5 Science and the Foundation of Heaven’s Gate

Abstract

This chapter examines the period during which Heaven's Gate founders Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles led the group together, from the mid-1970s until Nettles' death in 1985. It first considers Nettles and Applewhite's cultural and religious backgrounds. Though both had been raised as Christians, Nettles had left her Baptist heritage behind and become involved in the New Age movement, whereas Applewhite had followed his father's vocation and trained at a Presbyterian seminary before dropping out to study music. The chapter focuses on their transformation into “the Two,” as they came to call themselves, and their successful spread of a religious movement that questioned the very category of religion. Fundamentally, the Two attempted to absorb the methodological naturalism and materialism of science, and recast religion in that ethos, an act that they accomplished through a rereading of both Christian and New Age concepts. The chapter concludes with a close examination of a meditative prayer that the Two and their followers used during the early 1980s. The prayer combined a fiercely naturalistic approach using the language of chemistry and biology with the overtly religious form of prayer.