15. There is significant confusion over the nature of their separation. The 1968 divorce date seems most reliable. Applewhite’s ex-wife indicated that they separated in 1964, though Balch, the first scholar to systematically study the movement, indicates they separated in 1965. Unfortunately it is not clear in which state and county the two resided during their separation and divorce, making the access of public records extremely difficult. Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide,” A1; James Brooke, “Death in a Cult: The Silence; for Ex-Wife of Leader, No Wish for the Limelight,” New York Times, April 1, 1997, A18; Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 30.
16. Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide,” A1.
17. Steinberg, “Death in a Cult: The Leader,” A9.
18. Robert W. Balch, “Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Peep’s UFO Cult,” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 143; Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 33.
19. Evan Thomas, “Web of Death,” Newsweek, April 7, 1997, 31.
20. Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide,” A1.
21. The letter to his friend is reproduced in Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 30–31.
22. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a reductionist reading of Heaven’s Gate is David Daniel, “The Beginning of the Journey,” Newsweek, April 13, 1997, 36–37.
23. Robert Glenn Howard, “Rhetoric of the Rejected Body at ‘Heaven’s Gate’,” in Gender and Apocalyptic Desire, ed. Brenda E. Brasher and Lee Quinby (London: Equinox, 2006), 146–47.
24. Ibid., 149.
25. Susan Raine, “Reconceptualising the Human Body: Heaven’s Gate and the Quest for Divine Transformation,” Religion 35, no. 2 (2005): 99.
26. Robert W. Balch, email to author, September 14, 2013.
27. Raine, “Reconceptualising the Human Body,” 101–8.
28. Mrcody and Srfody, oral history and interview, September 30–October 1, 2013.
29. Hayes Parker, as quoted in Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide.”
30. Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 57.
31. Applewhite, quoted in Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 62.
32. Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 62.
33. Nettles and Applewhite, as quoted in Hewes and Steiger, UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, 82.
34. Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 62; Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 35; Hewes and Steiger, UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, 25.
35. J. Gordon Melton, “New Thought and New Age,” in Approaches to the Study of the New Age, ed. James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 18–19.
36. James R. Lewis, “Approaches to the Study of the New Age Movement,” in Approaches to the Study of the New Age, ed. Lewis and Melton, 6–8.
37. James R. Lewis and Gordon Melton, eds., Perspectives on the New Age (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996).
38. Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 36.
39. Ibid., 38.
40. Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, “Bo and Peep Interview with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” in UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, ed. Hayden Hewes and Brad Steiger (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 84.
41. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 70.
42. Ibid., 71.
43. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2008).
44. Balch, “Bo and Peep,” 42.
45. Randall Herbert Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 35.
46. Sales figures noted in William Martin, “Waiting for the End: The Growing Interest in Apocalyptic Prophecy,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1982, 31.
47. Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently, 16–17.
48. Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide,” A1.
49. Betty Penson, “During the Summer of 1974 UFO Couple Visited Boise Men,” Idaho Statesman, Oct 26 1975, A1–2.
50. Bearak, “Odyssey to Suicide.” See also Lynn Simross, “Invitation to an Unearthly Kingdom,” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1975.
51. Applewhite’s own perspective and recounting of this incident is contained in Heaven’s Gate, “’88 Update,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 3:5.
52. Ibid.
53. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1: Human Individual Metamorphosis,” held at American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara (1975). This source is identical to Heaven’s Gate, “First Statement of Ti and Do,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 2:3–4.
54. The figure of forty-one comes from Simross, “Invitation to an Unearthly Kingdom,” 5. The figure of eighty from Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 63. Balch mentions “about fifty.” Robert W. Balch, “The Evolution of a New Age Cult: From Total Overcomers Anonymous to Death at Heaven’s Gate,” in Sects, Cults, and Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis, ed. William W. Zellner and Marc Petrowsky (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 1. See also Phyllis Gilbert, “I Was a Member of the UFO Cult,” Pageant, March 1976, 47.
55. Again, the low figure is recounted in Simross, “Invitation to an Unearthly Kingdom,” 6; the high figure originates in Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 63.
56. Balch, “The Evolution of a New Age Cult,” 3–12.
57. Ibid., 15.
58. Ibid., 20.
59. Gilbert, “I Was a Member of the UFO Cult,” 48.
60. Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 358–59.
61. Roy Wallis, “The Social Construction of Charisma,” Social Compass 29, no. 1 (1982): 26.
62. Ibid., 35.
63. For more on the social construction of charisma, particularly as it relates to leadership of a NRM, see Wallis, “The Social Construction of Charisma,” Timothy Miller, ed., When Prophets Die: The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991).
64. On the remaining three members who were still present for the Rancho Santa Fe suicides, see Balch, “The Evolution of a New Age Cult,” 24.
65. “20 Missing in Oregon after Talking of a Higher Life,” New York Times, 7 October 1975, 71.
66. United Press International, “Couple Asks for UFO Volunteers—Now 20 Missing,” Herald-News, October 6, 1975, 1.
67. Applewhite reported that thirty-three joined, and Balch confirmed a number in that range. A contemporary newspaper account provides the lower estimate. Balch, email to author, September 14, 2013. “20 Missing in Oregon after Talking of a Higher Life,” 71.
68. “20 Missing in Oregon after Talking of a Higher Life,” 71.
69. United Press International, “Couple Asks for UFO Volunteers—Now 20 Missing,” 1.
70. United Press International, “It’s the Second Coming . . . We Are All Going Home,” Herald-News, October 7, 1975, 3.
71. Ibid.
72. Eve Muss, “‘Grave Not Path to Heaven,’ Disciples Told,” Oregon Journal, October 10, 1975.
73. Muss, “‘Grave Not Path to Heaven,’ Disciples Told,” 1.
74. Eve Muss, “No Disease Promised,” Oregon Journal, October 9, 1975, n.p. This unnumbered newspaper clipping is held in the archives of the American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara. I have not been able to locate a copy of this article from other archival sources.
75. Muss, “‘Grave Not Path to Heaven,’ Disciples Told,” 1.
76. Applewhite and Nettles, “Bo and Peep Interview
with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” 98.
77. United Press International, “Couple Asks for UFO Volunteers—Now 20 Missing,” 1; United Press International, “It’s the Second Coming . . . We Are All Going Home,” 3; Paul McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 16, 1975, 1.
78. “20 Missing in Oregon after Talking of a Higher Life,” 71.
79. United Press International, “It’s the Second Coming . . . We Are All Going Home,” 3.
80. Tom Robinson, “I Found the Missing People from Waldport,” Northwest Magazine, November 2, 1975, 14.
81. McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets,” 1.
82. George Williamson, “‘It Was a Sham’: Why One Convert Left the UFO Cult,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 1975, 2.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 12.
86. Heaven’s Gate, “’88 Update,” 7.
87. McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets,” 26.
88. Robert W. Balch, “‘When the Light Goes out, Darkness Comes’: A Study of Defection from a Totalistic Cult,” in Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, ed. Rodney Stark (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1985), 21.
89. Balch, “A Study of Defection,” 21–22.
90. Heaven’s Gate, “’88 Update,” 7.
91. Balch, “A Study of Defection,” 23.
92. Balch, “Waiting for the Ships,” 154.
93. Balch, “A Study of Defection,” 23.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
1. Robert W. Balch and David Taylor, “Salvation in a UFO,” Psychology Today 10, no. 5 (1976): 60.
2. Robert W. Balch and David Taylor, “Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult,” American Behavioral Scientist 20, no. 6 (1977): 848.
3. Colin Campbell, “The Cult, Cultic Milieu and Secularization,” in A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (London: SCM Press, 1972), 122.
4. Scholars today are apt to divide Campbell’s cultic milieu into the New Age movement, Western esoteric tradition, nature religion, and other various sub-traditions.
5. Douglas E. Kneeland, “500 Wait in Vain on Coast for ‘the Two,’ U.F.O. Cult Leaders,” New York Times, October 10, 1975, 16.
6. Simross, “Invitation to an Unearthly Kingdom,” G1.
7. Ibid., G4.
8. McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets,” 1.
9. Robert Bellah et al., eds., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 221.
10. Robert Bellah, “Habits of the Heart: Implications for Religion,” public address at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, Isla Vista, California, 21 February 1986. Available online at: http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures_5.htm.
11. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey; Pew Forum, “Nones” on the Rise; Pew Forum, Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths: Eastern, New Age Beliefs Widespread (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2009).
12. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #3: The Only Significant Resurrection,” held at American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara (1975).
13. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1: Human Individual Metamorphosis.”
14. Stewart M. Hoover, “The Cross at Willow Creek: Seeker Religion and the Contemporary Marketplace,” in Religion and Popular Culture in America, ed. Bruce D. Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 139–53.
15. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1.”
16. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #2: Clarification: Human Kingdom—Visible and Invisible,” held at American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara (1975).
17. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #3.”
18. Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 46.
19. Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 61.
20. Ibid., 63.
21. Pam Belluck, “Death in a Cult: Bewilderment Is All That’s Left for Families,” New York Times, March 30, 1997, A16.
22. Joanne Ditmer, “Durango Businessman Reported with UFO Group,” Denver Post, October 23, 1975, 33.
23. Ibid.
24. Bearak, “Death in a Cult: The Victims,” 1.
25. James David Hudnut-Beumler, Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics, 1945–1965 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
26. Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
27. Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 146–48.
28. For example, consider the work of William Sims Bainbridge on The Family (né Children of God) and E. Burke Rochford on the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, both of which feature high rates of defection. William Sims Bainbridge, The Endtime Family: Children of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); E. Burke Rochford, Jr., “Hare Krishna in America: Growth, Decline, and Accommodation,” in America’s Alternative Religions, ed. Timothy Miller (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
29. James T. Richardson, Conversion Careers: In and Out of the New Religions (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978).
30. Applewhite (Do) and Nettles (Ti) were the exception.
31. Tddody, “Statement of a Crewmember,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A53.
32. Ibid., A54.
33. Ibid., A55.
34. Qstody, “My Ode to Ti and Do! What This Class Has Meant to Me,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A30.
35. Qstody, Exit Video (Rancho Santa Fe, CA, 1997).
36. Gldody, Exit Video (Rancho Santa Fe, CA, 1997).
37. Wknody, “A Matter of Life or Death? You Decide,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A19.
38. Yrsody, “The Way Things Are,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A25.
39. Deb Simpson, Closing the Gate (Murfreesboro, TN: privately published, 2012), 147–48; 162–63.
40. Ibid., 178.
41. Gbbody, letter to Deb Simpson, February 23, 1995, reproduced in Closing the Gate, 233.
42. Simpson, Closing the Gate, 198.
43. Frank Rich, “Heaven’s Gate-Gate,” New York Times, April 17, 1997, A23.
44. Thomas Robbins, Dick Anthony, and James McCarthy, “Legitimating Repression,” in The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Historical Perspectives, ed. David G. Bromley and James T. Richardson, Studies in Religion and Society (New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1983), 319.
45. Ibid., 319–27.
46. Sean McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955–1993 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
47. James T. Richardson, “Conversion and Brainwashing: Controversies and Contrasts,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements, ed. George D. Chryssides and Benjamin E. Zeller (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 98.
48. Eileen Barker, “The Cage of Freedom and the Freedom of the Cage,” in On Freedom: A Centenary Anthology, ed. Eileen Barker (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997). See also Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?
49. Richardson, “Conversion and Brainwashing: Controversies and Contrasts,” 99.
50. J. Gordon Melton, “Brainwashing and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory,” in CESNUR Digital Proceedings, ed. Massimo Introvigne (1999), available online at http://www.cesnur.
org/testi/melton.htm.
51. Janja Lalich, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 17.
52. Ibid., 2.
53. Ibid., 18.
54. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #3.”
55. Heaven’s Gate, “Major and Lesser Offenses,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 2:9.
56. Lalich, Bounded Choice, 17.
57. To protect the privacy of these ex-members, I have used only their “ODY” names. In some cases these individuals have published under their birth names or other legal names. Neoody published a memoir under his legal name “Rio DiAngelo.” Yet he prefers to be referred to as Neoody, and I do so throughout the book except when actually citing his memoir, Rio DiAngelo, Beyond Human Mind: The Soul Evolution of Heaven’s Gate (Beverly Hills: privately published, 2007).
58. For more on these former members, see DiAngelo, Beyond Human Mind; Sawyer, “Sawyerhg’s Blog,” http://sawyerhg.wordpress.com; Crlody, “The Aftermath of Heaven’s Gate,” http://www.freewebs.com/crlody/; Crlody, “The Truth and Lies of Heaven’s Gate,” http://crlody.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/the-truth-and-lies-of-heavens-gate/. (Mrcody and Srfody do not have an active presence on the Internet, blogosphere, or print media, but do maintain the original Heaven’s Gate website. Heaven’s Gate, “Heaven’s Gate—How and When It May Be Entered,” http://www.heavensgate.com
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
1. Thomas, “Web of Death,” 27; Evan Thomas, “‘The Next Level’,” Newsweek, April 7, 1997, 30; Gregory Beals, “Far from Home,” Newsweek, April 7, 1997, 37.
2. Brad Stone, “Christ and Comets,” Newsweek, April 7, 1997, 40.
3. Larry B. Stammer, John Dart, and James Rainey, “39 in Cult Left Recipes of Death: The Cult: Tract Offers Clues About Group’s Theology, Motives,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1997, A1.
4. Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Prentice Hall, 2000).
5. Gregory E. Peterson, “Religion as Orienting Worldview,” Zygon 36, no. 1 (2001): 13.
6. Pierre Bourdieu, “Legitimation and Structured Interests in Weber’s Sociology of Religion,” in Max Weber, Rationality, and Modernity, ed. Scott Lash and Sam Whimster (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 126.
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