#Father Kent Burtner

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Helped to find a way out of the FFWPU/Unification Church

From All God’s Children by Jo Anne Parke and Carol Stoner
 (pages 232 - 241)

▲ Daphne Greene

Daphne Greene, a formidable and sensitive counter-cult activist on the West Coast, … has helped and encouraged many young people to leave the Moon church by spending countless hours talking to them and their parents. She says she will talk to anyone who willingly comes to listen.

Hundreds of young people have been convinced to leave religious cults during thoughtful discussions with concerned individuals such as Mrs Greene, Rabbi Davis and others. These re-evaluations of the cultist’s religious experience were not carried out under lock and key, but voluntarily. A parent who seeks to remove a son or daughter from the clutches of a cult must consider whether or not that young person would willingly hear the other side of the issue. Whatever alternative a parent decides to choose, it should be clearly defined and thought through before it begins….

Father Kent Burtner, the Oregon chaplain who offers cult members’ families a way to analyze their situation, has for years observed the rapid growth and expansion of the cult phenomenon and makes no effort to hide the strength of his convictions. “I am sick unto death that those kids are being used and exploited,” he says. For nearly a decade, Father Kent has been watching the followers of the Reverend Moon work to increase his flock. “The ways the Moonies recruit followers are deceitful,” he says. “And, the ends to which the energies of Moon’s disciples are aimed are just as indefensible as the ways their minds are captured.”

Before his charge in Oregon, Father Kent was a graduate student at Berkeley’s renowned Graduate Theological Union. In those days, the priest watched the changing political and religious scene and saw the Moon movement burst into bloom just as the flower children began to fade in the garden of the counter-culture.

Unification Church theology disturbs Father Kent. The message that Christ failed as a savior, along with the intricate plan whereby the Reverend Moon will unite and save the world, is offensive and upsetting to this Catholic priest. But a stronger reason for his counter-cult work is his fervent belief that the rights of individuals are being usurped by religious cults.

Any belief system that so polarizes the forces of good and evil, is mere negativism, is inhuman and intellectually dishonest,” he says. “The idea of the Manichaean split between good and evil denies the value of the human person. Moonies are asked to hold their objections and to drop them behind them. Pretty soon, if they ever turned around, there would be a huge pile of questions sitting there unanswered.” The priest points out also that cult members are not only discouraged from examining their questions, they are never even left alone for long enough to contemplate at all.

Father Kent in the West, and Rabbi Davis on the East Coast, are two of a very small number of clergymen who speak out against religious cults and who could be called counter-cult activists. Both of these men of the cloth are cautious about getting involved in activities that could be interpreted as illegal. But each will speak to any young cult member who is willing to listen.

When Father Kent was called to deprogram the young daughter of a Lutheran family, he agreed to help the family and the young woman with a re-evaluation of her life. She was not physically constrained or imprisoned in any way. Father Kent explains that he invoked her own intellectual integrity to make her listen to the sometimes “uncomfortable” facts about Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church. The young woman is Karin Hegstrom, a college graduate from an Ohio farm family. Karin’s parents and her closest friend from childhood were all involved in the re-evaluation.

One Sunday morning just as he was about to celebrate Sunday Mass in the campus chapel, Father Kent received a frantic phone call from Karin’s father. Mr. Hegstrom asked the priest’s help in deprogramming his daughter. Several weeks earlier she had disappeared into the Unification Church and was now at the group’s New Ideal City Ranch in Boonville, California, 200 miles north of San Francisco.

In order to reach her, Karin’s father was considering swearing out a warrant for his daughter’s arrest, since she had taken some of the family’s possessions, including a car, into the church with her. Mr. Hegstrom was aware that this move might mean getting involved in a potentially irreversible legal action: his daughter could end up in jail. But arrest seemed to be the only way he could be sure she would leave the ranch. She had refused to come home and she had hung up on all her parents’ phone calls.

First Father Kent cautioned the Hegstroms not to do anything they might regret and advised them to wait until they could all get together to make some plans. “Yes,” he promised, “I will help as much as I can.” The Hegstroms had to understand that the priest would not break any laws, but he would do everything in his power to help. In the meantime, he would serve Mass and be free in an hour.

After the service, they spoke again and discussed Karin’s situation. She had broken off several conversations with her parents. She would not tell them much about her new life. In fact, she was very secretive. The Hegstroms were anxious and concerned about their daughter, and on the basis of the phone calls, had driven across the country with Karin’s close friend, Louise. They didn’t know how they were going to “rescue” their daughter, they only knew they were going to try.

The plan was made. The Hegstroms would visit their daughter at Boonville and convince her to come with them to visit an aunt and uncle who live in a small town nearby. They had already tried to phone Karin, but were unable to reach her. The parents felt they had been given a run-around, so Father Kent gave them the phone number of Martin (Noah) Ross, director of the Boonville ranch and an ardent follower of the Reverend Moon. Mr. Hegstrom told the young man that he and his wife would, under whatever circumstances necessary, see their daughter. The ranch director agreed that Karin would meet her parents at the ranch gate.

▲ The Boonville gate

Karin came out of the padlocked gate, which is located miles from the ranch’s lodgings and main buildings, and met with her father. After much talking, Mr. Hegstrom convinced Karin that the only way she could demonstrate her sincerity about the Unification Church was to come with them for an overnight visit and explain her feelings. “We need to talk. And, if you feel you must, we’ll let you come back,” he told her.

The two drove off to the home of Karin’s aunt and uncle where her mother and her friend, Louise, were waiting. There was an emotional reunion, especially between the friends, as Karin told Louise she wanted her to experience the joy of being a member of the Unification Church. “I want to convert you as my first spiritual child,” she said.

Father Kent was also waiting and Karin abruptly questioned his presence at the reunion. “He’s here for me, isn’t he?”

That evening, Karin tried every ruse she could think of to avoid talking to the priest. First she and Louise went for a long walk. Then she said she wanted to spend some private time with her parents, then her aunt and uncle, all to avoid the confrontation she knew, by now, was inevitable. Although the young woman was trying to avoid having her belief tested in a discussion with the priest, she was not held against her will, doors and windows were not locked and bolted, but she made no attempt to leave. Karin Hegstrom had promised to spend the night with her family and she seemed determined to live up to her bargain.

Ultimately, Karin sat down with Father Kent, Louise and her parents. They asked questions about her new life, cautiously and without hostility, and she attempted to answer them, saying only, “It is so wonderful. You will have to visit and see for yourselves. You might not like it,” she grudgingly advised Father Kent, “since you are a priest.”

After several hours of questions, to which Karin responded only with bits and pieces of vague information, everyone was frustrated.

Then Father Kent asked a question that was calculated to arouse emotion. “Why have you accepted Moon and his wife as your true parents, and not your mother and father here?”

Later the family said they feared the entire neighborhood heard Karin’s screamed response. “You always drank, and made us work on that farm. And you hit us all the time,” she yelled at her father.

And to her mother she screamed, “You were so helpless. You wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

Karin then turned on the priest. “The church was so hypocritical. And no one cared about anyone else or about living any kind of decent lives.”

Pain that was for so long denied and camouflaged in this family had finally surfaced. Karin stopped screaming and ran into the kitchen, tears streaming down her face. Her parents wept too. Karin’s father followed her into the kitchen and everyone present heard what he told his daughter. “Maybe we did make some mistakes. But it’s not too late. Honest, honey, we’ll try to make it up to you. Please listen to what we have to say. I never knew how you felt.”

They returned to the living room and Karin asked Louise to come with her to talk. They excused themselves for a few minutes and when they returned they told of a bargain they had made. Karin would listen, but she would not respond. She would stay at the house, but only if no one questioned her. She would listen to anything they wanted to tell her and that’s all.

In exchange for Karin’s attention, Louise promised to visit one of the Unification Church’s Creative Community Project houses in San Francisco, where Karin had been recruited by the Moonies.

Father Kent says he “quavered inside,” when he thought of how often a young person attempts to rescue a friend or sister or brother and ends up being converted to the church themselves. “We might,” he worried, “end up having to rescue both young women.” But it was too late to worry. The bargain had been made.

They spent a few more hours talking to Karin about Unification Church theology and practice, then everyone went to bed. Father Burtner, who was bunking on the living room sofa, went over his copy of the Unification Church’s 120-day training program, making notes of salient points to refer to the next day. Just as the sun rose over the horizon, the priest decided he’d crammed all his tired brain could absorb, and dropped off to sleep for a few hours.

That morning he sat with Karin and Louise around the kitchen table and continued the one-sided discussion. The priest had decided not to violate Karin’s bargain, but to encourage her to explain views she had never really clarified for herself. He set his copy of the 120-day program nearby, but took pains not to refer to it. Instead he talked about Unification Church theology, explaining how the belief system differs from Christianity. Finally, to clarify a point she wanted to make, Karin reached for the 120-day training manual.

“Ah-haaa,” the priest said to himself. “This is the beginning.”

Studying the manual, Karin began to feel that the verbal interpretations of church philosophy she had been given were not always based on fact. By the end of the second day of re-evaluation Karin was feeing betrayed, confused and angry. She jumped up, caught Louise by the arm and pulled her outside. “I won’t stay a minute longer,” she told her friend. They walked together until Karin spotted a pay telephone. The priest was following them, at a distance, but he was close enough to hear what they were saying.

“You’re running away from the one person who can help you out of this mess, who can help you understand what to do with your life,” Louise was shouting. “And you won’t even give him a chance to talk to you. You’re turning your back on the one person who can help you. You may never have another chance …”

Then, just as the two young women came to the phone booth, Karin threw her purse down and began to cry. “Okay,” she sobbed, “I’ll listen. But I am going back tomorrow.”

Father Kent drew Karin aside and tried to comfort her by telling her how he once questioned his faith when he was a seminarian. “I felt like the loneliest soul in the world,” he said, “and I know you do too. But please listen to us. I want you to believe that we want to help you. You are mixed up in something that is much bigger than you know.” She picked up her handbag and they walked back to the house. After more discussion, the priest and Louise conferred privately. “All of Karin’s doubts,” Louise told him, “seem to hinge on who and what the Reverend Moon is, charlatan or savior?” Karin knew little about her adopted religious leader. She had not even learned of his existence until weeks after she joined his church.

“I know someone who knows a lot about the Reverend Moon,” Father Kent told Louise.

And so they planned a visit to Daphne Greene, who lives nearby in Ross, California. Mrs. Greene, mother of two children who have been involved in the church, one a former Moonie and the other still a member, is also a former president of the board of trustees of Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, a highly respected coalition of theology schools. This wife of a prominent Bay Area attorney is deeply religious and politically attuned. She has been watching the Unification Church, with a wary eye, since before her own children became involved.

“Bring the girls and come on over,” she said. “I’ll make sure Ford” (her son who left the church on his own) “is around, they can all spend some time together.” The next day the threesome went to the Greene’s hilltop home, and after a meeting, the three young people set out for a day at the beach.

▲ Ford Greene in 2005

That day, Ford Greene and later his mother told Karin facts about the Reverend Moon, his origins in Korea, his questionable political and financial goals, and how his brand of religion is not always compatible with Christianity.

By the end of the day, Karin had decided not to return to the Unification Church. “How could a girl like me get involved in something like that?” she wondered.

Father Kent knew that Karin and her parents still had some unfinished business to discuss so when they returned to the relatives’ home they all sat down with her mother and father and discussed the indictments Karin had screamed at her parents a few days earlier. Her parents wondered, “Could we have made Karin’s growing up less difficult somehow? Has life been so tough for our kids?” They didn’t have answers, but they decided they would make an attempt, however belated, to improve their lives. Karin’s father promised to join Alcoholics Anonymous and he has. Karin’s mother began to understand why she was chronically depressed, how she had lost control of her own life. The family promised to seek regular counseling.

Karin and the priest discussed her personal problems. Karin had had what in the Unification Church are called “chapter two,” or sexual problems. Karin is a big girl, not fat, but far from petite. She said she felt unattractive and inadequate with men and couldn’t always trust her own feelings. They agreed that it is not easy to learn to deal with members of the opposite sex. But Father Kent encouraged Karin to deal with doubts by facing rather than avoiding them.

No one in the Hegstrom family solved their problems that day. But it may have been the first time the family recognized them and promised to seek counseling. And they decided that they do care for each other and that each member would try to be kinder and more considerate. And, Karin was no longer a Moonie.

With planning rather than haste a re-evaluation, such as that done by Father Kent, or a deprogramming can be arranged for optimum success. …

The debriefer or deprogrammer needs to be made aware of sore spots in the family relationships and should learn as much as possible about the background, personality and life of the potential subject. Not all family problems are as easily unearthed as those of the Hegstroms, and neither are most families as willing to face difficulties with honesty and openness. …

Ideally, a re-evaluation of a cult member’s life and beliefs should be the result of a parent-child bargain. “If you intend to spend the rest of your life in that group, you owe us a week (or two weeks) of your time,” is one approach. Rabbi Davis has, himself, conducted well over one hundred “rescues” that came about this way. The young people Rabbi Davis has talked out of religious cults were probably no happier about a confrontation with him than Karin Hegstrom was about hers with Father Kent. But each came and sat in the rabbi’s unlocked study, across the desk from him, or sharing a sofa with him, and talked and listened. And each ultimately left a cult. He reports few “failures.”

__________________________________

Moonwebs by Josh Freed (the book was made into a movie)

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

Life Among the Moonies [in Oakland] by Deanna Durham

Barbara Underwood and the Oakland Moonies

Scared of Leaving the Moon church? My advice on leaving the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon An Open Letter to the Moon church from a former 2nd Gen. Raising Hell: Growing up 2nd gen in the Moon church by Julia McKenna

As I was leaving the church, there was a growing amount of emphasis on kingship.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

“Any belief system that so polarizes the forces of good and evil... is inhuman and intellectually dishonest”

▲ Father Kent Burtner, right, discussing with two former UC members.

“I am sick unto death of those kids being used and exploited” 

Father Kent Burtner, the Oregon chaplain who offers cult members’ families a way to analyze their situation, has for years observed the rapid growth and expansion of the cult phenomenon and makes no effort to hide the strength of his convictions. “I am sick unto death that those kids are being used and exploited,” he says. For nearly a decade, Father Kent has been watching the followers of the Reverend Moon work to increase his flock. “The ways the Moonies recruit followers are deceitful,” he says. “And, the ends to which the energies of Moon’s disciples are aimed are just as indefensible as the ways their minds are captured.”

Before his charge in Oregon, Father Kent was a graduate student at Berkeley’s renowned Graduate Theological Union. In those days, the priest watched the changing political and religious scene and saw the Moon movement burst into bloom just as the flower children began to fade in the garden of the counter-culture.

Unification Church theology disturbs Father Kent. The message that Christ failed as a savior, along with the intricate plan whereby the Reverend Moon will unite and save the world, is offensive and upsetting to this Catholic priest. But a stronger reason for his counter-cult work is his fervent belief that the rights of individuals are being usurped by religious cults.

“Any belief system that so polarizes the forces of good and evil, is mere negativism, is inhuman and intellectually dishonest,” he says. “The idea of the Manichaean split between good and evil denies the value of the human person. Moonies are asked to hold their objections and to drop them behind them. Pretty soon, if they ever turned around, there would be a huge pile of questions sitting there unanswered.” The priest points out also that cult members are not only discouraged from examining their questions, they are never even left alone for long enough to contemplate at all.

Father Kent in the West, and Rabbi Davis on the East Coast, are two of a very small number of clergymen who speak out against religious cults and who could be called counter-cult activists. Both of these men of the cloth are cautious about getting involved in activities that could be interpreted as illegal. But each will speak to any young cult member who is willing to listen.

When Father Kent was called to deprogram the young daughter of a Lutheran family mentioned earlier in this chapter, he agreed to help the family and the young woman with a re-evaluation of her life. She was not physically constrained or imprisoned in any way. Father Kent explains that he invoked her own intellectual integrity to make her listen to the sometimes “uncomfortable” facts about Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church. The young woman is Karin Hegstrom, a college graduate from an Ohio farm family. Karin’s parents and her closest friend from childhood were all involved in the re-evaluation.

One Sunday morning just as he was about to celebrate Sunday Mass in the campus chapel, Father Kent received a frantic phone call from Karin’s father. Mr. Hegstrom asked the priest’s help in deprogramming his daughter. Several weeks earlier she had disappeared into the Unification Church and was now at the group’s New Ideal City Ranch in Boonville, California, 200 miles north of San Francisco.

In order to reach her, Karin’s father was considering swearing out a warrant for his daughter’s arrest, since she had taken some of the family’s possessions, including a car, into the church with her. Mr. Hegstrom was aware that this move might mean getting involved in a potentially irreversible legal action: his daughter could end up in jail. But arrest seemed to be the only way he could be sure she would leave the ranch. She had refused to come home and she had hung up on all her parents’ phone calls.

First Father Kent cautioned the Hegstroms not to do anything they might regret and advised them to wait until they could all get together to make some plans. “Yes,” he promised, “I will help as much as I can.” The Hegstroms had to understand that the priest would not break any laws, but he would do everything in his power to help. In the meantime, he would serve Mass and be free in an hour.

After the service, they spoke again and discussed Karin’s situation. She had broken off several conversations with her parents. She would not tell them much about her new life. In fact, she was very secretive. The Hegstroms were anxious and concerned about their daughter, and on the basis of the phone calls, had driven across the country with Karin’s close friend, Louise. They didn’t know how they were going to “rescue” their daughter, they only knew they were going to try.

The plan was made. The Hegstroms would visit their daughter at Boonville and convince her to come with them to visit an aunt and uncle who live in a small town nearby. They had already tried to phone Karin, but were unable to reach her. The parents felt they had been given a run-around, so Father Kent gave them the phone number of Martin (Noah) Ross, director of the Boonville ranch and an ardent follower of the Reverend Moon. Mr. Hegstrom told the young man that he and his wife would, under whatever circumstances necessary, see their daughter. The ranch director agreed that Karin would meet her parents at the ranch gate.

▲ The locked gate at Boonville

Karin came out of the padlocked gate, which is located miles from the ranch’s lodgings and main buildings, and met with her father. After much talking, Mr. Hegstrom convinced Karin that the only way she could demonstrate her sincerity about the Unification Church was to come with them for an overnight visit and explain her feelings. “We need to talk. And, if you feel you must, we’ll let you come back,” he told her.

The two drove off to the home of Karin’s aunt and uncle where her mother and her friend, Louise, were waiting. There was an emotional reunion, especially between the friends, as Karin told Louise she wanted her to experience the joy of being a member of the Unification Church. “I want to convert you as my first spiritual child,” she said.

Father Kent was also waiting and Karin abruptly questioned his presence at the reunion. “He’s here for me, isn’t he?”

That evening, Karin tried every ruse she could think of to avoid talking to the priest. First she and Louise went for a long walk. Then she said she wanted to spend some private time with her parents, then her aunt and uncle, all to avoid the confrontation she knew, by now, was inevitable. Although the young woman was trying to avoid having her belief tested in a discussion with the priest, she was not held against her will, doors and windows were not locked and bolted, but she made no attempt to leave. Karin Hegstrom had promised to spend the night with her family and she seemed determined to live up to her bargain.

Ultimately, Karin sat down with Father Kent, Louise and her parents. They asked questions about her new life, cautiously and without hostility, and she attempted to answer them, saying only, “It is so wonderful. You will have to visit and see for yourselves. You might not like it,” she grudgingly advised Father Kent, “since you are a priest.”

After several hours of questions, to which Karin responded only with bits and pieces of vague information, everyone was frustrated.

Then Father Kent asked a question that was calculated to arouse emotion. “Why have you accepted Moon and his wife as your true parents, and not your mother and father here?”

Later the family said they feared the entire neighborhood heard Karin’s screamed response. “You always drank, and made us work on that farm. And you hit us all the time,” she yelled at her father.

And to her mother she screamed, “You were so helpless. You wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

Karin then turned on the priest. “The church was so hypocritical. And no one cared about anyone else or about living any kind of decent lives.”

Pain that was for so long denied and camouflaged in this family had finally surfaced. Karin stopped screaming and ran into the kitchen, tears streaming down her face. Her parents wept too. Karin’s father followed her into the kitchen and everyone present heard what he told his daughter. “Maybe we did make some mistakes. But it’s not too late. Honest, honey, we’ll try to make it up to you. Please listen to what we have to say. I never knew how you felt.”

They returned to the living room and Karin asked Louise to come with her to talk. They excused themselves for a few minutes and when they returned they told of a bargain they had made. Karin would listen, but she would not respond. She would stay at the house, but only if no one questioned her. She would listen to anything they wanted to tell her and that’s all.

In exchange for Karin’s attention, Louise promised to visit one of the Unification Church’s Creative Community Project houses in San Francisco, where Karin had been recruited by the Moonies.

Father Kent says he “quavered inside,” when he thought of how often a young person attempts to rescue a friend or sister or brother and ends up being converted to the church themselves. “We might,” he worried, “end up having to rescue both young women.” But it was too late to worry. The bargain had been made.

They spent a few more hours talking to Karin about Unification Church theology and practice, then everyone went to bed. Father Burtner, who was bunking on the living room sofa, went over his copy of the Unification Church’s 120-day training program, making notes of salient points to refer to the next day. Just as the sun rose over the horizon, the priest decided he’d crammed all his tired brain could absorb, and dropped off to sleep for a few hours.

That morning he sat with Karin and Louise around the kitchen table and continued the one-sided discussion. The priest had decided not to violate Karin’s bargain, but to encourage her to explain views she had never really clarified for herself. He set his copy of the 120-day program nearby, but took pains not to refer to it. Instead he talked about Unification Church theology, explaining how the belief system differs from Christianity. Finally, to clarify a point she wanted to make, Karin reached for the 120-day training manual.

“Ah-haaa,” the priest said to himself. “This is the beginning.”

Studying the manual, Karin began to feel that the verbal interpretations of church philosophy she had been given were not always based on fact. By the end of the second day of re-evaluation Karin was feeing betrayed, confused and angry. She jumped up, caught Louise by the arm and pulled her outside. “I won’t stay a minute longer,” she told her friend. They walked together until Karin spotted a pay telephone. The priest was following them, at a distance, but he was close enough to hear what they were saying.

“You’re running away from the one person who can help you out of this mess, who can help you understand what to do with your life,” Louise was shouting. “And you won’t even give him a chance to talk to you. You’re turning your back on the one person who can help you. You may never have another chance ...”

Then, just as the two young women came to the phone booth, Karin threw her purse down and began to cry. “Okay,” she sobbed, “I’ll listen. But I am going back tomorrow.”

Father Kent drew Karin aside and tried to comfort her by telling her how he once questioned his faith when he was a seminarian. “I felt like the loneliest soul in the world,” he said, “and I know you do too. But please listen to us. I want you to believe that we want to help you. You are mixed up in something that is much bigger than you know.” She picked up her handbag and they walked back to the house. After more discussion, the priest and Louise conferred privately. “All of Karin’s doubts,” Louise told him, “seem to hinge on who and what the Reverend Moon is, charlatan or savior?” Karin knew little about her adopted religious leader. She had not even learned of his existence until weeks after she joined his church.

“I know someone who knows a lot about the Reverend Moon,” Father Kent told Louise.

And so they planned a visit to Daphne Greene, who lives nearby in Ross, California. Mrs. Greene, mother of two children who have been involved in the church, one a former Moonie and the other still a member, is also a former president of the board of trustees of Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, a highly respected coalition of theology schools. This wife of a prominent Bay Area attorney is deeply religious and politically attuned. She has been watching the Unification Church, with a wary eye, since before her own children became involved.

“Bring the girls and come on over,” she said. “I’ll make sure Ford” (her son who left the church on his own) “is around, they can all spend some time together.” The next day the threesome went to the Greene’s hilltop home, and after a meeting, the three young people set out for a day at the beach.

That day, Ford Greene and later his mother told Karin facts about the Reverend Moon, his origins in Korea, his questionable political and financial goals, and how his brand of religion is not always compatible with Christianity.

By the end of the day, Karin had decided not to return to the Unification Church. “How could a girl like me get involved in something like that?” she wondered.

Father Kent knew that Karin and her parents still had some unfinished business to discuss so when they returned to the relatives’ home they all sat down with her mother and father and discussed the indictments Karin had screamed at her parents a few days earlier. Her parents wondered, “Could we have made Karin’s growing up less difficult somehow? Has life been so tough for our kids?” They didn’t have answers, but they decided they would make an attempt, however belated, to improve their lives. Karin’s father promised to join Alcoholics Anonymous and he has. Karin’s mother began to understand why she was chronically depressed, how she had lost control of her own life. The family promised to seek regular counseling.

Karin and the priest discussed her personal problems. Karin had had what in the Unification Church are called “chapter two,” or sexual problems. Karin is a big girl, not fat, but far from petite. She said she felt unattractive and inadequate with men and couldn’t always trust her own feelings. They agreed that it is not easy to learn to deal with members of the opposite sex. But Father Kent encouraged Karin to deal with doubts by facing rather than avoiding them.

No one in the Hegstrom family solved their problems that day. But it may have been the first time the family recognized them and promised to seek counseling. And they decided that they do care for each other and that each member would try to be kinder and more considerate. And, Karin was no longer a Moonie.

With planning rather than haste a re-evaluation, such as that done by Father Kent, or a deprogramming can be arranged for optimum success. And, as is apparent from the success of Karin Hegstrom’s experience, it needn’t take place outside of the law, behind locked doors or with force, to be effective.

extract from All God’s Children: The Cult Experience—Salvation or Slavery? by Jo Anne Parke and Carol Stoner (1977)

Contents Recruiting Theology Messiahs and gurus Two sisters: a case study Contrasts Give us this day Brainwashing or enlightenment? Politics and Unification Church Your child is involved: now what? Getting out Deprogramming: no guarantees Readjusting No easy answers.

_________________________________

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

My Time with the Oakland Family Moonies – by Peter from New Zealand

Unification Church’s deceptive recruiting tactics - Part 1

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

“Their feelings appear to them as being evil or the cause of their fallen condition... resulting in a repression of emotions.”

▲ Father Kent Burtner, right, discusses Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his teaching with former Moon followers. Burtner, a Catholic priest in Eugene, Oregon, has helped “deprogram” many Moonies over several decades.

_____________________________________

The minds of Moonies are changed

By Dave Horsman – South Idaho Press writer

There’s no universal formula for “deprogramming” a Moonie, according to Fr. Kent Burtner, a Catholic priest who first tangled with the Unification Church in 1969.

“The thing that’s crucial is that you consider who you’re talking to. You have to meet him where he’s at,” he said. In young Milton Esquibel’s case, “the process (of withdrawing from his Moonie experience) had already begun because he had so much time to spend with his family. Our time spent with him was to help reinforce the rehabilitation of his emotional faculties.”

Esquibel attended an all-day deprogramming session December 17 in Portland. It had been nearly a month since his parents abducted him from a Moonie group in Los Angeles and brought him home.

“Once they are out of the cult, their emotional life is restored to them rather dramatically,” Burtner said. “In cases where we begin deprogramming soon after the person is brought home, that restoration happens very, very suddenly.”

Burtner currently works at the Newman Center on the University of Oregon campus at Eugene. He previously was in the campus ministry at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where his reputation as an expert on the Unification Church was earned.

His introduction to the sect was in 1969 during his seminary training. “A daughter of our secretary got involved and I was asked to meet with her. She invited me to come to a lecture series in Berkeley. I could see then that the process by which the people got involved was much more significant than the doctrine.”

The American movement was in its infancy then. “It wasn’t until 1972 that they began the series of weekend seminars and 21-day workshops” that Esquibel attended.

Burtner has since helped dozens of young people shed the “emotional amnesia” produced by Unification indoctrination. He prefers “not to work in any extra-legal way —I don’t believe in kidnapping people.”

Gus and Gladys Esquibel, however, were “acting under the law” when they retrieved their 15-year-old son.

The “marvelous thing’ about deprogramming is that Moonies are led to believe it includes a variety of tortures, he said, “when in fact we just sit down and talk. We offer a supportive environment, usually with the family and close friends present.”

Deprogramming “can be done a lot of different ways,” he added. But it usually “gives an individual a chance to look at the aspects of his life in the cult that he wasn’t able to examine when he was in it. We give the person an opportunity to see new information that the cult itself would not have divulged. And it undoes two things that have been done to the individual. The first thing is that their critical faculties (their ability to observe and assess) have been put into a state of ‘suspended animation.’ The second thing is that they are made to feel guilty for having emotions.”

Burtner explained the latter condition: “Their feelings are things that appear to them as being evil or in some way the cause of their fallen condition. That gives the cult the power to control the person. It results in a repression of the emotional life and an inappropriate sense of responsibility for the state of the world. Once they have gotten into that mind set, everything outside the group appears to be evil and Satanic and everything on the inside is where God is. So their parents and their old friends are perceived to be agents of Satan.”

“We’re talking about a systematic program that denies a person his individual freedom without his being aware of it,” Burtner said. “I don’t believe there’s anything in the (Unification Church) that essentially relates to religious commitment. It uses very, very high pressure techniques of coercion and basically places the person in a conditioned neurotic state. When you get the person out of that environment and help them see what was going on, their attachment vanishes.”

Even the diet of Moonies is part of their conditioning, according to Burtner. They get very little protein and “without at least 70 grams of protein per day the cerebral cortex is unable to function adequately. They can’t reason normally.”

People who have been Moonies only a short time often are harder to deprogram according to Burtner. “They have a real idealism, They haven’t realized they are going to spend all of their time either fundraising or recruiting new members.”

Esquibel, although he was with the Moonies only about a month, responded well in the December 17 session.

“A young woman and myself chatted with him over coffee and tea to start with. We got him to talk about his experience and we shared some of our own experiences and helped him to understand some of what he had encountered. Later on he started asking the questions. He had to have time to kind of reestablish his emotional contacts and start living his real existence again.”

Each person is different, Burtner said. “Sometimes he is quite belligerent and you have to state your case quite boldly in the beginning.”

He offers the following advice to young people who may be drawn to the Moonies: “First, learn to accept and deal with your emotional life. Second, remember you have the right to ask a lot of questions when someone wants you to get involved.”

He suggests that parents “maintain open, honest lines of communication. If there are difficulties in the family, deal with them in a straightforward way.”

While Burtner despises the Unification movement, he respects its power. He encourages people to examine the church first hand, but asks them to leave a written statement with the police allowing them “to come and get you after a week” Granting another person power of attorney to assure your return is another possibility, he added.

“I had a case like that in Eugene, involving a young woman who wanted to visit a Moonie camp. She was against the (church) after seeing what one of her friends who had been involved had gone through” and wanted to expose its practices

“She gave me power of attorney and I had to use it after she had been there one weekend. I called (the church) and threatened to turn the story over to the Associated Press if she didn’t come home to talk to me. She returned and went through a day of deprogramming.”

LINK

___________________________________

Karin Hegstrom is helped to find her way out of the FFWPU / UC

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Karin Hegstrom is helped to find her way out of the FFWPU / UC

From All God’s Children by Jo Anne Parke and Carol Stoner (pages 232 - 241)

Daphne Greene, a formidable and sensitive counter-cult activist on the West Coast, … has helped and encouraged many young people to leave the Moon church by spending countless hours talking to them and their parents. She says she will talk to anyone who willingly comes to listen.

Hundreds of young people have been convinced to leave religious cults during thoughtful discussions with concerned individuals such as Mrs Greene, Rabbi Davis and others. These re-evaluations of the cultist’s religious experience were not carried out under lock and key, but voluntarily. A parent who seeks to remove a son or daughter from the clutches of a cult must consider whether or not that young person would willingly hear the other side of the issue. Whatever alternative a parent decides to choose, it should be clearly defined and thought through before it begins….

Father Kent Burtner, the Oregon chaplain who offers cult members’ families a way to analyze their situation, has for years observed the rapid growth and expansion of the cult phenomenon and makes no effort to hide the strength of his convictions. “I am sick unto death that those kids are being used and exploited,” he says. For nearly a decade, Father Kent has been watching the followers of the Reverend Moon work to increase his flock. “The ways the Moonies recruit followers are deceitful,” he says. “And, the ends to which the energies of Moon’s disciples are aimed are just as indefensible as the ways their minds are captured.”

Before his charge in Oregon, Father Kent was a graduate student at Berkeley’s renowned Graduate Theological Union. In those days, the priest watched the changing political and religious scene and saw the Moon movement burst into bloom just as the flower children began to fade in the garden of the counter-culture.

Unification Church theology disturbs Father Kent. The message that Christ failed as a savior, along with the intricate plan whereby the Reverend Moon will unite and save the world, is offensive and upsetting to this Catholic priest. But a stronger reason for his counter-cult work is his fervent belief that the rights of individuals are being usurped by religious cults.

Any belief system that so polarizes the forces of good and evil, is mere negativism, is inhuman and intellectually dishonest,” he says. “The idea of the Manichaean split between good and evil denies the value of the human person. Moonies are asked to hold their objections and to drop them behind them. Pretty soon, if they ever turned around, there would be a huge pile of questions sitting there unanswered.” The priest points out also that cult members are not only discouraged from examining their questions, they are never even left alone for long enough to contemplate at all.

Father Kent in the West, and Rabbi Davis on the East Coast, are two of a very small number of clergymen who speak out against religious cults and who could be called counter-cult activists. Both of these men of the cloth are cautious about getting involved in activities that could be interpreted as illegal. But each will speak to any young cult member who is willing to listen.

When Father Kent was called to deprogram the young daughter of a Lutheran family, he agreed to help the family and the young woman with a re-evaluation of her life. She was not physically constrained or imprisoned in any way. Father Kent explains that he invoked her own intellectual integrity to make her listen to the sometimes “uncomfortable” facts about Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church. The young woman is Karin Hegstrom, a college graduate from an Ohio farm family. Karin’s parents and her closest friend from childhood were all involved in the re-evaluation.

One Sunday morning just as he was about to celebrate Sunday Mass in the campus chapel, Father Kent received a frantic phone call from Karin’s father. Mr. Hegstrom asked the priest’s help in deprogramming his daughter. Several weeks earlier she had disappeared into the Unification Church and was now at the group’s New Ideal City Ranch in Boonville, California, 200 miles north of San Francisco.

In order to reach her, Karin’s father was considering swearing out a warrant for his daughter’s arrest, since she had taken some of the family’s possessions, including a car, into the church with her. Mr. Hegstrom was aware that this move might mean getting involved in a potentially irreversible legal action: his daughter could end up in jail. But arrest seemed to be the only way he could be sure she would leave the ranch. She had refused to come home and she had hung up on all her parents’ phone calls.

First Father Kent cautioned the Hegstroms not to do anything they might regret and advised them to wait until they could all get together to make some plans. “Yes,” he promised, “I will help as much as I can.” The Hegstroms had to understand that the priest would not break any laws, but he would do everything in his power to help. In the meantime, he would serve Mass and be free in an hour.

After the service, they spoke again and discussed Karin’s situation. She had broken off several conversations with her parents. She would not tell them much about her new life. In fact, she was very secretive. The Hegstroms were anxious and concerned about their daughter, and on the basis of the phone calls, had driven across the country with Karin’s close friend, Louise. They didn’t know how they were going to “rescue” their daughter, they only knew they were going to try.

The plan was made. The Hegstroms would visit their daughter at Boonville and convince her to come with them to visit an aunt and uncle who live in a small town nearby. They had already tried to phone Karin, but were unable to reach her. The parents felt they had been given a run-around, so Father Kent gave them the phone number of Martin (Noah) Ross, director of the Boonville ranch and an ardent follower of the Reverend Moon. Mr. Hegstrom told the young man that he and his wife would, under whatever circumstances necessary, see their daughter. The ranch director agreed that Karin would meet her parents at the ranch gate.

Karin came out of the padlocked gate, which is located miles from the ranch’s lodgings and main buildings, and met with her father. After much talking, Mr. Hegstrom convinced Karin that the only way she could demonstrate her sincerity about the Unification Church was to come with them for an overnight visit and explain her feelings. “We need to talk. And, if you feel you must, we’ll let you come back,” he told her.

The two drove off to the home of Karin’s aunt and uncle where her mother and her friend, Louise, were waiting. There was an emotional reunion, especially between the friends, as Karin told Louise she wanted her to experience the joy of being a member of the Unification Church. “I want to convert you as my first spiritual child,” she said.

Father Kent was also waiting and Karin abruptly questioned his presence at the reunion. “He’s here for me, isn’t he?”

That evening, Karin tried every ruse she could think of to avoid talking to the priest. First she and Louise went for a long walk. Then she said she wanted to spend some private time with her parents, then her aunt and uncle, all to avoid the confrontation she knew, by now, was inevitable. Although the young woman was trying to avoid having her belief tested in a discussion with the priest, she was not held against her will, doors and windows were not locked and bolted, but she made no attempt to leave. Karin Hegstrom had promised to spend the night with her family and she seemed determined to live up to her bargain.

Ultimately, Karin sat down with Father Kent, Louise and her parents. They asked questions about her new life, cautiously and without hostility, and she attempted to answer them, saying only, “It is so wonderful. You will have to visit and see for yourselves. You might not like it,” she grudgingly advised Father Kent, “since you are a priest.”

After several hours of questions, to which Karin responded only with bits and pieces of vague information, everyone was frustrated.

Then Father Kent asked a question that was calculated to arouse emotion. “Why have you accepted Moon and his wife as your true parents, and not your mother and father here?”

Later the family said they feared the entire neighborhood heard Karin’s screamed response. “You always drank, and made us work on that farm. And you hit us all the time,” she yelled at her father.

And to her mother she screamed, “You were so helpless. You wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

Karin then turned on the priest. “The church was so hypocritical. And no one cared about anyone else or about living any kind of decent lives.”

Pain that was for so long denied and camouflaged in this family had finally surfaced. Karin stopped screaming and ran into the kitchen, tears streaming down her face. Her parents wept too. Karin’s father followed her into the kitchen and everyone present heard what he told his daughter. “Maybe we did make some mistakes. But it’s not too late. Honest, honey, we’ll try to make it up to you. Please listen to what we have to say. I never knew how you felt.”

They returned to the living room and Karin asked Louise to come with her to talk. They excused themselves for a few minutes and when they returned they told of a bargain they had made. Karin would listen, but she would not respond. She would stay at the house, but only if no one questioned her. She would listen to anything they wanted to tell her and that’s all.

In exchange for Karin’s attention, Louise promised to visit one of the Unification Church’s Creative Community Project houses in San Francisco, where Karin had been recruited by the Moonies.

Father Kent says he “quavered inside,” when he thought of how often a young person attempts to rescue a friend or sister or brother and ends up being converted to the church themselves. “We might,” he worried, “end up having to rescue both young women.” But it was too late to worry. The bargain had been made.

They spent a few more hours talking to Karin about Unification Church theology and practice, then everyone went to bed. Father Burtner, who was bunking on the living room sofa, went over his copy of the Unification Church’s 120-day training program, making notes of salient points to refer to the next day. Just as the sun rose over the horizon, the priest decided he’d crammed all his tired brain could absorb, and dropped off to sleep for a few hours.

That morning he sat with Karin and Louise around the kitchen table and continued the one-sided discussion. The priest had decided not to violate Karin’s bargain, but to encourage her to explain views she had never really clarified for herself. He set his copy of the 120-day program nearby, but took pains not to refer to it. Instead he talked about Unification Church theology, explaining how the belief system differs from Christianity. Finally, to clarify a point she wanted to make, Karin reached for the 120-day training manual.

“Ah-haaa,” the priest said to himself. “This is the beginning.”

Studying the manual, Karin began to feel that the verbal interpretations of church philosophy she had been given were not always based on fact. By the end of the second day of re-evaluation Karin was feeing betrayed, confused and angry. She jumped up, caught Louise by the arm and pulled her outside. “I won’t stay a minute longer,” she told her friend. They walked together until Karin spotted a pay telephone. The priest was following them, at a distance, but he was close enough to hear what they were saying.

“You’re running away from the one person who can help you out of this mess, who can help you understand what to do with your life,” Louise was shouting. “And you won’t even give him a chance to talk to you. You’re turning your back on the one person who can help you. You may never have another chance ...”

Then, just as the two young women came to the phone booth, Karin threw her purse down and began to cry. “Okay,” she sobbed, “I’ll listen. But I am going back tomorrow.”

Father Kent drew Karin aside and tried to comfort her by telling her how he once questioned his faith when he was a seminarian. “I felt like the loneliest soul in the world,” he said, “and I know you do too. But please listen to us. I want you to believe that we want to help you. You are mixed up in something that is much bigger than you know.” She picked up her handbag and they walked back to the house. After more discussion, the priest and Louise conferred privately. “All of Karin’s doubts,” Louise told him, “seem to hinge on who and what the Reverend Moon is, charlatan or savior?” Karin knew little about her adopted religious leader. She had not even learned of his existence until weeks after she joined his church.

“I know someone who knows a lot about the Reverend Moon,” Father Kent told Louise.

And so they planned a visit to Daphne Greene, who lives nearby in Ross, California. Mrs. Greene, mother of two children who have been involved in the church, one a former Moonie and the other still a member, is also a former president of the board of trustees of Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, a highly respected coalition of theology schools. This wife of a prominent Bay Area attorney is deeply religious and politically attuned. She has been watching the Unification Church, with a wary eye, since before her own children became involved.

“Bring the girls and come on over,” she said. “I’ll make sure Ford” (her son who left the church on his own) “is around, they can all spend some time together.” The next day the threesome went to the Greene’s hilltop home, and after a meeting, the three young people set out for a day at the beach.

That day, Ford Greene and later his mother told Karin facts about the Reverend Moon, his origins in Korea, his questionable political and financial goals, and how his brand of religion is not always compatible with Christianity.

By the end of the day, Karin had decided not to return to the Unification Church. “How could a girl like me get involved in something like that?” she wondered.

Father Kent knew that Karin and her parents still had some unfinished business to discuss so when they returned to the relatives’ home they all sat down with her mother and father and discussed the indictments Karin had screamed at her parents a few days earlier. Her parents wondered, “Could we have made Karin’s growing up less difficult somehow? Has life been so tough for our kids?” They didn’t have answers, but they decided they would make an attempt, however belated, to improve their lives. Karin’s father promised to join Alcoholics Anonymous and he has. Karin’s mother began to understand why she was chronically depressed, how she had lost control of her own life. The family promised to seek regular counseling.

Karin and the priest discussed her personal problems. Karin had had what in the Unification Church are called “chapter two,” or sexual problems. Karin is a big girl, not fat, but far from petite. She said she felt unattractive and inadequate with men and couldn’t always trust her own feelings. They agreed that it is not easy to learn to deal with members of the opposite sex. But Father Kent encouraged Karin to deal with doubts by facing rather than avoiding them.

No one in the Hegstrom family solved their problems that day. But it may have been the first time the family recognized them and promised to seek counseling. And they decided that they do care for each other and that each member would try to be kinder and more considerate. And, Karin was no longer a Moonie.

With planning rather than haste a re-evaluation, such as that done by Father Kent, or a deprogramming can be arranged for optimum success. …

The debriefer or deprogrammer needs to be made aware of sore spots in the family relationships and should learn as much as possible about the background, personality and life of the potential subject. Not all family problems are as easily unearthed as those of the Hegstroms, and neither are most families as willing to face difficulties with honesty and openness. …

Ideally, a re-evaluation of a cult member’s life and beliefs should be the result of a parent-child bargain. “If you intend to spend the rest of your life in that group, you owe us a week (or two weeks) of your time,” is one approach. Rabbi Davis has, himself, conducted well over one hundred “rescues” that came about this way. The young people Rabbi Davis has talked out of religious cults were probably no happier about a confrontation with him than Karin Hegstrom was about hers with Father Kent. But each came and sat in the rabbi’s unlocked study, across the desk from him, or sharing a sofa with him, and talked and listened. And each ultimately left a cult. He reports few “failures.”

__________________________________

“Their feelings appear to them as being evil or the cause of their fallen condition… resulting in a repression of emotions.”

Excellent podcast: Ford Greene, Attorney and Former Moonie, on the Death of Rev. Moon

https://www.peterbcollins.com/podcast/PBC_20120928p607.mp3

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Moonwebs by Josh Freed

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

Barbara Underwood and the Oakland Moonies

Boonville’s Japanese origins

Life Among the Moonies by Deanna Durham

Mitchell was lucky – he got away from the Unification Church

My Time with the Oakland Family Moonies – by Peter from New Zealand

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Faith Yen interviewed by Caleb Maupin

Twitter: www.twitter.com/faithy3n Instagram: www.instagram.com/faithy3n

“I was 18 when I got kicked out of HQ. I was 19 when I started breaking rules but was still mentally in. I was 25 when I realized I was completely mentally out and had a Neo in the Matrix panic attack.”

Faith Yen Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC2eGLsbToZ5so4VVpRuJPw

_________________________________________________

Shamanism is at the heart of Sun Myung Moon’s church

Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central & South America

The Dark Side of True World Foods – owned by the Moonies

Sushi and Rev. Moon – Chicago Tribune special 2006

Sun Myung Moon could have spent a second spell in a US jail in 2007 – for encouraging poaching baby leopard sharks

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon and Koreagate – Robert Boettcher

Moon Church human trafficking is despicable

The Moon Church schism explained

‘Will they let us live?’ Inside Xinjiang, survivors of China’s internment camps speak – Los Angeles Times   Dec 17, 2020

_________________________________________________

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

Contents

1. VIDEO: Why do people join cults? – Janja Lalich 2. PODCAST: The Cult Vault – Introduction to the Study of Cults by Kaycee 3. VIDEO: The BITE model of Steve Hassan / The Influence Continuum 4. Father Kent Burtner on manipulation of the emotions by the UC 5. VIDEO: Terror, Love and Brainwashing ft. Alexandra Stein 6. Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria of Thought Reform 7. VIDEO: The Wrong Way Home . An analysis of Dr Arthur J. Deikman’s book on cult behavior 8. Cult Indoctrination through Psychological Manipulation by Professor Kimiaki Nishida 9. Towards a Demystified and Disinterested Scientific Theory of Brainwashing (extracts) by Benjamin Zablocki 10. Psyching Out the Cults’ Collective Mania by Louis Jolyon West and Richard Delgado 11. Book: Take Back Your Life by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (2009) 12. VIDEO: Paul Morantz on Cults, Thought Reform, Coercive Persuasion and Confession 13. PODCAST: Ford Greene, Attorney and former UC member, on Sun Myung Moon 14. VIDEO: Steve Hassan interviewed by Chris Shelton 15. VIDEO: Conformity by TheraminTrees 16. VIDEO: Instruction Manual for Life by TheraminTrees 17. The Social Organization of Recruitment in the Unification Church – PDF by David Frank Taylor, M.A., July 1978, Sociology 18. Mind Control: Psychological Reality Or Mindless Rhetoric? by Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph.D., President, American Psychological Association 19. Socialization techniques through which Moon church members were able to influence by Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D. 20. VIDEO: Recovery from RTS (Religious Trauma Syndrome) by Marlene Winell 21. VIDEO: ICSA – After the cult 22. “How do you know I’m not the world’s worst con man or swindler?” – Sun Myung Moon 23. VIDEO: What Is A Cult? CuriosityStream 24. VIDEO: The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion by Kristin Neff 25. Bibliography

_____________________________________________

6. Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria of Thought Reform

“I wish to suggest a set of criteria against which any environment may be judged — a basis for answering the ever-recurring question: “Isn’t this just like ‘brainwashing’?” – Robert Jay Lifton

“Ideological Totalism” is Chapter 22 of Robert Jay Lifton’s book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘brainwashing’ in China

Dr. Lifton, a psychiatrist and author, has studied the psychology of extremism for decades. He is renowned for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. Lifton testified at the 1976 bank robbery trial of Patty Hearst about the theory of “coercive persuasion.”

His theories — including the often-referred to 8 criteria described below — are used and expanded upon by many cult experts.

First published in 1961, his book was reprinted in 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press. From Chapter 22:

8 CRITERIA AGAINST WHICH ANY ENVIRONMENT MAY BE JUDGED:

Milieu Control – The control of information and communication.

Mystical Manipulation – The manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated.

The Demand for Purity – The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection.

The Cult of Confession – Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group.

The Sacred Science – The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute.

Loading the Language – The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand.

Doctrine over person – The member’s personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.

The Dispensing of existence – The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not.

Eight Conditions of Thought Reform as presented in 
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Chapter 22.

1. Milieu Control The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also — in its penetration of his inner life — over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984…. (Page 420.) Purposeful limitation of all forms of communication with outside world.

The control of human communication through environment control.

The cult doesn’t just control communication between people, it also controls people’s communication with themselves, in their own minds.

2. Mystical Manipulation The inevitable next step after milieu control is extensive personal manipulation. This manipulation assumes a no-holds-barred character, and uses every possible device at the milieu’s command, no matter how bizarre or painful. Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment. This element of planned spontaneity, directed as it is by an ostensibly omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality. (Page 422.) Potential convert is convinced of the higher purpose within the special group.

Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the “ultimate purpose.”

Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect.

People mistakenly attribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concocted by human beings.

3. The Demand for Purity The experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. Nothing human is immune from the flood of stern moral judgements. (Page 423.) The philosophical assumption underlying this demand is that absolute purity is attainable, and that anything done to anyone in the name of this purity is ultimately moral.

The cult demands Self-sanctification through Purity.

Only by pushing toward perfection, as the group views goodness, will the recruit be able to contribute.

The demand for purity creates a guilty milieu and a shaming milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can attain.

People are punished and learn to punish themselves for not living up to the group’s ideals.

4. The Cult of Confession Closely related to the demand for absolute purity is an obsession with personal confession. Confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal, and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself. (Page 425.) Public confessional periods are used to get members to verbalize and discuss their innermost fears and anxieties as well as past imperfections.

The environment demands that personal boundaries are destroyed and that every thought, feeling, or action that does not conform with the group’s rules be confessed.

Members have little or no privacy, physically or mentally.

5. Aura of Sacred Science The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute “scientific” precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also “unscientific”. In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science. (Pages 427-428.) The cult advances the idea that the cult’s laws, rules and regulations are absolute and, therefore, to be followed automatically.

The group’s belief is that their dogma is absolutely scientific and morally true.

No alternative viewpoint is allowed.

No questioning of the dogma is permitted.

6. Loading the Language The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. [Slogans] The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. The cult invents a new vocabulary, giving well-known words special new meanings, making them into trite clichés. The clichés become “ultimate terms”, either “god terms”, representative of ultimate good, or “devil terms”, representative of ultimate evil. Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: the language of non-thought. (Page 429.)

Controlling words helps to control people’s thoughts.

The group uses black-or-white thinking and thought-terminating clichés.

The special words constrict rather than expand human understanding.

Non-members cannot simply comprehend what cult members are talking about.

7. Doctrine over Person Another characteristic feature of ideological totalism: the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine. (Page 430.) Past experience and values are invalid if they conflict with the new cult morality.

The value of individuals is insignificant when compared to the value of the group.

Past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored to make them consistent with doctrinal logic.

No matter what a person experiences, it is belief in the dogma which is important.

Group belief supersedes individual conscience and integrity.

8. Dispensed Existence The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right. Lifton gave a Communist example:
In thought reform, as in Chinese Communist practice generally, the world is divided into “the people” (defined as “the working class, the peasant class, the petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie”), and “the reactionaries” or “the lackies of imperialism” (defined as “the landlord class, the bureaucratic capitalist class, and the KMT reactionaries and their henchmen”). (Page 433.)

The group decides who has a right to exist and who does not.

The group has an elitist world view — a sharp line is drawn by cult between those who have been saved, chosen, etc., (the cult members) and those who are lost, in the dark, etc., (the rest of the world).

Former members are seen as “weak,” “lost,” “evil,” and “the enemy”.

The cult insists that there is no legitimate alternative to membership in the cult.

The full text of Chapter 22 appears HERE courtesy of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton.

___________________________________________

The Cult Vault #1, 3 and 45: Introduction and The Unification Church

This Introduction to the study of cults is excellent and helpful for understanding #3 and #45.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

What kind of relationships do people have inside cults?

Cults & Cult Leaders – Talk by Alexandra Stein, PhD

Published on 9 Apr 2017 by Talk Beliefs

Cult expert & author, Alexandra Stein, PhD, at the Reason Coffee Shop and Bookstore, Watford, Hertfordshire, UK. Alexandra answers questions from the audience as well as sharing frightening revelations from her own past trapped in an oppressive and highly-controlling cult called ‘The O’.

Written by a cult survivor and renowned expert on cults and totalitarianism, Terror, Love and Brainwashing draws on the author’s 25 years of study and research to explain how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts.

TalkBeliefs in association with the Reason Coffee Shop and Bookstore presents Alexandra on the release of her latest book on cults: Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, which focuses on how charismatic cult leaders target social attachments (such as family) to seduce and control potential followers.

_______________________________________

What kind of relationships do people have inside cults?

at 24:40  https://youtu.be/nwHlIwCJftg?t=1478

_______________________________________

Alexandra Stein, Ph.D – Main Website:

http://www.alexandrastein.com/

_______________________________________

Cults & Brainwashing – 2015 Alexandra Stein TalkBeliefs interview:  http://bit.ly/2fBAOyV

_______________________________________

Terror, Love & Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandra Stein:

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/2uury4C (affiliate link)

Routledge.com http://bit.ly/2fBBS5K

_______________________________________

ALSO BY ALEXANDRA STEIN:

Inside Out: A Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult by Alexandra Stein

http://amzn.to/2vrAhWI (affiliate link)

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

VIDEO: Sensibly Speaking Podcast #154: Terror, Love and Brainwashing ft. Alexandra Stein

Chris Shelton: This week I have Dr. Alexandra Stein, social psychologist and author of the book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing. We discuss various aspects of cult behavior and psychology.

Comments: This is an outstanding piece of work that I will go back to several times. It has provided me with a degree of clarity hitherto unknown. Now, what do I do with it?

Some brilliant information, again, thank you. I found the part about separating from ones emotions and not allowing yourself to process them particularly interesting. Having been brought up in a Scientology family, I still struggle with dealing with ("low tone") emotions.

____________________________________

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

Contents of this web page

1. VIDEO: Why do people join cults? – Janja Lalich 2. PODCAST: The Cult Vault – Introduction to the Study of Cults by Kaycee 3. VIDEO: The BITE model of Steve Hassan / The Influence Continuum 4. Father Kent Burtner on manipulation of the emotions by the UC 5. VIDEO: Terror, Love and Brainwashing ft. Alexandra Stein 6. Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria of Thought Reform 7. VIDEO: The Wrong Way Home . An analysis of Dr Arthur J. Deikman’s book on cult behavior 8. Cult Indoctrination through Psychological Manipulation by Professor Kimiaki Nishida 9. Towards a Demystified and Disinterested Scientific Theory of Brainwashing (extracts) by Benjamin Zablocki 10. Psyching Out the Cults’ Collective Mania by Louis Jolyon West and Richard Delgado 11. Book: Take Back Your Life by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias (2009) 12. VIDEO: Paul Morantz on Cults, Thought Reform, Coercive Persuasion and Confession 13. PODCAST: Ford Greene, Attorney and former UC member, on Sun Myung Moon 14. VIDEO: Steve Hassan interviewed by Chris Shelton 15. VIDEO: Conformity by TheraminTrees 16. VIDEO: Instruction Manual for Life by TheraminTrees 17. The Social Organization of Recruitment in the Unification Church – PDF by David Frank Taylor, M.A., July 1978, Sociology 18. Mind Control: Psychological Reality Or Mindless Rhetoric? by Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph.D., President, American Psychological Association 19. Socialization techniques through which Moon church members were able to influence by Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D. 20. VIDEO: Recovery from RTS (Religious Trauma Syndrome) by Marlene Winell 21. VIDEO: ICSA – After the cult 22. “How do you know I’m not the world’s worst con man or swindler?” – Sun Myung Moon 23. VIDEO: What Is A Cult? CuriosityStream 24. VIDEO: The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion by Kristin Neff 25. Bibliography

____________________________________