A young Cape Codder self-immolates, becoming a worldwide symbol

Aaron Bushnell’s roots are in the Community of Jesus in Orleans; should that connection be made?

A man takes the most shocking, dramatic stand imaginable: He sets himself on fire and burns to death in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC to protest “genocide” in Gaza.

He becomes worldwide news.

This man, Aaron Bushnell, 25 when he died, came from Cape Cod.

Some – including many in the Middle East – see him as an heroic martyr, much as people saw Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who committed the same act to protest the Vietnam War 35 years before Aaron Bushnell was born. Bushnell’s name has been spoken across continents, images of him placed on posters in public places.

Others make different assumptions; he must have been very disturbed. Suicide for whatever articulated reason is mental illness.

Some see a higher morality, others a lost soul. Some see a champion, others a victim. Some sit in judgement, others suspend judgement.

Few know anything about his Cape Cod roots.

Aaron Bushnell grew up in the Community of Jesus, a religious enclave started and based in Orleans. Since the Community came into being in the early 1970s it has attracted hundreds of devotees, many of whom live in handsome homes and use communal buildings that dominate the area around Rock Harbor on Cape Cod Bay.

There is a church looming over the sprawling compound, a modern version of a cathedral from the Middle Ages, vaulted ceilings and resonant acoustics, religious art. There are spinoff, for-profit businesses, a printing company, a landscaper. To this day scores of people live on the grounds, though exact numbers are hard to say.

These are manifestations of wealth and well-being, but for decades other signals have emerged from the Community as well:

There have been repeated accusations that the group operated or operates like a controlling “cult,” children sequestered from their families, harsh discipline exacted, financial control exerted, a cloistered, rigid secrecy holding Community members apart from neighbors.

Over the course of 50 years, from disturbing tales shared by family members who “defected” to shocking court testimony and judgement about abuse at a related college in Canada (though the Community itself was not a defendant), controversy keeps re-surfacing — then subsiding.

Life goes on. The Community of Jesus remains.

This is where Aaron Bushnell came from. He lived with his parents at the compound, attended Orleans Elementary School for four years (2003-2007) and then Nauset High in 2013 and 2014 according to a Nauset school committee member; it seems he was home-schooled at other times, common at the Community.

He wrote on LinkedIn that he worked full-time at Paraclete Press, one of the businesses created and run by Community members, as a teenager from 2015 to 2017. He became an active duty member of the United States Air Force, though he’d made it clear he was disgusted with military service and wanted out.

Aaron’s Community context was clear to everyone who knew him or his family. Yet in the aftermath of his suicide, the Community of Jesus’ spokesperson Jeffrey Robbins told The Cape Cod Times that Bushnell had never been a Community member, an assertion Robbins repeated to me:

“My understanding is he never was a member. His parents were.”

Perhaps there is a formality he never adopted, a vow, a ceremony. That might provide justification for refuting what people who knew him understood and assumed, for in a way disavowing him.

But even if so, this begs a profound question:

To what extent is the Community of Jesus willing to soul search, to consider how their cloistered, secretive society might have anything to do with this young man’s state of mind and decision?

There is no direct line that can be drawn, any more than there can be a direct line drawn between family members, a work environment, a political cause, to a human being who makes a statement and sacrifice like this — not without real evidence.

Perhaps within the group’s sequestered confines these questions are being asked, with a willingness to see if such evidence exists. That would be a dramatic departure from previous controversies, when any challenge or criticism of the Community was met with a “circle the wagons” mentality, including implications that critical comments are veiled religious persecution.

For Attorney Robbins, who has represented and spoken for the Community for more than 30 years, even raising this question is “malicious, salacious speculation”:

“We would never indulge this s—t if it wasn’t a Christian community,” he argues. “For Blacks, Jews, anyone else, would we be saying, ‘Huh, there must be some connection here’? So there’s a certain bigotry that’s leveled at the Community because they’re devout Christians.”

Robbins’ premise is wrong; people look at communities and religions of all kinds, political movements, family psychologies and backgrounds of every persuasion when they try to understand why people behave as they do, especially at moments of tragedy and violence. And over the years there have been enough concerns about Community conduct to invite the question.

Also a columnist for The Boston Herald and journalism instructor at Brown University, Robbins strongly supports Israel’s wholesale war in Gaza as the only response to Hamas’ attack on October 6. He believes Israel’s invasion that has killed tens of thousands, leveled hospitals and cities, displaced well over a million people and initiated widespread famine, is necessary and appropriate. He sees “near-insanity” among some who support or justify Hamas, including on college campuses like Harvard’s and Brown’s.

So it is in keeping that he would attribute Bushnell’s act to “mental illness” and nothing else.

That’s his personal position, not a Community statement. And he does not expect one to be forthcoming let alone necessary:

“Is it really responsible to say, ‘You folks need to be candid and have a discussion’ (about Aaron Bushnell’s death)?” asks Robbins. “How about you just let the family grieve? … There is mental illness and issues in every family and every community.”

Of course this is true, though taking this position — whether applied to a Buddhist monk 60 years ago or Aaron Bushnell weeks ago – effectively shuts off any further conversation about the power of ultimate symbolic protest, the intent and reasons expressed for taking such action, whether there is rationale other than one person’s “mental illness.”

It also removes any need for self-reflection.

Either way, the name of a young man from Orleans has been invoked across continents. In his death he provoked many questions and emotions. That will continue as the immediacy of his act slowly recedes — just as the war he protested, even if it subsides, will not end.

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