Adventists who read the seals of Revelation as opening now.
The Branch Davidians are the second of two schisms from Seventh-day Adventism that settled outside Waco, Texas. Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian-born Adventist, began publishing tracts called The Shepherd's Rod in 1929, was disfellowshipped in 1930, and in 1935 moved with thirty-seven followers to land they named Mount Carmel. They kept the Adventist Sabbath and the vegetarian diet, farmed semi-communally, tithed twice, and waited for a purified church of 144,000 to be gathered before Christ returned. Ben Roden organised the Branch in 1955 after Houteff's death; his wife Lois led from 1978 and taught that the Holy Spirit is female. Vernon Howell, later David Koresh, took control of the property in 1987. The community that lived at Mount Carmel ended on 19 April 1993.
On 28 February 1993 agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to serve a search warrant at Mount Carmel. John C. Danforth, appointed Special Counsel to investigate, concluded that Branch Davidians shot and killed four ATF agents that day and wounded twenty; six Branch Davidians also died. A siege of 51 days followed. On 19 April 1993 the buildings burned. Danforth found that government agents did not start or spread the fire, did not direct gunfire at the complex and did not unlawfully use the armed forces; and that Davidians spread fuel through the main structure and ignited it in at least three places, and shot some of their own people, including at least five children. His report counted at least 80 recovered bodies in all, including the six killed on 28 February, and stated that the exact number could not be given because of the condition of the remains. The figure usually cited for 19 April is 76, among them 25 children.
Why it is filed this way
A movement by category — a schism from a schism, with no denominational structure and authority resting in whoever held the prophetic claim. Scholars of religion, notably James Tabor and Catherine Wessinger, argued during and after 1993 that the group's biblical framework was legible and could have been negotiated with, and that treating it as a hostage situation rather than a theological one made the outcome worse. That argument is not settled.
The community at Mount Carmel ended in 1993. Small Branch Davidian and Davidian congregations continue in Texas, California, Jamaica and elsewhere, some of them at the Mount Carmel site, and they disagree with each other about Koresh. The name has no single body behind it.
The map
The Branch Davidians’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →Where next
the museum exit — every door leads deeper inSources
2 cited texts
- Danforth, Interim Report, 21 July 2000, footnote 1 where it is cited →
- John C. Danforth, Special Counsel, Interim Report to the Deputy Attorney General Concerning the 1993 Confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas, 21 July 2000, section II where it is cited →
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