‘It was not a little unnerving, to see what a charismatic leader with a hodge-podge of not terribly original ideas cribbed from the world’s religions could achieve.’
Sounds a bit like Blair.
DZ
David Zersen
3 years ago
Interesting. Some years ago I taught history at a seminary in Novosibirsk and asked the students to write papers on indigenous religious movements of which they were aware. I was astonished at what surivived and thrived in remote forests and villages. The experience made me as an urban American find equally fascinating the movements that have surfaced in the U.S. led by people like Benjamin Purnell, Warren Jeffs or Ammon Bundy. Some psychological reflection on what creates extremists would be interesting. Yet judgement might also be disouraged since minority extremists have often discovered truths even majorities have found helpful.
SG
Starry Gordon
3 years ago
Sounds like the Dukhobors, although the Dukhobors seem to have backed off the Great Leader thing after awhile. I don’t know what happened to the Dukhobors in Russia, but in Canada, to where some of them moved, they were evenutally crushed by the state who found a bunch of rural religious anarcho-communist pacifist vegetarians absolutely intolerable.
I hung out in very High North Mennonites area a tiny bit but never with the the Dukhobors, although remembered the old stories of them marching in protest nude, and the arson, a tough bunch, and a little time around the Hutterites. But my main memories of odd religious groups was the times I lived on the road in the late 1970s when I spent numerous years living rough on foot, on the road, in poverty.
Several groups were cool, I got to know the Moonies a bit, and some Krishnas, even some time around Rosicrucians, although they can be a bit scary, and some others. The road is where you meet up with the fringes. But the ones I liked best, and they lived solitary on the road, walking alone in brown robes, dressed like Christ and with a vow of poverty, and I cannot remember their name, something like brothers of Christ, were admirable in their niceness and misery. We would walk up and down Florida highways and hear some of their life as wandering lost souls. It takes a lot to become a wandering hermit in Biblical dress and a vow of poverty and celibacy, and I admired them for that, I lived somewhat similar, and I knew how rough that was.
But I will tell one of these poor guys story, told to me at an Interstate rest stop in Florida, we had met several times that year as I hitched up and down the country, and he disappeared, so meeting again I asked what he had been up to. He had done a bit in jail and then in penance, just getting the OK to go back on the road from his order. The lack of any contact with women had almost broken him, there is no thing as soul destroyingly hard as the loneliness of the road during hard times, and he had gotten a rep for being awkwardly friendly with women at the interstate rest area, and finally pestering one young woman and scaring her, and got arrested (he did no actual harm, and would not, but..) Then he went back to their center for further instruction and help, and then given the Ok to return to the endless wandering of his kind. So I asked him if he was OK being back to the solitary life, and he assured me he was doing well; he had been given special dispensation allowing him to masturbate, and was getting by.
And I have to say I was very sad with the writers almost jeering and snide telling of this story. His Jesus-Off, and what felt like a complete lack of empathy with the followers and situation, a kind of ‘Oh, Well’ to end the tale of off to the gulag for this man. The road is full of a human equivalent of birds with broken wings just getting by as well as they can, and if you do not feel their humanity in their lost ways, you have little to learn from the road as you just do not get people.
GH
G Harris
3 years ago
As we’re fond of saying in our family when confronted with similar ‘messianic’ situations like these,
‘It isn’t Jesus, it’s just a fella.’
….the fantastic line from the 60s ‘children’s’ film, Whistle Down The Wind.
Maybe I just come from a darker more cynical family background than most, Fraser.
BS
Bob Sleigh
3 years ago
Yes, but did he turn vodka into water or anything like that? That’s what I want to know.
MW
Michael Whittock
3 years ago
Jesus said “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming ‘ I am the Christ’, and will deceive many”. Jesus of Nazareth is the one and only Christ ( Greek for Messiah). He proved it by rising from the dead and being seen by over 500 people before returning to Heaven on the first Ascension Day. One day He will return in glory and complete the work He began 2,000 years ago and the world will become as God intended to be. Today 2.3 billion people (31.2% of the world’s population) believe that He is not only the Messiah but also the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
Christian heresy is common in the past with Islam being the most successful. Christian heresy is much easier today as most people have given up religion but have kept all the trapping except, just like Islam the capacity of forgiveness, which is the entire point of Christianity.
Report this comment
This site is registered on wpml.org as a development site. Switch to a production site key to remove this banner.
‘It was not a little unnerving, to see what a charismatic leader with a hodge-podge of not terribly original ideas cribbed from the world’s religions could achieve.’
Sounds a bit like Blair.
Interesting. Some years ago I taught history at a seminary in Novosibirsk and asked the students to write papers on indigenous religious movements of which they were aware. I was astonished at what surivived and thrived in remote forests and villages. The experience made me as an urban American find equally fascinating the movements that have surfaced in the U.S. led by people like Benjamin Purnell, Warren Jeffs or Ammon Bundy. Some psychological reflection on what creates extremists would be interesting. Yet judgement might also be disouraged since minority extremists have often discovered truths even majorities have found helpful.
Sounds like the Dukhobors, although the Dukhobors seem to have backed off the Great Leader thing after awhile. I don’t know what happened to the Dukhobors in Russia, but in Canada, to where some of them moved, they were evenutally crushed by the state who found a bunch of rural religious anarcho-communist pacifist vegetarians absolutely intolerable.
I hung out in very High North Mennonites area a tiny bit but never with the the Dukhobors, although remembered the old stories of them marching in protest nude, and the arson, a tough bunch, and a little time around the Hutterites. But my main memories of odd religious groups was the times I lived on the road in the late 1970s when I spent numerous years living rough on foot, on the road, in poverty.
Several groups were cool, I got to know the Moonies a bit, and some Krishnas, even some time around Rosicrucians, although they can be a bit scary, and some others. The road is where you meet up with the fringes. But the ones I liked best, and they lived solitary on the road, walking alone in brown robes, dressed like Christ and with a vow of poverty, and I cannot remember their name, something like brothers of Christ, were admirable in their niceness and misery. We would walk up and down Florida highways and hear some of their life as wandering lost souls. It takes a lot to become a wandering hermit in Biblical dress and a vow of poverty and celibacy, and I admired them for that, I lived somewhat similar, and I knew how rough that was.
But I will tell one of these poor guys story, told to me at an Interstate rest stop in Florida, we had met several times that year as I hitched up and down the country, and he disappeared, so meeting again I asked what he had been up to. He had done a bit in jail and then in penance, just getting the OK to go back on the road from his order. The lack of any contact with women had almost broken him, there is no thing as soul destroyingly hard as the loneliness of the road during hard times, and he had gotten a rep for being awkwardly friendly with women at the interstate rest area, and finally pestering one young woman and scaring her, and got arrested (he did no actual harm, and would not, but..) Then he went back to their center for further instruction and help, and then given the Ok to return to the endless wandering of his kind. So I asked him if he was OK being back to the solitary life, and he assured me he was doing well; he had been given special dispensation allowing him to masturbate, and was getting by.
And I have to say I was very sad with the writers almost jeering and snide telling of this story. His Jesus-Off, and what felt like a complete lack of empathy with the followers and situation, a kind of ‘Oh, Well’ to end the tale of off to the gulag for this man. The road is full of a human equivalent of birds with broken wings just getting by as well as they can, and if you do not feel their humanity in their lost ways, you have little to learn from the road as you just do not get people.
As we’re fond of saying in our family when confronted with similar ‘messianic’ situations like these,
‘It isn’t Jesus, it’s just a fella.’
….the fantastic line from the 60s ‘children’s’ film, Whistle Down The Wind.
Yes, a great film. But not really a children’s film, I would say.
Maybe I just come from a darker more cynical family background than most, Fraser.
Yes, but did he turn vodka into water or anything like that? That’s what I want to know.
Jesus said “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming ‘ I am the Christ’, and will deceive many”.
Jesus of Nazareth is the one and only Christ ( Greek for Messiah). He proved it by rising from the dead and being seen by over 500 people before returning to Heaven on the first Ascension Day. One day He will return in glory and complete the work He began 2,000 years ago and the world will become as God intended to be. Today 2.3 billion people (31.2% of the world’s population) believe that He is not only the Messiah but also the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
Well, he’d better come back quickly, there’s lots to be done.
He’s already here, and called Tony Blair.
Christian heresy is common in the past with Islam being the most successful. Christian heresy is much easier today as most people have given up religion but have kept all the trapping except, just like Islam the capacity of forgiveness, which is the entire point of Christianity.