I have to completely agree with you on this one. I always felt that this faction was one of RJ's failures in the series. As a Threat/Villian/World force they always seemed (to me) to be a bad joke.

You have a bunch of "religious fanatics" who's target is people that wield the one power, and we are supposed to consider them a threat? 2 Sisters, alone in the wilderness, are suddenly suprised by 1,000,000,000,000 white cloaks. Oh my what can they do??? Umm slap up a wall of air around themselves and sit down to tea maybe? Tie off the flow, take a nap, play a few hands of bridge, *sniff* at them a few times, then saddle up and ride off still surrounded by walls of air... Oh! the drama....

As a political faction they have no support from any of the major nation-states, and are universally despised. Basically, they are simply pathetic.

I got the impression that RJ just couldn"t wrap his brain around total fanatacism and thus wasn't capible of writing it. I wish he had left them out of the story.