DeConick A.D

340
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
handbooks that the leaders used to induct and teach their congregations.
They used litanies and festivals to supplement their initiatory mysteries, in
which the spirit was conducted into the transcendent realms.
Mani built his institution very intentionally and systematically. He established
a strict leadership hierarchy, composed the religion’s scriptures,
and organized worship around prayers, hymns, litanies, and festivals.
Miriam’s religion was likewise formed institutionally, so that by the
third century a Gnostic priesthood and scribal class had emerged, scriptures
had accumulated, weekly water rituals were performed, death masses
took place, and unique festivals marked their calendar. It was this institutionalization
that gave these new religious movements longevity.
The survival of the Mandaeans was helped, additionally, because their
homeland remained within Muslim territories, where the Mandaeans were
tolerated as a People of the Book. The effect of this tolerance on the part
of Muslim authorities cannot be overemphasized. Sadly, the situation has
changed in the modern world. In the aftermath of the Gulf War and the
armed conflict in Iraq, the Mandaeans are no longer safe. Many Mandaeans
have fled to other countries, including the United States, seeking
refuge and political asylum. It remains to be seen how Mandaeism will
survive and adapt within this diaspora.
Unlike Mandaeism, the ancient Gnostic religions, whose homelands
were within Christian territories, did not survive the centuries as religions
because their message was too transgressive for Christians to tolerate.
Within the Christian West, the Gnostic insistence on the centrality of the
individual’s ability to make choices based on his or her own experiences,
rather than submitting to the will of God and his kings, was too alarming
to accept. So, like the actions of the people in Pleasantville , stones were
taken up and thrown through windows, books were piled up and burned,
and the Catholic church enacted laws to stop the heresy from spreading.
Yet, although the churches and the books of the Gnostics could be destroyed
and laws could be established against them, the idea of individual
freedom, of the self as God, could not be stamped out. It lived on, and
continues to turn the world colors.