Cargo cult's feud with Prophet Fred's sect splits Pacific island

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/08/wcult08.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/05/08/ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=44782

It has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster - a smouldering volcano, a jungle battle, a bizarre cult and a self-styled messiah called Prophet Fred. But the feud which has broken out between two villages in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu is all too real for the dozens of men in hospital with axe and spear wounds.

It has split one of the world's last surviving cargo cults, one of the strangest legacies of the European colonisation of the South Seas. The John Frum movement first emerged in Vanuatu in the 1930s when the island was jointly ruled by Britain and France as the New Hebrides.

Two weeks ago, the normally peace-loving movement was shattered when a simmering feud with a rival village erupted into violence in this all but forgotten part of the Pacific.

In a bloody encounter with traditional weapons John Frum believers clashed with the members of a breakaway Christian sect led by a soft-spoken villager, Fred Nasse, who calls himself Prophet Fred. Half a dozen houses and a thatched Presbyterian church were burnt down during a battle which involved 400 islanders.

[daleo]

1. Too bad these leaders aren't American

They could run in the next Republican primaries, and have a good shot at becoming president - good God-fearing leaders.

[Eye and Monkey]

2. Perhaps it's a Military-Industrial-Complex Vs. The Fundies, Pilot Phase I