Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

When I was in grade school, I had always been told that America was settled because of a desire for religious freedom. In the process of researching our current script, we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the settlement of the “New World.” As I’ve written before, it turns out that the ONLY religious freedom the Puritans were interested in was the freedom to practice the Puritan —and only the Puritan— religion. If you wanted to worship according to any other faith, say the Baptist or Quaker or Catholic faith, you would be denied the ability to vote, own business or be a meaningful member of the community. You would be ostracized, whipped, jailed or beaten. It was this religious intolerance that led to the formation of Rhode Island which inspired Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

My Mormon friends are quick draw a distinction between themselves and their fundamentalist counterparts. It was Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who said that he’d had a personal revelation from Jesus Christ in 1843 that the followers of the Mormon faith were obligated to practice the “divine principle” of plural marriage. Joseph Smith had 33 wives. That is not a typo. He had 33 wives. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy act into law making plural marriage illegal in the U.S. and all its territories. Extermination orders against the Mormons, forced expulsion from a number of states, more legislation and a failed Supreme Court case plagued the nascent religion for the next forty years. They fled to the new zion in the Utah Territory near the Great Salt Lake. Their efforts to gain statehood were thwarted until the 1890 Prohibition against polygamy was announced. Poor enforcement led to the Second Manifesto of 1904 which stated that any Mormon practicing polygamy would be excommunicated.

So, since 1904, members of the LDS church have chosen not to observe the divine principle of plural marriage. This is not true in the fundamentalist sects. The Salt Lake City Tribune estimates there are about 37,000 fundamentalist Mormons living in remote towns in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Canada and Mexico.

Of course, I believe in the Bill of Rights. I believe in freedom of speech and the freedom to practice my faith according to my conscience. But, I have to ask myself, what would I do if one of my friends or neighbors told me they had a personal revelation from God and they had been instructed to begin ritually sacrificing a virgin at every full moon. Suppose they said that only adult virgin females would be sacrificed and ONLY with their permission and of their own free will. Would I be okay with that? If not ritual sacrifice (everyone always thinks I’ve gone too far when I suggest that one), what about ritual mating on a golden altar? Where is the “religious freedom” line to be drawn? If I open an internet church and solicit willing sacrificial victims online, would that be okay?

In November of 1978, the Reverend Jim Jones convinced 909 of his faithful followers in Jonestown, Guyana to drink a reported concoction of valium, cyanide and chloral hydrate which resulted in the world’s largest mass murder-suicide. The medical examiner who examined the victims said well over 50 corpses showed evidence of having been injected with the poison, perhaps against their will. Jones’ benevolent communist church and society was established in Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 1950s with the beguiling name of the People’s Temple. In 1965, Jones and his followers were forced to flee, settling in Redwood City, then San Francisco and later Los Angeles. Ultimately, charges of tax evasion and an imminent arrest led to the group relocating to Guyana.

Thirty-eight members of the Heaven’s Gate religious order committed mass suicide as directed by their spiritual leaders in March of 1997. They were told their souls would be liberated so they could join divine beings who were piloting a spaceship that was hiding in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp. My entire family was in southern California a few miles from the Rancho Santa Fe location on a reunion-style vacation. We read a lot about the religious order of Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite. The Ontario consultants on religious tolerance support their decision to follow their faith in the way they saw fit. Don’t think I’d have been too happy if one of my family members had decided to go out that way.

It’s a Gordian Knot to be certain.