Sources:
"The Vissarian Christ: Inside Russia's End of Times Cults"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
"A Visit with Vissarionites"
http://www.newyorker.com/
"Jesus of Siberia"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?Relation:
The ways in which each of us views the world around us differs from person to person and culture to culture. These are our ‘beliefs,’ and they help govern our lives and direct us down the path that we wish to follow. People follow these paths through different ways, some of us are religious, some not, some of us follow a strong work ethic, and the list goes on. These are all a part of our beliefs, which in turn help to define our behaviors.
Discussion:
Personally, when it comes to beliefs I myself am not strongly religious, but I’m open to hear what others have to say. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I used to participate in meditation at an ashram. At the Ashram you have the spiritual guru, or Baba, and there is a small community of people who have chosen to devote their lives to him, their spiritual practice and hard work. Since I have first hand seen this type of lifestyle, I was very interested when I heard about a man in Siberia, named Vissarion.
Vissarion, declared himself to be Christ in 1991, a year after he had been fired from his job as a traffic cop, and right around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union. “I am Jesus Christ,” said Vissarion, who at the time was a man named Sergei Torop, “It was prophesized that I would return and finish what I started.” Since the fall of the Soviet Union many cults have appeared, “sort of looking for a new belief after a whole system falls apart.” Since 1991, Vissarion’s followers have grown to be nearly 5,000.
Vissarion and his followers live the beautiful countryside of Siberia, in a small city named the Abode of Dawn City. Within the city you are not allowed to drink, smoke, curse, use make-up, shampoo, money, animal food, weapons or cars. All of the money made is put into a community fund, and every month each family is given a certain amount of food, and are encouraged to use their own vegetable gardens. Vissarion teaches that women are to serve their husbands as their husbands serve God, and to raise the birthrate within the Abode of Dawn City, Vissarion encourages men to have more than one wife in the hopes of having more 'true' Vissarionite children raised into the beliefs. The birth rate in the Abode of Dawn City is higher than mosncourat of Russia. There are also strict differences in gender roles; men are to do ‘manly’ activities, such as: build and paint houses, shovel snow, cut wood, etc., while women are to take care of the children and the home.
Vissarion teaches that he knows that the end of the world is coming, yet he does not give a date, but tells his followers that they are in the ‘ark’ and are safe from the madness of the world. People have left their lives behind to follow the teachings of Vissarion. One man says that his teachings “just make sense,” and that Vissarion “embraced and mixed up bits of everything people liked from the Bible, Carlos Castenada, Osho or Krishna’s teachings.” It seems the people of the Abode of Dawn City are happy, but some worry that if Vissarion instructed people to do something unethical that they would very likely follow his commands.
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