On the Trail of High Weirdness

Nov. 14, 1988.

On the Trail of High Weirdness

Cults are on the rise, but they're more odd than menacing.

Warning about the danger of cults is a growth business. Academic psychologists produce scholarly papers on mass hysteria and mind control. Mainstream religious leaders speak darkly about the risks of dabbling in the occult. Even the mass media are now into the act; the ever-vigilant Geraldo Rivera recently took to the airwaves with a graphic 2-hour NBC special on Satanism, complete with with women identified as "Former Breeders", who claimed to have donated their children for ritual sacrifices.

Yet to Ivan Stang, America's leading connoisseur on crankdom, there's more to ridicule than to fear in the country's assorted fringe groups, crackpot publications, and cult religions. Stang, a Dallas radio announcer and film producer, has spent 20 years compiling an exhaustive catalog of the inhabitants of what he calls America's "zoo of beliefs"; the results appear in his recently published book, High Weirdness by Mail. For starters, there are the publishers of the Flat Earth News in Lancaster, Calif., who don't believe all that Pythagorean nonsense about a round earth. Then there are the Breatharians (also - suprise! - from California), who argue that we can survive without food or drink. That health cult's faith was shaken when its founder was found to be sneaking out at night to buy junk food at convenience stores. The Search and Prove cult in St. Paul Park, Minn., has had no such doubts. It listens directly to messages from God Almighty, members say, though to Stang the group's messiah sounds suspiciously like "a friendly old hick codger." The Searchers offer a special benefit, however: You can save on carfare, because they hold weekly out-of-body meetings.

DESKTOP TRACTS. Such unusual groups - religious and otherwise - have flourished since the 1960's. The weakening of traditional institutions, combined with inexpensive Xeroxing and desktop publishing, has made it just plain easier to promote weirdness these days. There are currently about 1,500 national and regional religious groups, according to J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute fot the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., and nearly half of them he ranks as "nonconventional," at least 40 percent more than there were just a decade ago. Alternative religious groups, Melton says, appeal to dissatisfied spiritual seekers with the lure of direct religious experience, warm personal relationships, and a strong sense of purpose - even if the purpose IS convincing the world that there are Nazi-like space aliens living in UFO's at the center of the earth.

Stang, for one, worries more about what their often strange beliefs say about the sad state of education than he does about whether the groups are dangerous. Widespread ignorance on such subjects as science, he argues, creates a fertile ground for irrational beliefs. "I see less and less logical common sense," he says. He is especially tough on "New Age" marketeers such as Chi Concepts, Inc. of Santa Cruz, Calif., whose "Chi Pants" have a crystal embedded in the back seam to send positive vibes to the "chakras", or purported energy centers of the body. (Another innovation : the pants don't have a restrictive crotch are, but a go-with-the-flow light cloth panel instead.)

Less amusing are white-supremacist groups that often mix Christian fundamentalism with none-too-veiled calls to violence. Of the 700 groups, periodicals and companies that are described in High Weirdness, about 40, most of them located in the South and Southwest, could be considered right wing or Christian extremist. Today's extremists still hate the old standbys - Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, feminists, and blacks - but they offer more than screeds: Some sell weapons and information on do-it-yourself sabotage and theft, and even a five volume series called How To Kill. Despite shrinking memberships, they are as virulent as ever; take the Racial Loyalty newsletter from Otto, N.C. (slogan:"It's great to be white!"), or Christians Awake of Birmingham, Ala., which argues that Ronald reagan is a "Masonic Jew-Catholic Tool."

Stang discovered long ago how to fight fire with fire, co-founding his own parody cult called the Church of the Subgenius. Its 3,500 dues-paying followers, mostly baby-boomers reared on the '60's counterculture, "worship" a smiling pipe-smoking salesman named J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and proselytize with such slogans as "Eternal salvation -- or triple your money back." Despite its comic intent, the church has been plagued by some overzealous followers mockingly dubbed "Bobbies" by Church leaders, who urge them to rebel and form their own schisms.

LIKE WRESTLING? Ironically, the Church is as big as many genuine cults. The group's "bible", The Book of The Subgenius, has sold about 30,000 copies. Cult-monitoring organizations even report occasional worried inquiries about it. The group's most sacred ritual: Hitting a plastic bust of Arnold Palmer across a room while prostrate members listen to an impassioned minister inveigh against the "anti-Palmer" Lee Trevino.

"The Church understands that the spiritual thrust of America is essentially like professional wrestling," says novelist Ken Kesey, one of many writers and artists who are members of the group. But, amid the laughs, Stang is genuinely pessimistic about what he sees as the growing gullibility of Americans. "The kooks are our future," he says.