![]() “These kids were subject to people who said, ‘You’re not my kid and I really don’t care about you that much,’” he said. Garrett said he followed their teaching, which he now regrets. Sect leaders believed breaking families up was the ethical thing to do. Since most were in their early 20s, that didn’t work out when children were born, parents weren’t allowed to raise them, as families were seen as obsolete. When he first joined, Bruce Garrett said, men and women lived separately and were expected to be celibate. “It was like a substitute for home,” he said. He had grown up with what he called “not the greatest of family lives,” he said. A place to belongīruce Garrett met Process members in Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Robert de Grimston and Mary Ann MacLean in undated photos. “Humanity chose the easy way that leads to Hell, and now its journey is ended,” de Grimston wrote in an essay titled “Humanity is the Devil.” Its leaders, harboring little hope that humans could mend their ways, said the only way forward was to withdraw from society and seek spiritual enlightenment while waiting for the world to burn. The Process Church offered spiritual enlightenment and a warning about the state of the world. One of its main teachings was that human beings had chosen evil over good. New religious groups were popping up all over. Many had lost faith in traditional religion. There was turmoil in the streets and young people were demanding change, Bruce Garrett said. Jared’s father, Bruce Garrett, now in his early 70s, joined the Process Church while serving in the National Guard near Boston. The sect eventually settled in the United States, setting up branches in Boston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, Chicago and other cities, and growing to about 150 people. RELATED: Tom Brady, Alex Guerrero and Apocalypse Meow - when weird belief turns harmful Robert de Grimston in an undated photo and The Process Church logo. Its logo - four Ps, each radiating from the center - closely resembled a swastika.Īfter being accused of brainwashing its members, about 30 sect members - and six German shepherds - left England, traveling first to the Bahamas and later to a remote Mexican village. The group venerated Jehovah, Lucifer, Jesus and Satan, and was known for dressing in long black capes. “As far as I could tell, it was Scientology thrown in the mixer with some paganism and some end-times Christianity,” said Garrett. They befriended celebrities including the musician George Clinton, according to “Sympathy for the Devil?,” a 2016 documentary about the group’s early years. The Process Church of the Final Judgment, as the Foundation Faith of God was originally known, got its start in London, where its founders, a couple named Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston, ran classes offering “compulsions analysis” - their take on Scientology’s practice of auditing - and operated a coffeehouse known as Satan’s Cavern. He recounts his journey in a podcast called “Tales From a Cult Insider,” where he details his time with the sect and his family’s spiritual history. Today he is a father of seven and volunteer pastor, or bishop, of a local congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was Garrett, now 46, who ended up finding faith again. Founded by ex-Scientologists turned Satanists, the Foundation Faith of God and its members awaited the end of the world but when it didn’t come, the group decided to rescue animals instead. As it happens, the small, nomadic apocalyptic sect that Garrett grew up in eventually gave up its original mission.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |