Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(24)

No, I don’t have to assume anything. If he’d done anything more scandalous than perform an unpopular wedding, I’m quite confident that the newspapers would’ve been more than happy to crow it from the rooftops. If the worst they can say of him is that a Protestant girl liked him, and liked a member of his congregation well enough to marry him . . . there’s not much to condemn him at all.

I fear there’s little chance of any justice. For the priest, or for that poor girl—the killer’s daughter, who is set to testify against him. Bless the poor girl, she’ll have quite the life if she stays there. A traitor to her race, her faith, and her family. That’s how they’re playing it, since she married an island man. Her father wants the world to know that she’s an ungrateful wretch who willfully defied him in the worst fashion possible, again and again.

She’d run away several times before, according to some stories.

God Almighty, who could blame her?

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Today, I received my monthly copy of the Journal of Arcane Studies in the Americas. Within it, I found an article that gives me true pause, true concern, for the good people of Birmingham . . . assuming there are a few, somewhere in the mix.

? ? ?

(No, that isn’t fair. There are some. I detect them in the background, in the ousted commission members, the stalwart daughter of the murderer, the innocent men and women minding their own business when the hatchet found them. I assume they were innocent. I might be wrong, but at the very least, they were not actively seeking to harm anyone.

My standards for “innocent” might be slipping.)

? ? ?

I realize that it’s not precisely the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, but I honestly believe that the contributors . . . they honestly believe in the subjects they research and report upon. Though some of the stories and their details seem salacious, they’re no more so than anything I’ve seen out of Birmingham over the last month; so it’s not that I give equal weight to the journalism, necessarily . . . it would perhaps be more accurate to say that I view it all with a similar balance of suspicion and credulity.

And that’s why this piece about American cults and communes leaped out at me.

(Excerpted for relevance.)


ON THE RISE OF ISOLATED RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE GENERATIONS AFTER THE GREAT AWAKENINGS

Journal of Arcane Studies in the Americas September 1921

. . . Throughout history and across the globe, groups of people have set themselves apart due to their social, political, or religious beliefs. Generally speaking, such groups are benign or even of a positive nature, planned primarily to form an association of like-minded fellows, or even generate an earthbound Utopia—one could point to the Amish and Mennonite communities as groups of spiritually inclined people whose communities are private, but scarcely scandalous, and likewise the Shakers in New Lebanon, who are thought to be peculiar, but hardly dangerous. In the middling territory reside the Theosophists, Christian Scientists, Perfectionists, Seventh-Day Adventists, and so forth—with Mormons presenting a somewhat trickier edge case, given their propensity toward plural marriages and a purportedly Christian faith that feels improbable to more traditional Christians.

One step farther into troublesome territory (so far as mainstream worshippers are concerned) are the Spiritualist communities, which despite the resistance from outside forces, have nonetheless succeeded in creating a number of long-lasting and well-established gatherings. These groups may begin and remain small, as in the case of Reverend Highs and his “circle of faith” in the 1890s (incorporated into the Red Pines community in 1901); or they may eventually establish fully fledged townships, springing forth from grand annual camp meetings (leading to the incorporated communities of Lily Dale, et al.).

But most troubling of all, from an outsider’s perspective, are the quiet, insular groups that speak not to Christ, not to the Hebrew god Jehovah, to the dead, or even to any of the somewhat unfamiliar (but well-established) Eastern gods or spirits. There may be elements of all these things present, but more often the group is founded around a singular prophet who professes ancient knowledge on behalf of some other culture: Egyptians are popular at the moment, as are Etruscans, Assyrians, and Celts. Through force of personal magnetism, these prophets collect disciples, money, and sometimes a small measure of power outside their circles; but the power they wield within these circles is absolute. They control everything: worship times and places, sexual relations, access to the words of the gods or goddesses, and even matters of life and death. And then the dangers to the outside world reveal themselves . . .

. . . And most recently, rumor swirls around a new sect that may be on the rise on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. Reverend A. J. Davis began his career of spiritual authority as pastor of that city’s First Baptist Church, but he shortly went on to found a new group with social views aligning with the Ku Klux Klan and the “True Americans.” (See also “Guardians of Liberty.”)

Something like a Masonic tribe, the True Americans focus largely on asserting political and ethnic dominance over those perceived as weaker or lesser, including all nonwhite persons, Jews, Catholics, and a veritable laundry list of other undesirables—prejudices which they insist can be backed with biblical principles. In the last few years this claim has been further supported by an influx of new members, including Methodist and Presbyterian ministers who have found their way into this hateful flock. Despite its origins as an ostensibly Christian or at the very least peaceful community, this organization openly calls for the subjugation or death of any who would oppose it.