Criminal
12-07-2005, 07:11 AM
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/119/nakedill.gif
Canadian Doukhobors being arrested
http://www.bodyfreedom.org/media_nma/duk-smv.jpg
Nude protest. Public nudity was a common form of protest for Dukhobors
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/119_naked.shtml
One hundred years ago this January, 8,000 Doukhobors from the port of Batum on the Black Sea settled in Canada in pursuit of a higher level of spiritual life. As they disembarked from the immigrant ship SS Lake Huron, each one hoped this was the Promised Land.
But the transition for this pre-industrial, rural, Russian Christian sect was not easy; their concepts of pacifism, animal rights and anti-materialism split the Doukhobor community into three factions. The most active of these was the 'Sons of Freedom', whose millennial zeal manifested itself in now-legendary nude marches and acts of violence that ran counter to their fundamental tenet of non-violence.
The need for strong spiritual leadership existed from the sect's earliest days in Russia. Leaders who had visions or who received 'visitations' emerged according to a hereditary principal. The most influential of all was Peter Vasilievitch Verigin – known as Peter the Lordly – in the late nineteenth century.
Verigin's influence held them together when, in an attempt to force to submit to Czarist state control, the Doukhobors were exiled to Siberia. It was under his direction that Doukhobors destroyed their arms in huge bonfires in a mass refusal to serve in the military in 1895.
Corresponding with Leo Tolstoy – whose admiration of Doukhobor ideals prompted him to become their greatest champion – Verigin saw the need to find a land where his people could live uncontaminated by a violent, selfish and materialistic society.
Verigin wrote that an earthly paradise was only possible by a return to "primitive conditions ... and a spiritual stature lost by Adam and Eve." Labour would be only in Christ's service, currency returned to the Caesars that devised them, animals freed from enslavement. Metal objects were to be rejected because mining "tortured" people to obtain ore and food could be raised in abundance by solar heat. A new exodus was required to a land closer to the sun and closer to God.
Although some of Verigin's phraseology sounds like half-baked religious philosophy, he was simply rejecting what he saw as the greedy exploitation of man and nature. He longed for a world without violence, where food was plentiful and neither man nor beast would suffer. " Plenty of corn exists, if only avarice were diminished," he wrote. "The earth freed from the violence of human hands would abound with all that is ordained for it." Ironically, a century on, this view is gaining more and more currency in western cultures.
A large segment – known as the 'Independents' – had already turned away from the communal Doukhobor lifestyle to run their farms on an individual basis. The first serious fracturing of the community was inspired, unwittingly, but the writings of Peter the Lordly himself, which were never intended to be read by his largely illiterate followers.
Embracing Verigin's slogan "the sons of God shall never be the slaves of corruption", a religious fervour took hold of another group. Releasing their livestock into the woods, the zealots hitched themselves to wagons when taking their produce to market. When hundreds marched barefoot and singing to preach to the unconverted, they burned leather and fur in ritual bonfires and discarded metal tools.
See link for more
Canadian Doukhobors being arrested
http://www.bodyfreedom.org/media_nma/duk-smv.jpg
Nude protest. Public nudity was a common form of protest for Dukhobors
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/119_naked.shtml
One hundred years ago this January, 8,000 Doukhobors from the port of Batum on the Black Sea settled in Canada in pursuit of a higher level of spiritual life. As they disembarked from the immigrant ship SS Lake Huron, each one hoped this was the Promised Land.
But the transition for this pre-industrial, rural, Russian Christian sect was not easy; their concepts of pacifism, animal rights and anti-materialism split the Doukhobor community into three factions. The most active of these was the 'Sons of Freedom', whose millennial zeal manifested itself in now-legendary nude marches and acts of violence that ran counter to their fundamental tenet of non-violence.
The need for strong spiritual leadership existed from the sect's earliest days in Russia. Leaders who had visions or who received 'visitations' emerged according to a hereditary principal. The most influential of all was Peter Vasilievitch Verigin – known as Peter the Lordly – in the late nineteenth century.
Verigin's influence held them together when, in an attempt to force to submit to Czarist state control, the Doukhobors were exiled to Siberia. It was under his direction that Doukhobors destroyed their arms in huge bonfires in a mass refusal to serve in the military in 1895.
Corresponding with Leo Tolstoy – whose admiration of Doukhobor ideals prompted him to become their greatest champion – Verigin saw the need to find a land where his people could live uncontaminated by a violent, selfish and materialistic society.
Verigin wrote that an earthly paradise was only possible by a return to "primitive conditions ... and a spiritual stature lost by Adam and Eve." Labour would be only in Christ's service, currency returned to the Caesars that devised them, animals freed from enslavement. Metal objects were to be rejected because mining "tortured" people to obtain ore and food could be raised in abundance by solar heat. A new exodus was required to a land closer to the sun and closer to God.
Although some of Verigin's phraseology sounds like half-baked religious philosophy, he was simply rejecting what he saw as the greedy exploitation of man and nature. He longed for a world without violence, where food was plentiful and neither man nor beast would suffer. " Plenty of corn exists, if only avarice were diminished," he wrote. "The earth freed from the violence of human hands would abound with all that is ordained for it." Ironically, a century on, this view is gaining more and more currency in western cultures.
A large segment – known as the 'Independents' – had already turned away from the communal Doukhobor lifestyle to run their farms on an individual basis. The first serious fracturing of the community was inspired, unwittingly, but the writings of Peter the Lordly himself, which were never intended to be read by his largely illiterate followers.
Embracing Verigin's slogan "the sons of God shall never be the slaves of corruption", a religious fervour took hold of another group. Releasing their livestock into the woods, the zealots hitched themselves to wagons when taking their produce to market. When hundreds marched barefoot and singing to preach to the unconverted, they burned leather and fur in ritual bonfires and discarded metal tools.
See link for more