Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America

James D. Tabor · Eugene V. Gallagher

Nov 2023 · Univ of California Press

About this ebook

The 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and eighty Branch Davidians, including seventeen children. Whether these tragic deaths could have been avoided is still debatable, but what seems clear is that the events in Texas have broad implications for religious freedom in America.

James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's bold examination of the Waco story offers the first balanced account of the siege. They try to understand what really happened in Waco: What brought the Branch Davidians to Mount Carmel? Why did the government attack? How did the media affect events? The authors address the accusations of illegal weapons possession, strange sexual practices, and child abuse that were made against David Koresh and his followers. Without attempting to excuse such actions, they point out that the public has not heard the complete story and that many media reports were distorted.

The authors have carefully studied the Davidian movement, analyzing the theology and biblical interpretation that were so central to the group's functioning. They also consider how two decades of intense activity against so-called cults have influenced public perceptions of unorthodox religions.

In exploring our fear of unconventional religious groups and how such fear curtails our ability to tolerate religious differences, Why Waco? is an unsettling wake-up call. Using the events at Mount Carmel as a cautionary tale, the authors challenge all Americans, including government officials and media representatives, to closely examine our national commitment to religious freedom.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.
The 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and eighty Branch Davidians, including seventeen children. Whether these tragic deaths could have been avoided is still debatable,

Ratings and reviews

This is not actually a religious book, but the authors are both theologians and they do discuss the Davidian Branch of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in detail. The authors take the perspective that the news media and anti-cult groups have tilted the story of Vernon Howell, aka David Koresh, and his group. In this, they seem to have proved their point. The story from inside, or from the survivors, some of whom went to prison, has not equaled the story from the perspective of the anti-cult groups. The news media, newspapers, television, journalistic books, and so forth seem to almost always have adopted the anti-cult perspective. But as the authors point out, the concept of "cult" is loosely defined and is really just a negative label that can be applied by anyone to any small religious group. This book's major flaw, in a word, is redundancy. Chapter after chapter, and subtitle after subtitle, alludes to the imbalance, the bias, in the perspective of the news media, which has been then passed along to the public that consumes those media. The authors might have made their point with many fewer words. They write like theologians, which, of course, they are. They do not write like journalists, nor less like logical thinkers, though they are attempting to be logical. They are saying, in essence, the Davidian/FBI confrontation in Waco has more to it than has been generally reported or known. And they say it over and over again. Here is an example: When the reader observes the photograph section of the book, and sees the faces of the youngsters and infants who were killed when the FBI destroyed their compound on April 19, 1993, the effect is far greater, on the reader, than this "sermonizing" that the authors do about the bad press David and his followers received. They point out how David differed from Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple: Jones had developed an alternative theology and had rejected the Bible; Koresh used the Bible as his backbone, even to justify all of his actions, including his "New Enlightenment." The "New Enlightenment" called for the other males in his group to remain celibate, while he himself made "God's grandchildren," having intercourse with the young women who pleased him. No matter how theological the authors get, this point cannot be denied: whether knowingly or not, David used the Bible to justify his own lust. That's the downfall of the authors' argument as to his "possible" innocence. But it does not gainsay their assertion that the FBI was overly aggressive on April 19, or that the FBI never made an honest attempt to stop David without causing death and destruction. All those children who died were not a threat to the FBI or to anyone else, but they went anyway, because, I guess, they were in the way. Now what kind of a society do we live in that condones, or at least ignores, that kind of aggression, even against children? Well, it's the same society we always lived in, and still do, so I guess it's not really surprising. I do believe the FBI just got impatient. Fifty-one days was too long for them (the "standoff," as they waited for David to surrender himself. They could not wait a minute longer. They were impatient and, as law enforcers tend to be, overly "macho" in their response to David's "Bible talk." They called him a criminal and a master manipulator. I think they were, in their heart of hearts, just jealous of the man. Sure, I didn't like David for taking young girls to bed and having children by them. I mean, I was envious in a way, because it sounded like a good sex life for a male, but most men, I believe, though they might desire this kind of a set-up, would not follow through, because they know there would consequences. Or because they just feel it's wrong. Or would they? Maybe, if they thought God wanted them to, most men would go ahead and have sex with 12 year old girls. Regardless, most men

Very well documented. Gave balanced insight into the thinking of both groups involved in the Waco incident.

About the author

James D. Tabor is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the coauthor of A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom in Antiquity (1992). Eugene V. Gallagher is Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College and the author of Expectation and Experience: Explaining Religious Conversion (1990).