Tomorrowland

Razing The Children of God

The Children of God tour bus, 1972 (from UVA's Religious Movements site)

Groomed from birth as the messiah to David Berg's Bible-based sex cult, the Children of God, Rick Rodriguez finally snapped in 2005, taking the life of his childhood captor Angela Smith as well as his own.

Not for the faint of spirit or weak of stomachs, the Chanel 4 (UK) film Cult Killer: The Rick Rodriguez Story chronicles the events that lead to Rick's tragic collapse. As seen in the film, the cult's institutionalized pedophilia and patriarchal mind-control techniques set it apart from the hundreds of other freaky sects of the Love Generation. The Children of God still exists today but vehemently denies any sort of wrongdoing. However, several ex-members posted their controversial literature online and it's pretty clear that ritualized child abuse forms a core part of their doctrine. 

I found the show intriguing on several levels: as utopian subcultural anthropology, "seekers gone wild" high tragedy and pop news exposé. I'm also reminded of the phantom "Satanic child abuse cults" of the late-80s, which turned out to be case after case of mass hysteria fueled by the moral panic of Reagan-era culture wars. (Capturing the Friedmans brilliantly captured that moment of American history.)

The Children of God, however, is the real deal. River Phoenix was easily the most famous former member. (His mother even renamed the family "Phoenix" to signify their escape from the group in 1977.) Rose McGowan, too. My parents have some very close friends who were members back in the 1970s. They're some of the sweetest people I know, eccentric but giving—they raise the kids the rest of us don't want: the emotionally and physically disabled. Needless to say, the cult messed them up pretty bad.

I got a seriously gross feeling while doing this research. It's not pretty. Yet it serves as a fascinating glimpse into the ongoing American quest for enlightenment, no matter what the cost.  

Lord, Make Me a Channel of Your Peace

"After Anne's Metal Bending Session" from Taggart's photoset.

Shannon Taggart shares incredible photographs of Spiritualist communities in England and New York. From Taggart's site:

"These images represent part of a five year project on modern Spiritualism. As a complete collection, my photographs are meant to document this religion's practices, to illustrate what it means to be a Spiritualist, to attempt to manifest the unseen and to pose the question: What if?"

Thanks, Becky!

Jesus Gave Me AIDS

Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher is a new documentary that tells the incredible true story of Lonnie Frisbee, a massively influential (and tragic) Christian "counterculture evangelist" from the Sixties.

Lonnie came to Jesus after an especially vivid acid trip and soon attained prophet status, baptizing thousands and catalyzing the international Vineyard Church movement (which later recruited folk-seeker Bob Dylan in the mid-70s). Yet Lonnie was gay, a fact that even the most open-minded of Jesus Freaks were unable to accept, and he was eventually disowned by the very community he helped found. To this day, the official Vineyard literature makes zero mention of Lonnie, who eventually died in 1993 from AIDS-related complications at 43 years old.

"They want the goodies," sighed Lonnie, referring to his abundant gifts of the Spirit, "but they don't want me."

Bearded Patriarchs and Wide Leather Belts

Californian cult The Source in happier times.

Slate columnist, author and New Age scholar Erik Davis has posted his introduction to a new book about The Source, a tantric SoCal cult from the early 1970s. 

Crazy wisdom, polyamory, veggie consciousness, hang gliding and rock 'n roll... Erik relays it all with the Zen countenance of a wide-eyed skeptic, equally fascinated and terrified at the behavior of his bearded, berobed subjects. As in all his writing, Erik convincingly historicizes religious figures and events in a wider, cosmic narrative, with a special focus on the American pursuit of the godhead. Read on!

"Here, amidst the wild freedom of early 70s California, was a deeply devoted group of young people, living communally, whose eccentric sexual, spiritual, and financial relationships were commanded by an enormously charismatic patriarchal figure who presented himself to his flock as both Father and God. The figure in question was also, as you might suspect, a bit of a rogue. Before changing his name to Father Yod, and then to YaHoWha, Jim Baker was a decorated Marine and judo master, and later a Hollywood restaurateur and womanizer who claimed to have robbed a couple banks to support his enterprises."

(If fringe utopia reportage is your bag, I highly recommend Erik's book Techgnosis, an impressive exploration of the historical interplay between mysticism and technology. Amazing stuff, with a great sense of humor and a much-welcome rational perspective on some truly far-out phenomena.)

My Dreaming Hill

Photograph of the elusive holy mountain by Flickr member Sol Dust Love.

Found a stunning Sufi parable of transformation in the introduction to Rene Daumal's 1944 surrealist reverie, Mount Analogue, a Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing:

Having left its home in the mountain, a rushing stream made its way to the edge of a sprawling desert. But as fast as its waves crashed into the sand, that fast did the stream disappear. Helpless and lost, the stream feared it would never reach the ocean.

At that moment, the sand spoke to the stream. "By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over to your destination."

The stream wasn't interested in riding the wind across the desert, as it would no longer remain water if it did so. But after listening to the murmurs of its own past, it soon changed to vapor, crossing the desert to descend as rain and become a stream again, dying in order to become reborn.

Daumal was a visionary French author whose interest in Sufism (the mystical wing of Islam) led him to create Mount Analogue, a fabulous allegory of the esoteric quest for "inner knowledge." He wrote the novel while resting in the mountains, attempting to recover from tuberculosis. He died before finishing the work, but much like the stream in the Sufi tale, it lives on in other forms, most notably/notoriously as the basis for The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky's breathtaking film of screwball enlightenment.

Daumal is right up there with Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Malarme as a master of the French dreamscape tradition. Find his work while it's still in print, and dare to evaporate.

In The Beginning Was The Logo

Rolling Stone journalist (and Tomorrowland hero) Jeff Sharlet has posted the full text of his article "Teenage Holy War" at The Revealer. It's a sharp look at BattleCry, the insanely popular Christian youth crusade, essentially Billy Graham with a Fall Out Boy makeover.

The brainchild of evangelist Ron Luce, BattleCry is sold to the Hot Topic generation as a remedy to our culture's name-brand pressures and Hollywood materialism. Yet it's pretty clear that Luce's campaign just seeks to trade a secular commodity system for a shiny Christian substitute. From the article:

Luce's BattleCry gives kids a concert, a T-shirt and a conviction, a universe as broad as the consumer culture it's meant to replace. That is, a very small world, after all, a cramped little country in which there is not enough room to be either lost or found, only "saved" as a static condition. BattleCry, a distillation of teenage anxiety and ambition, also functions as a sort of antidote to adolescence, a cure meant to fix a generation in a permanent state of "counterrevolution."

The video above helps illustrate Luce's bag of para-militaristic tricks: chanting, flag waving, thunderous amplification and ubiquitous, integrated branding and symbol play. (He brought the show to Jacksonville last September, and tickets weren't cheap.) There's definitely a marketing strategy peeking from behind the cross. Is it any surprise that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are major financial backers for this latest brand of tribal American fascism?

Gamelan Tantra Avatars, Inc.

"We in the West are the inheritors of a very different understanding of the world. Loss of connection to the Tao has meant that the psychological development of Western civilization has been markedly different from the East's. In the West there has been a steady focus on the ego and the god of the ego—the monotheistic ideal.

Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego. This God is not someone you would care to invite to a garden party. Also interesting is that the Western ideal is the only formulation of deity that has no relationship with woman at any point in the theological myth...

Only the god of Western civilization has no mother, no sister, no female consort, and no daughter."

- Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: the Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

A Fascist Movement is Underway in America

I wish I was exaggerating. Here's Chris Hedges, former NYTimes war correspondent and graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, interviewed on the CBC show "The Hour."

In his new book, American Fascists, Hedges links the ideology of the Evangelical "Dominionist" Right to the "cult of masculinity" of traditional fascism. He identifies several attributes of fascism and explains how the Dominionists exemplify this politik, such as their war against science—a fundamental component of the fascist, or totalitarian, state.

Like me (like a lot of us, probably), Hedges was raised in a home where he encountered the Bible long before he could read. As he grew older, he didn't question the doctrines so much as he began to question the authority of the Right's spiritual leaders. I hit the same roadblock in college when I discovered the writings of Dominionist, Calvinist, and would-be theocrat R.J. Rushdoony. Here was a guy who positioned himself as a cultured intellectual at the forefront of reformed theology. And yet... it just didn't add up. Rushdoony sought to resurrect Old Testament law for modern times, which included advocating primitive acts such as stoning women & children. It became very clear to me that "God" was a cloak under which the most fearful, violent and repressed individuals of the world could hide from critics and disbelievers.

Modern Christian intellectuals have done much to separate themselves from Rushdoony's name. But his legacy continues in the work of financier Howard Ahmanson, Jr, Bush advisor Marvin Olasky, and the writings of Francis Schaeffer. Rushdoony's also considered the father of the modern home school movement. Although Rushdoony isn't mentioned by name in the video, he remains synonomous with Hedges' themes: fascism; dominionism; evangelical literalism.

It's the dark side of tomorrow, the Puritan fantasy of authority, the possibility of bloodshed under the banner of heaven.

Marjoe Gortner, Pentecostal Child Preacher

Ordained at the age of four, little Marjoe toured the tent revival circuit across the US, converting, healing and raking in the cash. By his mid-20s, a disillusioned Marjoe left the ministry to expose the predatory tactics of Pentecostal faith healers. This is a clip from Marjoe, his self-produced film. Fascinating!

Gettin' Down to the Fundamentals

Again with the Harper's Magazine: they've just posted Jeff Sharlet's Through a Glass, Darkly, the December 2006 cover story on contemporary Christian fundamentalism.

A must-read for anyone raising kids in Amerika.

I really can't stress enough how great this piece is. History, heresy, and the continuing American Dream of its own origins. It's all in there. An elegant, witty criticism that surveys the roots of the fundamentalist tree, then goes and chops off the branches for kindling.

Just go read it. Go!