Papists take alcohol in the house of the Lord!--so might some irate Ulsterman defame his Catholic neighbours. The statement, as it stands, is true--yet few would fail to agree that it was somewhat of a misrepresentation of the Eucharist, for though wine is drunk in church, it is done so on the understanding that it is symbolic of the saving blood of Christ and the whole sacramental rite is backed up by a sophisticated and elaborate theology. If one is ignorant of that theology and of the various values to which it gives rise--or if one fails to view specific rites within the general framework of their supporting theology--those rites may well appear not only absurd but even sacrilegious. When viewed from within the system as a whole such rites are, on the contrary, quite meaningful, even mandatory, for the believer; and to criticise them on the basis of some other belief system or set of values, whether religious or otherwise, would be little short of bad manners. And yet much of the criticism levelled against the new religious movements is precisely of this order, a specific activity of a particular group being singled out and then, divorced from its overall context, used as a vehicle for derisive misrepresentation.
That we tolerate this, perhaps on occasion even indulge in it, may in part be due to the fact that there is, in most of our minds, a largely unconscious and quite irrational prejudice to the effect that (a) in contrast to the established religious traditions the new religious movements parade what is simply a mishmash of bits and pieces culled, without regard to context, from already existing traditions; and that (b) like artistic and musical geniuses, religious leaders have to be dead before authenticity can be accorded to their teachings. I do not, on this occasion, propose to elaborate on the first of these two assumptions, other than to say that close--and above all honest---examination of the formative phase of almost all the major traditions of the world would probably reveal a similar process of assimilation of snippets drawn from preexisting and contemporary faiths, the Pauline interpretation of the Christ event being a notable example, as is the way in which Mohammed fused disparate elements accumulated here and there on the caravan routes of West Asia 2. As to the second, I must admit that I c~nnot altogether understand why, on the one hand, it is perfectly acceptable--for some even commendable -that a man should regulate his whole life on the belief that God spoke to Moses