Rican Magnetism

Last week, a good article from David Van Biema in Time about upstart messiah Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda. Yup, the self-proclaimed "antichrist" from Puerto Rico who preaches a kind of apocaplyptic prosperity gospel (figure that one out), and whose followers sport "666" tattoos on their hands.

I blogged a few weeks ago about methodologies for separating the crackpots from the truly saved. An interesting stretch about this follows:

Thomas Tweed, Chair of the religion department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert in Miami's religious history, doubts, as do several other scholars, that de Jesus' renown will extend much beyond the Latino community unless he preaches more regularly in English or finds someone to do it for him. But then again, these days a phenomenon does not need to break out of the Latino world to be a force in the U.S. "The question people ask about new religions," he says, is 'is this just a silly group or is this a group we should be scared of?'"

He refuses to regard De Jesus as silly: Tweed is impressed with its use of Spanish language media and even YouTube. But at the same time, he thinks it is nothing to be afraid of. Technically, Tweed notes, Crecienda en Gracia is a cult, a small group in some tension with the world at large and organized around a single magnetic leader. But it is not a cult as understood in the popular sense: Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians, who in deep self-imposed isolation, honed a violent apocalyptic element that eventually led to murder or suicide. Those at last weekend's rally and throughout De Jesus' following, he says, do appear to believe we may be approaching the Millennium (or else why indulge in a Second Coming?), but they lack a fire-and-brimstone End Times scenario and their leader shows no appetite for isolation — or self-sacrifice, for that matter.

For Tweed, a cult is "a small group in some tension with the world at large and organized around a single magnetic leader," a definition broad enough to embrace Lubavich Hasids, early Christians and the Green Party. Or does Nader fall down on the "magnetic" front? But he seems to agree that by his definition, "cult" isn't really a "cult", not in the scary crackpot sense, anyway. Phew.

I like the mention of YouTube, and the place it has for disseminating the teachings of "marginal" figures - a personal fascination of mine. Just enter the word "sermon" for over 6,000 hits - from Palestinian to Presbyterian. You can catch some of the Latin Menace here (I can't embed - sorry):

CLIP ONE

CLIP TWO

Nothing in English yet, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for online transcripts. In the meanwhile, here is the (patchy) English portal page for Jesus Dos on the Web.