Christianity still burns people alive.
Excerpts from an article in Tablet:
Why did a 25-year-old U.S. airman named Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington?
There really is no way to understand Bushnell or his motivation without first understanding the community in which he was raised. His struggle, was, ultimately, a deeply personal one.
The troubling details of Bushnell’s childhood in an isolated community known as the Community of Jesus suggest that setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy may have been Bushnell’s response to his own searing victimization at the hands of people who had nothing to do with Israelis or Gazans, and who have been characterized as espousing a particular brand of antisemitism.
Like many born-again communities, the Community of Jesus sees itself as a staunch supporter of Israel. This support, however, is based only on a literal reading of the Book of Revelation. For certain evangelicals, Israel is merely a means to an eschatological end, a pawn in the biblical endgame that ends with the establishment of Christ’s kingdom. For Bushnell, Israel would have represented yet another piece of the oppressive theology from his childhood.
The community practices a hodgepodge of Catholic, Episcopalian, and charismatic beliefs combined with their own homespun fire and brimstone theology. [Practicing punishment] and shaming to a pathological degree, it is especially hard on its children, who are frequently beaten, screamed at, shamed and made to perform endless menial labor. Bushnell, who was the child of two core members, was raised under this regimen.
Kept to a strict schedule that includes mandatory early morning and evening worship, children are also forced to perform menial labor alongside adults that includes tending to the cult’s extensive vegetable gardens, grounds, and buildings. Children who do not comply are beaten, collectively shamed, isolated, sleep deprived, and in some cases, deprived of food. The community believes these austere measures are not punishments but actual blessings, ways of steeling the child to be a more perfect disciple of Christ. Like the Puritans before them, community members see themselves as a chosen elect who must undertake the arduous task of living a perfect Christian life.
The allegedly abusive practices of the Community of Jesus have come to light largely because of the tireless work of Ewan Whyte, a survivor of the cult. Like Bushnell, Whyte was raised by the community as a child.
Children were forcibly separated from parents, usually at the age of 8, but often as young as 6. The sisters believed that a child’s love for their parents is “idolatrous” because it supplants their love of God. They were taken from their parents, and placed in separate houses.
Whyte vividly remembers his first year as a child member of the community, where he was placed with around 15 other children under the constant supervision of a dour cult couple he was forced to call “Uncle and Aunt". During his first few weeks at the house, a fellow child was found “guilty” of scribbling on a log of firewood with a pencil. He was beaten until he bled.
Whyte believes his growth was stunted due to the substandard food in his first house. Unable to finish his dinner one evening, it was set aside and returned to him the next day. After a week of this, he was finally forced to eat it anyway. When he vomited, he was made to eat his vomit while the house uncle screamed an inch from his face.
He was beaten countless times, both publicly and privately. He was physically thrown against walls and down a flight of stairs. Once he was locked in a walk-in freezer for two hours and made to sleep in soiled bedding for a week. He is more reticent about the incidents of sexual abuse, which he said were numerous.
A lion’s share of his time [now] consists of securing personal statements, affidavits, and signed court documents that corroborate the severity of the cult’s practices, which they continuously and categorically deny.
Read it all here: