Word: waco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though Howell and several followers were charged with attempted murder, a jury acquitted the followers, and the charges against Howell were later dropped. But the trial revealed that the Waco sect was already well armed, with at least a dozen firearms, including shotguns and .22-cal. rifles. Roden, who was judged unable to stand trial in an unrelated slaying, is now in a state mental hospital...
With Roden out of the way, Howell became undisputed leader of the Branch Davidians in Waco, completing their transition from congregation to cult. He and a few select followers began recruiting new members on trips around the U.S., Britain and Australia. In 1990 he changed his name legally to Koresh, Hebrew for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Israel after their captivity in Babylon. His apocalyptic theology converged with secular survivalism, with its programs for hunkering down amid stockpiles of food and ammo to endure a nuclear holocaust or social collapse...
Koresh began to preach that his followers should ready themselves for a final battle with unbelievers. The Waco settlement, once a collection of old cottages scattered around 78 acres of scrub pasture and woods, was consolidated into a compact fort the size of a city block. Having equipped it with an underground bunker and an armory -- adjacent to the chapel -- cult members discussed renaming the place Ranch Apocalypse. Federal agents began tracking frequent shipments of firepower that they say amounted to 8,000 lbs. of ammunition and enough parts to assemble hundreds of automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Some time...
Religion is sometimes a fortress for the beleaguered tribe in the new world disorder. Every cult is a kind of nation. The citadels bristle with intolerant clarities of doctrine -- and with high-caliber weapons. Outside Waco, Texas, a cult called the Branch Davidians, apocalyptic and armed to the teeth, played out a siege drama that owed something to Jim Jones' last hours, when he and more than 900 members of his People's Temple cult died in Guyana, and to some older religious Americana, like Elmer Gantry, darkened with touches of the Road Warrior. The tragedy in Texas was self...
...Waco represented a micro-fanaticism. The week's other case suggested larger issues, a macro-drama. It may have involved religion in more political form. The arrest of a 25-year-old Muslim named Mohammed Salameh raised the specter that the bombing of Manhattan's World Trade Center was perhaps a terrorist act of intense cultural symbolism, framed in religious context. And it brought serious terrorism across the American threshold for the first time...