Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. - book reviews

Reason, March, 1996 by Jacob Sullum

In 1979, the year after more than 900 followers of Jim Jones committed suicide in the Guyanese jungle, I attended a gathering sponsored by the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) where a speaker warned us about the dangers posed by "cults." He said cult members reach out to young people, pretend to be their friends, and invite them on retreats where food is meager, group activities such as prayer and singing are emphasized, and new recruits are never left alone, lest they start thinking for themselves. To me and several other wise guys in the group, this sounded a lot like an NCSY convention. It was an observation we could laugh at, because clearly there was a big difference between a youth group run by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and loony cults like the Moonies and the Hare Krishnas. Superficial similarities aside, one was legitimate and respectable while the others were weird and vaguely sinister.

That sort of confidence, reinforced by decades of propaganda against unconventional religious groups, helped set the stage for the deaths of 80 men, women, and children at the Mt. Carmel Center near Waco, Texas, in 1993. As Texas journalist Dick J. Reavis writes in his thorough and lively account, The Ashes of Waco, "The line between churches, which Americans believe should be protected from government interference, and cults, which most Americans hold in disdain, has nothing to do with the Constitution - whose First Amendment in theory shields both - and everything to do with the prejudices of a nation that has grown fearful of the diversity that made it nearly unique."

Several contributors to Armageddon in Waco, an informative but sometimes dry and repetitive collection of essays edited by Lamar University sociologist Stuart A. Wright, make similar points. "The failure of normally open-minded people to protect religious pluralism has allowed contemporary witch-hunters to declare open season on marginal religions or 'cults,'" writes James R. Lewis, editor of Syzygy: Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture. "The Branch Davidians' chances for a fair hearing were severely damaged as soon as the label 'cult' was applied."

Two professors of religious studies, James D. Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Eugene V. Gallagher of Connecticut College, argue eloquently and persuasively in Why Waco? that the central failure of federal negotiators after the aborted February 28 raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was their unwillingness - or inability - to take the beliefs of the Branch Davidians seriously. The cult stereotype told them that David Koresh was a cynical con man who had tricked or brainwashed his followers for his own personal gain. Furthermore, the negotiators did not have the background to understand Koresh's extended biblical exegesis ("One of the FBI negotiators admitted," write Tabor and Gallagher, "that some of them initially thought the Seven Seals of the book of Revelation, about which Koresh talked incessantly, were animals"), and they failed to consult with anyone who did. So they soon lost patience with Koresh's "Bible babble," which they considered a meaningless distraction.

From the perspective of the Branch Davidians, however, the religious significance of the standoff with the federal government was all important. "The only effective way to communicate with Koresh," write Tabor and Gallagher, "was within the biblically based apocalyptic 'world' he inhabited, taking advantage of the inherent flexibility that the situation at Mt. Carmel presented." If the Branch Davidians perceived the standoff with the FBI as fulfilling the martyrdom foreseen by biblical prophecy, they would prefer to die rather than surrender. But if they could be convinced that the final confrontation had not yet arrived, a peaceful resolution was still possible.

Tabor and another Bible scholar, Philip Arnold, apparently succeeded in convincing Koresh, by way of a discussion on the radio, that the Seven Seals passage in the Book of Revelation, central to the Branch Davidian faith, did not require him and his followers to die in the spring of 1993. Tabor and Arnold argued that the relevant prophecy left open the possibility of an interlude during which Koresh would explain his interpretation of the Seven Seals to the world. On April 14, Koresh released a letter to his attorney, Dick DeGuerin, in which he declared that God had given him permission to surrender once he had completed a written explanation of the Seven Seals. "As soon as I see that people like Jim Tabor and Phil Arnold have a copy I will come out and then you can do your thing with this beast," he wrote, offering "to stand before man to answer any and all questions regarding my actions."

Upon being informed of the letter, Jeff Jamar, the FBI special agent in charge at the scene, reassured DeGuerin that "we've got all the time it takes," even though he knew that meetings were being held in Washington that day to plan the tank-and-tear-gas assault that the FBI would mount four days later. After Mt. Carmel went up in flames, Jamar said he viewed the letter as a delaying tactic, a claim he reiterated at congressional hearings last summer. Yet Koresh was in fact hard at work on his exegesis, and he completed the first section of it just before the final attack. A survivor brought it out with her on a computer disk, and the text appears in an appendix to Tabor and Gallagher's book. They estimate that he would have completed the document in another week or so.