c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Rabbi A. James Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Let me say it loud and clear to people who still don’t get it about cults that carry out murder and suicide: I told you so!

For more than 20 years, I have written and spoken extensively about dangerous cults. My warnings about groups like the Heaven’s Gate sect have usually drawn two reactions: Friends kindly excuse my”fixation,”and cult apologists call me a”counter-cult zealot,”a label I happily plead guilty to it.

But it’s not the apologists _ usually academics who attempt to explain away terrible actions by cults_ who most concern me. Rather, it’s the detached folks of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., who apparently never inquired into what was happening in their neighborhood.

Most bizarre is the real estate agent who reportedly conducted a prospective house buyer through the Heaven’s Gate mansion jammed with 39 silent computer specialists. Were no questions ever raised about business licenses, commercial taxes, worker insurance, or sanitation and occupancy codes?

Perhaps the Heaven’s Gate sect broke no laws, but the one thing cults fear is public exposure and legal inquiry. The less the outside”wicked world”knows about a closed group, the easier it is for cult leaders to manipulate and control followers.

Any public attention given to a mansion full of brain-washed adults might have provided hope and information for separated family members who desperately wanted to make contact with lost loved ones inside the cult.

However, in America today, what really seems to matter are quiet neighbors, even if they are robot-like and androgynous.

People are rightly skeptical of videos depicting political hostages held against their will. But why are so many suspending their critical judgment when viewing tapes of Heaven’s Gate members nervously announcing their impending deaths?

Whatever happened to recognizing peer pressure, physical and psychological duress, mental coercion, and the need to win approval from the cult leader, the psychological captor of the hapless people paraded before the camera?

We correctly recognize that cruel pressures are applied to political hostages on video, but why is it so difficult to realize that cult hostages suffer similar pressures?

How many more deaths will it take to finally convince people that America is honeycombed with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deadly cults like Heaven’s Gate, which systematically break down members’ identities and personalities and then contemptuously re-assemble them for the leader’s private use?

How many more murders are needed in the Order of the Solar Temple, Hare Krishna, Jonestown, Branch Davidians, and the Japanese group Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth) until we recognize the enormous dangers posed by destructive cults?

These groups are not wacky aberrations nor are they creative”new religious movements”that provide spiritual fulfillment for their followers. In fact, cults are often killers.

Is there a numerical quota of cult murders needed before we declare a public health emergency? And in a nation that proudly professes its abiding commitment to something called family values, how many more parents of dead cult members must appear on TV before we acknowledge not only their individual pain but our collective responsibility?

In addition to extensive cult education programs in high schools, colleges, and religious institutions, legal action is frequently required. Fortunately, Shoko Asahara, Supreme Truth’s leader, is in a Japanese jail awaiting trial. He has promised to explode atomic bombs in the United States, believing that America is an”impurity”that must be destroyed.

No one should doubt that if Asahara’s cult acquired weapons of mass murder from the former Soviet Union as they tried to, his followers would carry out their leader’s catastrophic threat. Two years ago, Supreme Truth members released a deadly gas into the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 and injuring thousands _ just a tryout before unleashing mushroom clouds over the United States.

There is a documented record of cult offenses: murder, sexual and physical abuse, child molestation, fiscal criminality, and forced family separation, among others. But, incredibly, many people of goodwill who condemn political corruption and denounce totalitarianism still find denial preferable to facing the terrible truth that cults represent a violent and growing threat to American society.

News of the Heaven’s Gate suicides filled me first with profound sorrow for the victims and their families, followed by outrage at the cult’s leader, Marshall Applewhite, who coerced his followers to join him in suicide.

But my real anger is directed at those who do not want to see what is happening. To them I can only say: I told you so!

MJP END RUDIN