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This interview with world-renowned Biblical scholar Elaine Pagels was conducted shortly after the Heaven’s Gate suicides took place in the spring of 1997. While it remains unpublished, I include it here because of Pagels’ stature as an expert on early Christianity and also just because I admire her greatly.

Q. and A. With Elaine Pagels

Heaven’s Gate And Early Christianity

By Sean Casteel

When reading and listening to reports of the theological and philosophical beliefs of the Heaven’s Gate cult, many people were struck by how the group’s ideas resembled those of early Christians and echoed with common religious practices from throughout history. What may seem on the surface to be the lunacy of a modern day cult and its leader has a strong connection with earlier spiritual traditions.

Q: It’s been noted more than once that the Heaven’s Gate cult and it’s sci-fi theology could be viewed in a context similar to the early Christians. Their theological strangeness and their use of suicide as a form of martyrdom may be viewed as orthodox somewhere down the line. Would you care to comment on the idea that today’s lunatics are tomorrow’s prophets?

Pagels: Well, first of all, I think it’s true that most of what I’ve read about this movement is really not very different from the early Christian movement in most of its respects. Many of the teachings about renouncing family and sexuality and so forth are quite consistent with Christian teaching. You can see that the leader of this movement had a father who was a preacher. He seems to know the New Testament quite well. What I find quite different is that most Christian groups would never invest in a human being today the kind of supernatural qualities that this group seems to have invested in their leader or leaders. And second, suicide has never been a positive option in Christian tradition so far as I know it. Martyrdom was a pretty extreme situation. If you said you were Christian, you could get killed. Some people thought that you were killing yourself if you admitted it, but that’s an extreme view. The word “martyr” means “witness.” And they were witnessing to what they believed. I think that’s quite different from believing that suicide offers access to the “next level.” That I’ve never seen in any Christian teaching.

Q: So, at least in the ancient times, the Christians had the Roman government to deal with. It wasn’t “self murder.” It was kind of like a political resistance kind of thing.

Pagels: They were a group that was illegal. It was a capital crime to belong to it. That’s quite different, you know.

Q: Sort of compensating for the fact that our government’s not as repressive?

Pagels: Yeah, maybe.

Q: Many of the cult’s ideas seem to have been similar to ancient Gnostic beliefs, particularly their loathing of the physical body as the unclean prison of the soul. Would you care to comment on that? Can you give me some specifics on the way the cult’s religious beliefs were influenced by or were similar to--

Pagels: Sure. First of all, that’s what many people say about Gnostic teaching, and there are some ancient texts that support that. However, you can get a rather similar view from parts of the New Testament where Paul speaks about his longing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. He speaks about subduing his flesh and so forth. There are similar sort of antagonistic views of the body in perfectly straight forward Christian tradition. In fact in most ancient traditions, and you find it in philosophic sources as well. It’s a very commonplace view. I guess that some people have the belief, which many today share, but I don’t share it, that these are “detachable entities” in that way.

Q: The idea that there can be a spiritual separation from the body.

Pagels: Well, I don’t mean that there can’t. Who could ever know that? But simply despising the body as though it were simply some kind of contemptible mode of transportation for the spirit-but that’s not a unique view. It’s widely held in religious culture. I won’t speak for Eastern religions, but certainly in Western religions.

Q: Well, Matthew 19 has Jesus talking about the subject of eunuchs and allowing that sometimes men were eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Pagels: Yes.

Q:He also says very carefully that this was a difficult teaching that not everyone could receive.

Pagels: That’s right. But everybody in the ancient Church who commented on that thought-and had no question-but that he was praising those who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God. It was just assumed that this was a good thing to do. It was considered also to be very hard, but Fathers of the early Church admired people who castrated themselves.

Q: Okay. So how do you feel the castrations of Marshall Applewhite and several of his followers fit with what Christ said? Were they taking an obscure saying too much to heart?

Pagels: Well, that question, what do I think of it-it depends how literally you want to take those sayings. I know of cases in which a convert to Christianity took literally the saying from the Gospel, “If your eye offends you, pluck it out.” I’ve known of someone who tore his eye out because he thought he was obeying the command of Christ. That kind of literal response to what most of us consider a sort of hyperbolic and metaphoric way of speaking is certainly not one I would endorse.

Q: Well, some of the cult members said it gave them a huge sense of relief and freedom from troubling sexual thoughts. Is that the intent of Christ in saying what he did? For instance, we’re never told anywhere that Christ chose castration for himself.

Pagels: No. And therefore I would be surprised if he meant that literally. Anymore than, “If your eye offend you, pluck it out.” It’s a way of speaking about removing obstructions. And there’s no question that if you read parts of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew-as I wrote in the first chapter of my book Adam, Eve And The Serpent-the movement was much more ascetic than most Christians usually admit. The idea that sexuality, sexual desire, family, procreation and all this is an obstacle to devotion to the Kingdom is all over the New Testament.

Q: Right. Christ says to hate your own life, to hate your mother and father-

Pagels: Yes, that’s in Luke. But again, the question is is that meant to be taken literally or not? There have always been people who thought so.

Q: Well, another item that one runs across in coverage of the cult is the idea that their strict regimen for daily life was little different than that of monasteries or convents. The breaking of family ties, the taking of a new name, the abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol, rules of enforced silence and obedience in even the tiniest details of everyday life. All these same elements can be found in orthodox forms of retreat as well.

Pagels: Exactly. I was going to say everything you’ve mentioned-yes.

Q: So is there a thread of sanity or at least some “respectable” elements of asceticism in the practices of Heaven’s Gate?

Pagels: Well, all of the practices you mentioned, exactly, are observed so far as I know in most monastic rule. Now there are different ways to enforce them. And I don’t know the details of how this group and its leaders practiced them. But everything you mentioned is sort of a standard way of life for many monastics around the world. Christian monastics, whether they’re Roman Catholic or Orthodox or whatever.

Q: The whole reason I was prompted to ask that question was that about a week before the incident happened, I watched a movie called “The Nun’s Story” with Audrey Hepburn.

Pagels: Oh, yes.

Q: I was watching it with my mother and I remember commenting to her, “All the things she’s going through there in the convent are what they always used to say about cults.” She said, “I was thinking the same thought.”

Pagels: Well, it’s true actually. There’s a book that might be useful here. It’s Irving Goffmann’s book. He’s a sociologist, and I think the book is called Total Institutions. He was a psychiatrist writing about mental hospitals. But his book talks about the methods that Total Institutions use to break down a previous sense of self and transform the self. The examples that he has in mind primarily are the Army, the monastery, prison, and mental hospitals. And all of those use the same techniques. I mean, there’s certain ways you do that. And you deprive people of the objects and possessions that are personal and so forth.

Q: Well, in spite of the cult’s outreach on the Internet and their sporadic attempts to get publicity, there were a great many times when the group went underground and maintained extreme secrecy about their activities. Isn’t that another element they have in common with the early Christians, especially the Gnostics and the Essenes, a kind of indoctrination into a form of mysticism that they kept hidden from outsiders?

Pagels: Well, perhaps so. Although, again, for the early Christian movement, the purpose of that was mainly safety. Now these people may have thought that, too. I think they gave some indication that they felt they were liable to persecution. I don’t know. But that’s a little different from belonging to a movement that’s illegal.

Q: What about the idea that Applewhite and Nettles were the fulfillment of “The Two Witnesses”? They believed they’d be publicly assassinated and then put on view for three and a half days-all that stuff from Revelations 11. What do you have to say about that? Do you think it’s a typical form of religious delusion?

Pagels: I don’t know how to classify it. I only know what I’ve read in the newspapers. Have you talked to Jim Tabor? At the University of North Carolina? He has worked extensively on David Koresh’s group and for that purpose he has studied Revelations carefully. And in fact was talking with David Koresh about the Book of Revelations. He knows much more about that than I do.

Q: Well, I know there’s a thing called “Jerusalem Syndrome” where tourists who go visit Israel-

Pagels: I’ve heard of that.

Q: --come back suffering under various religious delusions. And the idea of fulfilling “The Two Witnesses” is a fairly common delusion. There are people who go there in pairs anticipating being assassinated or whatever.

Pagels: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.

Q: Well, is there anything you wish to add? Is there some question I haven’t asked or some kind of final statement you’d like to make?

Pagels: Well, I think this episode is very sad. I feel sorrow about this event. And it seems to me that other people who feel that way might consider that that the sort of denial of spiritual and religious impulses, which is common among people who regard themselves as agnostics or “rational, sensible, scientifically-minded” people, can open people up to religious points of view that are quite extreme. How shall we say? I just think that many people express surprise about this sort of event, which I think is quite sad. But in fact it seems to me that when people are unaware that there is such a thing as spiritual need among human beings, they become perhaps more susceptible to anyone who claims to fulfill those kinds of needs. Instead of having the capacity to reflect on it, think critically, make choices between different religious communities-

Q: So you’re saying that the repression of religious ideas-

Pagels: Or the religious impulses, really.

Q: The suppression of religious impulses is what makes cults like this-

Pagels: I would just say may allow for people to be much more susceptible to this kind of movement. I wonder how many of those people chose between that and say, the local Pentecostal Church or Roman Catholic charismatics or a Benedictine Monastery or Buddhist Ashram? There are many ways to explore and fulfill religious needs, I think. But many people are unaware that they even have them. I think that is also unfortunate. I also think there are people who don’t either have or feel those needs in the way I’m describing. But some do, and we ought to keep that in mind.

Q: So, if fulfills a need, in other words

Pagels: I think so. I mean, if you believe Freud, it just fulfills a totally neurotic need. But I don’t agree with Freud. I think that religious needs are deeper than that and more pervasive. Finding some relationship with one’s self and the universe. And this obviously fulfilled that for some of these people. I don’t mean to say that it fulfilled it in a way that you and I would find positive necessarily. I mean, I think it’s unfortunate, but what they did is not so different, as you’ve rightly discerned, from much other religious tradition. And I think that when people are unaware that they have religious needs they become susceptible to leaders who claim to fulfill them and who may in fact not.

THE END