Progress
This chapter argues that MOVE’s public confrontations in the early 1970s should be understood within their religious worldview. John Africa taught MOVE people to confront progress, the idea that we can make the world a better place, that technology can relieve our suffering, that we control our own destinies. MOVE people used profane language, situationally inappropriate attire, and disrespectful behavior to draw attention to the sacredness with which American society imbued organized religion, political advancement, and formal education. They refused to genuflect before the power of the state to expose, they believed, the false trust Americans had placed in government. John Africa taught that by merely forcing Americans to confront the hypocrisy inherent in their false religion of progress, the System would crumble. But to do that, MOVE people had to profane what American society held sacred, and to venerate the sacredness of Life that American society had forgotten.