Mormonism and the Problem of Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer
RELIGION & POLITICS

By Max Perry Mueller | July 14, 2015

Jon Krakauer got lucky. When Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith first went on sale in the summer of 2003, Krakauer hoped that the many sins of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) he set out to expose would not go unpunished forever. And he certainly believed that his own book—framed as muckraking of faith gone bad—would help bring this day of reckoning forward. Yet Krakauer couldn’t have imagined the FLDS Church would soon become headline news for much of the next decade. In 2004, child sexual molestation charges against the FLDS Church’s reclusive prophet Warren Jeffs made him one of the most notorious men in America. Krakauer also could not have foreseen that Jeffs’ subsequent trials and police raids of FLDS communities in Utah and Texas would overlap with Mitt Romney’s two presidential campaigns, not to mention with the hit Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon. The fact that the “Mormon fundamentalist moment” of the aughts intersected with the latest “Mormon moment” in American history helped make Under the Banner of Heaven the bestselling book on Mormon history in recent memory.

Krakauer knows the work of Warren Jeffs well. Much of Under the Banner of Heaven examines how, starting in the 1980s, Warren and his father Rulon (who died in 2002) ruled with a potent mix of religious zealotry, intimidation, and corruption the 10,000-member sect, most of whose members reside in Colorado City, Arizona, located on the Utah-Arizona boarder. According to Krakauer, in the FLDS Church, men who do the church leaders’ bidding were rewarded with power, wealth, and very young wives. Dissenters and young men, who were seen as potential threats, were often run out of town. In 2004, just after Krakauer’s book debuted, Jeffs’ nephew filed a lawsuit accusing his uncle of abuse. That scandal was followed by allegations that Jeffs had presided over the marriage “sealing” of a fourteen-year-old girl to her nineteen-year-old cousin. Those accusations set in motion a series of events that began to dismantle the religious community, which was built on a “patch of desert,” as Krakauer put it, on the upper rim of the Grand Canyon. Church members had hoped that such isolation would allow them to be “left alone to follow the sacred principle of plural marriage,” which the LDS Church had officially abandoned in 1890. In May 2006, a nation-wide manhunt began after the FBI placed Jeffs on its “Ten Most Wanted List.” In August of that same year, Jeffs was arrested following a traffic stop in Las Vegas. Along with one of his estimated 80 wives, in Jeffs’ Cadillac SUV police found more than a dozen cell phones, a police scanner, dozens of pairs of sunglasses, three wigs, and $54,000 in cash. In 2011, Jeffs was convicted of aggravated sexual assault against two of his “spiritual brides,” aged 12 and 15, and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.

These events kept journalists, pundits, and casual readers coming back to Under the Banner of Heaven, in hopes of understanding the origins of this violent and abusive faith. After all, what Krakauer claimed on the pages of his book—that the church is run by pedophiles claiming to speak to and for God, and who use their prophetic authority to insist that teenage girls submit to their often octogenarian husbands—was borne out in the court documents and witness testimonies produced during Jeffs’ trials.

As Matthew Bowman, the author of the Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, explained to me, Under the Banner of Heaven “rode the wave of Warren Jeffs for a few years until it became entrenched” as the single most influential book on Mormonism published this century. (Full Disclosure: Bowman is a friend and colleague and I consulted on much of his book.) The popularity of Krakauer’s book occurred despite the LDS Church’s efforts to keep modern-day Mormon polygamy and the LDS Church separate in the collective American mind. In fact, while Jeffs was on the run in 2006—and HBO’s Big Love was all the rage on TV—the LDS Church declared that “there is no such thing as a ‘Mormon Fundamentalist.’” Instead, the LDS Church insisted that journalists refer to Jeffs’ church as a “polygamist sect,” not a Mormon one.

Yet Krakauer, who grew up in heavily Mormon Corvallis, Oregon, doesn’t believe that the chasm between the two faiths is as vast as the LDS Church claims. After all, “Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon fundamentalists believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history,” Krakauer writes in Under the Banner of Heaven. “Both believe that Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in 1830, played a vital role in God’s plan for mankind; both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a prophet comparable to Moses and Isaiah.” And like fundamentalists who claim to be his true spiritual descendants, Joseph Smith also took teenage girls as his plural wives, a fact that the LDS Church has only just recently acknowledged.

Based on this shared history, Krakauer claims that LDS authorities have learned to tolerate Mormon fundamentalists like “a crazy uncle,” but nevertheless an uncle within the same Mormon family. Despite their church’s protestations, many if not most Mormons still have “‘polygs’ hidden in the attic,” as Krakauer puts it. Even Mitt Romney’s father, George who also ran for president, was born on a polygamist compound in Mexico that was established by Mitt’s great-grandfather in the 1890s to avoid anti-polygamy prosecution.

But Krakauer is (mostly) wrong here. In fact, in their efforts to distance themselves from their polygamist past, the LDS Church and its members have become virulent “polyg” hunters. They are quick to call church officials and the cops on any suspecting offenders of the Utah State Constitution, which explicitly outlaws polygamy, or of LDS marriage norms of traditional, heterosexual monogamy.

The fact that the LDS Church hasn’t been able to shake off the scarlet letter of polygamy has a lot to do with, I would argue, the continuing popularity of Under the Banner of Heaven. This is what I call the “Krakauer problem”: more than twelve years after it was first published, and after Romney’s presidential campaigns helped make Mormonism an acceptable American religion, Under the Banner of Heaven remains the definitive book on Mormon history in popular culture. Under the Banner of Heaven spent months onThe New York Times bestseller list, and it is still ranked number one on Amazon’s bestsellers in the “Mormonism” list. Its popularity is also reflected at social events—even social events with other scholars of religion. When historians of Mormon history like me explain what they study, most of those who have read one book on the faith will tell us that they’ve read Under the Banner of Heaven. And, as Krakauer himself intended, they will also tell us that they understand it to be not only an exposé of Mormon fundamentalism, but also a reliable history of the origins of the LDS Church, too.

To be sure, this is a problem for the LDS Church and for its members. Mainstream Mormons don’t want to be called upon to answer for Jeffs anymore than “mainstream” Muslims want to be called upon to answer for jihadists. Yet, this is also a problem for scholars of Mormonism, a problem that we’ve yet to solve. Scores of both scholarly and popular books on Mormonism have been published since Under the Banner of Heaven was first released in 2003. Yet none have come close to displacing it as the dominant portrayal of Mormon history in American culture.

THE QUESTION IS, WHY? What’s so compelling about Under the Banner of Heaven? That is, what makes it such a gripping and troubling read? The primary answer is perhaps an obvious one. Krakauer knows how to write a page-turner. “In its depiction of that strange American blend of piety, violence and longing for the End times,” wrote Don Lattin in his review of the book in the San Francisco Chronicle, Under the Banner of Heaven is a true-crime thriller “right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” In the late 1990s, Krakauer became one of the most celebrated and controversial narrative non-fiction writers of his generation. All of Krakauer’s stories focus on the human desire to conquer their environment. Whether it’s in recounting a catastrophic Everest expedition or the story of a promising young man who dies alone in the Alaskan wilderness, Krakauer imbues his writing with a feeling of impending doom—when humans let their own hubris go unchecked, disaster is unavoidable. In Under the Banner of Heaven the disaster occurs in 1984, when brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, recent converts to a brand of Mormon fundamentalism, cut the throat of their young sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, in her home in American Forks, Utah, and subsequently the throat of her infant daughter. Krakauer uses these murders as an entrance into three narrative strains that he interweaves throughout the book, the three narratives ultimately becoming one on Brenda Lafferty’s doorstep.

The first part of Krakauer’s narrative is focused on the early history of the LDS Church and centers on the life and leadership of the church’s founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr. Krakauer follows Smith from the founding of the church in Palmyra, New York, through the nascent church’s tumultuous attempts to establish permanent settlements in Ohio and Missouri, to Smith’s eventual murder at the hands of an anti-Mormon mob in Nauvoo, Illinois. Krakauer describes Smith as a religious genius who taught an “optimistic cosmology” that departed radically from the Calvinistic doctrine of total human depravity that many of his earliest followers inherited from their parents’ Yankee Puritanism. Instead, as Krakauer explains Smith’s basic theological beliefs: “Anyone who elected to obey church authorities, receive the testimony of Jesus, and follow a few simple rules could work his way up the ladder until, in the afterlife, he became a full-fledged god—the ruler of his very own world.”

According to Krakauer, Smith’s success at attracting converts led him make increasingly brazen theological innovations. Smith’s revelations about “the Principle of celestial marriage” sparked internal feuds among the Saints, then gathering in Nauvoo, and angered the Illinois public at-large. After Smith’s death, the Mormons left the United States to seek isolation in Utah. Yet polygamy did not die with Smith. Instead under Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, “the Principle” became the defining organizing principle of Mormon culture as they built their Zion in the high plains desert. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did continual conflict with the federal government force the Mormons to give up polygamy.*

This drastic departure from what had been the defining organizing principle of early Mormons leads to the second part of Krakauer’ narrative—the history of Mormon fundamentalism, which emerged in 1890 when then-LDS President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff declared that “‘it was the will of the Lord’ that the church stop sanctioning the doctrine of plural marriage.” Most Mormons eventually accepted the change. But small groups of Mormons felt that the LDS Church had betrayed the true faith. A small number broke from the church, settling small communities throughout the American West. More than a century later, much to the dismay of the mainline LDS Church, not only do Mormon fundamentalists continue to practice polygamy, but they also “consider themselves to be the keepers of the flame—the only true and righteous Mormons,” Krakauer explains. The fundamentalist prophets like Warren Jeffs taught that plural marriage brings order to this world and the next. It forces women into their proper roles as servants to their husbands, and provides for their eternal salvation as no woman can enter the kingdom of heaven if she has not practiced the Principle. Unwilling to compromise celestial marriage for acceptance into the American mainstream as the LDS Church has done, Mormon fundamentalists leaders, who run Colorado City, Arizona “like Kabul under the Taliban” believe they alone carry forth Joseph Smith’s true message.

The story of the Lafferty brothers’ gruesome murders of their sister-in-law and infant niece in 1984 is the third and most problematic part of Krakauer’s narrative. He uses the Lafferty brothers to tie the present-day LDS Church to Mormon fundamentalism by demonstrating that, at its core, the LDS Church has not abandoned its violent polygamous past. After all, the Lafferty brothers were not raised as Mormon fundamentalists, but were reared in what Krakauer describes as a model LDS family. They were known as “hundred-and-ten percenters” in their Provo, Utah community, fully dedicated to living saintly lives—lives that today’s LDS Church maintains would be theologically and culturally incompatible with Mormon fundamentalism. And yet according to Krakauer, it was exactly this dedication to their faith taken to its logical conclusion that drew Ron and Dan Lafferty to begin studying Mormon origins, especially Joseph Smith’s revelations on plural marriage. After meeting a Canadian Fundamentalist prophet, Ron and Dan, along their other brothers, quickly worked to establish their own fundamentalist community based upon the principles of plural marriage and strict patriarchal control. While most of the brothers’ wives went reluctantly along with their husbands’ drastic changes, Brenda Lafferty, the wife of the youngest Lafferty brother, Allen, refused and urged her sister-in-laws to do so as well.* When Ron’s wife Dianna divorced him, Ron received a revelation from God to kill Brenda and her infant daughter, Erica. Ron and Dan carried out the revelation and after living on the run for a time, the two brothers were apprehended, tried, and convicted of the murders.

SCHOLARS OF MORMONISM—both within and outside the LDS Church—have taken Krakauer to task for his richly detailed, but ultimately self-serving research. (Following the initial publication of Under the Banner of Heaven in June 2003, the LDS Church published a lengthy critique of both Krakauer’s sourcing and his interpretation of Mormon theology.)

Bowman explains that because his book is so thesis-driven, in telling his tale about the origins of polygamy and about the Mormons’ propensity to violence in the nineteenth century, Krakauer “sacrifices accuracy on the alter of sensationalism. He treats as facts rumors and unreliable sources, which serious historians have debunked.”

J.B. Haws, a professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of The Mormon Image in the American Mind, notes that of particular concern is how Krakauer “makes little distinction between [LDS] polygamy past and [FLDS] polygamy present.” According Sarah Barringer Gordon, a renowned legal scholar on church-state relations who has written extensively on the history of Mormon polygamy, Joseph Smith built from the ground up a radical new Christian society, of which a radically new approach to marriage was one part. On the other hand, as Gordon explained to the Salt Lake Tribune a few weeks after Jeffs’ 2011 conviction, “[Warren] Jeffs inherited a great deal of religious power and spent his life exploiting it,” including teaching his young brides that their highest calling was to please him sexually. To be sure, historians continue to debate Joseph Smith’s fundamental motivations behind introducing polygamy to his followers. However, most agree that in the early 1840s, Joseph Smith revealed a theological system that empowered polygamous wives to participate in the civil and religious governance of Mormon communities. In the 2000s, Jeffs delivered prophecies that required that FLDS women submit unconditionally to their husbands.

And yet the Krakauer problem doesn’t end with problematic sources and faulty interpretations of theology. To contextualize Under the Banner of Heaven as a piece of writing, the literary “parents” to Krakauer’s book are not only twentieth-century true-crime thrillers and captivity narratives like Capote’s In Cold Blood (which, of course, has also been criticized for blurring the lines between fact and fiction in service of a better story). Bowman says Krakauer’s version of Mormon history is “descended from the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack London who all wrote nineteenth-century dime novels premised on the notion that Brigham Young’s Zion was a totalitarian dictatorship complete with secret police and young Mormon maidens pining for rescue from the grimly-bearded elders of the church.”

Part of the Krakauer problem then becomes a problem of genre confusion. To be sure, Under the Banner of Heaven is meticulously researched with extensive endnotes. And Krakauer’s hours of interviews with former members of the FLDS expose the abuses that the leadership of this insular community have long perpetrated. And he does so with arguably more authority than even the many Mormon fundamentalist captivity narratives published before or since. Yet, more than history or investigative journalism, Under the Banner of Heaven is first and foremost a page-turning polemic against religion in general and Mormonism—in all its forms—in particular. As such, if it can be solved at all, the Krakauer problem cannot be solved by peer-reviewed biographies of Joseph Smith, like Richard Bushman’s celebrated and exhaustive Rough Stone Rolling, published in 2005.* Nor can it be solved by trade press books like Bowman’s own The Mormon People, which came out in 2012, and has been perhaps the best single-volume history of Mormonism published in the last decade. Krakauer tells a better, more gripping story because he writes by a different set of rules that values thesis over fact.

Krakauer believes that there are degrees of difference—not distinctions of kind—between the murderous Lafferty Brothers, the Mormon fundamentalists, and the LDS Church. This despite the fact that the Lafferty brothers never belonged to Warren Jeffs’ church. And this despite the fact that the mainstream Mormons are, as Gordon has put it, “the most antipolygamy people you could meet.” Yet Krakauer, like others before him and since, makes the argument that because each group claims to be the true heirs to Joseph Smith’s legacy, whether they recognize each other as such or not, they all belong to Joseph Smith’s Mormon faith. However, while they all might belong to the Mormon movement, Warren Jeffs is not LDS. For that matter, Lafferty brothers aren’t FLDS. In fact, most Mormon polygamists look and live more like TLC’s Sister Wives—consenting adults with jobs and careers, who wear clothes from the Gap instead of long prairie skirts and bonnets, whose children attend public schools in communities far away from Colorado City, and who reject the FLDS as dishonoring the Mormon tradition even more vociferously than the LDS Church. When I had the chance to visit with Sister Wives’ Kody Brown and his four wives when they came Boston in 2011 to film an episode of their very popular reality show, they told that the main reason that they chose to “come out” as polygamists was to try to displace Warren Jeffs as the dominant face of Mormon polygamy.

At its core, Krakauer’s thesis is that faith corrupts. And absolute faith—like those held by Mormon fundamentalists—corrupts absolutely, to the point that brothers kill another brother’s wife and child; to the point that thousands of parents allow their teenage daughters to become the spiritual brides of church leaders. The closer the faithful hue to the origins of the faith, the more radical the faithful. As such, the difference between the FLDS and the LDS is that the LDS has moved away from the founding principles (notably the “Principle” of polygamy) to become the kind of friendly, family-oriented Mormon friends and playmates, teachers and coaches, whom Krakauer encountered when he was a child in Oregon. But, according to Krakauer these Mormons’ faith still corrupted their ability to reason, to “sustain belief when confronted with facts that appear to refute it.”

And yet for Krakauer the corrupting power of faith isn’t particular to Mormonism. Mormonism—in the extreme form he presents it—becomes a case study of the irrationality and violence inherent to all faith. “As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane,” Krakauer explains in the book’s introduction, “as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may be no more potent force than religion.”

Krakauer’s view on Mormonism in particular and religion in general is a problem. But it’s a problem not only for scholars of religion but also religious people, whose faith Krakauer reduces to a tool of coercion. And as such scholars of religion should pay attention to how, beyond just the FLDS and Warren Jeffs, the lives of the religious people whose sins and traumas Krakauer profiled with such pathos have unfolded since the publication of his book.

The case of Elizabeth Smart might be a good place to start. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer chronicles the then-14-year-old’s abduction from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 at the hands of another self-proclaimed polygamist Mormon prophet and his wife. Krakauer argues that it was Smart’s devotion to her LDS faith that made her susceptible to the manipulation of her kidnapper, who allegedly quoted revelations from Joseph Smith while he raped her almost nightly during her nine-month captivity. In recent years, Smart, who has become an advocate for victims of sex crimes and human trafficking, has herself spoken out against how traditional Mormon sexual purity lessons kept her from simply running away from her captures while they were walking the streets of Salt Lake City, just miles from her home.

Yet, as JB Haws pointed out to me, Elizabeth Smart, who recently gave birth to her first child with her husband whom she met on her Mormon mission in France, has also spoken about how her faith sustained her during and after her captivity. “I wonder if Elizabeth Smart’s resilience, activism and strength and religious commitment will give readers [of Under the Banner of Heaven] pause—a sort of a decade-later postscript,” Haws suggested. “Will it make readers ask, ‘What is it about Mormonism that produces more Elizabeth Smarts than Laffertys?’”

Max Perry Mueller is a contributing editor to Religion & Politics.

*Corrections: The youngest Lafferty brother’s name was Allen, but he was originally misidentified as Dan. The LDS Church ended polygamy in the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. Richard Bushman’s book was published in 2005, not 2007 as originally stated. The paperback version came out in 2007.

http://religionandpolitics.org/2015/07/14/mormonism-and-the-problem-of-jon-krakauer/

Memories of Waco Siege Continue to Fuel Far-Right Groups

CLYDE HABERMAN

New York Times
JULY 12, 2015

The Shadow of Waco

In 1993, federal agents raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., and generated a legacy of fear that continues to shape antigovernment groups today.

On Wednesday, the Army is scheduled to begin two months of training exercises across the American Southwest. If the past is a reasonable guide, some on the outer reaches of the far right are bound to recycle warnings that martial law is at hand. Conspiracy theorists were singularly imaginative after these war games, code-named Jade Helm 15, were announced.

Among the dire predictions: Citizens’ guns will be confiscated. Political opponents of President Obama will be rounded up and herded into detention centers. Mr. Obama will suspend the Constitution and cling to office indefinitely. All this is part of a plan to establish a “new world order.”

While not endorsing those prophecies, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas did little to tamp them down when he ordered the Texas State Guard to “continuously monitor” Jade Helm to reassure Texans that “their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.”

As the conspiracy theories bubbled, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carterwas asked point blank at a news conference in May if a military takeover of Texas was in the works. “No,” Mr. Carter replied. Laughter accompanied both the question and the response, underscoring how frivolous the very idea seemed to those in the room.

Still, that such an exchange even took place was testament to the deep mistrust of government harbored by some Americans, more than a few of whom come to any dispute heavily armed. Hostility toward the federal government is hardly new. It can be traced at least as far back as the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s. But its modern roots may be summed up in a single word: Waco.

That word and its abiding significance are explored in the latest episode of Retro Report, a series of video documentaries that study the lasting consequences of major news stories of the past. For right-wing militias and so-called Patriot groups, Waco amounts to evidence of a tyrannical, illegitimate government unblinkingly prepared to kill its own people.

In early 1993, a religious sect with apocalyptic visions, the Branch Davidians, was ensconced in a compound called the Mount Carmel Center, just outside Waco, Tex. Its adherents were led — some would say dominated — by a man with a messianic sense of himself, David Koresh.

Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms suspected that, whatever their theology, the Davidians were amassing an illegal arsenal. On Feb. 28, 1993, agents descended on Mount Carmel. A gun battle broke out. Each side blamed the other for having fired first. Either way, the results were disastrous: Four agents and half a dozen members of the sect were killed.

The shootout led to a 51-day siege, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation taking charge for the government. Hoping to induce a surrender, agents tried to disorient the Davidians — by way of sleep deprivation, for instance, with all-night floodlighting of the compound and the blaring of horrible sounds like the screams of rabbits being slaughtered.

All that did was impel the group to dig in. Finally, on April 19, the F.B.I. mounted a full assault, pumping in large quantities of military-grade tear gas. Fires, which independent investigators later deemed to have been set by the Davidians, engulfed the compound. Shooting could be heard inside. When it was all over, 75 people were dead, a third of them children. Some, including Mr. Koresh, had been shot by fellow sect members. There were few survivors.

The Waco events did not occur in a vacuum. Eight months earlier, federal agents laid siege to the compound of a family of white separatists in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. That encirclement also ended badly, with several people killed, among them a 14-year-old boy. F.B.I. officials later acknowledged that their operations at Ruby Ridge had been “terribly flawed.”

As for Waco, a Harvard professor of law and psychiatry, Dr. Alan A. Stone, took the F.B.I. to task in a report to the Justice Department in November 1993. An apocalyptic sect like the Branch Davidians should not have been handled as if it would “submit to tactical pressure” the way a band of ordinary criminals would, Dr. Stone said. Government agents sought to prove to Mr. Koresh that they were in control. Instead, Dr. Stone said, they drove him to the “ultimate act of control — destruction of himself and his group.”

The grim events in Texas and Idaho proved sobering for the government. Its agents began to exercise more patience with defiant militant groups. An armed standoff in 1996 with the Montana Freemen ended without a shot fired and with the Freemen’s surrender after 81 days. In Nevada last year, agents of the federal Bureau of Land Management tactically retreated rather than get into a shooting war with rifle-toting supporters of Cliven Bundy. Mr. Bundy, a rancher given to racist rants, owed the government more than $1 million in grazing fees amassed over two decades, but cast his refusal to pay as the act of a patriot and not, as many of his critics suspected, of a deadbeat.

Throughout, the specter of Waco has not faded. Right-wing extremists regularly invoke it as a defining moment, proof of Washington’s perfidy. “Waco can happen at any given time,” Mike Vanderboegh, a prominent figure in the Patriot movement, told Retro Report. He added ominously: “But the outcome will be different this time. Of that I can assure you.”

One man who took the notion of a different outcome to a murderous extreme was Timothy J. McVeigh, who went to Mount Carmel and observed the siege. On April 19, 1995, two years to the day after the mass deaths there, he and an accomplice, Terry L. Nichols, bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and wounding nearly 700 others. It was the most devastating act of domestic terrorism in American history. Mr. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison, Mr. McVeigh to death.

Interviewed in prison by two Buffalo News reporters in 2001, the year he was executed, Mr. McVeigh said: “Waco started this war. Hopefully, Oklahoma would end it. The only way they’re going to feel something, the only way they’re going to get the message is, quote, with a body count.”

Post-Waco, many on the radical right organized. The number of Patriot groups rose sharply, to 858 by 1996, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such organizations. But the number then plummeted, to as few as 149 in 2008. That happened to be the year America elected its first African-American president. In short order, the number soared once more, to a peak of 1,360 groups (including 321 militias) in 2012, though the law center reports that they declined to 874 in 2014.

In a survey conducted last year for the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group, law enforcement agencies expressed far more concern about threats from right-wing extremists than from Islamic fanatics. The New America Foundation, a Washington research center, has found that since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people in this country have been killed by non-Muslim extremists than by self-proclaimed jihadists.

Even some Branch Davidians worry about the new militancy. One of them is Clive Doyle, who survived the 1993 inferno while his 18-year-old daughter, Shari, died. “Now everything’s likened to us: ‘Is this going to be another Waco?’” Mr. Doyle told Retro Report. Referring to the Patriot groups, he added: “I appreciate their support and their sympathy. But you listen to what they’re saying, and some of them scare me.”

On the eve of Jade Helm 15, the government has yet to find firm footing in how to deal with those who take up arms in defiance of lawful authority. “Two decades after the Waco debacle, federal officials continue to struggle with their approach to radical right extremists,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a 2014 report. “What they learned from Waco was that a heavy-handed approach risks a major loss of life. Yet allowing the antigovernment movement to flout the law at gunpoint is surely not the answer.”

The video with this article is part of a documentary series presented by The New York Times. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors led by Kyra Darnton. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. Previous episodes are at nytimes.com/retroreport.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/us/memories-of-waco-siege-continue-to-fuel-far-right-groups.html?_r=0

A Mischievious Thorn in the Side of Conservative Christianity

MARK OPPENHEIMER
The New York Times
JULY 10, 2015

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — It is hard to know what to hope for when meeting a couple of Satanists. Horns? Sulfurous fumes? Faint strains of organ music? But when they sit down in an organic food cafe and order plates of fettuccini Alfredo, it’s hard to take them seriously as worshipers of the Dark Lord of the Underworld.

Nevertheless, the men who call themselves Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry — pseudonyms for the two co-founders of the Satanic Temple — have done more for the Satanic brand than anyone since Anton LaVey, the San Francisco carnival worker who wrote “The Satanic Bible” (Avon, 1969). With only a website, some legal savvy and a clever way with satire, the two Bostonians’ new, mostly virtual religion has become a sharp thorn in the brow of conservative Christianity.

Their religion, or anti-religion, has about 20 chapters and 20,000 Facebook followers, they say. With no full-time staff, the Satanic Temple has in three years achieved the kind of social media exposure usually reserved for pets in distress.

Last month, the Satanic Temple claimed victory after a court ordered that a monument to the Ten Commandments be removed from the Oklahoma Capitol grounds. Although the Satanic Temple was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, they say their plan to place a statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed deity of occult legend, beside the monument, on freedom-of-religion grounds, may have forced the court’s hand.

In April, the Satanic Temple used a crowdsourcing campaign to raise $800 for a rural Missouri woman’s trip to St. Louis, to have an abortion. As legal restrictions have forced other clinics to close, the St. Louis clinic is the last abortion provider in the state.

And in 2013, the Satanic Temple achieved notoriety for its “pink mass,” enacted at the grave site of the mother of Fred Phelps, founder of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church. The ritual, involving same-sex couples kissing, was described on the Satanic Temple website as having turned Mr. Phelps’s mother “gay in the afterlife.”

Mr. Jarry, a 48-year-old filmmaker, musician and academic, agreed to speak on the condition that I not use his real name. He does not actually believe in Satan, he said. But long ago he imagined the potential effectiveness of a Satanic organization.

“The first conception was in response to George W. Bush’s creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,” said Mr. Jarry, who was raised by irreligious Jews. “I thought, ‘There should be some kind of counter.’ ” He hit on the idea of starting a faith-based organization that met all the Bush administration’s criteria for receiving funds, but was repugnant to them. “Imagine if a Satanic organization applied for funds,” he remembered thinking. “It would sink the whole program.”

That idea percolated until 2012. At an event at Harvard, Mr. Jarry, who was taking graduate classes there, met the man who became “Mr. Greaves,” a man who, when not participating in Satanic Temple activism, is often called Douglas Mesner. He is now 39 years old and says he “does some odd jobs” for a living. Mr. Jarry and Mr. Mesner bonded over a shared distaste for organized religion and an inclination to fight back with mischief.

At the time, Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, was pushing a bill to allow voluntary prayer at public school functions. After the bill passed, the two traveled to Florida to make their feelings known.

“So we created this mock rally in support of Rick Scott,” Mr. Jarry recalled, “where we were coming out to say how happy we were because now our Satanic children could pray to Satan in school.”

Mr. Mesner stood behind Mr. Scott on the steps of the state Capitol, holding a banner proclaiming, “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!”

At the time, the name associated with the Satanic Temple’s email account was “Lucien Greaves.” When it became clear that the news media would want to interview someone from the organization, Mr. Mesner adopted Lucien Greaves as his pseudonym. In 2013, Vice magazine outed Mr. Greaves as Mr. Mesner, and since that time he has answered to both names — although in fact, “Douglas Mesner” is also a pseudonym, one he has used for many years. He, too, asked that his legal name not be published, to prevent threats to his family.

Mr. Mesner insists that his attraction to the Satanic label is not just opportunistic. Although he, like Mr. Jarry, is an “atheistic Satanist,” meaning that he no more believes in a literal Satan than he does in a literal God, he finds special meaning in Satanism, which represents to him the solidarity of outsiders, those judged and excluded by the mainstream.

As a child in the 1980s, Mr. Mesner noticed how suspected Satanists were accused of inciting child abuse and how Satanic music was considered a culprit in juvenile delinquency.

“And as a kid, in the midst of that, you are playing Dungeons & Dragons, listening to certain music, and you wonder, ‘What is Satanism?’ ” Mr. Mesner said. “And you find it to be this syncretism, this amalgam, and it’s something you can’t walk away from. It’s not arbitrary to us. It’s a way of celebrating an outsider status, to look where other people won’t, to look for the obscure, the bizarre, the anomalies. To see the beauty in the ugliness.”

The Satanic Temple’s founders do not believe in tax exemptions for religious organizations, so have not asked for one; they also refuse to say what the Satanic Temple’s budget is. The organization has seven fundamental tenets, which the founders say are a work in progress, subject to change.

“It could be eight tomorrow, it could be six,” Mr. Jarry said. The tenets include humanistic statements like “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s will alone” and “Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.”

Satanic Temple plans include the ultimate in strait-laced, law-abiding activism: lawsuits. It is looking into using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to oppose abortion waiting periods, claiming that it violates Satanic doctors’ belief in the sanctity of good science.

And they are looking for plaintiffs, willing to identify as Satanists, who will file suit against public schools’ use of in-school isolation and deprivation of bathroom access. Such punishments “are physical or psychological abuse,” Mr. Mesner said, “which violates the Satanic Temple principle of sovereignty of body and mind.”

The two Satanists are also trying to figure out what to do with their statue of Baphomet, by the sculptor Mark Porter, since they no longer plan to place it on the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol. It was to be unveiled on July 25 at a theater in Detroit, but under pressure from Christian activists, the theater has withdrawn its permission. Which is the kind of oppression that Mr. Mesner has come to expect will be visited on his kind.

“We’ve been talking a lot of comedy,” Mr. Mesner said, “but I genuinely feel this is every bit a religion — this cultural identity, this narrative that contextualizes your life, your works, your goals. And you have these deeply held beliefs, that if they are violated, it compromises your very self.”

mark.e.oppenheimer@gmail .com; Twitter: @markopp1

A version of this article appears in print on July 11, 2015, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: A Mischievous Thorn in the Side of Conservative Christianity .

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/us/a-mischievious-thorn-in-the-side-of-conservative-christianity.html?_r=0

Lev Tahor children's best interests not respected by public system: report

JASON MAGDER

MONTREAL GAZETTE
July 9, 2015

It took youth protection officials far too long to intervene in the case of 127 children who were part of the Lev Tahor community living in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, a report from the Quebec human-rights commission concluded.

In November 2013, about 250 members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect fled the Laurentians town to avoid a hearing in youth court. The group was facing allegations of child abuse and neglect from Quebec’s youth-protection department — such as corporal punishment in school, underage marriage, sexual abuse of minors and squalid living conditions.

The commission made public a report into the case on Thursday morning, which noted several failures in how the system handled the case.

Camil Picard, the vice president of youth issues for the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, said the delays in this case were “incomprehensible,” considering the fact it took 17 months for youth protection officials to move to seize the children after the problem was first identified.

It also took school board officials 15 months to move to get proper schooling for the children in the community. The children were receiving a strictly religious education, and spoke neither English nor French. Picard said children have the right to receive a proper education, and if they don’t get that, youth officials must intervene.

“In this situation, it’s clear that the (actors) systematically failed in their role to protect the children, including health services, the education department and youth protection,” Picard said.

Jacques Frémont, the president of the Quebec human-rights commission added that the youth protection department should have been much more proactive, and sharply criticized a decision to delay its intervention by three months at the request of the Sûreté du Québec.

“It was the prerogative of the department to refuse the delay,” Frémont said. “It could have given the SQ a couple of days (to collect more information on a criminal investigation), and it could have said, ‘no way, will I accept a delay of three months.’ During these three months, the kids in question suffered, and their rights were violated every day by the community.”

He said perhaps in this case, child authorities should have seized the children immediately at the first sign of trouble, and then investigate whether they could be returned to the community.

“Of course, it’s not a decision taken lightly; it’s difficult, and after the fact it’s easy to say they should have been taken away,” Frémont said.

He admitted, however that even if child protection authorities had acted more quickly, they still might not have been able to prevent the group’s flight. He said the community acted fast — moving out three days after it became clear the children might be removed.

The Lev Tahor members left for Chatham-Kent. There, Ontario courts ruled against a Quebec court order to place 14 of the children in foster care. Child services in Chatham-Kent also refused an order to remove all 127 children from the community.

The report recommended Quebec act swiftly to come to an agreement with Ontario so youth court cases can be applied in that province as well. Currently, Quebec has similar agreements with all eight other provinces. Picard said it’s possible the children would have been immediately returned to Quebec if they had fled to any other province.

The report also recommended that the province develop a guide on best clinical and administrative practices for youth protection interventions within sects or “closed communities,” and that the guide be widely distributed to all actors.

It recommended better co-ordination between youth protection officials, the courts, and other authorities to act when children are threatened.

“This must not happen again,” Frémont said. “Our role is to provide Quebec with a wakeup call, and that’s what we’re doing. We dearly hope this will not happen again.”

jmagder@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/JasonMagder

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/lev-tahor-childrens-best-interests-not-respected-by-public-system-report

Ontario 'weakest link' in Lev Tahor case, says Quebec human rights commission

Ontario was the “weakest link” in a child-welfare saga involving the Jewish sect Lev Tahor that fled Quebec in 2013, according to the head of Quebec’s human rights commission.

Allan Woods Quebec Bureau
Toronto Star
July 9, 2015

MONTREAL—Ontario was the “weakest link” in a child-welfare saga involving the Jewish sect Lev Tahor that fled Quebec in 2013 because the province has no way to enforce protection orders issued outside its borders, according to the head of Quebec’s human rights commission.

Jacques Fremont released a sweeping review of the years-long case that resulted in 200 people from 40 families who were members of the isolated group ultimately fleeing to Guatemala from Canada and the scrutiny of police, education and child welfare officials.

The conclusion is that the competing mandates and priorities of Quebec’s director of youth protection, which wanted to take children into its custody, and the Sûreté du Québec, which wanted to gather evidence for its criminal investigation, meant the Quebec government was unable to ensure the protection of some 134 underage, at-risk children.

After numerous isolated investigations of Lev Tahor in Quebec stretching back to 2006, including allegations of inadequate school conditions, suicide attempts, unsanitary living conditions and sexual abuse, the Lev Tahor probe had to re-start from scratch in for Chatham-Kent, Ont., when the group fled Quebec on the night of Nov. 18, 2013.

“A chain is the weakest at its weakest link,” Fremont said. “Ontario was the weakest link and that’s where (Lev Tahor) went. Was it by chance or deliberately? I don’t know.”

The review recommends that the Quebec government urge Ontario to change the laws so that court orders issued by judges outside of the province can be executed in Ontario.

“If (such measures) had been in place, it’s possible that in the days following their escape, the children — if not the rest of the community — would have come back to Quebec,” said Camil Picard, vice-president of the human rights commission responsible for youth.

Instead, child welfare investigators in Chatham-Kent received a crash course from their Quebec counterparts in the history of a reclusive group, which is labelled by some as a cult. The group aspires to live according to a literal reading of the Jewish law as dictated by its leader, Shlomo Helbrans.

In practice, that means extreme dietary restrictions, long hours of prayer and isolation from the wider community in which they live. Ex-members speak of corporal punishment, children forcibly removed from their parents and Helbrans himself diagnosing wayward souls with psychiatric conditions.

The group has denied doing anything wrong and says it has been persecuted.

Upon Lev Tahor’s arrival in Chatham-Kent, social workers began monitoring and rebuilding the child welfare case against Lev Tahor families.

Quebec’s child-protection authorities began showing their frustration when the crackdown took too long to materialize. When Ontario officials showed signs they were ready to move from study into action, and when border and passport officials started poking around for visa violations or denying the group travel documents, members fled once again, this time for Guatemala.

The conclusion of the review is damning. From the beginning of the case until the end, said Picard, “we lost sight of the interest of the child.”

The review is particularly harsh on the different organizations in Quebec that had a hand in the case, noting that it took 17 months before the province’s director of youth protection first began investigating and the time it was ready to take action to protect 134 Lev Tahor children deemed to be at risk.

The findings regarding the 134 children came after an August 2013 raid of the community, which rented houses in a town north of Montreal. Despite long-standing suspicions, the raid itself was delayed by four months when police investigators lobbied for more time to conduct their criminal probe.

While court documents have revealed police were investigating suspicions that Lev Tahor leaders were involved in human trafficking and forgery, no criminal charges have ever been laid.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/07/09/ontario-weakest-link-in-lev-tahor-case-says-quebec-human-rights-commission.html

Coroner rules TB Joshua church to blame for building collapse

Deji Badmus (CCTV)
CGTN Africa

July 8, 2015

"There's been a ruling on the TB Joshua building collapse where 116 people were killed when the hostel imploded last year.

The self-styled prophet blamed a terror attack. But the coroner has found Joshua's church is to blame and recommended that there should be prosecution - for criminal negligence."

Human rights commission to release Lev Tahor report

MICHELLE PUCCI

MONTREAL GAZETTE
July 8, 2015

Quebec’s human rights commission is expected to release its report Thursday morning on how well the system handled child protection issues regarding the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that fled Quebec last year.

In November 2013, about 250 members of Lev Tahor left Ste-Agathe-des-Monts in the Laurentians to avoid a hearing in Youth Court. The group was facing allegations of child abuse and neglect by Quebec’s Department of Youth Protection, but left the province for Chatham-Kent, a town in southwestern Ontario.

Ontario’s courts ruled against an order made by Quebec at the time to return 14 of the children to Quebec to be placed in foster care. Child services in Chatham-Kent also refused to remove all 127 children from the community.

Many families left Ontario for Guatemala, where they have been living since.

The commission launched its study in May 2014, to determine whether police, youth protection officials, education officials, the health sector and the legal system had the proper tools and administrative and judicial powers. The study is expected to report on how the system protects youth in sects and religious groups, including high-profile cases, such as the 2009 murder of four-members of the Shafia family by their parents and brother.

“The commission has to assure that all young people in Quebec in all communities see their rights respected,” said Camil Picard, the commission’s vice-president responsible for youth matters, when the report was first announced. “We want to know that the actors have what they need to intervene in assuring children’s rights are protected.”

Sûreté du Québec investigators found that within the Lev Tahor community young girls were tied up when they disobeyed and married off before the legal age. Some children were taken away from their family to live with other families, and corporal punishment was used in classes for children. Members are believed to be given psychotropic drugs and generally live isolated from other communities.

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/human-rights-commission-to-release-lev-tahor-report

Trial set in civil rights case against polygamous towns

SFGate
July 7, 2015
PHOENIX (AP)

(AP) — A Jan. 19 trial has been set in Phoenix for a lawsuit that alleges polygamous towns on the Arizona-Utah line systematically denied housing, water services and police protection to people who aren't part of the communities' dominant religious sect.

The lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department alleges that officials in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, served as an arm of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sect that broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when it disavowed polygamy.

The lawsuit alleges that the communities' police officers have confronted people about their disobedience of church rules, failed to investigate crimes against them and returned an underage bride home after she had fled.

The towns deny the allegations.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Trial-set-in-civil-rights-case-against-polygamous-6369898.php

Laura Prepon Credits Scientology for Making Her Calmer

SIERRA MARQUINA
Us Magazine
CELEBRITY NEWS
July 7, 2015


Laura Prepon says that Scientology has made her so relaxed, other people ask her what her secret is. In an interview conducted with the controversial religion’s magazine, Celebrity, the Orange Is the New Black star details how Scientology has helped her gain control of her emotions.

“When I first got into Scientology, I did Personal Values and Integrity and then Overcoming Ups and Downs in Life. These courses touched on the observations I was aware of when I was younger. It was right there in black and white. It was amazing, and I felt that finally something was speaking my language. It totally connected with me,” she explained. “Pretty soon after that I got onto the Purification Rundown, and I started moving up the Bridge.”

The 35-year-old devoted Scientologist went on to explain how “auditing” helped her relax. In case you’re unaware, Scientologly believes that a MEST universe keeps a “thetan” trapped and that through the church’s rituals, you can liberate the thetan from the MEST primarily through a process called “auditing,” which is essentially therapy. (MEST stands for matter, energy, space, and time; and according to the religion, the “thetan (spirit) uses its mind as a control system between itself and the physical universe.”)

“The auditing has stripped away all of this charge, false ideas, decisions and mis-emotions that were affecting me. I recently had one of my biggest cognitions in a New Era Dianetics session,” she explained. “I spotted this decision I made a long time ago that was affecting me to this day. It was a huge realization…When you really cognate that you are a thetan and you have a mind and body, and that the MEST universe does not control you - it puts things into perspective. It takes the weight off you and things become very easy."

“Things don't bother me that had before," she continued. "I remember I was doing a show with an amazing actor, and we were waiting to hear the fate of our show. He turned to me one day and asked, 'How are you always so relaxed? Nothing seems to bother you. I want to know what you are doing...' I take that as such a compliment and testament to the auditing I have done."

Prepon has been a Scientologist since 1999.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/laura-prepon-credits-scientology-for-making-her-calmer-201577

Evangelicals take their fight with Satan tothe streets of Sao Paulo

Vincent Bevins
Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2015


It is 5 p.m., and the church bells in the center of the city begin to toll. Hundreds of commuters stream across the Praca da Se square, passing in front of the headquarters of the largest archdiocese in the nation with the most Catholics in the world.

But over the pealing sounds of the cathedral, many commuters are hearing a very different religious message.

"The world is dominated by sin! Only the Gospel can save you! Only evangelism can save you!" shouts a middle-aged man, gesticulating wildly and increasing volume as he utters each sentence. A rapt crowd of 30 or 40, mostly men, listens as the street preacher seeks to draw in additional passersby, warning them of danger to their souls.

"Satan is hidden everywhere! If you're with a religion, you're wrong! If you're Catholic, you're wrong! Put your hands together for Jesus!" The crowd obliges.

Nearby, homeless youths huddle together, passing a crack pipe back and forth. A young woman, apparently mentally ill, sits among the worshipers, playing with leaves and sticks on the ground.

Street preachers maintain a daily presence here and elsewhere around Brazil, calling upon believers to accept Jesus directly, rejecting the need for the Roman Catholic Church to serve as mediator.

Whereas some leaders behind Brazil's large evangelical churches have become famously wealthy and powerful, these men sweat on the street among Sao Paulo's downtrodden. They're foot soldiers on the front lines of a religious battle that their side seems to be winning.

When Josemar Bento Mendes was born, 50 years ago, more than 90% of Brazilians declared themselves Catholic. But by 2013, at the time that Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, visited, just 57% of Brazilians claimed allegiance to Rome. About 28% declared a commitment to some kind of evangelical Christian faith.

"I was born and raised Catholic like everyone else. But it's full of false doctrine and tradition which has nothing to do with the word," says Bento Mendes, who is preaching in the harsh cold of a wintry June day. "I come here because everyone in the city comes through the plaza. It's ground zero. It's a river with many fish, and many people suffering."

Mendes and others preach that the Bible is God's authoritative word, which should be spread evangelically, and that the Catholic Church is not necessary to interpret it.

Most of the fish in the river move along quickly, heading into the crowded metro station. But those loitering in the square tend to respect the seriousness of the gathering. After one young man, visibly high, spends a few minutes giggling, his perceived insolence is quickly singled out.

A tough-looking man in a hoodie and gold chains threatens him, instructing, "Respect the word of God!" The youth is soon clapping and praying along with the rest.

Preachers change off every hour or so and switch up styles. But they all rely on their intensity and passion, which could not contrast more sharply with the inside of the Catholic cathedral.

There, a priest's sermon is scarcely audible over the PA as he calmly explains the meaning of the church calendar. The audience for his Mass is barely larger than the circle formed around the preachers outside. Their slight presence in the pews is dwarfed by the ornate and grand structure built to hold thousands.

The format of the lessons outside is also looser, with the preachers reading select passages from the Bible, then expounding on their meaning. They may seem to be closer to adhering to Jesus' message of embracing the poor and sick, but these teachings — and indeed the Gospels themselves — are almost never the main point. Over the course of days and various preachers, a few dominant themes emerge: the imminent apocalypse, the influence of Satan and the evils of homosexuality.

"There are men sleeping with other men! We should see shame in your faces! You are worse than a dog or a pig. I have never seen a pig lie down with another pig," says one. Some in the crowd just listen intently, while others cry out spontaneously, or raise their eyes to the sky and tremble.

The preacher now turns his wrath on Edir Macedo, the media mogul billionaire leader of the evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, for airing sexually charged shows on his Record TV network. Bento Mendes and preacher Waldo Silvio Santos belong to the competing Assembly of God congregation. "Woe to you who pays his tithes to men who put naked women on TV to make millions. False prophets love money."

The evangelical movement has been criticized for profiting off Brazil's most destitute and sometimes offering a version of Christianity that they consider fundamentalist and reactionary, rejecting much of modern society. Within the complicated rules of Brazil's brutal class system, however, many middle-class liberals have also felt uncomfortable criticizing any movement that is largely working class.

But in the last few months, evangelical figures have risen to top positions of political power, causing liberals to panic. Eduardo Cunha, an evangelical who serves as president of the lower house of Congress, is considered a dangerous, cynical schemer by progressives, and he has said he will bar any vote on liberalizing abortion, which is illegal here.

After evangelical congressmen staged a protest against Sao Paulo's recent Gay Pride Parade, the major Folha de S.Paulo newspaper printed a scathing indictment: "A growing spirit of fundamentalism is manifesting itself ... and Congress seems committed to reflect this trend, intensify it, and use it to demagogic ends."

But the halls of the capitol in Brasilia are very far away from Praca da Se. As a Catholic priest and a Franciscan friar walk slowly, Bento Mendes has no time for focus on matters of politics.

"It is a thousand times better to trust in God than to trust in princes," he booms. "And I tell you this: Christ's return is coming sooner than we imagine. If it doesn't, I'll stop preaching. I'll rip up my Bible, if terrible things don't rain down upon us soon."

http://www.latimes.com/world/brazil/la-fg-ff-brazil-street-preachers-20150707-story.html

A Group Proposes to the Portuguese Government the Construction of an Embassy for Extraterrestrials

GIULIANA MIRANDA
Folha.com

July 7, 2015

The Raelian Movement -a group which believes that life on Earth was created by beings from another planet- made a formal request to the government of Portugal asking it to build an embassy for extraterrestrials in the country.

This space would serve not only as a diplomatic mission but also for the landing of spacecrafts. In a total area of 4,000 square meters (approximately 43,056 square feet), there would still be an expansive lawn, swimming pool, meeting room and accommodation aimed to the rest of the intergalactic visitors.

Budgeted at US$ 40 million (approximately R$ 120 million), the project presented to the government was signed by the Portuguese architect Marco Antunes.

The professional says that, despite having given hints in the work, the fundamental aspects of the project have been transmitted by an alien architect during previous contacts with some members of the group.

Besides the benefits to saving the planet, the Raelians say that the embassy could help the tottering Portuguese economy. This construction, in their view, would attract direct investments and wealthy Raelians from around the world.

Founded in the 1970s by the former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who has since adopted the name Rael, the Raelian Movement claims that life on Earth did not arise spontaneously, but through the so-called intelligent design, using the DNA of an alien people, the Elohim.

The goal is to have the embassy ready for the return of the extraterrestrials, scheduled for 2035. In addition to Portugal, other countries should be contacted. Brazil is also on the list and stands out, according to the Raelians, because of its religious plurality.

According to Uzal, the government of Portugal remains silent. Sought by Folha, the Portuguese government did not respond until the completion of this text.

Translated by DENISE MOTA

Read the article in the original language

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2015/07/1652603-a-group-proposes-to-the-portuguese-government-the-construction-of-an-embassy-for-extraterrestrials.shtml

Give Me That Old-Time Religion

From ISIS to the Christian right, three new books explore the modern urge to go back to an original, uncorrupted version of faith.

ALEX STRICK VAN LINSCHOTEN

PACIFIC STANDARD 

JUL 7, 2015

BUILDING GOD'S KINGDOM: INSIDE THE WORLD OF CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION
Julie J. Ingersoll
Oxford University Press

ISLAMIC POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION
Gerhard Bowering
Princeton University Press

MISQUOTING MUHAMMAD: THE CHALLENGE AND CHOICES OF INTERPRETING THE PROPHET'S LEGACY
Jonathan A.C. Brown
Oneworld Publications

They have a long-term vision for social change. Some of them believe that adulterers, homosexuals, and blasphemers should be stoned to death. They reject liberal ideas and seek a return to religious fundamentals. Secular governments, they feel, should be replaced with theocracy; legal systems should be replaced with religious law; the education of all children should be guided by the precepts of faith. God, they proclaim, is the only authority.

ISIS ideologues? Taliban clerics? No, these are the Christian Reconstructionists, adherents of an American religious movement whose ideas, thanks to the efforts of the Chalcedon Foundation, have for decades slowly been gaining traction among a portion of the Christian religious right in the United States.

All too often today, whenever the subject of “religious fundamentalism” comes up, Americans are quick to think of conservative Muslims overseas. But, as Julie Ingersoll makes clear in Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, they would do well to broaden their outlook to include other brands of extreme views—especially those that have arisen much closer to home. Ingersoll takes the Christian Reconstructionists as a case in point, in part because she knows them well (she was once married to a Reconstructionist and co-founded a private Christian school) and in part because she feels they have exerted a surprisingly powerful effect on American political discourse.

Reconstructionism’s founder, Rousas John Rushdoony, was born in the United States to a family that had just fed the Armenian genocide—a trauma that inspired Rushdoony to want to re-build society from the ground up, according to fundamental Christian principles. With secular politics and morality having failed humanity so spectacularly, it was time to run the world again the way God wanted it to be run. He laid out his program in a monumental 1,879-page work entitledThe Institutes of Biblical Law.

Rushdoony and his followers began their efforts with a focus on the grass roots. They eschewed direct political engagement and took a longer-term view of their enterprise. In a savvy tactic used the world over by religious movements interested in effecting social change, the group has devoted much of its time and energy to the family unit and education. Reconstructionists were instrumental in fighting the early battles of what became the homeschooling movement, for example, and Rushdoony himself actively took part in the legal challenges that first allowed the movement to spread in the United States.

In terms of sheer numbers, the Reconstructionism is not a major factor on the American religious scene; it’s not a denomination and has very little active presence in actual churches. But in Building God’s Kingdom, Ingersoll makes the case that core Reconstructionist ideas have exerted an outsized influence on political, cultural, and legal life in the U.S., through their leadership presence at the forefront of key issues. Homeschooling is one obvious example, but Ingersoll cites others: the work of the Tea Party activist David Barton, who has championed the idea of America as a fundamentally Christian nation; the creationist movement, the revival of whose literal interpretation of scripture owes much to Rushdoony; and the development of “biblical” arguments against government welfare and taxation. Ingersoll even discerns Reconstructionist roots in some of the particularities of the language used by the American religious right. When their affiliates refer to public schools as “government schools,” or argue that they are “Marxist-socialist,” for example, Ingersoll contends that they are echoing phrases used by Rushdoony. Ingersoll also detects Reconstructionist influences on the secessionist Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Republican senator Rand Paul.

Studying the Reconstructionists can help us understand the motivations and tactics of religious groups trying to return to an “authentic” experience—among them the West’s current obsessions, ISIS and the Taliban. But trying to make sense of the Islamic State or the Taliban without a thorough understanding of the political traditions from which they derive is foolhardy. Hence the importance of Islamic Political Thought: An Introduction, a new collection of essays edited by Gerhard Bowering, which presents a nuanced guide to the many approaches to political life that have evolved during Islam’s almost 1,500-year history. In many ways, this amounts to an entire history of ideas, full of foreign terms and unfamiliar characters, that most Westerners simply aren’t taught. Trying to absorb it can be overwhelming, and the editors of this volume haven’t helped matters by ordering it alphabetically rather than thematically. But their efforts do have one very important merit: They make abundantly clear that Muslims themselves have long grappled with questions about the relationship of religion and politics.

The first issue to contend with is the fact that the Qur’an itself offers few details about what sort of political system Muslims should adopt. Instead, over time, scholars and theologians engaged in a vast collective effort to establish the history of the religion and to define its political principles—much of which is now found in the sunna and hadith—and the precedents established by the initial four rulers of the new polity. The early religious community was forced to adapt to the challenges of ruling over vast swathes of territory, and in doing so they inevitably absorbed ideas and practices from those they conquered and studied. Plato and Aristotle’s idea of a rational philosopher-king as ruler was an important influence, this volume shows, as was the Persian culture of bureaucracy, which allowed the growing Islamic empire to administer its territory.

As the centuries wore on, the burgeoning enterprise of Qur’anic interpretation and Islamic political theorizing generated an entire class of Islamic scholars, who, in turn, set about consolidating their position as the arbiters of religious authority and political power. They did this in part by engaging in increasingly abstract debates that alienated lay believers—and, as routinely happens in all religious traditions, those believers began calling for a return to an “original,” uncorrupted version of the faith, especially in the 20th century. At the same time, literacy rates and communication techniques improved, enabling fundamentalists to spread their message with unprecedented power and speed—which is how the Islamic State and the Taliban today have managed to lay claim, however misguidedly, to “authentic” Islamic imperatives.

But what is “authentic” in Islamic history and interpretation? That’s the subject of Jonathan A.C. Brown’s Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy. Brown expounds on several key moments of debate in Islamic history to illustrate a flexibility and variety of interpretation that is almost always forgotten, ignored, or denied in Western discourse about Islam. Brown can be overly loquacious, but still, Misquoting Muhammad is a book I wish I had the money to buy for all my friends and colleagues, because he presents readers with a guide to Islamic thought that portrays it not as a fixed entity but as a complex product of utterly human machinations.

Consider the case of what is sometimes referred to as the “wife-beating verse” in the Qur’an (4:34). The text seems to support the idea of men beating their wives in the event of disobedience, yet Brown shows how Muslim scholars and followers have often rejected that apparent meaning in favor of one in which affection and mercy are the norm. Where there’s a will, there’s always a way around literalism.

The examples Brown cites in Misquoting Muhammad are instructive: They’re a reminder of the ultimate importance of context. As the anthropologist and scholar of religions Talal Asad has noted, it’s in studying the gradations of belief and interpretation—and the attempts to deny those gradations—that we can begin to understand a religion. Ultimately, Brown teaches a simple, if vital, lesson: Authenticity is elusive in religion, and those who claim it tend not to be searching for the truth but grasping for power.

http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/give-me-that-old-time-religion

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How some organized religion leads to mental health problems

VALERIE TARICO, ALTERNETRAW STORY!

July 6, 2015

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

A few years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label? I asked her.

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin 2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call“ reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW. I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship, and there is a group organized to oppose their incursion into public schools. I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today? Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait…That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals. They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help. For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference. I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves. Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/religious-trauma-syndrome-how-some-organized-religion-leads-to-mental-health-problems/