Review: The Waco Branch Davidian Tragedy: What Have We Learned or Not Learned, Produced by J. Phillip Arnold and Directed by Minji Lee

Abstract

The events that took place at the headquarters of the Christian Adventist sectarian group known as the Branch Davidians from 28 February through 19 April 1993 continue to claim public attention even as their thirtieth anniversary approaches. The events now summarized as “Waco” effectively constitute a national Rorschach test, with different groups having very different interests in what happened.From the beginning, for example, vocal partisans of the Second Amendment have decried the initial raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) as an unwarranted attempt by an overreaching government to confiscate private citizens’ legally owned weapons. Timothy McVeigh, the most notorious domestic terrorist in U.S. history, presented his bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 as, in part, a reaction against what the government did to the Branch Davidians. Also, scholars of new and alternative religions, in particular, have consistently critiqued the ways in which the pernicious cult stereotype of a deranged leader hoodwinking gullible followers and leading them into harm was wielded against a group with a history that reached back into the mid-nineteenth century. Nonetheless, that stereotype dominated much of the press coverage and even influenced the ways in which both the BATF and the Federal Bureau of Investigation approached the Branch Davidians both before and during the fifty-one-day siege.It should not be surprising, then, that there has been a steady output of analyses of what happened at the Mount Carmel Center outside of Waco, ranging from TV movies and documentaries, through popular books and self-produced videos, to scholarly anthologies and monographs. The sheer volume of material and the diversity of viewpoints represented challenges the observer’s ability to sort through the primary and secondary material and come to a reasoned understanding of the Waco incident.Against that background, the Reunion Institute (http://reunioninstitute.net/) in Houston, Texas gathered four scholars for a sustained discussion of what is now known and what remains to be learned about the Branch Davidians and the siege at the Mount Carmel Center. All of them have devoted substantial effort to studying the group and analyzing its eventual confrontation with government forces. J. Phillip Arnold and James Tabor attempted to help de-escalate the situation as it was happening and caught the attention of David Koresh in the process. Catherine Wessinger has written extensively about Waco and helped produce three autobiographies of people associated with the community. Stuart Wright edited one of the first scholarly anthologies about the Branch Davidians and has written about the trials that followed the terrible conclusion of the siege on 19 April 1993.The film eschews dramatic effects and hyperbolic claims, though it does make occasional effective use of images and printed texts. For the most part, however, the participants are shown gathered around a small table, with Arnold acting as both the moderator and a participant. In the course of nearly three hours, the participants cover the history of the Branch Davidians, including their roots in Seventh-day Adventism and, in more detail, the events of the siege and its aftermath. Scholars who have worked extensively on the group may not find much new in the film, but they will see fresh instances of scholars coming to grips with the limits of their knowledge and admitting that some questions, such as who is responsible for the fire on April 19, must remain unresolved for now.The film will be most useful to scholars who are only somewhat familiar with Waco and particularly to students who may be encountering the material for the first time. The exposition is generally quite clear and easy to follow and the three-hour film is also broken up into nine segments of a half hour or less, which facilitates its easy use in the classroom.Overall, The Waco Branch Davidian Tragedy is an accessible and helpful summary of the state of research on Waco. It provides a sober counterweight to some of the more outlandish claims that have been made, and continue to be made, about what happened at the Mount Carmel Center.