Ex-Moonie Diane Benscoter talks about how she got involved with the Moonies for five years, and explains about how cults think:
I think it’s the same mentality with most religions, not just cults.
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Cool. That gives me a ray of hope. I may not see the end of delusion before I die, but maybe there will be an end some day. The simple message she portrayed and her very non-threatening way of doing it was great. I hope she’ll talk more.
the only difference between a religion and a cult is tax-exempt status ;)
I do not understand the ;) in your comment. :-)
A religion abuses followers of other religions, a cult abuses its own.
Cult studies – one of my favorite subjects!
I am delighted that someone is speaking about it from experience. I would like to see someone speak to groups about their experience in christianity as a cult. I would enjoy doing so, though my three years in a church in high school, after having been brought up as non-religious, is less riveting than the story of someone like Daniel or William Lobdell.
Some of the things that Diane says:
It feels good to have your ego bolstered. I know it. I see through you. Admit it!
Church youth groups, Young Christians, Hitlerjugend: all draw in the young impressionable ones.
All the christians are positive that with enough persuasion, you’ll come back to Jesus! William Lobdell recounts this about good friends in “Losing My Religion”.
Look at the fundies who post to this site. (Or their own.) Look at John C’s rambles.
Thinking is hard work. This is not a wise-ass joke. Having to face uncertainty, make decisions, wonder, live with angst, are difficult. It’s tempting to throw over having to work at life. I’ve been there, and still feel it, so even if you don’t admit it, I see through you anyway.
christians vs atheists; christians vs. “the world”
Again, look at fundies and John C posting. Some fundies have been defending murder. Or, at least, quietly feeling satisfaction about it.
The disease model distracts from our responsibility for our own choices. It’s not necessarily wrong – our choices have been responsible for some degree of our diseases. I still think it removes focus from one’s own choices.
Like christianity, like Alcoholics Anonymous?
Some commenters on YouTube replied that it was an emotional appeal! I thought it was intellectual, rant-free, even and nearly devoid of emotional appeal. She must have hit a nerve!
I didn’t think she was emotional, but I got a little emotional at the idea that just maybe people could be freed from faith slavery.
I’ll point out the obvious correlation here: Faux News and Wingnut Radio are, according to their proponents, the ONLY viable source of information … everyone else is compromised (US vs THEM == Evil Socialist Liberals vs God-fearing Conservatives). The idea that ABC, NBC, and CBS who are all competing with each other (as well as with Fox and PBS) in the all important viewers/ratings race are all also somehow, at the exact same time, part of some sort of overarching Liberal Conspiracy is frankly on the paranoid side of crazy: it manages to ignore the “Liberal Media’s” near total complicity in the build up to the second war with Iraq as well as the way they almost uniformly continue to use the Orwellian phrase “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” rather than the word “torture” even now.
And we’ve already seen one person killed (IN HIS CHURCH) by a “PRO-LIFE” individual after he was called “Tiller the baby killer” several hundred times by various screaming heads on Faux to say nothing of their naked promotion of “TEA Parties” to “protest tyranny” a few months ago … truly the mind boggles.
I often wonder what physical factors in my brain made it impossible for me to feel the presence of god. I was raised a Christian Fundamentalist and prayed sincerely many times to get save. Like Mother Teresa I lived a very religious life, hoping that god would make his presence known to me. But not matter how hard I tried I got no response. I was even in Christian consoling. Finally I realized I was in an unhealthy relationship, where I loved someone who did not return the love. If this had been my real fathers and not my “heavenly” father, my father would have been call abusive.
I am not claiming to be more evolved or am I 100% reasonable all of the time. It would just be interesting to study why people like me, while raised in very religious environments, seem to never feel the supernatural.
Because you checked yourself what others claimed. You did not follow blind believe because somone said so. I also had never this believe gene.
I never felt any response of call from God either! So when fundies write to this site, I call them on it: you liar, you’re blustering hard in the desperate attempt to convince yourself that you have a relationship with God, the same kind of pretense that yes, the Emperor is wearing such fine clothing! You don’t feel the peace of God and the Emperor is naked!
The idea that maybe some of these idiots maybe have a brain so fuddled and muddled, so mentally ill and unaware, that they are being honest – you can be honest and deluded and flat-ass wrong – is difficult for me to accept. Occasionally I consider it, when someone can’t hear any reason, can’t challenge themselves or their beliefs.
I knew I wasn’t getting responses or a relationship or the peace that passes all understanding, so I figure they have to know it about themselves too.
I take it back. They are not being honest. They are so dishonest with themselves – and with people who see through them – that they can’t wade through their own lies.
It was a nice speech, but I don’t think she touched enough on why a person becomes trapped in the mindset – the feelings of belonging, privilege, etc. that really draw you in. It would have been nice if she’d explained the feelings you get when you belong to a cult.
I was, astonishingly, not one of those people who never seemed to feel anything. In fact, I was somewhat of a spiritual prodigy – I dove into my Bible with gusto, prayed regularly, and felt what I believed to be God on multiple occasions. Still, I made a crucial mistake that left a gaping hole in my ability to rationalize – I valued the truth over everything, including God.
(I’m sure some Christian will come along now and tell me that if I keep trying, the truth will lead me to God. I reiterate: I am an ex-Christian who left the faith despite an intense yearning to save my soul and repeated studies of Christian teachings. I left because of reasons very different from most other atheists – reasons which no Christian has ever been able to rationalize their way around without falling back on the “seek and ye shall find” cliche.)
Now, though, I credit my heady immersion with much of my ongoing sanity. Because, despite my piety and yearning, I hardly ever felt/received answers from God – and, especially as I grew older, I found myself increasingly frustrated with the lack of results. Had I not been so immersed in the Christian faith, and tried my hardest to earn God’s blessings, I may never have come to realize that the only reasonable explanation for his absence – except that “faith as a grain of mustard” is FRIGGIN’ HUGE up in Heaven – is that God was not there.
Wanna know who else is a Moonie??? Johnathan Wells, of the Discovery Institute! That’s right fundies… ID isn’t what you think it is…
So she admits doing the kidnapping of people because they belonged to the Unification Church.
Funny is this though most commentators here think she committed the lesser crime. After all her “kidnapping” was supposed to “help” some-one.
So she then has the audacity to claim that “ALL GROUPS” ARE the “SAME” or could ACT IN THE same manner.
Islamic Suicide-bombers and others are Miles apart from a Member of the Unification-Movement. While the Qur’an is full of Verses telling the good Muslim to kill the “Unbeliever” no such text can be found in the teachings/writings of the Unification Movement.
But instead of looking at those things which separates the various groups, she like so many others gives the hint to focus on something that on the surface *MAY LOOK* similar.
I too came in contact with the Unification Movement in 1975 but I did not have Parents who would not trust me ,their child. Diane Parents most likely did not trust their child enough to let her make her own decision. Instead they had some paid Kidnapper come in and hold her against her will.
No wonder after her faith was broken, she didn’t see that she was a victim of a crime, instead she blamed the Unification-Movement.
She mentions
right and wrong:
us vs them:
Funny isn’t it most people here think exactly along these lines , but in this case it’s OK? I had had the experience that Christian Ministers didn’t want to talk with us because of this thinking, again in their case this was/Is OK?
I do not know what Diane did in the 5 years, but one thing of the teaching of Rev. Moon that hit me early very profoundly is that God’s will is that all people will be saved. We are all Children Of One God! Some might not know this while others (like myself) do know this.
Therefore there is no reason for me to divide people in “us vs them” They are all my brothers and sisters. Of course some i don’t know, or if I don’t like a person, then this is *MY* problem and not theirs. Yes Diane was chosen to be one of the early people to find God, and this is all this amounts to! Even now I think that one day she will take her rightful position as a beloved daughter of God.
God is not a vicious being punishing his children with a eternal hell.
This is one of the reasons why I still embrace this faith that Rev. Moon taught me.
Not ONE Member of the Unification Movement has committed suicide-attacks
as she used the example or any other violent crimes in the name of our faith or Movement . On the contrary as she said, Unificationists were the ones who got kidnapped.
The worst case of this happen in Japan, one Man was held for 12 years and 5 months by his Brother and Sister in Law, only because of his faith!
Yeah I know most of those who’ll read my post will disregard it as the writings of a “brainwashed” person. After all there is a mountain of information out there describing the UM as a very bad organization. Why do people who claim to think for themselvs not check out what the UM has to say? Why not look at what the Unification Movement has to say?
All the best to all. (even those who think I’m a lunatic)
Josef Oswald
yes this is my real name as I have no reason to hide it, in fact I’m very proud about my affiliation with the Unification Movement.
I have to giggle a bit about all these discussions. First of all, I knew (and enjoyed) Diane very much, as a friend and fellow member of the then-existing Unification Church. We fundraised together, talked a lot, and had some very memorable experiences. She was a bit younger than me, and I did have the impression that she joined the church at a very young age, which may have been before she had done her “due diligence” in figuring out who she was and what her priorities were before deciding to join a movement that was very clearly trying to change a lot of age-old problems in the world: racism, religious bigotry, communism, etc. Those of us who joined tended to be people who had already searched through things like college studies, various belief paths and social trends. Dissatisfaction with the level of answers there was a pretty big motivator in why I took my time investigating, testing, accusing, and then (with no one else’s pressure) joining the church. But, had I not gone through all those investigations and conclusions, it would be easy to assume that someone simply was handed a bill of goods and swallowed it whole.
My impression of Diane at that time was of a young girl with a good sense of humor, and my only concern was that she had a bit of a hero-worship thing going on with one older guy who had been the center director in the location where she joined. I didn’t think that was altogether healthy, as people tend to disappoint us. In my experience, the only firm and absolute thing we can base a religious search on is God himself (or herself!) not the personalities of the people who teach about God.
So…that being said…I had no idea she had gone through the whole deprogramming thing, or become involved in deprogramming others. Evidently, she also went to jail??? Very tough life. All things I never would have expected for a bright and sunny character like hers.
Anyway, I have very fond memories of Diane, and still remember some of the funny experiences we had. All these debates…sometimes tend to distract us from the core reality. Sorry guys, I can’t get too wrapped up in defining “good” and “bad” spiritual movements. For me, it ultimately comes down to what am I doing with my life. For instance, let’s say I belong to a “good” group…but I don’t practice the teachings, don’t love, am a greedy, grasping person. Does my “good” group membership make me good anyway? And vice versa, let’s say I’m ostensibly in a “bad” group. Yet, I love others, love myself, love God, serve mankind, and bring happiness everywhere I go. So, am I bad? Or good?
I know for me, I know someday I will reach the end of life, and I will have to look back at the way I spent these rare and precious moments on the earth. I want to be able to look back on a life lived in love, for as many people as possible.
I personally want to live so that those who feel themselves enemies to me will know that they are loved by me. What their feelings are then, I don’t have control over, but I would wish they would also be happy.
Anyway, I want to just express my fond memories and good wishes for Diane and everyone who’s been discussing, and thank you all for being people who care.
I don’t believe anyone here has divided spiritual groups into “good” and “bad” either. Although I certainly define belief without, and in the face of contradictory evidence as a bad thing.
According to me, or according to Christians? According to Christians, yes, if you are one of them you are saved, and it doesn’t matter if you’re evil Susan Atkins who murdered pregnant Sharon Tate so she’d stop begging for her life. According to many Christians, evil Susan Atkins is in their heaven now, because she converted, but Ghandi and Ann Frank are burning in their hell. Just one of the many reasons I am not a Christian.
I have been a moonwatcher since the seventies, when religious cults first came to light in the daily press of the Netherlands. I ordered several books written by ex-moonies, read many speaches of Reverend Moon and of course all the scandals surrounding this prophet.
I believe this man is in fact the product of Korean Intelligence in the struggle against communist North Korea as research by the US Congress has revealed in 1978. I would like to recommend the articles on the false prophet written by Robert Parry of Consortium News.com and the news reports on the website of the Rick Ross Institute.
A most excellent book on CounterCultures was written by sociologist William Zellner in 1995 for St. Martins Press, who moved out from Oklahoma a few years later as a result of actions by fundamentalist christians at his University, that would not stand an atheist to lecture them. I would enjoy to correspond with ex-moonies like Nansook Hong, who fled her True Family in 1997 and other ex-members like Diane Benscoter, whose story is on YouTube.
So if you feel like sending me your own story with cults, you are welcome.
With sincere regards from Holland. The Moonwatcher.
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[….] read many speaches of Reverend Moon
So then what is your opinion about the eternal relationship Rev. Moon teaches about humans and God? That God is not only the masculine father (as known in the Christian theology) but also the feminine mother? That God as a loving arents suffers from the loss of his/her children? A suffering we from the christian viewpoint don’t even see?
How do you view his explanation that a marriage is eternal? One husband and wife will be together as a couple and such express a very unique aspect of God? Or what about his explanation that humans are being the eternal vessel of God’s eternal spirit?
St.Paul in one of his letters wrote that “humans are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in each of us”. Rev. Moon picks up this theme and expanded it, in his explanation of the first of the three blessings.
Or what is your opinion about the concept of universal salvation Rev. Moon teaches? That God will eventually save all and every human being, because each is child and worthy to be loved?
All these themes Rev. Moon adresses countless times in his speeches, so how do you view them?
Greetings,
Josef Oswald