“O sinners!” Review: What is the line between religion and worship?

What is the line between a religion and a cult? This implies money, without a doubt. And control who you can see and what you can say. And a narcissistic leader too. But the line can always become vague quickly; Traditional churches have had their own dark history of abuse and exploitation. One of the most captivating elements of Nicole Cuffy's second novel, “O sinners!”

The protagonist of the novel, Faruq, is almost tailor -made to dwell on these questions. A journalist accomplished for a New York style publication with a specialty in culture and race, he is a touched Muslim, without attachment and cries his late father but soldier. To avoid professional exhaustion but to continue working, he continues a more relaxing mission, heading for a complex of 16,000 acres in the northern California sequoias which shelter “without name”, a community led by Odo, “a veterinarian of the Vietnam War with a penchant to find catchy sentences which resembled the siette”.

And not only catchy sentences: the “without name” attracts thousands of followers on Instagram with honeyed images and all the hashtags of appropriate well-being. Faruq is naturally skeptical about all of this, in particular the way in which ODO seems to be offered to extract very rich and dedicated disciples. One of them says they simply reject the world and its “distortions”, but for a stranger, it looks very much like captivity.

“O Finspools!” alternative through three narrative tracks. The first focuses on the trip from Faruq to the redwood, because its initial plan to spend six weeks after ODO turns into a month of immersion in the community. The second is a scenario of a documentary on a conflict between “without names” and a Christian conservative city of Texas which has turned into a legal conflagration on sexual abuse and defamation. The third is the saga of an American army company in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, while a group of men crossed the jungle, lands in firefighters and uses time to stop for Josh and fight for God, the country, the race and more.

One of these soldiers becomes ODO; Cuffy's neat tip is that we cannot determine which before the end of the novel. It could be a preacher, who has a religious curvature; Or more, the new gross but hyperobervante recruit; or the silk of the war, which already has a purple heart; or the aggressive crazy horse. Metaphorically, suggests Cuffy, a cult leader man has some of these characteristics. But the only thing all these men shared was a trauma, and an ability to remove it. Whatever the man that Odo is, he is a man capable of covering almost anything with layers of sophistics, becoming “as smooth and serene as the sphinx”.

The role of Faruq as hero of history is to kill the past and the motivations of Odo, even if he counts with his own feelings on his Muslim education and the way in which he still shapes his life. “He formed a theory on the distinction – or his absence – between a cult and a religion in his nascence,” writes Cuffy. And Cuffy is too, of course. The “unnamed” does not have a sexually raptor leader like NXIVM or an operating financial program such as Scientology or an apocalyptic philosophy like Heaven's Gate. Faruq does not find a single former disappointed member. Odo is a more subtle figure. Although its “18 statements” are clearly Judeo-Christian-Islamic Goulash borrowed from the ten commandments and beyond, they seem largely mild.

However, nestled among the encouragement to be “hiper to unity” and “train the other view” is the dark glow of the place where the cult religion is blurring. The ODO command “does not despair of death” reads on the surface as compassion – acceptance of loss is something that everyone, including farq, must manage. But on the complex, it also encourages a certain display, a desire not to intervene when the worst occurs. Faruq sees him when he is forced to help births in the stables of the compound, but he also testifies to metastasize around humans. A religion respects death and aspires to guide the subscribers through the sorrow it causes; A cult considers death as a simple proof that life is cheap.

Cuffy is gifted to show how this distinction hably Odo and Faruq Baffles, and the parts of the scenario give the novel a concrete – a specific drama – without which it could turn into a book Wooll, Talk and Less Dramatic. (A large part of the Faruq stay is consumed by conversations with ODO where he beats direct questions, giving Faruq the revealing and condescending nickname of “Scholar”.) Always, the treatment by Cuffy of “Nomless” is not entirely convincing. Which makes ODO so fascinating that people who would abandon millions of people are not clear; It is difficult to see how Odo, who spends his days delivering Benisons and pose for Insta, manages what is indeed a city; And the reader wonders what is happening with the “deep”, a militia patrolling on the ground.

But “o Finspools!” is as much a spiritual thinking exercise as a realistic novel. The “unnamed” is clearly at the dawn of something – ready to break towards a traditional religion or to give in to its darkest instincts. In this regard, suggests Cuffy, we, humans, do not have to be skeptical just for a faith offer but on what we do not want to face to be a servant. Odo can offer a “network of fairy tales and other religions”, but you don't need a cult leader to sell it. And any type of person can fall there.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest”.