Radical Religion and Violence

Theory and Case Studies

Jeffrey Kaplan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780415814140
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317369875
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Jeffrey Kaplan has been one of the most influential scholars of new religious movements, extremism and terrorism. His pioneering use of interpretive fieldwork among radical and violent subcultures opened up new fields of scholarship and vastly increased our understanding of the beliefs and activities of extremists. This collection features many of his seminal contributions to the field alongside several new pieces which place his work within the context of the latest research developments. Combining discussion of the methodological issues alongside a broad array of case studies, this will be essential reading for all students and scholars of extremism, religion and politics and terrorism.

Part I

Methodology and theory

1 Interpreting the interpretive approach

A friendly reply to Thomas Robbins

(Copyright © 1997 University of California Press. This chapter was first published in Nova Religio 1, no. 1 (October 1997), pp. 30–49. Reprinted with permission of the publisher)

Some people got no choice, And they can never find a voice,

To talk with that they can even call their own.¹

(Lou Reed)

Thomas Robbins’ most interesting article, “Religious Movements and Violence: A Friendly Critique of the Interpretive Approach,” offers a number of pertinent observations and expresses several legitimate concerns about the possible misuse of the methodology as an apologia for violence emanating from new religious movements. Robbins’ comments are both constructive and timely, and he singles out my own work as a prime example of the pleasures and the perils of this approach. This essay will therefore be divided into three sections. The first will offer some observations on Robbins’ critique of the “interpretive” approach. Section two will answer the specific comments centering on my own work. A final section will consider the future utility of the methodology. It will also suggest that the interpretive approach’s emphasis on dialogue may one day help to build bridges of mutual understanding that could help to allay the barriers of fear and hostility which have so long divided the mainstream culture from the adherents of millenarian and messianic movements, as well as from members of minority religio-political belief systems.²

Interpreting the interpretive approach

So the first thing that they see, That allows them the right to be, Well, they follow it.

And you know what it’s called?

Bad luck!³

For many years, academics have sought to come to some understanding of outbreaks of millenarian violence. This form of violence has been given many names in the literature by such scholars as Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, Norman Cohn, Ehud Sprinzak, David Rapoport, and Michael Barkun to name but a few.⁴ But by whatever name, there has been a consistent thread in all of these works. While often brilliant theoretical encapsulations of the phenomenon, none fully succeeded in making the intuitive leap from the scholar’s detached analysis to the emotional cauldron inhabited by the groups themselves that would allow the reader to see the world through the eyes of the adherents. It was arguably the conspicuous absence of such vital data that made such stunning events as Jonestown, Waco, and Ruby Ridge so traumatic to the civil authorities and the scholarly community alike—this despite calls for research that would make events like Jonestown part of the common corpus of our field. As Jonathan Z. Smith so aptly put it:

How then, shall we begin to think about Jonestown as students of religion, as members of the academy? … A basic strategy … is to remove from Jonestown the aspect of the unique, of its being utterly exotic. We must be able to declare that Jonestown on 18 November 1978 was an instance of something known, something we have seen before…. We must reduce Jonestown to the category of the known and the knowable.⁵

The methodology that Thomas Robbins dubs the interpretive approach was a response to this call. In reality, Robbins may be somewhat premature in his analysis. The methodology, born of trial and error by a number of younger scholars working largely in isolation, is still very much in its infancy. This isolation raises several points that should be considered by scholars of religion interested in the question of religious violence should we ever collectively succeed at reducing Jonestown and Waco to the “category of the known and the knowable,” and thereby contribute to preventing such tragedies in the future.

First is the problem of disciplinary boundaries. The cadre of researchers engaged in the fieldwork upon which the interpretive approach must be based are scattered thinly through a number of disciplinary ghettos. For example, Bron Taylor, whose pioneering work with Earth First! is a prime example of the interpretive methodology, is in the field of Religion and Ethics. Heléne Lööw of Stockholm University, whose work with the radical right in Europe is among the best products of the interpretive approach, is a historian who has worked closely with political scientists for a number of years. Katrine Fangen, a graduate student at the University of Oslo who has done some fascinating work with Norwegian skinheads, is a sociologist. My own training is in the history of culture. It is only in the last several years that we have begun to establish contact and become familiar with each others’ work. Such interaction is the necessary first step to replace our heretofore idiosyncratic trial and error methodology with anything so coherent as an ‘approach’.

It is vital in this respect to understand what the interpretive approach is not. The approach must never be confused with apologetics on the one hand or with scholarship which deals entirely with the literature on the other. In the former case, the interpretive approach was never intended to in any way ‘excuse’ or ‘explain away’ violence emanating from millenarian movements. Thus, Thomas Robbins’ use of the work of James Lewis in the context of the interpretive approach is unfortunate given the clearly apologetic nature of Lewis’ coverage of events in Waco and in his work with other NRMs such as the Church Universal and Triumphant.⁶ The central requirement of the approach if it is to succeed in providing the reader with a vision of the world from the eyes of the adherent is a Weberian detachment on the part of the scholar. This detachment means that the investigator must place to the greatest degree possible his own biases and preconceptions in abeyance throughout the research project lest he or she fall into the all too frequent trap of writing about the scholar in relation to his subjects—an ultimately sterile exercise. While the ideal of the scholar remaining utterly unmoved by his subjects is probably an impossible goal, it is nonetheless worthy of some effort. Moreover, I would argue that it is simply not possible to appreciate fully the millenarian worldview without considerable interaction with the groups’ leadership and with its adherents. Thus even so brilliant an encapsulation of the history of Christian Identity as that offered by Michael Barkun should not be considered exemplary of the interpretive approach as Robbins suggests.⁷ There is simply no substitute for fieldwork.

At the same time, there are a number of pitfalls inherent in this endeavor. The most serious of these, as Robbins implies, is the danger of being “captured” by the very movements that we seek to examine. The problem of distance is indeed of prime concern. It is important to remember in this regard that the movements which, for a myriad of reasons, may resort to (or become victims of) violence are relatively few in number and have a pariah status in the view of the mainstream culture. For this reason, contacting them and establishing a sufficient level of rapport to engage in productive fieldwork is no easy task. Once accomplished, however, a dynamic is established that cannot help but affect both the scholar and the movement.

Contacting the movement one wishes to study is not difficult. Oppositional movements are rarely so deeply underground that potential adherents will fail to find them. Conversely, such movements must sustain a sufficient degree of friction with the dominant culture to maintain an internal cohesion based on a self-view of the group as an oppositional force with which to be reckoned. In such a milieu, it takes years of patient work to establish a relationship in which the scholar is able to earn even a qualified degree of trust.⁸ In the process, as the researcher gets to know the members of the group as individuals, interacts with their families, and takes part in their private world, the aura of demonization that characterizes the public perception of the movement invariably fades away.⁹ It is in this process of getting to know the oppositional movement as individuals who share a common humanity with the researcher that there is the greatest danger of becoming captured by the movement’s worldview. Conversely, it is precisely through this give and take relationship that the members of the movement may be influenced, however unintentionally, by the researcher. This is a risk that both investigator and ‘investigatee’ must assume as the price of “interpretive” success.

With this preamble, we turn to the text of “Religious Movements and Violence” itself. The following discussion of Robbins’ article will intentionally avoid the difficult issues arising from the tragedies surrounding Aum Shinrikyo in Japan or the Swiss-based Order of the Solar Temple. Given the vastly different historical, social, and political contexts of the United States, Japan, and central Europe, Robbins’ decision to include these cases in a single, short critical article was unfortunate in that it may have done more to obscure than illuminate the issues involved in the resort to violence.

According to Robbins, “What we shall term the ‘interpretive’ approach focuses on how militant or volatile groups are affected by the interpretations which they construct of the actions and dispositions toward them on the part of those persons and groups which they perceive as their ‘enemies,’ e.g., authorities, apostates, anti-movement crusaders.”¹⁰ Moreover, “The interpretive model sees the orientations and behaviors of problematic movements with apocalyptic worldviews as significantly influenced by the actions and perceived dispositions of groups in their environment, particularly groups and individuals who are perceived as distinctly hostile (and sometimes conspiratorial) to the movement….”¹¹

At the same time, as Robbins accurately points out, the actual level of threat presented by forces perceived as hostile by the target movement may vary greatly. Where the actual danger to the Jonestown settlement presented by Leo Ryan and a handful of newsmen and defectors may seem from our vantage point to have been rather minuscule,¹² the forces surrounding Randy Weaver’s cabin were all too real, as the shooting death of his wife and young son, as well as of a federal agent—not to mention the subsequent attempt to cover up the unprecedented rules of engagement that made these tragic events all but inevitable—makes clear.¹³ And this being the case, how much greater still was the threat of the full fledged siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco? Yet the perceptions of the immediate protagonists in these incidents—amounting in all cases to mutual demonization—were remarkably similar.¹⁴

The scholarly reaction to these three paradigmatic cases is instructive in evaluating the benefits of the interpretive method. The mass suicide/murder of the members of the Peoples Temple in Guyana understandably caught the academy by surprise. This sense of numbed shock explains the dearth of academic analyses that prompted Jonathan Z. Smith’s challenge quoted above.¹⁵ Equally understandable—but far less excusable—was the relative silence surrounding the Randy Weaver episode. Weaver, an admitted racist and an adherent of the then little understood but much feared Christian Identity faith, was hardly the stuff of an academic cause célèbre. Thus while a few academics took notice—James Aho and Michael Barkun come immediately to mind—few others in academe were interested in the drama in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Yet to those few of us engaged in the interpretive method and focused on the radical right, the Weaver drama was electrifying. Where most observers saw the standoff as an isolated case, the events at Ruby Ridge were seen quite differently through the eyes of the denizens of the radical right. For them, Weaver and his family were yet another in a long chain of martyrs to the cause. The deaths of Weaver’s wife and young son were interpreted at once as a sure sign of impending apocalypse and as proof positive that the American government, believed to have fallen under the domination of a Jewish conspiratorial elite known as ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government), had at last decided to liquidate the “righteous remnant” of the far right once and for all.

Paranoia? Yes, but as I have written time and again, even real paranoids have real enemies. And the far right’s list of martyrs—Gordon Kahl, Arthur Kirk, John Singer, Robert Mathews and David J. Moran to name a few—could be far longer. In most cases, oppositional centers such as the compound of James Ellison’s idiosyncratic Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord chose the easy route of surrender when confronted by state power.¹⁶ It was clear enough to anyone dealing with the radical right and utilizing a fieldwork-based interpretive approach that, by the time of the Weaver incident, some reaction was building. Moreover, it was obvious that this reaction would be seen by the community of the far right as a defensive measure born of desperation and despair. That is, desperation arising from the all too certain knowledge of the far right’s isolation from mainstream society, and despair that any hope of solace or salvation could come from the world as it was seen through the eyes of the faithful. Thus the movement’s increasing turn to apocalypticism and violence by the late 1980s.

Also little known to the scholarly community were the accidents of timing that would mark the reaction to the Weaver and later the Waco affairs among the radical right wing faithful. In the Weaver case, as the siege turned towards its bloody denouement with the unconscionable killing of Vickie Weaver, by chance the fiery Identity pastor Pete Peters of LaPort, Colorado, was holding his annual Bible retreat in the Colorado mountains. The news hit the meeting like a storm, and in a men-only meeting, the decision was taken to accept once and for all the reality that the government had set out to eliminate the Identity faithful. In reply, those present agreed to put faith in the mercy of the Lord and at last fight back against the inexorable power of ZOG when the moment of truth arrived.¹⁷

In another quirk of timing, the Waco tragedy would take place during the Weaver trial.¹⁸ The Identity world, and beyond it the wider world of the radical right, were thus immediately drawn into the outraged aftermath of Waco. This gave them common cause with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians—a group whose ideology and lifestyle most in the far right found repugnant, but with whose fate at the hands of a government seemingly run amok all could instantly identify. Herein lies the answer to the much asked question of the time as to why the radical right would react so s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Methodology and theory
• Part II Firsts
• Part III Case studies
• Part IV New directions
• Index