CULTISM: A SICKNESS OF BEING
- Mark Antony Krupa
The thoughtless are always going to be prisoners of other people's thoughts.
Alan Bloom.
March 14, 2000. The unforgiving African sun beats down on a party being held in the shade, next to a church. The members of the commune raise their glasses of Coca-Cola in celebration, then feast on exquisite roast bull: a tribute to the chosen one.
Three days later "the scene is horror," utters a horrified police spokesman: "There are only two or three bodies which indicate that these are men or women. The rest are beyond recognition." As the death toll in Uganda hits the 900 plus mark (and still counting), people from all walks of life again begin asking the familiar question: Why? Why did members of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God nail shut their church and set ablaze a drum of fuel? Most of the bodies were victims of a mass-suicide, but others were found with bags over their heads: the stench of murder. Among the dead were two active police officers; others included group leader 32 year old Dominic Kataribabo, 39 year old Joseph Kasapurari, 69 year old John Kamasara, and 40 year old Cledonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute.
Their
leader, 68 year old Joseph Kibwetere, once a wealthy dairy and poultry farmer,
was also head of the Roman Catholic based Democratic Party in the 1960s and
70s. His political career ended abruptly when the rival Ugandan People's Congress,
led by Milton Obote, won a controversial general election in 1980. Kibwetere
was hounded out of his home district of Ntungamo in south-western Uganda,
taking refuge with an Anglican bishop in the nearby town of Kabale. Seven
years later, at a time when many people claimed to see mystic apparitions
in the Kabale area, Kibwetere claimed to have overheard a conversation between
Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary -- and recorded it on tape. This tape recording
became the basis for the infamous Friday the 17th mass, where all the chosen-ones
gathered to be saved from the up-coming apocalypse. Kibwetere convinced his
members that the Virgin Mary told him that the world was going to end, and
their Church would serve as an ark, bringing them to a better world. Initially,
he predicted the world would end on December 31st, 1999, but when that didn't
happen, he set March 17th as the date, as a growing number of devotees, who
had divested themselves of all their worldly possessions, were beginning to
get restless.
Once criticized for being 'a Catholic who wanted to be more Catholic than the Pope,' Kibwetere blamed the world's problems on those who were not strictly enforcing the Ten Commandments. Within his commune, he insisted on strict discipline, including celibacy, dressing in robes and communicating with secret hand signals when not praying or singing. However, there were warning signs within the group that the seeds of fanaticism had already sprouted. A pregnant female member was reportedly beaten until she miscarried, as punishment for breaking the celibacy vow. Then, in 1998, the cult was closed down for unsanitary conditions and abuse of children as laborers; but since several members were law enforcers, the cult was allowed to re-open.
* * * * * * * *
It is all too easy to dismiss the spectacular loss of life through cults as a freak occurrence, but the growing body of evidence supports the opposite conclusion. Dr. Florence Baingana, a psychiatrist in charge of Uganda's mental health division said: "Fears about what would happen in the year 2000 and grinding poverty had fuelled the religious sect movement . . . people have these gaps in their lives, spiritual gaps, and they look for different ways of filling them like joining cults. Our history has made us more vulnerable because life has been very hard."
As an effect of global secularization, life is indeed becoming
harder for those who require a spiritual ceiling to shelter their universe.
And where there was once hope and optimism, grows a void that is as disturbing
as the hole in our sacred Ozone, and we all run the risk of falling into it.
Let us review some of the most recent mass murder-suicides:
March 23, 1997 -- Police in Saint Casimir, Quebec, find the charred bodies
of three women and two men inside a house owned by a member of the Solar Temple,
an international sect that believes death by ritualized suicide leads to rebirth
on the star 'Sirius.' The bodies of the five were found in a bedroom, laid
out on a bed in the form of a cross.
March, 1997 -- Thirty-nine members of the Higher Source cult commit suicide at a mansion in Santa Fe, California. The bodies of 21 women and 18 men (8 were castrated) were lying face up, arms by their sides, dressed in black trousers and black tennis shoes with purple triangular shrouds covering their faces and chests. The group killed themselves by swallowing Phenobarbital dissolved in apple sauce and vodka. The sect's leader, Marshall Applewhite, also died. The deaths were believed to have coincided with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, which the cult members believed contained a space ship that would deliver them to a 'higher evolutionary level' after they had shed their bodies. It is reported that one cult member, who purchased a high powered telescope to monitor the comet's trajectory, returned the device as 'defective' because it couldn't locate the space ship.
December 1995 -- 16 Solar Temple members are found dead in a burned house outside Grenoble, in the French Alps. Two French police officers were among the 16 dead.
October 1994 -- Police find the burned bodies of 48 Solar Temple members in a farmhouse and three chalets in Switzerland. At the same time, in Quebec, five bodies, including that of an infant, were found in a chalet in Morin Heights, north of Montreal.
October 1993 -- 53 hill tribe villagers, in a remote Vietnamese hamlet, commit mass suicide with flintlock guns and other primitive weapons, believing they would go straight to heaven. Officials said they were the victims of a scam devised by a blind local man, Ca Van Liem, who received big cash donations in return for promising a speedy road to paradise.
April 19, 1993 -- At least 70 Branch Davidian cult members die in a fire and shoot-out with police and federal agents who ended a 51-day siege of the compound near Waco, Texas. David Koresh, the group leader, died of a gunshot wound to the head during the blaze. A former rock guitarist from Dallas, Koresh preached a messianic gospel of sex, freedom and revolution and told his followers he was Jesus Christ.
December 1991 -- Mexican police blame a minister's fervent belief in God for his own and the death of 29 followers who suffocated when he told them to keep praying and ignore toxic fumes filling their church. Ramon Morales Almazan shouted at his followers to remain calm as they began to choke, vomit and faint.
November 18, 1978 -- Paranoid U.S. pastor, the Rev. Jim Jones,
leads 914 followers to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking a cyanide-laced
fruit drink. Cult members who refused to swallow the liquid were shot. Jones
had carved a sign over his altar at Jonestown, that reads: 'Those who forget
the past are doomed to repeat it.'
Since history does tend to repeat itself, what can we do to protect ourselves
from the spiritual bankruptcy that leaves us vulnerable to cultism? The above-mentioned
mass-suicide cults grab the head-lines because of the sensational loss of
life, but many other cults operate freely under our very noses, scheming to
take our money -- directly or indirectly.
For example, the hard-working, tax-paying citizens who saw John Travolta's Battlefield Earth, filmed in Montreal last summer, will have indirectly contributed to the Church of Scientology's coffers. Founded by Ron L. Hubbard, the Church, now a multi-national sect, disguises its true intentions by offering a wide range of self-help programs, including language courses and YMCA sponsored drug rehabilitation facilities, all the while preying on the vulnerable and their assets. How dangerous is Scientology? Go to your nearest Internet and search under Lisa McPherson: death lawsuit.
There are an estimated two thousand groups classified as cults in North America alone, each with its self-serving agenda. The more sophisticated they become in their recruitment techniques, the more difficult it is to say NO. But the reasons for saying NO are as compelling as ever. Like with unprotected sex, if you leap into a cult without due consideration, the consequences can be deadly.
Recently, the Pope 'confessed' that Hell doesn't exist and the Holy Crusades were a little messy. In light of statements such as this, along with increasing demographic pressures and the exponential growth in communication technologies, it is not surprising that the traditional religions are no longer able to satisfy the spiritual needs of the masses.
What will fill the spiritual gaps of tomorrow? Can personal harmony be achieved without force-feeding our children on anthropomorphic notions such as the Soul, Heaven, Re-incarnation, and Nirvana? Is it so horrific to imagine that when we die - that's it? Nothingness. Our atoms become carbon: the dust of the cosmos. Does this mean we can not be spiritual, ethical, or moral in a heavenless world? I think not.
The universe is an ineffably wondrous place filled with quasars, black holes, infinite space and time, waterfalls, the morning dew on a spider web, a human face. Whether there be One or a myriad of imposing, awe-inspiring creative forces out there, it takes more strength to keep the roof of the universe open than it does to close it with the security of religion. As it is, we are granted such a short period of time on the planet earth, it seems tragically unfair to limit oneself to one creed, one paradigm, one vision. Yet while in quest of a more fulfilling spiritual life, one must be on guard against groups who insidiously impose their vision on others.
Sipping my 'Second Cup-achino,' I scan the headlines of the Uganda story, tucked in between the Entertainment and Sports section. And I can not help but to wonder what will happen to the earth the day our sun finally burns out (I look at my watch) -- six billion years from now. Will we be sufficiently advanced for an extra-planetary exodus? I think for the time-being, there are sufficient intra-planetary distractions to keep us busy!
THE END