Page 177 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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Religion

Sarah M. Pike

Druids and witches in the virtual world
Altars and shrines as heterotopia writ small
The sacred geography of back yards and roadsides
Slam dancing and chanting for God

In 1997, a television news reporter called me to set up an interview about
the Heaven’s Gate suicides that had occurred in San Diego the previous
week. Scholars of religion are often given the task of explaining what seems
inexplicable: why educated and economically comfortable men and women
would decide to die by their own hand to catch a ride on an alien ship they
thought was behind the Hale-Bopp comet, why dedicated Muslims would
destroy innocent people on September 11, 2001, or how Catholic priests
could justify molesting boys under their spiritual guidance. These and other
examples of religious people’s incomprehensibility to outsiders are a typical
occasion on which religion scholars speak to the news media.
I had taken to heart Susan Sontag’s dictum that the task of the intellectual
is “to promote dialogue, support the right of a multiplicity of voices to be
heard, strengthen skepticism about received opinion,” and so I wanted to
educate television viewers about the difference between a “cult” and a “new
religious movement” (Sontag 2001: 296). “Cults,” according to received
opinion, are not real religions, and the news media’s stereotypes of Heaven’s
Gate’s “deluded” followers did not represent a multiplicity of voices. During
our half-hour interview, I suggested that most religions begin as “cults”
or small groups gathered around charismatic leaders. I also pointed out
that mainstream religions include all the “bad” things that are commonly
attached to “cults,” including substance abuse and child molestation. The
reporter nodded with understanding and asked me several questions about
local religious groups in Chico, including religions that recruit on campus,
none of which I had encountered. However, the next night, when I sat
down to watch the news program, I was startled by the title: “Vampire
Cults in Chico.” The ten-minute report consisted of my comments taken
out of context and spliced in between rumors about a “blood-drinking cult”