Rapture of the death cults

Scepticism will not always protect us from the destructive force of apocalypticism
The mass suicide of 38 members of a Californian cult and their leader shocked the world. What • leads some religious-minded people to such extremes? DAM IAN THOMPSON reports
BELIEF IN THE END of the World is as American as blue jeans or Coca-Cola. The Pilgrim Fathers were convinced that they were living in the Last Days; arid ever since, millenarianism that is, belief in the imminent end of the world as we know it has cast a shadow over America's religious landscape.
Sometimes this millenarianism has driven sects to hide in the deepest recesses of that landscape, awaiting the final onslaught of the forces of evil. At other times it has fuelled the growth of religious movements with millions of adherents.
Walk into any fundamentalist bookshop in Middle America, and you will be confronted by garish posters depicting the Rapture the moment when Christ lifts all born-again believers up to heaven, leaving the unconverted to rest at Armageddon. One picture shows mom and the kids sailing skywards, while dad, mowing the lawn, gazes up in horror. Note the setting: this apocalypse occurs not on a mountain top, but in a welltended suburb a place just like Rancho, Santa Fe.
It might seem offensive to bracket fundamentalist Christians with a New Age suicide cult such as Heaven's Gate. Yet they are both outgrowths of the tree of American millenarianism, which is forever sprouting and Shedding doctrines ranging from Biblical Christianity to the wildest inspirations of science fiction.
In the 1870s, a nationwide survey found America dotted with small groups living in daily expectation of the End. Some were more occult than Christian, and several unnerved their neighbours by dressing in uniforms. All would be classed as "cults" today. Equally significant however, is the way in which apocalyptic beliefs which were largely discarded by Europeans after the 17th century have worked their way into a wider culture. America's sense of itself as the world's last great civilisation is, in fact, a profoundly apocalyptic idea. It is characteristic of societies which enjoy fast and sustained economic growth, with all the upheaval that entails. For at least three centuries, America's identity has been coloured by fantasies of building an earthly millennium, but also clouded by the fear of sudden apocalypse which often follows in the wake of disorientating prosperity.
We can see this mixture of optimism and pessimism today in the Far East, with its Japanese End-time cults and armies of Korean fundamentalists. Apocalypticism is not something we associate with Catholic societies, but even a brief glimpse of Renaissance Florence confirms that civic millennialism was not invented by Protestants. Look at the strange figure of Savonarola, who only this week was proposed for canonisation; with his dire warnings of Antichrist, he reminds us that the most dazzlingly sophisticated society the world had ever known was also one in which men lived in daily fear and hope of the apocalpse.
Which brings us back to modern America. Perhaps eight million Americans are "end-timers", who believe Christ will return in their lifetimes.
Far from retreating to Hicksville, this constituency has grown enormously since the Second World War. Ronald Reagan understood this when he condemned the "evil empire". To liberals, this was rhetoric; to fundamentalists, it was an image from the Book of Daniel which identified the Soviet Union with Satan and made it their Godly duty to vote Republican.
TO SOME BORN-AGAIN Christians, all New Agers are Satanic: gentle crystal-gazers are as evil as any cult. Yet many "fundies" and New Agers feed on the same traditions and on the same mass culture. Bornagain Christians align Scripture with the stars: New Agers fantasise about the Anti-Christ. Many of the most dangerous people in America are poised somewhere between the Bible Belt and the Twilight Zone.
David Koresh, leader of Waco's Branch Davidians, believed he had been abducted by a spaceship and incorporated a sci-fi movie called The Lawnmower Man into his interpretation of the Book of Revelation.
Although it seems uniquely grisly, Heaven's Gate is just the lastest product of what sociologists call the "cult milieu", a bizarre mish-mash of conspiracy theories, science fiction esoteric traditions and fundamentalist sub-culture on which disaffected people can draw at will.
Its origins lie in the American genius for religious improvisation, and for constructing apocalyptic scenarios out of concepts invented by mass entertainment, such as UFOs. Thanks to the unpoliceable Internet, the cult milieu is humming as never before. Moreoever, its global reach ensures that its appeal is not confined to America. Arm Shiruikyo's members were mesmerised by American popular culture, and reinforced their paranoia with chunks of Revelation, a text introduced to Japan by fundamentalist missionaries.
Is Britain immune? From murderous End-time cults, possibly, since, unlike America and Japan, we have no millennarianist tradition. But cast your minds back to the "ritual satanic abuse" scare, in which innocent British families were torn apart.The harrowing myths of baby-murdering covens were invented in Hollywood from where they spread to American fanatics
convinced that they were a portent of the Last Days. They then were picked up by extreme fundamentalists in this country a growing breed who persuaded gullible social workers that "satanic abuse" really was taking place.
So let us not fool ourselves that our scepticism will always protect us from the destructive force of apocalypticism, which may yet turn out to be as exportable as jeans or Coke. Those dawn raids by social services prove that we have already been manipulated by End-timers.
DA shorter version of this article was fmt published in The Sunday Telegraph.Damian Thompson is Literary Editor of the Catholic Herald and author of The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (Sinclair-Stevenson, 06.99). Available post-free by mail order from. the Catholic Herald. To order, please call our credit card hotline on 0171 588 3 101.