by Martin Wong|
With their marriage coming up in a few days and a minister who wasn't 100
percent sure about performing the ceremony, friends asked me to be
Plan B. So I applied to be ordained online--and it only took four hours
to receive confirmation! The real minister came through after all, but
I could have done it. Really and legally. According to the email documentation,
I can perform wedding vows, funeral rites, and baptism--just about anything
except circumcision. |
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It does seem sketchy that I could become officially ordained despite having almost no religious training or background. Not counting weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs, I can count the times I've been to church on one hand. For all the online church knew, I could have been in jail or even the bass player for Slayer. When I signed up to be a man of the cloth, I didn't dwell too much on that, though. I knew my cause was righteous. THE TRUTH But isn't that how most religious wackos feel, at least in the beginning? Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Jim Jones all believed that they were doing the right thing. In that way, they weren't so different from Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, or even Jesus. It is faith that generates charisma and power for the cult leader. It's what gets people to follow no matter how ludicrous the requests or claims may be. Marry a complete stranger. Drink the Kool-Aid. Shave your head but wear a ponytail. Slip on your Nikes and hitch a ride on a comet. Enjoy the afterlife. The so-called experts usually associate cults with attributes such as having an absolute leader, using mind control, encouraging paranoia, using drugs, utilizing indoctrination, and fearing the apocalypse. But the anti-cult admonition generally comes from hardcore members of (accepted) religions that share many of the same beliefs. The line between what's religion and what's cult depends on which side of the pointing finger you are on. With a tradition that includes the Manson Family, the SLA, Scientology, and Heaven's Gate, California has earned a reputation for accommodating cults, but the tradition of cults goes well beyond the West Coast. The 914 members of the People's Temple who committed suicide at the behest of Jim Jones in Guyana, the 86 Branch Davidians who burned to death in Waco, the Solar Temple suicides in Switzerland and France, and the 235 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments who offed themselves in Uganda deserve note as well. And then there's an entire genre of Asian cults in America. The Moonies and the Krishnas, for example, have been around for years, but their alleged brainwashing, mass marriages, and dancing with tambourines seem quaint in comparison to the new generation of cults in Asia.  |