to 1843 he estimated that he had brought his message to a half million persons. By Miller’s calculation, the return of Jesus would happen between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When latter date passed without anything significant happening, Miller, like many others who have prophesied the end, did not lose faith in his prediction. Instead, he adjusted his calculations and reset the date for October 22, 1844. Expectations heightened as summer turned into fall, but the date again came and went without incident. Those who had believed Miller’s prophecy experienced what came to be called the “Great Disappointment , ” and his prophetic career came to an end. But even that second experience of disconfirmation was not sufficient to quell completely an interest in the imminent dawn of the millennium (Rowe 2008: 192-225).
guided by revelation from God in their own time. Ellen G. White, who became the group’s prophet, came to call that contemporary revelation “present truth” or “new light.” The twin foci of observing the Lord’s Day on Saturday and maintaining the expectation of Jesus’ imminent return to initiate the final judgment would remain central characteristics of Seventh-day Adventism from the time of its origins in the small band of New Hampshire Millerites through its entire history. The openness to receiving prophetic “present truth” introduced a principle of dynamism into the broad Adventist tradition that played an especially important role in the origins of both the Davidians and the Branch Davidians (see Gallagher 2013) .
immigrant to the United States who joined the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church in 1919 in Illinois . As Houteff studied the Bible, he developed two distinctive ideas that were out of conformity with established SDA doctrine. First, expressing a vivid sectarian indictment of the SDA Church, he disagreed with Ellen G. White that the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation 7 as being worthy of entering the new Jerusalem referred to the Adventists themselves. Instead, he argued that the Church had become complacent and pervaded by “worldly” influences. He saw his own mission as purifying the church from within and gathering a truly faithful 144,000 in anticipation of the Lord’s return. Second, he argued that it was his task to lead the purified 144,000 to the ancient land of Israel , where they would meet Christ at his return. Both the Davidian and Branch Davidian traditions developed an elitist self-conception according to which they would be the first to be redeemed upon the return of Jesus. Borrowing a concept from the agricultural festivals of the ancient Israelites, Ben Roden , one of the leaders who followed Houteff, described the Branch Davidians as “the first of the first fruits – wave-sheaf, vanguard NOT wave-loaves – 144,000, army” of the final harvest of salvation (Ben Roden 1959: 4).
known by that name ( Victor Houteff 1930) . The first volume was quickly followed by a second and throughout the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s Houteff produced multiple religious tracts and collections of his sermons that were distributed by the Davidian publishing operation to a growing list of SDA Church members. In February, 1943 he published The Leviticus of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists , which details the constitution, by-laws, system of government, and form of education for the Davidian community (Victor Houteff 1943) . Much of the one hundred page document is devoted to citing the authorizing precedents from both the Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White.
generation religious group. Kenneth Newport suggests that at least some of the 100 or so members of the Mount Carmel community probably left after Houteff’s death, but those who remained faced the task of developing new leadership (Newport 2006: 66). Into that breach entered Houteff’s wife, Florence, along with several other contenders. Soon after Victor’s death, Florence began to make predictions about the future of the community, apparently including the idea that Victor himself would be resurrected. Claiming that on his deathbed Victor had urged her to take over his position, Florence quickly and persistently made her case to the Executive Council of the Davidian Association and eventually garnered their recognition.
Code, of which nine volumes had been published during her husband’s life (Florence Houteff 1955-1958). To this day there remains controversy about whether Florence ‘s “new Codes” contain the genuine teaching of her husband. But by far the most dramatic and controversial move that Florence made was to set the date of the beginning of the end times. Echoing William Miller’s decision that produced the Great Disappointment, Florence proclaimed that at the end of the Passover season, on April 22, 1959, the events of the end would begin to take place (Newport 2006:101). She urged the Davidians to assemble at the Mount Carmel Center, and some 1,000 did.
person of Benjamin Roden (1902-1978). After joining the SDA church in 1940 Roden and his wife Lois (1905-1986) had first encountered Victor Houteff’s Shepherd’s Rod message sometime in the mid-1940s. It appears that the Rodens had first visited Mount Carmel no later than 1945. They returned several times over the next decade, and when Victor Houteff died in 1955, Ben Roden was confident enough of himself that he made an unsuccessful bid for the leadership of the community.
Last Judgment was again delayed. But Roden’s death did not threaten the community with disintegration because his wife Lois was already poised to assume the responsibility of leadership, although the Roden’s son George did dispute her right of succession and would remain a serious irritant to the Mount Carmel community for some time. Like her husband, Lois based her claims on charismatic grounds. She had begun to receive revelations in 1977, and they were the driving force for her innovative theological program, particularly the idea that the Holy Spirit was feminine (Lois Roden 1980). George resorted to more traditional grounds for his claims, asserting that his father had appointed him to a central role in the movement, since Ben Roden believed that his sons would live to see the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem .
behalf, directing his vitriol first against his mother and then against her and David Koresh, who, as Vernon Howell, joined the Mount Carmel community in 1981. George eventually succeeded in winning a leadership election in 1984, after which he assertively changed the name of Mount Carmel to “Rodenville” and vigorously argued for his primacy. It took a complex series of events, including multiple hearings in court, George’s conviction on contempt of court charges, and his 1989 arrest for murder and eventual confinement in a mental institution, before Koresh could enjoy uncontested leadership of the Branch Davidians.
offshoots from that tradition. In the early days of the SDA Church, James White, a founder of the SDAs along with his wife Ellen, published a periodical entitled The Present Truth. On the first page of its first issue in 1849, he cited the promise of the author of II Peter 1:12 to the early Christian church, “I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.” White argued that such present truth could not be limited to the apostolic age but must at least potentially be continually available. He wrote that “Present truth must be oft repeated, even to those who are established in it. This was needful in the apostles (sic) day, and it certainly is no less important for us, who are living just before the close of time.” (James White 1849:1). Similarly, with regard to the observance of the Sabbath on Saturday, Ellen G. White wrote in her second volume of Testimonies for the Church (1885) that “The present truth, which is a test to the people of this generation, was not a test to the people of generations far back. If the light which now shines upon us in regard to the Sabbath of the fourth commandment had been given to the generations in the past, God would have held them accountable for that light.” (Ellen White 1885: 693).
Missouri. As a child, Zell read the Greek myths and fairy tales, which instilled in him an affinity for myth and magic. He also had paranormal experiences, such as experiencing visions from his grandfather’s life. Zell enrolled in Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in 1961 and was married for the first time in 1963. Timothy and Martha (McCance) Zell had a son that same year. Zell went on to receive his undergraduate degree in psychology from Westminster in 1965, enrolled as a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis for a short time, and then enrolled in Life Science College in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Two years later was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree.
organizations. He separated from and divorced his first wife, and had brief relationships with other women before marrying Diana Moore (Morning Glory Ravenheart) at a public Pagan handfasting. Moore, who was born in 1948 in Long Beach, had attended Methodist and Pentecostal churches during her childhood, but broke with Christianity as a teen. She began practicing witchcraft at seventeen and changed her name to Morning Glory at twenty. She was married for a short time before meeting and soon marrying Zell in 1973. The couple sustained a lifelong, but sexually open (polyamorous), marital relationship. Among these relationships were the formation of a triad with Diane Darling, who became editor of Green Egg in 1988, and a triad with Wolf Dean Stiles, which led to the adoption of Ravenheart as a family name for all three partners.
Ecosophical Research Association, Universal Federation of Pagans, Grey School of Wizardry). The Ecosophical Research Association offered a source of income for a time as the Zells produced unicorns by breeding and surgically altering white goats, four of which were sold to Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1984. The following year the organization, which aims to “explore the territory of the archetype, the basis of legends and the boundaries between the sacred and the secular” and specializes in crypozoology, undertook a search for mermaids in the South Seas (Adler 1975:317). The Grey School of Wizardry, founded in 2004, is a magickal education system that is organized online.
of the Goddess,” which was later developed into “The Gaea Thesis.” It posits that “the entire Biosphere of the Earth comprises a single living organism” and is composed of all living life-forms (Cusack 2010:65; Adler 1975:298). Zell (2010) traces the evolution of the Biosphere of the Earth back to a single living cell:
credited with inventing the concept of polyamory in “A Bouquet of Lovers.” As she describes polyamorous relationships, “The goal of a responsible Open Relationship is to cultivate ongoing, long-term, complex relationships which are rooted in deep mutual friendships.” Polyamory is thus one of the expressions of human interconnectedness and protests against divisive exclusivity. Open relationships are sustained by honesty, transparency, mutual agreement. A further provision is that unprotected sexual relationships may by practiced only within the group, which is the “Condom Compact” (Morning Glory Zell n.d.).
heritage, decries the absence of meaningful ritual in American culture:
commonly referred to as the “Wheel of the Year.” These include days of the solstices and equinoxes and the cross quarter days. Many members ritually observe the Full and/or New Moon monthly. Waterkin typically believe that the ritual observation of the “Wheel of the Year” and cycles of the Moon can bring about a communion with Divinity through attunement of one’s life with the waxing and waning of Nature. The changing seasons, the waxing and waning of darkness and light, are understood as an expression of the life cycle of Divinity that includes birth, love, death and rebirth. CAW also holds initiation, handfastings, vision quests, retreats and workshops of various kinds.
each of which contains three concentric Circles. The Rings are described as “ an initiatory path leading ever inward , towards the consciousness of the Goddess/God Within, with a threefold purpose of a) self actualization, b) connection / tribal involvement and c) service” (Maureen n.d.; “The Church of All Worlds n.d.).