Cults I Have Known, Part I

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

I came of age in the early 70's, when people were free, possibilities were endless and life was a constant song of joy. Of course it wasn't like that at all, but isn't that how we feel at 18? I also recall that the fashions weren't at all silly and the music was the best it ever was and ever will be, but I could be wrong.

But one thing I remember quite clearly from that era is the proliferation of youth-preying cults, some of which touched me personally in ways both peripheral and profound. Join me as I reminisce, and share your stories about cult influence in your life.

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When I was in my late teens, a younger brother became involved with a cult that I will describe later. At the time that he was falling under its influence, a friend invited me to join a charismatic group. In those days I was still a Catholic, performing for groovy folk masses and suchlike.

The group met at some church in a basement room filled with young believers perched on folding chairs. Three stern men in their 20s led the prayers accompanied by others strumming their requisite guitars. I was starting to nod off when one leader jumped to his feet and spewed a stream of nonsense syllables. My friend nudged me excitedly. I had heard of glossolalia and could accept it as a rapturous form of expression, but I couldn't believe it when another leader stood and solemnly interpreted the "prophecy" we had just received. What a crock!

But I had friends in the group, so I continued to attend. Jesus was love and all that, so what was the harm? Over the next few months I discovered more things I couldn't accept, like the decision to separate men and women to receive different teachings. The leaders also insisted we go out and witness our faith. I decided to witness to my friends at art school, many of whom were gay and who felt rejected by their churches. Frowning, the leaders told me that I couldn't witness to "faggots" because God didn't love them. I replied that God loved faggots and junkies and the Red Chinese. The leaders conferred among themselves, then told me they were going to perform an exorcism to cleanse me of my devils. I laughed at their joke, gaped at their dead-serious faces, spat a hearty "fuck you" and fled.

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Don van Vliet once joked in an interview about rockers who took a lot of LSD and then found Jesus. He didn't think it was a coincidence. Some of my friends were starting to go the same route. When her mother developed terminal cancer, one friend decided it was all due to her hedonistic lifestyle, and poof! this sweet, smart, bubbly woman suddenly turned into a grim, dark, bible-beating fundy. So sad.

My best friend started her quest with primal therapy. My refusal to join created a permanent rift between us, exacerbated by her new circle of dour, macrobiotic-munching friends who deemed me non-feminist because I enjoyed sex with men. But I still loved her and tried to keep up as she became a follower of Seth and then dabbled in Scientology . She wouldn't explain any of it to me; I couldn't possibly understand - I was just too much of a good-time girl (and later, corporate drone) to be a keeper of the sacred flame. But I did understand, because I read the books, and knew she couldn't explain it because it was bullshit. Years later she came to believe, based on family practices and traditions, that she was descended from crypto-Jews (Jews who became Catholics to escape persecution by the Spanish Inquisition) and converted to Judaism.

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I too had a new circle of friends - drug-using, glam-rocking artists, transvestites and fun seekers. The center of our circle lived next door to a house owned by the Process Church of the Final Judgement, which taught the unity of God and Lucifer - and Satan, who is somehow different from Lucifer, and Christ. It was very confusing. The Process Church was started by a couple of British ex-Scientologists who found wealthy patrons to fund their mission. They had a relatively brief but lurid existence marked by accusations of satanism and connections with Charles Manson.

Chicagoans of that era might remember the Process people, whose long black capes and expensive literature made them standouts in the prosletyzing community. They would flock out of their commune like so many black-winged bats, flagging cabs to take them to their downtown posts. Quiet at home except for the children in the backyard, one night they interrupted one of our acid parties to invite us to a midnight mass. We declined.

At least the Process people were entertaining. Back then you couldn't go out for a night of fun without stepping on - literally - scores of raggedy Jesus People, Jews for Jesus and idiots-of-all-stripes-for-Jesus who cluttered the Rush Street area. You had to push them out of the way just to show the bouncer your fake ID. "Have you found Jesus?" "Why, is he missing?"

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I moved to Chicago and got an office job around the time that est got big. Some of the executives signed up for the seminars, and for weeks the office buzzed about it. Would the attendees become self-actualized ubertypes who would have the edge on everyone else? Had the rest of us been scooped on the next big thing, and was it too late to catch up? Who would pay good money to be called an asshole and denied bathroom breaks, when they already got paid to take that kind of abuse at work?

But the next big thing comes and goes pretty quickly, and the estians I knew didn't stick with it. By the end of the 70s a lot of people had given up on Human Potential training and switched to cocaine - same feeling, same price, and available on demand.

People in my business get involved in all kinds of strange things, but if they're smart they keep it to themselves. I once had a boss who tried to convince me of his phenomenal power by showing me the pentagram amulet he had worn constantly since the age of 18. (He pulled it out from beneath his striped shirt and yuppie suspenders, and I'm afraid my giggles offended him.) But the only real cultists I knew at the office were Scientologists. They were good colleagues, and low-key about their beliefs.
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I've had the usual brushes with Jehovah's Witnesses. I've known occultists of all kinds. I was in a serious relationship with a Pentecostal who claimed experience with levitation and astral projection, and had other wonderful friends who believed incredibly loony stuff.

But the looniest beliefs of all belong to the Children of God. Their story is packed with so much ugly, bizarre shit that I wrote a really long piece just about them. If you're interested, see Cults I Have Known, Part II.

[Tace]

1. Interesting Stuff

I've read a bit about L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. He was nothing more than an intelligent con man. It amazes me that folks today could be involved with that organization, with all that's now known about Hubbard easily available on the internet and in bookstores.

[Random_Australian]

2. You kept true to your beliefs... esp.

" laughed at their joke, gaped at their dead-serious faces, spat a hearty "fuck you" and fled. "

In other words, you kept damn thinking for yourself, and in my book that is a rather high acheivement. :patriot::applause:

I look forward to part 2! (About to read it now)

[Wilber_Stool]

3. I remember.

The one thing that sticks in my head,'67 thru '75 is still a bit blurrie for me, was all of the signs and bumper stickers that said "I found it!". I didn't know it was missing.

[neebob]

4. What struck me, reading your post

is the difference in perspective. I spent the 1960s and 70s in a right-wing Mormon cocoon, so I had no idea it was all free and joyful and everything like that. Reading other people's experiences of the time always makes me feel envious, like I missed something. Like I wasn't there.

Ah well, I guess it kept me out of a lot of other cults. :)

[hunter]

5. As a young man I was too psychotic to be captured by any cult...

...but a number of them tried.

The Moonies tried to snatch me off the street once, but I was having a momentary infatuation with Fidel Castro at the time, so it didn't turn out well for them. (How do Moonies disinfect a place of residual socialist demons? Seems like most methods would be too Catholic for their tastes.)

Unfortunately there are many organizations that are very much like cults... I did get snagged up in some of the more cultish aspects of the anti-nuclear movement. The idea that you are "saving the world" can really blind a young person to a lot of nonsense. (I truly believe some of this nonsense is injected by outsiders seeking to discredit these movements, but little good comes of feeding that understanding, since it's just a short hop from there to debilitating paranoia. Hell, you can't but help look at some of the posts on DU and think, hmmmmmmmmm....... but it rarely gets you anywhere.)

The crisis of my young adulthood was being captured by a woman who had turned to God to "save" her from her homosexuality. I was ignorant enough at the time (and in another way selfish enough) to think it could happen. Some of her girlfriends were refugees from cults or addictions (same thing), including some of the cults you mention, which is where some of my opinions come from. Also, when I was a kid, my mom was a Jehovah's Witness, so that adds to this stew of feelings I have about this. I didn't say the flag salute in grammar school, and I sure as hell don't pledge allegiance to the flag now, as it seems to be the worst sort of idolatry. The prayers I say are my own. (Great, now some patriotic U.S. Air Force cultist is going to put me on their secret list of miscreants because I don't worship their Red, White and Blue flag draped god. How are those secret underground prisons in Colorado going???)

I do not draw a strong line between cults and other social structures. Cults have very much in common with non-religious groups such as European soccer hooligans. Rah, rah! We all root for the same team!

In my own religion, Catholicism, as practiced within my community, there is a wide range of application, from essentially secular to "cultist."

Different societies draw the line in different places. In Germany Scientology is illegal. Here in the United States it is well integrated into our cultish worship of money and celebrity.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

10. Excellent point: cults are not limited to religion

In my other thread I touch on cult recruitment, and how nobody would join a cult that promised them years of bare-sustenance living under the complete control of a megalomaniac who would use the profits for the lifestyle of his choice. Yet I have accepted employment that amounted to just that. Certainly Enron is an example of a corporate cult: it was led by psychopaths who created an environment that allowed employees to disregard the immorality/illegality of their actions to the obscene profit of the leaders, who then destroyed their followers' lives.

I also agree that cultish behavior is evident on DU. "How dare the freepers demonize us when we are all smart and altruistic free-thinkers, and they are all stupid and selfish ideologues!" As you experienced in the anti-nuke movement, it's almost unavoidable in any cause commitment. And it explains why centrists and moderates receive such abuse from people who measure commitment in terms of purity. Since that's a sliding scale, some want to push the setting as far left as possible. And when they reach a setting that you or I or most of the voting public would consider extreme, it's hard not to question motivation.

I'm glad you escaped the Moonies. I consider them the biggest cult threat of our day, with a global network that has infiltrated everything from the tops of governments down to the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. When I found out they own my local health food store, I flipped out. No more shopping there!

[eridani]

6. With early injections of the Baltimore Catechism--

--I developed a really strong immunity against all of that stuff.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. I do remember one Christian group that sent the children out to do

flirty fishing. In essence, they were child prostitutes for Jesus. They would bring in people to the church this way.

The kids were filmed in a room and they looked perfectly normal, until the interrogator asked them to explain flirty fishing. One child got very tremulous and said, "How do you know about that? You're not suppose to know about that."

What else don't we know about these cults?

[Wonk]

8. A discordian told me to "get lost" once. Does that count?

:shrug:

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

11. Since it was a discordian, I think it does count

:rofl:

[Liberal Dose]

9. Similar experience with a slightly different outcome.

"I was starting to nod off when one leader jumped to his feet and spewed a stream of nonsense syllables. My friend nudged me excitedly. I had heard of glossolalia and could accept it as a rapturous form of expression, but I couldn't believe it when another leader stood and solemnly interpreted the "prophecy" we had just received."

In 1985, I had an aunt-in-law who brought me to her Assembly of God (Pentecostal) church. At first it freaked me out when people "spoke in tongues" but after a few times it was difficult to keep from laughing. I was really curious about the interpretations, so I faked speaking in tongues. It was a lot of fun, and really easy to do. All I had to do was work myself up and start spitting out gibberish. I thought about throwing myself on the floor, but figured that might be going too far. Anyway, a member of the congregation stood up and interpreted my fake baptism in the Holy Spirit. I wish I could remember the exact words of the interpretation, because it was good. Something about the innocence of the lamb, or the lion laying down with the lamb. There was at least one lamb. :crazy:

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

12. You only THINK it was a fake conversion

:freak: :scared:

At least you got some lamb out of it. :D

[eppur_se_muova]

13. Hmmm...I'm sure someone has tried speaking an authentic obscure language.

It would be particularly interesting if someone memorized a passage of scripture in Aramaic (the language of the historical Jesus) and had that "interpreted".