Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [189]
Besides deprivation of some sort, there must be a willingness to interpret one’s lot in explicit religious terms. This is usually supplied by millenarianism or fundamentalism and, when fundamentalism has done its educating job thoroughly, it may itself foster the birth of a millenarian cult or an extremist cult. There must also be an ideology of apocalypticism, which can be supplied by the traditional religion or invented by a new prophet’s innovative revelations or both. But there must be a leader whose life and behavior exemplifies the piety of the group (like Osama bin Laden). There is often a practical leader who organizes the movement.
Although the sociological picture of ancient apocalypticism is incomplete, apocalyptic movements in the modern period, particularly those in Melanesian and Native American religions (with all the dangers inherent in analogies between ancient and modern movements), evidence clear sociological commonalities. The modern data also have limitations, but because they are complete by comparison to data in the ancient period, they serve as a practical guide.
Melanesian and Native American societies during the last century, though far removed from the world of Maccabean Judaism in history, geography, and material culture, exhibited some of the same social forces. They, too, had to deal with the problems of acculturation and disorganization brought on by European domination, similar to ancient Jewish society’s need to deal with the problem of Greek culture-whether it be defined as Egyptian Greek, Syrian Greek, or later Roman domination-as well as their own oppressive leadership in the Hasmonean dynasty. The colonial relationship between the subject group producing the religious movement and the imperial power seems significant in every case.
In Messianic movements, the leader’s individual skills and talents, the way he or she communicates the new messianic beliefs, values, and ideals, have a key effect on the movement. The leader comes to be revered by the community of believers, not primarily as a strong political leader but as a person who exemplifies the moral values of the group.40 This is an important perception for understanding the rise of the Qumran sect, whose organizer and possible founder was the Teacher of Righteousness. The perception is crucial for the rise of Christianity as well.
What Modern Apocalypticism Can Tell Us about Martyrdom, Resurrection, and Deprivation in Daniel
IN RECENT years we have seen several other American examples of the violent history of millenarian sects, as well as a surprising relationship with martyrdom and notions of life after death. In the case of Jonestown in Guyana in 1979, the movement ended in a mass suicide, in which hundreds of people apparently willingly drank cyanide-laced punch, though they were not in any danger. Those who knew what was happening thought they were escaping persecution by commiting suicide. It is interesting to note that there were constant rehearsals of this mass suicide, in which the initial horror of the suicide was dissipated by habituation. It is a dramatic and terrible illustration of the process of building mythological patterns for martyrdom.
In the somewhat similar case of the Branch Davidians in 1993, the movement ended in a suicidal conflagration in Waco Texas, which was partly due to the sect’s own hostility to authority, partly due to the justifiable suspicions of their neighbors, partly due to the rash and inept initial attempt by law-enforcement officials to disarm them. After the initial battle lines were drawn, with heavily armed sectarians facing off against heavily armed authorities, the whole situation resembled nothing so much as a ticking bomb, scheduled to go off at some unknown time, despite the best efforts of many people who sought to defuse it.
There is also the equally sad example of the members of “Heaven’s Gate,” who inexplicably all committed suicide to join the spaceship hiding behind Comet