But according to this Smithsonian article, the John Frum cult is still active and is gradually turning into a real religion (Leonard's heuristic for cults turning into real religions: the eschatalogical event predicted by the cult keeps not happening, so it gets moved off into the indefinite future or the realm of metaphor). And I can't find the other article, so I guess the Smithsonian one wins. Probably there's just a few people doing cargo cult demonstrations on the side. It doesn't seem like they could support the whole tourist economy.
Wed Feb 15 2006 22:33 Cargo Cults:
I read an article once that the Melenasian cargo cults had died out but -- this was the interesting part -- recently resurrected as a tourism thing. So that people were putting on reenactments of cargo cult rituals because doing so made people come to their islands and spend money.
Wed Feb 15 2006 23:36:
I thought I had me a breakthrough but apparently the only true breakthrough is spray-on solar-power cells.
