Sacred and Profane: Violence, Vision and the Waco Disaster

More than 2 decades after the stand off at the Waco Branch Davidian compound which led to what appears to have been the avoidable deaths of 74 including 25 children, it remains a subject that continues to resurface as secular mainstream American society continues to attempt to come to terms - or not- with outlying religious groups. In this week's New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell looks at the (mis-) understandings on the part of US federal ATF and FBI officials that contributed to the failure of negotiations to end the standoff and resulted in further violence and death.

Mr Gladwell's article here 

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/31/140331fa_fact_gladwell

More Details from the James Tabor blog on religion and religious freedom here http://jamestabor.com/

--Anthony Napoli