Christian Century: Playing with fire: looking at Heaven's Gate - suicide cult

After an event like the Heaven's Gate suicides, people in the religion business get put on the spot. The question asked most often has to do with the ways in which the Heaven's Gate movement was or was not "just like" other religions. I want to ask in return, Why do you ask now, and in this way? People who had shown little curiosity about religion suddenly find their interest quickened, their critical faculties sharpened, and their passion for religious history aroused. It's also an occasion to put religion on the defensive: "See what belief leads to; keep your distance, everybody." And for thoughtful members of religious communities questions arise about the kinds of zeal and sacrifice religion may exact. Are we living up to our own faith's demands? Has our historical development, with all its compromises, made us more humane but less religious?

The truth is: there are some similarities between events like the Heaven's Gate incident and some of those recounted in the originating stories of the major religions. Questioners and critics will certainly bring up stories like the call to Abraham to sacrifice his son, some of the harsh demands of Jesus to follow him even to death, and not a few incidents in the development of Islam. My calling as a Christian historian does not entail obscuring such truths.

To some critics, however, any acknowledgment of such similarities is thought to be devastating to personal faith and public religious life. Their line of questioning suggests we should do away with our faith and sign up for life in the great, free, responsible secular world, where all the issues are solved, or at least handled less dangerously. I respect those who take this tack, but theirs is only a first word, not a last one.

In beginning a reply, I try to point out that the religious mind and the religious heart have different concerns. The religious mind sees just enough sense in the comparison for it to be credible, while the religious heart has many reasons to find incredible any comparisons between what Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example, are about and what Heaven's Gate people pursued.

"Heart" here refers to what is discovered by existential probing, the tests to which faith has been put by billions of people in many centuries in virtually every place. In the study and library and laboratory, in the room of rejoicing and the sickroom of near-despair, in the field of voluntary action--in these settings, religions, for all their real limits and awesome flaws, in the main have been agents of healing, leaders in acts of justice and mercy.

I might also bring up the idea of religious development. The Abraham story is not the legitimator of child abuse in the name of God. Isaac is not sacrificed, and that story represents the end, not the beginning or the licensing, of child sacrifice (which was common in the cultures in which the story was first set forth). Early Christians did sometimes seek voluntary martyrdom (a complicated topic), but the church's memories of Jesus are overwhelmingly on the side of love and sacrifice for others, not the killing of the self for the sake of a passage to the life to come. That passage must always wait for God's time.

Some people have asked, "How can you Christians scorn or scoff at Heaven's Gate? If you knew your past and were consistent in your faith today, you should recognize yourselves in the messianism and suicides of Heaven's Gate." Perhaps my antennae have been pointing in the wrong direction, but I have noticed far more Christians grieving and expressing empathy for the families of the suicides than chortling over the absurd proclamations of Marshall Herff Applewhite. A standard set of questions I've heard goes like this: How is belief in a UFO hidden behind the HaleBopp comet any more absurd than the claim of Jews that an angel of God helped spare Israel's firstborn in Egypt, or that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was raised from the dead? I see no reason to minimize the scandal (a scandal being something one "trips over") of faith and faiths. Virtually all of them derive from some experience of supernature or with superhuman power or person(s). I cannot suggest all the ways these originating events and proclamations are grasped by believers in later generations, but several things might be said.

First, common-sense judgment does come into play. The instinct to be dismissive of the Heaven's Gate proclamation is not entirely misplaced. The public is not all wrong to see weirdness in Applewhite's persona and presentation.

Furthermore, there are various ways in which worldwide communities of faith test themselves and each other; subject themselves and each other to criticism; find new applications and understandings. It makes no sense to say, "Yes, Applewhite and Aquinas, Do and Ti and Maimonides and Al Ghazzali--they are just like each other."

The question might come: Doesn't your religion feature a strong desire for reaching heaven? What's wrong with people who act on the courage of their convictions, and ship themselves off early?

Here one might talk about the call of faith which lets God set forth times and seasons, a faith that asks us to cherish life, live for others, and not let the quest for a personal reward in heaven replace the love of God and neighbor.

We live in a world of judgment calls, where games of inches and miles are played. Compare target shooting and Russian roulette. The games are similar in that both involve firearms. But there are significant differences in how the firearms are used.

The firearm image aptly suggests that playing with religion is dangerous. Playing with nonreligion is also dangerous. When one asks ultimate questions, one is playing with fire. So I would want to make sure my questioner heard this much from me: Thanks for making me rethink my commitments to my faith and my religious community. I hope you will stick around to hear some of my responses.