If you're, uh, lucky enough to have a program here, you'll see a name on there, James Lewis. Uh, I don't have one, but it comes on there somewhere, and I am here because James Lewis is not here. He's had, an illness problem, and wasn't able to make it. Which is, really unfortunate for all of you, because it would be better if he were, here than me. He's eloquent, and he knows the territory very thoroughly. Ah, two or three years ago, back before the siege, he believed that, ahhh, alternative religions, slightly unconventional religions, weren't getting a fair shake in this country. He started an organization called the Association of World Academics for Religious Education, with the vecific goal, specific goal of trying to communicate, honest information, to the general public, in place of the great misinformation that seems to be so common. And a group like the Branch Davidians would, were very much within the kind of thing he was working on. Um, so he would, it would have been wonderful if he personally could have been here, because he has a tremendous wealth of information, and I'm sure would, uh, be able to tell you, far more of interest than I am.

I'm gonna confine myself to, uh, a brief personal story, that I think illustrates what in some ways is one of the great tragedies to come out of this, the larger tragedy I would call it. Eighty-six deaths is tragic enough- ah, the whole siege and standoff and destruction, we all know hoo, how, horridly tragic all of that is. But it seems to me as bad as that is there's an even larger tragedy, that, that is ongoing, and therefore, at the moment even worse. And that is that an awful lot of innocent people are suffering, because the American public, has become fired up with the notion that there are, dangerous people out there that somehow have to be stopped. Every time there's a situation that comes into the public eye in a major way, lots of innocent people suffer. Um, completely unjustly.

Well I got interested in that, and tried, ah, last, late last summer, to, ah, check something in that vein out. As many of you know, the Branch Davidians are only, one part of a larger Davidian movement that goes back to the 1930s, and there were, at various points in their history, some divisions into different subgroups of Davidians. And actually, one of them is quite a lot larger than any, ah, group ever here in Waco was. They are headquartered in the Ozarks in southwest Missouri, not too far from where I live, a little town of Exeter, Missouri. I'd actually known of their existence for quite a few years, but didn't think alot about it, had never gone down to, check them out, even though they had a large, communal settlement down there, and some thousands of members altogether. But after the siege of Waco, ah, you can imagine, as someone who, teaches in the field of religious studies, I became quite interested in this question, what is the spinoff for other Davidians? Ah, what is going to happen to other people who carry this name which now, carries such dangerous, terrible connotations? So I decided I would like to go visit them as a relatively sympathetic observer, and just, see for myself, so I could tell people that there's a larger story, of what are these people doing. So I wrote a polite, lengthy letter, to the, president of the, Bashan Hill, Exeter, Missouri, Davidian Adventist Fellowship, it has a long name- and, uh, explained what my purpose was, and I, I thought was quite, uh- I, I thought all- everything would, would do them good; I thought that everybo- I thought that my visit would be helpful to them; that by being there I would, would somehow, help them show, that they are not, because we have no reason to believe there's anything whatsoever, out of line about what they're doing, and I, ah, expressed that to him.

After a couple of weeks I got a letter back from the fellow who's president down there. Ah, he, he sent me my own letter back actually, and across the bottom he wrote in one line- he said, "We're very busy, uh, no time for visitors." Uh, well, I thought that's interesting. A group of thousands of members is so busy they don't have any time for visitors. And, uh- I, uh, am not one to be put down easily and quietly, I guess, and I thought, well, any group that big, you know, just, just better count on the fact there're gonna be visitors. So I'm going down that way anyway in a few weeks, I'll, I'll just go, take a look for myself, I'll just drive up and see what they say. So I went down there and found the little crossroads town of Exeter, and went into the grocery store- and, uh, after some inquiry, found someone who knew where they were, and got these elaborate directions- you go out, this way, and there's this corner, it's not marked, but you take a dirt road down to the south, and ya, better clock it pretty careful, it's about 1.8 miles, and make sure you take the right turn there, and it's one of those, uh, kind of, classic Ozark windy roads through the hills scenes, and anyway, I went down there, and I spent over an hour looking for it. Uh, the guy had been- in the grocery store had warned me, he said, "They took their sign down not too long ago." Well, I spent an hour driving around looking for this other group, and I couldn't find 'em. And I looked everywhere that could possibly be within the range, I thought. They had actually- the, the conclusion is, of course, that they had made themselves deliberately very scarce. They were getting so much hostility, just from having that name Davidian, that they had basically done their most perfect job of dropping out of view altogether. And my only message here today, is that I think that's tragic. There is a larger spinoff, innocent people are hurting all over the place, ah, religious tolerance, religous freedom, things that a lot of us think are absolutely crucial to American life, are taking it on the chin. I'm sad to report that. [applause]