Says gullible Bahamians being lured

By MINDELL SMALL,Guardian Staff Reporter

Cults and sects are increasing in The Bahamas to include Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the Unity School of Christianity, said Anglican Archbishop Etienne Bowleg. Speaking at the National Cultural Development Commission meeting held at Victoria Gardens Wednesday, he defined a cult as a religious group of people who are unorthodox, having devotion to a person. The person who leads the cult, he continued in his definition, is usually a charismatic, charming individual who is revered.

Archbishop Bowleg warned Bahamians to be aware of 250 religious groups in New Providence, which might appear to be authentically Christian "but are not." He charged that these groups often sought to become popular but noted that religion in the popular mode, consisting mainly of sects and cults, would not get a person into the "pearly gates of heaven."

"Unfortunately the Church is being undermined today in many places by those who purport to teach the Bible but who are really teaching doctrines from their own understanding of what the scripture says," the Archbishop explained. He said the 250 cults here could be categorised in four main groups: Pseudo-Christian cult, oriental cult, new age cult and spirituous cult. He described the four as lacking the three basic characteristics that a Church must have as outlined in the New Testament.

"In the New Testament, the Church must be firstly apostolic, you must be able to trace your line of apostolicity. Secondly, you must adopt a form of New Testament worship - there is only one form, the institution that Jesus enacted in the upper room, the night before his crucifixion," Archbishop Bowleg said. "Thirdly, Church structure must be apostolic – bishop, priest, deacon, brethren. Any thing in this society that parades under the name of Christianity without those three characteristics, are not Church."

Archbishop Bowleg further indicated that in The New Testament there was no Church that had a president, vice president, senior pastor, first lady or Suffragan Bishop. He said this type of interpretation was one of the doctrinal errors that each cult or sect was guilty of in their teachings. He indicated that, within the Pseudo Christian cult, a sub-group, the conversionists, were the most popular as they believed that the world generally was evil and salvation could only be achieved through a profound change in oneself. "For instance by being born again. The purpose of this type of sect is to affect individual consciousness of guilt, bringing about conversion and secure redemption. And this group tends to place most of its emphasis on proselytising members of the established Church," he explained.

Archbishop Bowleg said one of the driving factors of this cult was emotionalism as their leaders rejected formal ritualism, resorting to theatrics while delivering sermons. "The focus of the conversionist sect is really in its worship, the feeling, and how much emotion you can conjure up. So the preacher preaches with that kind of style. And you always know when he is coming to an end. He'll say I'm coming home now, great God from Zion." Archbishop Bowleg claimed that several denominations including Baptists, Methodist and the Disciples of Christ belonged to the conversionist sect, of which new churches are being built all over The Bahamas.

Regarding the spirituous cults, Archbishop Bowleg said the Obeah man, astrologists, tarot card readers, palm readers and those who practise witchcraft were all spirituous. "They're not only in Cat Island and Andros, this group span the whole spectrum or the archipelago. Paul warned the Church in Corinth of these same people, how dangerous they are. And we are seeing the proliferation of such movements in our society."

However, out of the 250 groups Archbishop Bowleg described as cults, he named only one, the Nassau Disciples, whose members, he claimed, were popular on the campus of the College of The Bahamas. He said their goal was to influence the minds of young people, programme them with an isolationist philosophy - seeing others not belonging to the group as the enemy. He added that they had certain prohibitions governing what they eat, wear and where they go. "Ideally, when you join the group, you must defect from your family," and, "love God and do as you please," he said, explaining that members had a commitment to eachother to proselytise the unconverted, which was the rest of society.

When asked what an oriental cult was, Archbishop Bowleg defined it as a group of people of a foreign culture infiltrating Bahamian society. He did not say that they were Asian people alone but charged that Buddhism and all religions, other than Christianity, were cults. However, the estimated 350 million Buddhists worldwide do not see other religions as cults. Compassion, kindness to all life and non-judgement of other religions and beliefs are qualities deeply rooted in the Buddhist tradition.