12 - Lessons from the Past, Perspective for the Future

Summary

Dramatic Denouements involving new religious movements have become the focus of a surge of scholarly attention over the last decade. For a time after the occurrence of the Peoples Temple episode, there was a tendency to treat scattered violent incidents idiosyncratically, as few historical counterparts had been studied by social scientists. The occurrence of several high-profile episodes over the last decade created the impetus and opportunity to develop a more general understanding of these Dramatic Denouements. In order to achieve greater theoretical specification, we have deliberately limited the focus in this volume to a small set of events that have key elements in common rather than theorize broadly about the complex, multifaceted relationship between religion and violence. The dynamics of conflict between control agencies and governmentally sponsored guerrilla groups, for example, might well differ in some important ways from the events analyzed here. In this concluding chapter we consider three important issues: the likelihood of future violent incidents, the sociopolitical context within which such incidents are likely to occur, and the perspective gained from analyzing recent cases that might be brought to bear on any future episodes.

Future Episodes

There are a number of reasons to anticipate future incidents that resemble in some measure the episodes analyzed in this volume. At the most fundamental level, this expectation is based on the observation that the histories of the major religious traditions are replete with the creation of both unity and division, harmony and conflict.