Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Jewish people had not yet succumbed to this enthusiasm for the literal: in 1492 they had suffered a disaster, which made many turn to the mystical consolations of Kabbalah. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile, had conquered the kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe. Jews and Muslims were given the option of conversion to Christianity or deportation. Many Jews chose exile and took refuge in the new Ottoman empire where a significant number settled in Palestine, which was now an Ottoman province. In Safed in northern Galilee, the saintly mystic Isaac Luria (1534–72) developed a kabbalastic myth that bore no resemblance to the first chapter of Genesis, and yet by the mid-seventeenth century Lurianic Kabbalah had a mass following in Jewish communities from Poland to Iran.33 Exile had been a central preoccupation for Jews since their deportation to Babylonia. For the Spanish Jews – the Sephardim – the loss of their homeland was the worst disaster to have befallen their people since the destruction of the temple. They felt that everything was in the wrong place and that their entire world had collapsed. Snatched forever from places that were saturated in memories essential to their identity, exiles can feel that their very existence is in jeopardy. When exile is also associated with human cruelty, it raises urgent problems about the nature of evil in a world supposedly created by a just and benevolent God.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Bible A Biography Current and forthcoming titles in the Books that Changed the World Series: Plato’s Republic by Simon Blackburn Machiavelli’s The Prince by Philip Bobbitt Darwin’s Origin of Species by Janet Browne Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens The Qur’an by Bruce Lawrence Machiavelli’s The Prince by Philip Babbitt Homer’s The Iliad and the Odyssey by Alberto Manguel On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O’Rourke Clausewitz’s On War by Hew Strachan Marx’s Das Kapital by Francis Wheen The Bible A Biography KAREN ARMSTRONG Copyright © 2006 by Karen Armstrong All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or permissions@groveatlantic.com. First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5558-4924-5 (e-book) Designed by Richard Marston Atlantic Monthly Press an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003 Distributed by Publishers Group West www.groveatlantic.com In Memory of Eileen Hastings Armstrong (1921–2006) CONTENTS Introduction 1 Torah 2 Scripture 3 Gospel 4 Midrash 5 Charity 6 Lectio Divina 7 Sola Scriptura 8 Modernity Epilogue Glossary of Key Terms Notes Index INTRODUCTION Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures. Unless we find some pattern or significance in our lives, we fall very easily into despair. Language plays an important part in our quest. It is not only a vital means of communication, but it helps us to articulate and clarify the incoherent turbulence of our inner world. We use words when we want to make something happen outside ourselves: we give an order or make a request and, one way or the other, everything around us changes, however infinitesimally. But when we speak we also get something back: simply putting an idea into words can give it a lustre and appeal that it did not have before. Language is mysterious. When a word is spoken, the ethereal is made flesh; speech requires incarnation – respiration, muscle control, tongue and teeth. Language is a complex code, ruled by deep laws that combine to form a coherent system that is imperceptible to the speaker, unless he or she is a trained linguist. But language has an inherent inadequacy. There is always something left unsaid; something that remains inexpressible.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama’s chin was sharp, shining now against other car lights, now against the lights from the dash. I watched the tears on her face when she looked back at me. I closed my eyes, opened them. Everything seemed spongy and strange, but I couldn’t care anymore. The cool air rushing in the window was damp and sweet. If there really was a God or even magic, that air would blow through me and out again. It would go back down that road to the hospital, sweep up the dirt, and throw it in Daddy Glen’s eyes. It would make him see who he was, what he had done. That doctor would come out on his way home, see him there, and know who he was. The wind would tell him, the moon, or maybe even God. That doctor would know, and he would start his car, knowing. He would slam that car into gear and roar across that lot. The grille would stop just inches from Daddy Glen’s terrified face. “You son of a bitch,” that doctor would scream. “You ever touch that child again and I’ll grind you into meat and blood!” Daddy Glen would weep tears of blood. Jesus, maybe, would come into his heart. He’d follow us out to Alma’s and get on his knees before the whole family. “I have sinned,” he’d say, and hold his hands out to me, beg my forgiveness and cry my name. Mama would say no. My aunts would say no. My uncles, Reese, the minister, everyone in the world would stand up and say no. But I would pull myself up from my sickbed. I would look right into his eyes, into the lamps of his soul. Yes, I would say. Yes. I forgive you. Then probably I would die. I almost laughed, my shoulders shook. The pain was hot and took the story away so fast I made a little sound. I swallowed hard, determined not to cry. Mama reached over for me. Her face looked old, very old and tired. It made my heart hurt to see her look that way. I couldn’t hurt her, I couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Don’t, honey, don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Her lips were swollen where she had bitten them, and I felt my own lips swollen and cracked against my teeth. “I love you.” My voice was so soft I didn’t think she heard me. But hers came back to me, quick and low. “I love you too.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I picked my way across to the refrigerator, surprised that it wasn’t standing open, more surprised to find that the contents were intact and there was ice in the freezer. There was a gallon jug of tea ready-made. I turned back toward the porch, seeing Mama and Aunt Alma still sitting together on the steps. “You want a glass of tea too, Mama?” I asked slowly. “Yes, honey, that would be nice.” She put her arm all the way across Aunt Alma’s shoulders and hugged her close. “Your aunt and I just want to sit here a while before we start cleaning all this up.” “I want another baby,” Aunt Alma was saying in a slurred tone. We had her in Patsy Ruth’s bed, bundled in blankets, with bandages on her hands. Alma’s big old bed was broken in half, though we couldn’t figure out how she had managed to smash that oak headboard so completely. She lay there murmuring softly, groggy from the toddy Mama had made for her with whiskey, hot water, honey, and lemon. “I told him that. Told him I wanted another little girl. Told him it wasn’t gonna be all right until I had another baby.” She paused. She still had the razor in her hand, closed now but gripped too tight to get away from her. We’d cleaned up a good bit, got the kids off to Aunt Raylene’s, and made sure Uncle Wade wouldn’t be coming home until someone went to get him. We hadn’t done anything with the yard, just picked most of the broken glass and ripped clothes off the floor, put the kitchen back together more or less, and cleaned and bandaged Aunt Alma. None of the kids had been hurt, just scared to death. The only casualty was one of the puppies, whose neck had been broken when something or someone fell on him. Grey and Garvey had showed up just before sundown to work on the yard a little and help round up the various animals. Mama wouldn’t let them come in the house. I watched them for a while as they wandered around shaking their heads and exclaiming in awe over how much destruction Aunt Alma had managed to do. Mama had stayed right beside Alma, keeping her hands on her, steadying and quieting her, and keeping between me and that razor that never left Aunt Alma’s hand.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama hadn’t talked to him. I felt suddenly so tired I could barely draw breath. “They call you Bone, don’t they?” I said nothing. “Bone, I want you to know that no one is gonna hurt you. No one is gonna be allowed to hurt you. We can see that you’ve been through enough. Just tell me who beat you, girl. Tell me.” His voice was calm, careful, friendly. He was Daddy Glen in a uniform. The world was full of Daddy Glens, and I didn’t want to be in the world anymore. “Honey,” the sheriff said again. I hated him for calling me that. He didn’t know me. “We’re gonna have to know everything that happened.” No. My tongue swelled in my mouth. I didn’t want anyone to know anything. Mama, I almost whispered, but clamped my teeth together. I couldn’t tell this man anything. He didn’t care about me. No one cared about me. I didn’t even care about myself anymore. “Ruth Anne.” He leaned forward, his face close to mine, his whispery voice too big in my ear. “I want to help you. I want you to tell me what happened, girl. I’ll take care of everything. I promise you. You’ll be all right.” No. He thought he knew everything. Son of a bitch in his smug uniform could talk like Santa Claus, promise anything, but I was alone. “I want to go home,” I said. “I want my mama.” Sheriff Cole put his hand on mine and sighed. “All right. All right, girl.” I looked at him, remembering what Raylene had said that night on the landing when I told her how much I hated people who looked at us like trash. What must it be like to be Sheriff Cole? What made him who he was? I’d think about that sometime, but not now. I didn’t want to think at all right now. The double door swung open. I turned eagerly, but the struggling angry figure there wasn’t Mama. Raylene was wrestling with a nurse, pushing the woman away and almost losing her black pea coat in the process. “Let me go,” she said in a voice bigger than the room. “You let me go.” She shoved the woman away and came forward like a tree falling, massive, inevitable, and reassuringly familiar. “Bone. Baby.” Her words echoed hollowly against the stark white walls. “Oh, my girl, what’d they do to you?” Raylene leaned over me, and the smell of her wrapped me around. I opened my mouth like a baby bird, cried out, and reached up to her with my good arm. I said her name twice and lay against her breasts.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She opened the door, eased me down onto the front seat, lifted my legs. He was still crying her name. I was thinking fast and slow at the same time. How could I do it? No shotgun here, not even a butter knife. “Anney, please. Talk to me. Love, please. Please, Anney.” She dodged him, ran around to the other side of the car, and got the door open. He was right beside her, sobbing and wringing his hands. He pushed the door almost shut while she struggled to open it again. “Anney, you know how I love you. I wouldn’t have hurt her, darling, but I went crazy. I just went crazy!” I pulled myself across the seat, trying to reach her and help, but it was back to being hard to move. The air had become thick as jelly. I had to push through it. I gritted my teeth and inched forward until I was leaning against the steering wheel, watching them struggle with the door. “Mama.” She looked toward me, her face empty and strange. I said it again. “Mama.” Mama slapped Glen again, with her open hand and then with her cupped fist. The sound of her blows was dull and horrible, but not so horrible as the mewling grunts he made as she struck him. “Let go,” she said. He staggered, sweat streaming into his eyes. His mouth worked uselessly, all his features seemed realigned. “Let go,” she said again. He wailed and dropped to his knees, his hands still clinging to Mama and the door. He bowed his head and whispered, “Kill me, Anney. Go on. I can’t live without you. I won’t. Kill me! Kill me!” Mama jerked away from him, and the door slammed shut. “Oh, no,” she whimpered. Her face became the mirror of his, her mouth as wide, her neck as rigid. “Kill me,” he said again, louder. “Kill me.” He butted his head into the metal door, pulled back, and rammed again. He shouted every time his head hit, the thuds punctuating the cries. “Kill me. Kill me.” Mama was so close I could have touched her, but her head was turned away, turned to Glen. I could not reach her. “Oh, God,” she cried, and I let go of the steering wheel. “No,” I whispered, but Mama didn’t hear me. “Glen!” she said. “Glen!” She moaned and covered her face with her hands. Her body shook as she sobbed. Mine shook as I watched her. “Glen, stop,” she said. “Stop.” She grabbed his head, wrapping her fingers over his forehead to block the impact of his blows. “Stop.” There was blood on her fingers. She was crying. He was still. I closed my eyes. “No,” I said again. He spoke once more, drowning me out. His voice was very calm, very soft. “Kill me, Anney. Kill me.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Big dumb sad eyes waited on me. I wanted to beat my fists until bones splintered, kick my heels into raw meat, scream until my tongue pulled loose and split at the root, but everything was slow, words and feelings just moved across my brain. I was slow, numb, and stupid. The pain in my arm was comforting, the throbbing at my temple was a music I needed in order to keep breathing. Everything hurt me: my arm in its cotton sling; the memory of the nurse’s careful fingers; the light that glinted into my eyes from the flawed glass of Raylene’s window; my hip where it pressed against the mattress. Most of all my heart hurt me, a huge swollen obstruction in my chest. Every time I closed my eyes there was a flash of Glen’s face as he had looked above me. I kept turning my head as if Mama’s prayers still echoed in my ears, and even the slow drag of that dog’s eyes raked over my skin like a pitchfork cutting furrows in dust. I had seen my whole life in Sheriff Cole’s eyes, contemptible, small, meaningless. My mama had abandoned me, and that was the only thing that mattered. When Raylene brought me some soup later, I refused to eat. “I hate her,” I whispered through torn lips. “I hate her.” “You’ll forgive her,” Raylene said. I pulled the sheet up over my mouth. How do you forgive somebody when you cannot even speak her name, when you cannot stand to close your eyes and see her face? I did not understand. If I thought of Mama, I thought of her with her head thrown back and her mouth open, Glen’s bloody face pressed to her belly. I could not stand to remember that, could not watch it again. I turned away, closed my eyes, and prayed for the darkness to come back. I wanted to die. I refused to eat, refused to speak, covered my face, and would not let Aunt Raylene coax me out of bed. She left me alone, and I woke up with my eyes wet and my mouth open, but with no memory of dreaming. The only sound was the yellow dog’s tail thumping the rug. My heart, the pulse that pounded in my head, beat to that rhythm. Everything in me said no, repeated it, drummed it, hummed and sang it. I had no more spirit of meanness than a bug had. I was just a whisper in the dark saying no and hoping to die. Raylene came in the morning and fed me grits with a spoon. She let me be quiet that day, but the next, she picked me up and carried me out to the porch to sit on her rocker in the sun. I wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t speak, but she didn’t seem to care.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I held the envelope and watched her shoulders. They were shaking, but she made no sound. “Do you know where she’s going?” I asked. “No.” The word was a whisper. Raylene lifted her hands slightly, dropped them again. She did not turn to me, and I knew she did not want me to see her face. “California,” I said. “Or Florida, maybe. He always talked about taking us off there sometime, someplace where they grew oranges and a man could find decent work.” My voice sounded so rough and mean I barely recognized it. I felt old and chilled, though I knew the night was warm. I looked down my bandaged arm to the envelope. It was oversized, yellow, official-looking, and unsealed. I opened it. Folded into thirds was a certificate, RUTH ANNE BOATWRIGHT. Mother: ANNEY BOATWRIGHT. Father: UNKNOWN. I almost laughed, reading down the page. Greenville General Hospital and the embossed seal of the county, the family legend on imitation parchment. I had never seen it before, but had heard all about it. I unfolded the bottom third. It was blank, unmarked, unstamped. I looked out into the dark night, past Raylene’s hip and the porch railing. What had she done? I shook my head and swallowed. I knew nothing, understood nothing. Maybe I never would. Who had Mama been, what had she wanted to be or do before I was born? Once I was born, her hopes had turned, and I had climbed up her life like a flower reaching for the sun. Fourteen and terrified, fifteen and a mother, just past twenty-one when she married Glen. Her life had folded into mine. What would I be like when I was fifteen, twenty, thirty? Would I be as strong as she had been, as hungry for love, as desperate, determined, and ashamed? My eyes were dry, the night a blanket that covered me. I wasn’t old. I would be thirteen in a few weeks. I was already who I was going to be. I tucked the envelope inside my pocket. When Raylene came to me, I let her touch my shoulder, let my head tilt to lean against her, trusting her arm and her love. I was who I was going to be, someone like her, like Mama, a Boatwright woman. I wrapped my fingers in Raylene’s and watched the night close in around us. Bastard Out of Carolina Afterword “Y ou told my story,” the man in the Peterbilt cap said to me. His face was stern, the skin worn and lined, his eyes implacable and black under the brim of that cap. “Oh. I am sorry.” He nodded. “I wanted you to know,” he said, “you made sense of what did not make sense.” I breathed in as slowly as I could, trying to think what to say.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  There seems at no time to have been any widespread revolt against the procedure of the Inquisition. In Aragon, some mitigation of its rigors and rules was proposed by the Cortes of Barcelona, 1512, such as the withdrawal from the inquisitors of the right to carry weapons and the exemption of women from the seizure of their property, in cases where a husband or father was declared a heretic, but Ferdinand and Bishop Enguera, the Aragonese inquisitor-general, were dispensed by Leo X., 1514, from keeping the oath they had taken to observe the rules. At Charles V.’s accession, an effort was made to have some of the more offensive evils abolished, such as the keeping of the names of witnesses secret, and in 1520 the Cortes of Valladolid and Corunna made open appeal for the amendment of some of the rules. Four hundred thousand ducats were offered, presumably by conversos, to the young king if he would give his assent, and, as late as 1528, the kingdom of Granada, in the same interest, offered him 50,000 ducats. But the appeals received no favorable action and, under the influence of Ximines, in 1517, the council of Castile represented to Charles that the very peace of Spain depended upon the maintenance of the Inquisition. The cardinal wrote a personal letter to the king, declaring that interference on his part would cover his name with infamy.964 The most serious attempt to check the workings of the Inquisition occurred in Saragossa and resulted in the assassination of the chief inquisitor, Peter Arbues, an act of despair laid at the door of the conversos. Arbues was murdered in the cathedral Jan. 25, 1485, the fatal blow being struck from behind, while the priest was on his knees engaged in prayer. He knew his life was threatened and not only wore a coat of mail and cap of steel, but carried a lance. He lingered twenty-four hours. Miracles wrought at the coffin vouched for the sanctity of the murdered ecclesiastic. The sacred bell of Villela tolled unmoved by hands. Arbues’ blood liquefied on the cathedral floor two weeks after the deed. Within two years, the popular veneration showed itself in the erection of a splendid tomb to the martyr’s memory and the Catholic Church, by the bull of Pius IX., June 29, 1867, has given him the honors of canonization. As the assassination of the papal delegate, Peter of Castelnau, at the opening of the crusade against the Albigenses, 1208, wrought to strengthen Innocent in his purpose to wipe out heresy, even with the sword, likewise the taking off of Arbues only tightened the grip of the Spanish Inquisition in Aragon. His murderers and all in any way accessory to the crime were hunted down, their hands were cut off at the portal of the cathedral and their bodies dragged to the market-place, where they were beheaded and quartered or burnt alive.965

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But the atrocious act was too public to leave room for such a mistake. Both Tacitus and Suetonius distinguish the two sects, although they knew very little of either; and the former expressly derives the name Christians from Christ, as the founder of the new religion. Moreover Nero, as previously remarked, was not averse to the Jews, and his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, a year before the conflagration, had shown special favor to Josephus, and loaded him with presents. Josephus speaks of the crimes of Nero, but says not a word of any persecution of his fellow-religionists.526 This alone seems to be conclusive. It is not unlikely that in this (as in all previous persecutions, and often afterwards) the fanatical Jews, enraged by the rapid progress of Christianity, and anxious to avert suspicion from themselves, stirred up the people against the hated Galilaeans, and that the heathen Romans fell with double fury on these supposed half Jews, disowned by their own strange brethren.527 The Probable Extent of the Persecution. The heathen historians, if we are to judge from their silence, seem to confine the persecution to the city of Rome, but later Christian writers extend it to the provinces.528 The example set by the emperor in the capital could hardly be without influence in the provinces, and would justify the outbreak of popular hatred. If the Apocalypse was written under Nero, or shortly after his death, John’s exile to Patmos must be connected with this persecution. It mentions imprisonments in Smyrna, the martyrdom of Antipas in Pergamus, and speaks of the murder of prophets and saints and all that have been slain on the earth.529 The Epistle to the Hebrews 10:32–34, which was written in Italy, probably in the year 64, likewise alludes to bloody persecutions, and to the release of Timothy from prison, 13:23. And Peter, in his first Epistle, which may be assigned to the same year, immediately after the outbreak of the persecution, and shortly before his death, warns the Christians in Asia Minor of a fiery trial which is to try them, and of sufferings already endured or to be endured, not for any crime, but for the name of "Christians."530 The name "Babylon"531 for Rome is most easily explained by the time and circumstances of composition. Christianity, which had just reached the age of its founder, seemed annihilated in Rome. With Peter and Paul the first generation of Christians was buried. Darkness must have overshadowed the trembling disciples, and a despondency seized them almost as deep as on the evening of the crucifixion, thirty-four years before. But the morning of the resurrection was not far distant, and the very spot of the martyrdom of St. Peter was to become the site of the greatest church in Christendom and the palatial residence of his reputed successors.532 The Apocalypse on the Neronian Persecution.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She smiled wanly as she sat back and remembered. “I never played much with other kids on my block because I was so lost in my fantasies. I’d watch them but not join in. Instead, my sister and I had our own private games. Our favorite was that we lived on top of a high steep mountain and saw our parents once a month, maybe less. All we had was magic, a fantasy, a dream. From the time I was very small I knew that they would never divorce. I knew I could not make them disappear. And I knew that I was trapped with them forever. I spent a lot of my childhood thinking, When will I be old enough, when will I be big enough, when will I be strong enough to leave? Those were my wishes.” As we sat in silence, I thought to myself, “go figure” indeed. According to our demographic questionnaire, Carol’s father had made it big in the corporate world, rising to vice president in one of the largest West Coast engineering firms. Carol’s mother was a successful fund-raiser and had been on the board of numerous nonprofit organizations. They had a nice house, good clothes, expensive cars. The children had been sent to the best private schools. Yet life at home had been one long nightmare for Carol and her siblings. When did she begin to question the normalcy of her family life? “All through my growing up, I knew in my bones that I was supposed to keep what happened a secret,” she said. “Had you interviewed me then, I would never have told you about our rituals, about what was going on. I had no one to talk to. Only my brother and sister and I knew and we didn’t dare let it seep out. Maybe the hardest thing of all, which I still haven’t told you, is that we kept our secret so hidden, making sure no one found out. It was like I had two identities. It was a heavy thing for me to carry. I know that after awhile I began to feel sort of dead inside. I went into treatment years later because I was afraid that I was dead or empty.” The Castle SecretsFAMILIES LIKE CAROL’S rarely come into public view because they are so normal-looking from the outside. Had I met this couple at a party, I would have found them to be cultured, respectable members of the community. The children were never hit so hard that they had visible bruises or needed to be taken to an emergency room. Nothing about the family’s behavior in the public domain—in business, social, or school life—would have given any clues as to what happened from five o’clock on. A man’s home is his castle. It is surrounded by a moat and outsiders are not invited in.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  However, the young woman’s older brother, a twenty-nine-year-old law student, entered guilty pleas to kidnapping and forcible confinement. He was sentenced to a fifteen-month term of house arrest and community supervision.674 I no longer do involuntary cult-intervention work with adults, though such an involuntary intervention for minor children remains completely legal in the United States when it is under the direct supervision of their legal guardian or custodial parents. But despite my decision to abandon involuntary intervention work with adults, I deeply sympathize with families and others concerned who may find themselves facing an extreme situation, in which voluntary interventions seem to be improbable, if not impossible, due to a lack of meaningful access as a direct result of cultic influence and manipulation. After his acquittal in 1993, deprogrammer Kenneth J. Paolini said, “What pulls on you is when a parent calls and says, ‘I’m desperate.’”675 But today, regardless of how desperate the situation may be, due to legal concerns, cult-intervention professionals in the United States have abandoned involuntary intervention, with the possible exception of minor children under the direct supervision of a custodial parent or legal guardian. Evolution of Deprogramming What was once called “deprogramming” remains largely the same process used today for cult-intervention work, but it is done only with adults on a voluntary basis. Conway and Siegelman succinctly described the deprogramming process in their book Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change . The authors wrote, “It appears to be a genuinely broadening, expanding personal change, it would seem to bear closer resemblance to a true moment of enlightenment, to the natural process of personal growth and newfound awareness and understanding, than to the narrowing changes brought about by cult rituals and artificially induced group ordeals.”676 Steve Hassan, himself a former member of the Reverend Moon‘s Unification Church, related about his own deprogramming, “I had the indescribable experience of my mind suddenly opening up, as if a light switch had been thrown.” He concluded that this was like “rediscovering myself.”677 In the second edition of Conway and Siegelman’s Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change , they explain that the “methods of voluntary deprogramming and exit-counseling, while far less controversial and much safer from a legal standpoint, prompted fewer cult members to experience a sudden ‘snapping out’ of their controlled states of mind.”678 Instead, as I discussed with the authors, what now most often occurs is a slower, less pronounced moment of emergence or “gradual ‘unfolding’ from the cults’ ingrained altered states.”679 From the time of Ted Patrick to today, cult-intervention work has evolved and changed. But the essential elements for a successful intervention remain largely intact and based on an educational model and process. The essential building blocks are the following: learning about the inherent dynamics and authoritarian structure of destructive cults; reviewing the systematic persuasion, influence, and control techniques evident in such groups; sharing historical information about the particular group or leader; and understanding the family concerns that led to the intervention.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AMBROSE. In the blind man we have a type of the Gentile people, who have received by the Sacrament of our Lord the brightness of the light which they had lost. And it matters not whether the cure is conveyed in the case of one or two blind men, inasmuch as deriving their origin from Ham and Japhet, the sons of Noah, in the two blind men they put forward two authors of their race. GREGORY. (Hom. 2. in Ev.) Or, blindness is a symbol of the human race, which in our first parent knowing not the brightness of heavenly light, now suffers the darkness of his condemnation. Jericho is interpreted ‘the moon,’ whose monthly wanings represent the feebleness of our mortality. While then our Creator is drawing nigh to Jericho, the blind is restored to sight, because when God took upon Him the weakness of our flesh, the human race received back the light which it had lost. He then who is ignorant of this brightness of the everlasting light, is blind. But if he does no more than believe in the Redeemer who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life; (John 13:6.) he sits by the way side. If he both believes and prays that he may receive the everlasting light, he sits by the way side and begs. Those that went before Jesus, as He was coming, represent the multitude of carnal desires, and the busy crowd of vices which before that Jesus comes to our heart, scatter our thoughts, and disturb us even in our prayers. But the blind man cried out the more; for the more violently we are assailed by our restless thoughts, the more fervently ought we to give ourselves to prayer. As long as we still suffer our manifold fancies to trouble us in our prayers, we feel in some measure Jesus passing by. But when we are very stedfast in prayer, God is fixed in our heart, and the lost light is restored. Or to pass by is of man, to stand is of God. The Lord then passing by heard the blind man crying, standing still restored him to sight, for by His humanity in compassion to our blindness He has pity upon our cries, by the power of His divinity He pours upon us the light of His grace. Now for this reason He asks what the blind man wished, that He might stir up his heart to prayer, for He wishes that to be sought in prayer, which He knows beforehand both that we seek and He grants. AMBROSE. Or, He asked the blind man to the end that we might believe, that without confession no man can be saved.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  A month earlier Chile’s supreme court found Gerard Mucke Koschitzke, Kurt Schnellenkamp Nelaismisckies, Gunter Schaffrik Bruckmann, and Dennys Alvear Henríquez, members of Schaefer’s “iron circle,” guilty of “various crimes of sexual abuse, rape of minors and abduction of minors.” The men will serve eleven-year prison sentences. Judge Hernán González of the Talca Court of Appeals announced that a total of nineteen individuals convicted of cult-related crimes in January must surrender and serve their sentences.233 Allegedly Hartmutt Hopp, reportedly Schaeffer’s “right hand man,” escaped Chile and fled to Germany with millions of dollars taken from the Dignidad community. Chilean authorities have applied for his extradition. More than one hundred members of the Dignidad group eventually drifted back to Germany. Others remained behind in the Chilean compound, which is now called “Villa Baviera.” They hope to eventually turn it into a financially viable community again. Just like many of the former members of the Children of God, second-generation survivors of Dignidad are reportedly deeply traumatized because of the horrible childhood Schaefer imposed on them.234 By the conclusion of the twentieth century and now in the twenty-first century, the damage done by destructive cults has become increasingly evident. Collective awareness about them has largely increased through media reports, criminal arrests, and court trials. Groups called “cults” often fit a particular pattern, which may include a seemingly encapsulated or cocooned state of being. In this sense the people in cults appear to function within their own alternate reality. But when that alternate reality comes into conflict with mainstream society, some groups have imploded or exploded. The occurrence of such tragic events brings into sharp focus what Dr. Bruce Perry calls “the fracture lines in our culture.”235 CHAPTER 2 SMALL BUT DEADLY Most of the destructive cults reported about around the world are actually quite small, often with less than one hundred members. Nevertheless, these small groups have greatly contributed to the history of cult tragedies. Unlike the larger organizations or movements, these smaller groups are typically very tightly wound around an ever-present charismatic leader. The tight-knit nature of small cults often means leaders more readily influence and control members. Because small cults are so tightly wound, their members seem to be more subject to the mood swings and delusions of their leaders. Historically, mental health professionals have described some leaders of destructive cults as psychopaths, deeply disturbed individuals, or both. Within the environment of a tightly controlled small cult, there is what can be characterized as an almost symbiotic relationship between the leader and his or her followers. This close relationship in some cultic situations has become the basis for tragedy. Members of small cult groups typically become largely dependent on the leader to determine the parameters of reality.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  The center helps cult victims and generally educates the public.292 1997—Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate Suicides In March 1997 thirty-nine people, twenty-one women and eighteen men, were found dead at a mansion in the exclusive neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego in the United States. They ranged in age from twenty-six to seventy-two and came from nine different US states. The thirty-nine bodies were identified as members of a cult group known as Heaven’s Gate.293 Again, like the Solar Temple, the small group had not been subjected to intense scrutiny or what some might label “persecution”; rather it had remained relatively obscure and unnoticed. The bodies of the cult members were found dispersed in the mansion on cots and mattresses. All but two had shrouds of purple covering their heads and shoulders. Most had died of suffocation, induced by plastic bags placed over their heads after they took a concoction of phenobarbital and alcohol. Found among the dead was Marshall Herff Applewhite, the sixty-five-year-old leader of the group. Applewhite had a troubled history. In 1970 he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital after hearing voices. He also hoped to find a cure for his “homosexual urges.”294 Marshall Applewhite never resolved his mental illness. After discontinuing his psychiatric treatment, Applewhite had himself castrated, it appears in an effort to resolve his sexual conflicts. Videotapes of Applewhite’s final statements were shown to Louis Jolyon West, professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. West concluded that the tapes demonstrated Applewhite was “delusional, sexually repressed and suffering from clinical paranoia.”295 Applewhite taught his followers that he was a messenger from an “Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human.” He claimed that periodically this higher kingdom sent messengers to earth and that one such previous visitor was Jesus. Applewhite believed he had once been Jesus in an “away team” and had been “incarnated again in…[a] mature (adult) [body] that had been picked and prepped for [his] current mission.” He advised his followers that if they studied with him, he would become their pivotal link to this higher level. He said that only through him would it be possible for them to eventually evolve and shed their human “containers,” which were only temporary “vehicles” for this supposed journey. Applewhite’s group evolved over the years, beginning in the 1970s. The group was known by successive names including The Two (Applewhite and his platonic companion, Bonnie Nettles), Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM), Te and Do (Nettles was Te, and Applewhite was Do), and then Total Overcomers Anonymous.296 Finally, Applewhite chose the name Heaven’s Gate. Applewhite required his “class” to give up virtually everything. This included their families, friends, and sex. Five of his male followers also had themselves surgically castrated, following their leader’s example. Members of Applewhite’s “crew” surrendered and renounced all their worldly possessions. They were told that they must overcome and do battle spiritually with dark forces known as the “Luciferians” and those they influenced.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Her body was never found, but she was officially declared dead. Left behind was a suicide note. The environmental consultant with a master’s degree in plant ecology had written, “I attended a course called Executive Success Programs [ESP] based out of Anchorage, Alaska and Albany, New York. I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. Please contact my parents…if you find me or this note. I am sorry life; I didn’t know I was already dead. May we persist into the future.”973 At the time Snyder had been attending a sixteen-day “intensive” offered by a for-profit privately owned company run by a former multilevel marketing guru named Keith Raniere. On the second day of that program, Snyder reportedly seemed “delusional.”974 Her domestic partner, Heidi Clifford, said she had stopped sleeping and was threatening suicide. Kristin Snyder had been involved with ESP, now known as NXIVM (pronounced nexium).975 Her parents said they had become concerned when their daughter came home for a visit after her first sixteen-day ESP intensive. In conversation they questioned the cost of ESP, specifically the $7,000 she paid for an intensive. She then cut them off and called her “coach.”976 Snyder reportedly spent more than $16,000 in four months before she was done with ESP.977 “I do, indeed, feel that her involvement in ESP was a first-cause factor in her death,” Kristin Snyder’s father told the press. “As it was, her personality disintegrated right before their eyes, and no one knew how to pick up the pieces. I do not believe that Kris wanted to kill herself. She cried out for help for almost a week, but was totally ignored,” her father said.978 Carlos Rueda, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in New York City, stated that he treated three ESP/NXIVM students for psychological disorders he believed were related to its training. One case included a “psychotic episode” and required hospital care in January 2003. Rueda told the press, “I think that the stress and the way the courses are structured may make people who have a tendency to have a psychotic disorder have an acute episode.”979 The press contacted the woman who had experienced the breakdown, and she claimed that ESP/NXIVM told her, “We have to break you to reconstruct you.” She then concluded, “But they rebuild you how they want to rebuild you.” A spokesperson for ESP stated that “no civil action has ever been alleged against ESP in that regard.”980 Other controversial LGAT programs include EST (Erhard Seminar Training), now known as Landmark Education, Lifespring, and the Mankind Project. These LGATs have also garnered press attention, complaints, and in some instances personal injury lawsuits.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Dr. Baur, of Tübingen (d. 1860), the master-critic among sceptical church historians, and the corypheus of the Tübingen school, came at last to the conclusion (as stated in the revised edition of his Church History of the First Three Centuries, published shortly before his death, 1860) that "nothing but the miracle of the resurrection could disperse the doubts which threatened to drive faith itself into the eternal night of death (Nur das Wunder der Auferstehung konnte die Zweifel zerstreuen, welche den Glauben selbst in die ewige Nacht des Todes verstossen zu müssen schienen)." Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, I. 39. It is true he adds that the nature of the resurrection itself lies outside of historical investigation ("Was die Auferstehung an sich ist, liegt ausserhalb des Kreises der geschichtlichen Untersuchung"), but also, that "for the faith of the disciples the resurrection of Jesus became the most solid and most irrefutable certainty. In this faith only Christianity gained a firm foothold of its historical development. (In diesem Glauben hat erst das Christenthum den festen Grund seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung gewonnen.) What history requires as the necessary prerequisite of all that follows is not so much the fact of the resurrection itself [?] as the faith in that fact. In whatever light we may consider the resurrection of Jesus, whether as an actual objective miracle or as a subjective psychological one (als ein objectiv geschehenes Wunder, oder als ein subjectiv psychologisches), even granting the possibility of such a miracle, no psychological analysis can penetrate the inner spiritual process by which in the consciousness of the disciples their unbelief at the death of Jesus was transformed into a belief of his resurrection .... We must rest satisfied with this, that for them the resurrection of Christ was a fact of their consciousness, and had for them all the reality of an historical event." (Ibid., pp. 39, 40.) Baur’s remarkable conclusion concerning the conversion of St. Paul (ibid., pp. 44, 45) we shall consider in its proper place.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  My heart wasn’t good, I was short of breath, and I didn’t have time to go to the doctor. She continued to cry and then to holler, but I was too tired and beat to listen. Anyway, to make it short I came home one day and the house was empty. She had moved out, taking the couch, the TV, the washer and dryer, her clothes, the whole frigging house. Fortunately she left my dog. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. It was night. I walked in and out of the house four or five times. I couldn’t believe it. I was sobbing like a baby. How could she? I nearly went mad. I mean it, Judy, mad, insane, bonkers. I couldn’t eat. I went to work but I did nothing. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go into the empty house. I stayed out on the porch for eight months, rain or shine. Depression set in like an anvil-shaped cloud. I was so overwhelmed with sadness, I said to myself, ‘This is it. No one’s ever wanted you—your wife, your dad, your mom.’ I tried to kill myself with carbon monoxide four or five times. Actually the only way I slept at all was by wrapping my arms around my dog and dozing off at dawn.” I’ve seen many marriages come apart with the kind of severe reactions Billy described. (Often this kind of terrible trauma is what sparks a custody fight that never ends.) Still hurting from the unexpected and long-remembered loss of their intact family during childhood, they go on to lose the central relationship of their own adulthood without any warning. This confirms their view that they’re doomed, that everything they need dies. The suffering is exactly as Billy described. They can’t stand it. To come home to an empty house and be greeted by a note tacked to the door is a dreadful humiliation. The reaction—depression or explosive rage—can last for years. People blame the partner, the real or imaginary lover, the partner’s family, the world. The trauma of the breakup can dominate their lives and lead to savage fighting over children or property. But why didn’t Billy have a clue about what was coming? For a woman to empty the household takes not only careful planning but a towering rage that builds over time until it explodes in an extraordinary act of hatred and revenge. Yet Billy was taken by surprise. He was looking miserable. I touched his arm and said, “Billy, I can’t think of anything worse that could happen. What she did was awful. Thank God you didn’t kill yourself. What led to her anger?

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  “Homosexuality was frowned on” by Moses and his followers, said Tracey Cline, district attorney.465 Moses took Jadon Higganbothan into a garage and shot him in the head. What happened next was reminiscent of 1 Mind Ministries; the boy’s lifeless body was stuffed into a suitcase and stored in the house until the odor caused Moses to have the remains buried.466 Willie Harris, the father of Lavonda Harris, one of the Black Hebrews charged with murder, told the media that Moses made communication difficult between his daughter and her family. After her arrest Harris spoke with his daughter and said she seemed “programmed.” “She was very withdrawn and very sad…She’s in denial about whether Moses had anything to do with the murders,” he said.467 In June 2012 Peter Lucas Moses Jr. entered a guilty plea to avoid the death penalty. He also agreed to testify against his followers.468 Moses was finally sentenced during June of 2013 and received two life terms in prison.469 Charges against two Black Hebrews, Sheila Moses and Sheilda Harris, were dropped, and the women were released from jail. Lavada Harris and Vania Sisk both entered guilty pleas, Sisk for second degree murder and Harris as an accessory after the fact of murder. Sisk was sentenced to two consecutive prison terms of fifteen to nineteen years each. Harris was sentenced to two consecutive terms of between six to eight years.470 In February 2013 LaRhonda Renee Smith pled guilty to second-degree murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy charges related to the deaths of Antoinetta McKoy and Jadon Higganbothan. Smith agreed to cooperate as a witness for the state but was sentenced to eleven to fifteen years in prison.471 The harm inflicted and the suffering endured in family cults have been horrendous and often seem unimaginable to the general public. For this reason they are often realized only through sensational media reports. But the fact that that this type of abuse exists is historically undeniable. Within the larger context of destructive cults, the relatively small fraction that constitutes family cults is perhaps the most unsettling. This is because the leaders doing harm are parents. The idea of fathers—and in some cases, mothers—becoming cult leaders and using their parental power to physically, psychologically, and emotionally damage their children is a deeply disturbing reality. But what we can see through the case histories recorded in this chapter are the death and destruction family cults have wrought. Parental rights have been repeatedly challenged in courts across the United States and around the world when the welfare of children is threatened and abuse allegations are investigated. The leaders of family cults have been criminally prosecuted and held legally accountable. These prosecutions have shocked communities when a family household within a residential neighborhood is exposed as a destructive cult. CHAPTER 4 DEFINING A DESTRUCTIVE CULT The definition of a cult has been debated, and it is frequently understood in a myriad of different ways from various perspectives.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  It has huge flaws, in both the institution and the people who lead it. They are only human. And I have no trouble accepting that. It’s all part of my faith. “On the very first page of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith wrote that if it contained mistakes or faults, ‘it be the mistakes of men.’ And this same thing is stated in various ways throughout the text that follows—that errors in this sacred book are possible, even likely. I have always believed that Mormonism was the one true church, but I don’t think it has ever been infallible. And I certainly don’t believe it has a monopoly on the truth.” One of the events that led to Dr. Quinn’s excommunication was the publication, in 1987, of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, a fascinating, exhaustively researched examination of Joseph Smith’s involvement in mysticism and the occult. In the preface to a revised 1998 edition of the book, Quinn astutely observed that “many academics feel embarrassed for a scholar who even briefly acknowledges belief in the metaphysical.” He argued, nevertheless, that authors had an intellectual and ethical responsibility “to state one’s own frame of reference when writing about the metaphysical”—which he proceeded to do, succinctly describing his Mormon faith. And regarding that faith, he wrote, “I make no apologies to secular humanists or religious polemicists.” I happen to find Quinn’s argument compelling. He’s convinced me that those who write about religion owe it to their readers to come clean about their own theological frame of reference. So here’s mine: I don’t know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don’t know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand extant religious sects—each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I’ve come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain—which doesn’t strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why—which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator.