Staying after Class: Memory and Materiality beyond Heaven’s Gate Report on the New Religious Movements Group Methods Meeting, 21 November 2014

In March 1997, Marshall Herff Applewhite (Do) and thirty-eight of his students made headlines when they exited their human bodies in a home in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County, California. While the class (as they called their group) is gone, the legacy of Heaven’s Gate remains on the Heaven’s Ga...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nova religio 2017-05, Vol.20 (4), p.80-93
Main Author: Goodwin, Megan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applewhite, Marshall Herff
Field Notes
Human body
Internet
Memory
Religion
Religious cults
Religious movements
Suicides & suicide attempts
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Summary:In March 1997, Marshall Herff Applewhite (Do) and thirty-eight of his students made headlines when they exited their human bodies in a home in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County, California. While the class (as they called their group) is gone, the legacy of Heaven’s Gate remains on the Heaven’s Gate website preserved by Mark and Sarah King. These two former members shared their experiences in the class at the New Religious Movements Group Methods Meeting on 21 November 2014 in San Diego at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting. Their presentation and participation in a question-and-answer session provided insight into the complex, ambiguous legacy of Heaven’s Gate: a group that strove for existence beyond the materiality of human bodies now survives on Earth in material form, disseminated by human persons dedicated to preserving the teachings of Do, and his mentor Ti (Bonnie Lu Nettles) in a dynamic, ephemeral space—the internet.
ISSN:1092-6690
1541-8480
DOI:10.1525/nr.2017.20.4.80