The only theocracies in the twentieth century are those
fundamentalist Islamic nations, especially Iran and Afghanistan, where the ayatollahs hold power, where women are totally concealed except for their eyes, and where life seems to have been made deadly boring all round. Perhaps not
for those who get their kicks from prayer. No wonder their young men look forward to the excitement of a bit of war or a bit of terrorism, especially when their death in such holy enterprises is instantly rewarded by the
fabulous and sexy delights of Paradise. Alas, in Islamic Paradise, female souls, so I understand, are promised no more fun than they usually enjoy in those down-to-earth, down-market, countries.
But among countries with
strong Christian traditions the United States appears to be by far the most religious, and, oddly enough, also one of the most violent. I have to try to accept the statistics about religious belief in that country.
These
say that 48% of US citizens believe that the Book of Genesis is literally true, that God made the world (Have they heard about the universe? Do they include that?) in six days and had a holiday on the seventh. The Big Bang, for
them, is just baloney.
Also that 70% of Americans think that Creation "Science" should be taught in the schools.
We have all heard about the Amish, the Hutterites, the Scientologists, the Jim Jonesians, and the
Latter-Day Saints, but I had not realised that the Santerians had colonised the US.
Santerians flourish along the "African" coast of Brazil, a geographical area very suitable to the religion, which is a
combination of Catholicism and Yoruba traditions. The easterly city of San Salvador has a cathedral-size church in which both Catholicism and Santeria are celebrated, and an adjoining chapel full of various parts of the human body,
all in plastic or plaster of Paris, which have been preserved or cured by these faiths. Heads, legs, arms, abdomens, the pelvis were all understandable but I was unable to get a satisfactory explanation in English of the many
plastic naked ladies among the souvenirs hanging from the rafters, ladies about twelve to eighteen inches high, also on sale in the next-door shop.
Santerian ceremonies sometimes include animal sacrifice, as does Voodoo in Haiti,
but in Florida Santerians encountered a State law prohibiting this very ancient ceremony. So the Santerians went to the US Supreme Court which kindly declared the Florida law to be unconstitutional. Animal sacrifice could be
reinstated. Not yet, I believe, has the Supreme Court re-introduced burning at the stake, that popular and logical old Catholic custom, once acceptable in Protestant New England for witches.
Not many Bajans are
knowledgable about the Hutterites. They are an ancient, four- century-old, and Protestant Christian sect of farmers, having no private ownership and a communal attitude of marvellous selflessness. Giving to others must
have nothing to do with family relationships nor the prospect of a similar benefit. They do not approve of modern technology, so it is remarkable that they survive at all, as remarkable as is the Amish survival.
Hutterites do
not favour large communities, and they are said to have the highest birth-rate of any current human community, so rather often their numbers increase and they must solve that problem. The community then multiplies by binary fission
in a splendidly biological way. They select and fully prepare the new community site. When all is ready, the existing, too-large community divides itself into two groups with similar numbers, genders, ages, skills and
personal compatibilities. They pack their toothbrushes and nighties and sort out the ploughs and harrows, the cattle and horses. Then, and only then, which group stays and which goes is decided by a lottery. Mitosis not meiosis?
Not unnaturally there are problems, even among the Hutterites. Young people want to see and even to participate in the world outside. Pastor Ehrenpreis, an early leader of the sect, commented that "Again and again we see
that man with his present nature finds it very hard to practice true community." So there are daily meetings to reinforce community, as in monasteries, nunneries and Islam, and as there were for morning prayers after
breakfast, in middle and upper-class English houses in the nineteenth century.
Any doubter or backslider is reproved and, if their rebellion persists, is cut off from the community.
You will remember some of the
communities which established themselves in the US, especially in the nuttier West, most of them around a charismatic male leader who had widespread sexual privilege in the group.
There was Charles Manson, and his Hollywood
troupe of pretty-girl murderers of pretty girls, who chopped up and killed the minor (and pregnant) film star, Sharon Tate. The sinister Manson will soon be getting out of jail, I imagine.
There was the startlingly successful
Jim Jones, who collected a tribe of 900 nitwits, extracted their millions of money from them, and exported them all to Guyana and death from poisoned Kool-Aid in their jungle village of modern huts. What a marvellous crazy Leader!
Fancy practicing 900 deaths many times, and then being able to say: This time, my friends it's for real. Power, enormous power, even though you too are soon to be dead. Do you have such ambitions? I don't. Can you
understand such ambitions? I think I can. Power is a marvellous attractant. Look how politicians love it.
And then there's the Symbionese Liberation Army which captured Patti Hearst for ransom and turned her into a willing
participant, a millionaire bank robber.
I enjoyed the story of the Heaven's Gate computer kids, who dressed themselves in purple robes and new tennis shoes before embarking on their death flight to the space vehicle lurking
behind Hale-Bopp.
The Branch Dravidians of Waco, Texas who got at cross purposes with the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, and ended the siege by incinerating themselves, must have had a similar leader and similar
hostility to the real outside world, the same world which you and I can manage rather to enjoy.
What drives people into these isolated, insulated, indoctrinated groups? Many US citizens have no strong geographical loyalties, no
city or town or valley to which they firmly belong. They are here today and gone to a different job tomorrow. Their family may be just as widely dispersed. These groups provide an instant family and centre for their boring, lonely
and unimportant lives.
Many people long for somebody to love and worship. God is too distant and theoretical. They want someone more domestic, and will readily provide a leader with miraculous powers and amazing insight, giving
them loyalty unto death and beyond. Look at the Elvis Presley followers still worshipping that pretty, epicene singer long after his death.
Bajans can retain a loyalty to this small island even after leaving it. That loyalty and
our own proliferation of hundreds of sects and groups and clubs seem to protect us from the wilder extremes of belief. Long may it continue.
Though I hear that the Branch Dravidians are already colonising our island. Bad
luck to them.
