I've been reading the news summaries from the 06/23/05 Cultic Studies Review (available online but behind subscription). Here are a few intriguing items from this one:
First, in the "traditional family" category:
The attorneys general of Utah and Arizona announced at a recent public forum that they will not prosecute people for plural marriages, but that they would press charges against people involved in underage marriages, sexual abuse, and welfare and tax fraud. (Chicago Tribune, Internet, 3/11/05)
I wonder what Rick Santorum has to say about this? No, on second thought, I don't want to know. For those who keep up with apocalyptic groups gone bad - and what a fun hobby it is! - there's this:
As former Church Universal and Triumphant leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet continues to decline, suffering from Alzheimer's, "There are at least eight people currently claiming the mantle of Messenger," according to the CUT board of directors, which rejects the claims while urging members to continue to support Prophet. Meanwhile, CUT recently broke ground for a new office building in Corwin Springs, MT, but without the controversy and notoriety that attended the church's activities in the 1980s and 1990s.
A professor who published a book on CUT says the church, which has lost a great many members after a predicted apocalypse did not arrive, says CUT is trying to refocus and move away from origins "steeped in conspiracy and feelings of besiegement." (Scott McMillon [sic], Bozeman Chronicle, Internet, 3/13/05)
That "steeped in conspiracy and feelings of beseigement" doesn't just apply to cults. It sounds like a description of the people who make up the main market for OxyContin radio.
For the last excerpt from the CSR news summaries, there's this on the rightwing Catholic order Opus Dei, which is now the most influential organization in the Church under the current Pope Benedict XVI (aka Ratzinger I):
Former long-time member Bernard Bergonzi says that Opus Dei is an extremely controlling organization. "Why such fear of personal freedom in making ordinary, commonsense decisions," he asks? "Why treat adult members like children? Why the routinization of spiritual direction by way of uniform commands, endlessly repeated? Why maintain the Index of Forbidden Books after the Holy See itself had discarded it? Why such fear of modern critical biblical studies and new understandings of hagiography and ecclesiastical history? Why the stubborn resistance to liturgical change, from the use of the vernacular to Communion in the hand, permanent deacons, and altar girls? Why the obsession with prescribing human behavior? Saints can't be manufactured like plastic dolls." (Silvio Alfaro, Commonweal, Internet, 2/25/05)
Then there's this one, which is pretty scary: The Young and the Sexless by Jeff Sharlet Rolling Stone 06/23/05.
Matt Dunbar is a handsome young man, though his face is still ruddy with acne. He has rounded cheeks, a soul patch beneath his lips and soft eyes that hold yours like he trusts you. He's not a prude. He will say the word "[Cheney]," but he will never, not even in the wedding bed he hopes God has prepared for his future, embody it as a verb. He will make Christian love. What most of us call sex he calls communion, and he believes it can happen only within marriage.
Chastity is a new organizing principle of the Christian right, built on the notion that virgins are among God's last loyal defenders, knights and ladies of a forgotten kingdom. Sex outside of marriage is, in the words of D. James Kennedy, pastor of the influential Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida, "an uprising against God." But if sex is the perfect enemy of the blessed lifestyle, it is also the Holy Grail for those who wait: "A symphony of the soul for married couples," according to John Hagee, author of What Every Man Wants in a Woman.
This elevation of virginity - especially for men - as a way of understanding yourself and your place in the world is new. It's also very old. ... Now, though, the Protestants of the Christian right are reclaiming that two-tiered system, only they're projecting it onto individual lives, making every young man and woman part of an elite virgin corps.
"The world hasn't yet seen what God can do with an army of young men free of sexual fevers," write the authors of Every Young Man's Battle, one volume in a hugely popular series of "purity" manuals. "You can remain pure so that you might qualify for such an army."
I don't know if it's the good news or the bad news that the Christian Right wants to organize an "army" of horny, virginal twentysomethings to do whatever. A bunch of young exceptionally sexually repressed guys running around obsessing about sex while trying to proselytize for the Christian Right don't sound like the most fun bunch to hang out with. On the other hand, they may be so distracted by kinky fantasies and terrified that they may get lust in their hearts that they wouldn't be able to do too much harm. Except maybe to themselves.
And something tells me that somewhere not far underneath ideas like "making Christian love" sex as "communion" lie some seriously lustful temptations. Sex as "communion": for me that conjures up a scene from the movie To the Devil, A Daughter (the last of the Hammer films) in which Nastassja Kinski is lying nekkid on an altar and a little... oh, never mind, we'll go into that some other time.
Gosh, what could "communion" sex be? It must have something to do with pouring wine on each other, or grape juice if you're a teetotaler, and then, who knows what? Or is it something that involves a lot of kneeling and foot-washing?
And how about the guy who calls sex before marriage an "uprising against God"? Yes, he said "uprising." And I can't wait for the movie version of Every Young Man's Battle. Oh, these people are strange.
If I ever get kidnapped by some religious cult, please please please let it be at least a pro-sex one, not a bunch of abstinence zealots!
This talk about the "uprising against God" and Every Young Man's Battle reminds me of a book that was popular in America during the first half of the 19th century. It was a handbook for young men about the evils of masturbation (it makes you go blind and stuff), and it was titled The Boy's Manual. It's a safe bet that the author didn't intend to give it a satirical title. Or maybe his publisher just had a sense of humor.
That little book and the goofy ideas that went along with it inspired Herman Melville to write a short story called, "The Lightning-Rod Man." In it, a lightning-rod salesman appears at the narrator's door during a storm and proceeds to display a sample of his rod and to rave about all the things that could bring deadly danger if you touch them and gives a lot of insane advice about what people should do. Finally, the narrator has had enough and throws him out, saying, "In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away!"
"Impious wretch!" foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the rainbow beamed, "I will publish your infidel notions."
"Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm."
The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes as the storm rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me; his tri-forked thing at my heart.
I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.
But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbors, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.
Apparently his descendants are with us still.
And have you heard about "second chance" viriginity? That's when you slip up and do the Big Nasty but then you're really, really sorry about it and truly repent and pledge not to do it any more. Then you get to be a virgin again. If Herman Melville or Mark Twain had lived to hear about such an exotic concept, they would probably have had some entertaining things to say about that.
