David B

My lurking in this forum has led me to the tentative hypothesis that there was a lot of in fighting between various factions of the Christ cult following the death of the leader.

Any parallels to this?

http://www.cesnur.org/2006/waco.htm

I don't mean this trivially.

I seriously wonder if followers of charismatic leaders don't have schisms following the death of the original cult leader a lot of the time, even if it ain't a universal truth.

Shias and Sunnis seemed to part company a generation or so after Mohammed, for instance.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others who followed Guru Dev split following hs death.

Weren't/aren't there many non mainstream followers of Jo Smith?

So, I ask - are aspects of schisms between early Christian Sects implied by the biblical (and non biblical, like the gnostic gospels) accounts of Christ and his followers?

David B (is further vaguely wondering if the size of religious cults doesn't display a power law)

Hex

Absolutely. If there isn't someone really charismatic and forceful to step up, cults, already disparate from the mainstream, tend to work to be more in-line (Perhaps to stop some of the suffering or to give back some of what people gave up under the old leadership?). If you need to recognize this in Christianity, look to how much of the NT is taken up by Paul trying to rein in the different churches which were taking on societal aspects. Similarities with pagan groups and actions.

There are still non-mainstream Morman groups that are polygamous. Shiites claim a blood tie to Muhammad. Sunnis beleive the Caliph has military but not religious power.

Why? Because some elements of the teachings were important to 'this' group, but not to another (ie. Sunnis and the equality of the umma). Some elements of society were more important to 'that group (ie. Shiites and the tribal elements of geneology.)

Small, intense cults, especially prophet cults, are rapid, radical and focused. But without leadership, all that change can be too much. The really 'smart', selfifsh leaders end in catastrophe (Jim Jones, anyone?). It takes out the believers at the same time as the prophet, so nobody else can get them!

Caveat_Imperator

I wonder how big his cult would be now if he had been the only one (or him and a handful of followers) to die.

Nazaroo

The problems with comparisons like this is that the data is skewed by critically important circumstances, like:

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(1) The Jim Jones thing was a CIA operation in which a fairly tame and insignificant protestant sect was heavily infiltrated and taken over by a covert operation in order to lure a bunch of rich Americans out of the country and kill them, so that their property and money could magically 'vanish'.

"We investigated, and couldn't find out what happened to all the money."

We saw the same thing again when the question of who profited from the 9/11 fiasco on the stock-market was 'investigated' by the FBI and shut down by the president of the United States.


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(2) The WACO incident was sheer bullying, which resulted in 4 ATF officers getting themselves killed, because essentially they were fucking stupid asses. Then the inevitable 'revenge' scenario played itself out.

"Oh, yeah, he's a crazy pedophile, so we had to gas and burn all the women and children in order to save them."

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(3) Ruby Ridge was another lesson courtesy of the American authorities. Buddy refused to 'cooperate' with police by acting like a stool-pigeon and informing on all of his friends, so they trumped up a warrant based on a bogus charge of 'religious crazy KKK guy' and surrounded his house, shot his dog, and then shot the arm off of his 12 yr old son who went to defend the dog, then shot the child in the back.

"I'm coming home daddy...I've been shot..."

Then they shot a pregnant woman and baby standing in a doorway (an obvious threat to the police in the form of a witness to murder by official sniper).

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In all three cases, the American governmental authorities were the instigators and perpretrators of the crimes, and were never brought to justice.

So yeah, there are an awful lot of similarities to the early Jesus movement and modern religious people trying to get away from being 'over-governed'.

Hex

Ummmm ...

There's no -provable- link between Jones and the CIA. Governement funding for the 'Agricultural Project' in Guyana was about sustainability. If it were a CIA plot, why not move the cult to some backwater US location where it could have been covered up better? And how could they have missed the 8 people who survived the massacre if they -were- the CIA? Wouldn't those folks have had a particularly chilling story to tell (that differed from the cyanide and Kool-Aid story)? :huh:

There was also over $12 million recovered.


If you're going to look at government conspiracy, don't look to early Christianity as an aspect of that. Governments (Rome) and theocracies (Judea) were looking to exterminate them, not control them ...

Nazaroo

For WACO try these:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/
http://www.serendipity.li/waco.html
http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/
http://www.counterpunch.org/waco2.html

For Ruby Ridge:

http://www.ruby-ridge.com/
http://www.boogieonline.com/revoluti...rce/rubyridge/
http://www.constitution.org/ruby/ruby.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/rubyridge.htm
http://www.rotten.com/library/conspi...idge-incident/


Jonestown:

http://www.cnn.com/US/9811/18/jonestown.anniv.01/
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/
http://www.rickross.com/reference/jo...onestown2.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1509317

Amaleq13

Please stick to topics specifically relevant to BC&H and keep politics in the appropriate forum.

Thanks in advance,

Doug aka Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

enoch007

this reminds me of being invited to a party by a really charismatic person, like, and, you know, it's really rockin' and everyone is, like, having a great time and bonding and stuff, and then, like, the host leaves or goes to another party or goes to bed and, like, leaves all these "guests" alone till they start to get uncomfortable and nervous and begin arguing amongst each other,like, who invited you and how did you get here and stuff