Washington - THE WACO hearings are over, and the nation gained few insights into the tragic event that took place April 19, 1993. Before the hearings fade away like old soldiers, some sobering reflections are in order, because we have learned nothing from Waco.

And, given our history and record of failure to learn from the past, there will be another Waco.

The horrifying memory of Europe's religious wars during the 16th and 17th centuries motivated Thomas Jefferson and many others to fight for a disestablishment of religion in America. Freedom of religion may be the first freedom of the Bill of Rights, but the U.S. government does not have a good record with religion.

In 1839, the Missouri militia drove Mormons to Illinois. Then the Mormons had to flee to Utah after the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother while in legal custody. In 1890, the U.S. Cavalry killed Chief Sitting Bull and massacred the Indians, including women and children, partaking in the outlawed Ghost Dance religion at Wounded Knee.

The Branch Davidians consistently were castigated as a "cult" by detractors and law enforcement agencies called in to oversee the situation in Waco. FBI negotiators referred to David Koresh's speech as "Bible babble." The Branch Davidians were a sectarian offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, itself a sectarian millennialist religion originating in the first half of the 19th century.

My suspicion is that a generalized "secular" mode pervades most government agencies, and this attitude leads to a disdain of nonmainline and even mainline religion in America. Yet thousands of U.S. citizens belonging to millennium-imbued religions must deal with government agencies systematically unsympathetic to them and unwilling to learn about them.

The hearings made it clear the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had it in for Koresh. This animosity may have been the chief motivator for seeking out the initial warrant for Koresh's arrest, because the hearing showed that the evidence for the initial warrant was flimsy.

There were three basic charges: illegally altered weapons, the manufacture of drugs and child abuse. The hearings demonstrated that the Branch Davidians were not in the drug-manufacturing business or making wholesale alterations of arms.

A 14-year-old girl did testify that Koresh had intercourse with her at the age of 10. However, there was no evidence of this when the warrant was first issued against Koresh. The Texas Department of Welfare even issued a clean bill on the state of the children at the compound prior to the initial raid. Even if all the sexual charges against Koresh were upheld in a court of law, sexual crimes are a matter of state, not federal, jurisdiction.

What the world witnessed at Waco was a military assault by agencies of the U.S. government against its own citizens.

I have no intention of sanctifying Koresh's amassing of needless arms and his mixing of guns and God. But - prior to the initial raid by the ATF the Branch Davidians had amicable relations with their neighbors and local law enforcement officials.

Without taking anything away from the right and need of local and national governments to uphold the law, I look on with amazement at the militarizing of law enforcement.

After the initial violence in the second Wounded Knee incident in 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered federal agents to take no provocative actions against the barricaded members of the American Indian Movement. The agents waited 70 days without resorting to helicopters, blaring loudspeakers and tear gas tanks until a settlement was negotiated without further bloodshed.

Nobody mentioned the Wounded Knee option during the siege at Waco, and nobody mentioned it during the hearing.

Will there be another Waco? Given our history and failure to learn from it, I would have to say yes.

Frank K. Flinn, adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis, often serves as an expert witness in legal cases involving the separation of church and state.

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