Into the secular void
Smith, John E.
CULTS & CHARISMATIC...
...Secondly, the charismatic figure must not exempt How did I ever, blind with self, discover himself from the ethic or regimen imposed on the followers, the small strict pathway to this shining place, nor should he ever come to believe that he actually possesses I who betrayed the truth over and over all the power and virtue which his followers bestow upon him and let a tangle of dark woods surround me...
...That concern seeks for an un- ers of a charismatic figure can determine whether he is genuine derlying purpose in life, a sustaining power, a cause, a goal or not...
...Concern for authenticity arises within the religious What did I hold for ease against my breast...
...Whoever fails to grasp this point will become Guyana cannot be undone, but it can be lessened in force if we enmeshed in at least two errors...
...Secondly, if he considers the sufficiency of information, computers and technology must matter at all, he will invariably suppose that there must be ultimately find itself incapable of understanding the religious some "scientific" test or standard whereby would-be followconcern in human experience...
...16 March 1979: 139' There is, however, a mitigating circumstance which must be taken into account in any appraisal of cults in America...
...This is an error...
...Wanderer T HERE is no litmus-paper test to be applied to the promises (From the 'Scivias' of St...
...claim for himself, but must point beyond himself to the reality I let the little one grow thin and pale in whose "Name" he comes...
...The People's Temple quite obviously belongs in this tradition, a fact which helps to explain the search for a special place, a new Eden, where, so to speak, man can start over again in an atmosphere of love and devotion, uncorrupted by the sins of capitalistic society and beyond the threat of the secular void...
...Our extensive knowledge of has been a major factor in bringing about a secular void, void the history of the world religions makes clear that the religious because the idols of individualistic narcissism, moral insenconcern forms a permanent part of the structure of human life...
...The Kingdom is certainly for this world as the transforming power The task, therefore, of "testing the spirits," of finding some of the leaven in the lump, but it is not of this world in the sense marks of authenticity, is inescapable...
...the more reason is constricted, the more human experience is forced outside the domain of rational criticism and given over to the wayward power of Jessica Powers caprice and rhetoric...
...Religious insight and some centuries of experience provide Two children vied for life in me: I fed us with at least three touchstones for appraising religious the greedy one whose talent was to beg claims...
...E. SMITH philosophy...
...Jones...
...The flimsy comfort of a wanderer communities themselves...
...The problem is difficult of constituting a political or socio-economic order...
...Unhappily, the entire outlook represents a misreading of the Christian story...
...This ideal has received much support from both ends of the theological spectrum...
...peril that it will fall prey to the demonic would-be messiah...
...Jones passed any of these tests...
...This survival of a false philosophy of history according to which the void is dangerous because in times of despair and frustration human race is supposed to pass necessarily through three those sensitive enough to recognize the void for what it is are successive stages-the religious, the metaphysical and the most vulnerable in, the face of the magnetic leader who prompositive or scientific...
...Where did I walk...
...Jonathan Edwards, for example, wrote A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections in which he offered pathway of error, was a child of earth twelve criteria for distinguishing genuine from counterfeit (and down the years my speech betrayed my birth...
...CULTS & CHARISMATIC FIGURES JOHN...
...ence to the Father, and answered his contemporaries by saying, "Why callest thou me good...
...in their fanatic devotion...
...But neither religion nor philosophy can I People's Temple in Guyana leads us to reflect soberly be reduced to "primitive" attempts at controlling human deson some perennial human concerns-the orientation of tiny...
...it commits the additional error of supposing that the concerns they represent have been superseded and will THE BIZARRE, but all too tragic, dissolution of the eventually disappear...
...critic whose interest in religion is extrinsic...
...power...
...leader...
...Those who so constrict rea- creating a secular void so readily filled by the demonic...
...I refer to the powerful strain of Millennialism rooted in American Puritanism, and enhanced by what has been called "muscular" Christianity or the determined effort to plant the "Kingdom of God" on earth...
...son believe they are striking a blow for rationality and against superstition...
...Jesus emptied his will in obediand put a blame on life that she was frail...
...to resolve, and it has not been made easier by the shrinking of The tragedy of Guyana should serve as a mirror in which we the sphere of rationality to the point where the expressions of can discern the shape of our own failure in turning away from our most intimate human concerns are regarded as merely the religious resources that have sustained us and thus thereby "emotional" if not meaningless...
...Only one is good, even How did I ever come then to the light...
...The demonic fills the void...
...In an increas- tion, and it makes no sense to think of them as superseding ingly secularized society, there has been a growing tendency to each other in the name of "progress...
...drawing men out of their self-centered enclosures and eliciting The belief that the religious concern has been superseded from them a supreme devotion...
...Fundamentalists of various stripes have espoused it, and their antagonists, or "modernists," under the aegis of the "Social Gospel," likewise believed in taking religion down from the clouds and building the Kingdom on earth...
...piety...
...Thirdly, he must not solicit money or Simple the answer lies: down cliffs of pain, property that are not put to visible work for human welfare, but through swamp and desert, thicket and terrain, remain instead at the personal and largely secret disposal of the oh, someone came and found me...
...sitivity and the twin gospels of greed and success are totally This truth, however, has been obscured for many people by the inadequate foundations for any lasting human fulfillment...
...Commonweal: 140...
...The history of both Judaism and Christianity is filled with the concern to distin- Where did I dwell...
...First, the charismatic figure must not make an absolute (no one had warned me of the cowbird's egg...
...Accordingly, religion the sort of concern to which he speaks...
...It is doubtful that the Rev...
...Far from it, he comes to be more "rational" than religion, both in the end are seen as with an inspiration and a promise to deliver his followers from om quite ineffectual in comparison with the third and final stage the emptiness of a life governed by the struggle for wealth and which is applied science...
...The three exist contemavoid these issues and to bury them under more immediate poraneously at different levels of development in every historconcerns that are ultimately less important...
...Hildegarde) of the would-be messiah, but from this it does not follow that there are no critical standards at all...
...He does not come and philosophy are made to appear as mere instruments for asking people to believe in some information of the sort to be achieving the desired goal and, while philosophy is supposed verified with the aid of an encyclopedia...
...Such a view utterly fails to comprehend either religion or If the religious concern is not fulfilled in a way that involves love, responsibility, honesty and courage, there is the constant JOHN E. sMFFH is Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale...
...concerning the role, the appeal and the activities of such To begin with, a society with a robust but simple faith in the figures as the Rev...
...The truth is that the different aims and motives of science, our lives, the loyalties to which we are committed, and the religion and philosophy are rooted firmly in the human situavalues that determine our decisions and actions...
...it does not originate with the secular for whom there is no rest...
...I walked on the primitive from the hypocrite...
...I dwelt in the shadow of death, guish the true prophet from the false, the sincere man of faith as did a mystic anciently aver...
...God...
...On this view, man has always been ises a deliverance he cannot fulfill...
...The tragedy in ical period...
...First, he will misunderstand can come to a realistic understanding of some factors responsi- the peculiar nature of religious or quasi-religious belief and ble for the tragedy, and see their bearing on our present will thus be prevented from making any relevant judgment situation...
...motivated by one aim-to secure his life in a precarious world But, again, there can be no understanding of the power and by devices and techniques designed to overcome the obstacles appeal of the charismatic leader if there is no appreciation of presented by nature and human history...
Vol. 106 • March 1979 • No. 5
