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New beginning is set for Mount Carmel
More articles on this topic: The group that assumed control almost a year ago of the new Mount Carmel, former home of the David Koresh faction of the Branch Davidian sect, announced this week plans to resume the communal lifestyle of its founders in the compound made infamous 14 years ago.
Charles Joseph Pace, 57, leader of The Branch, The Lord of Righteousness sect — who now goes by the “spiritual title” of Joshua Solomon Branch — will be joined in the venture by father and son developers Ray Feight Sr. and Robert Feight.
The elder Feight, in keeping with a Branch Davidian religious custom, also has a religious nom de plume, that of “Benjamin Israel.”
The trio said they seek to transform the site of “so many lies and deceptions, lawlessness and sin,” according to Pace, into a holistic health center and organic farm as well as a religious community.
A sign of that new beginning will be the ceremony at 11 a.m. today on the property at 1781 Double EE Ranch Road in Elk, in a building called The Branch and Stone Church. The Sabbath service will include a recitation of the “wedding vows” of God to his people, better known to most as the Ten Commandments. The public is invited.
“The old ways (of David Koresh) are finished, and the Lord is doing a new thing,” said the elder Feight, a Branch Davidian since 1971. He also identified himself as a U.S. Navy veteran and a former Baptist missionary to the Caribbean.
Robert Feight, born and reared in Waco, said he will head up the building process on-site. His father is part of the teaching team with Pace.
The trio said they aim to bring back the Victor Houteff model of religious community. Houteff founded what became the Branch Davidians following his expulsion from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1929. He brought his followers to Waco in 1935, and they established their church near Lake Waco, west of town.
The elder Feight said the current Branch believers want to erase the stigma of cult behavior from Waco by disassociating themselves from the guns, drugs, polygamy and “sorcery” of the Koresh band.
Eighty-six people died during the 51-day siege of the compound in 1993. Seventy-six of them, including Koresh and 21 children, died during the April 19 fire, which broke out after the FBI mounted a tank-and-tear-gas assault. The rest died during the initial raid conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Feb. 28.
Almost a year ago, Clive Doyle, a siege survivor and Koresh follower, decided to move off the land, and emptied out the visitor museum on the site. This action left Pace’s band of eight in control of the new Mount Carmel Center, located about 12 miles from Waco, near Elk.
“Clive Doyle can come back. The Branch Davidians can come back — as long as they keep the (biblical) law and denounce that false God before them,” said Pace, referring to Koresh.
A Branch Davidian originally from Canada, Pace said he joined the movement in 1973. In 1984, he was ordained to the ministry by Lois Roden, a co-founder with her husband Benjamin Roden of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church at the new Mount Carmel Center.
When Lois and Benjamin Roden’s son, George Roden, seized the new Mount Carmel property in 1984, Pace moved his faction to Gadsden, Ala. He returned to Waco in 1995, and has lived on the property with his family since then. Until a year ago, they worshipped in a renovated barn.
Pace describes himself as a doctor of naturopathy — a way of treating diseases that largely uses natural means, such as sunshine — registered massage therapist, chartered herbalist and reflexologist. But his main mission, he said, is to restore the good name of Branch Davidians “and teach the truth as it is in Yehoshua (Christ) and his Holy Spirit Bride.”
Pace conducts Sabbath services at 11 a.m. Saturdays and on the feast days of Passover, Pentecost, Atonement and Tabernacles.
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