#church of jesus

[lilly-anarkitty]

Bushnell Grew Up in a Religious Compound - The Church of Jesus

CW: Discussion of Abuse, Religious Compound/Cult, Religious Trauma, etc.

Airman who set self on fire grew up on religious compound | 27 February 2024

Bushnell was raised in a religious compound in Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod, according to Susan Wilkins, 59, who said she was a member of the group from 1970 to 2005. She said that she knew Bushnell and his family on the compound and that he was still a member when she left. Wilkins said she heard through members of Bushnell’s family that he eventually left the group.

Wilkins’s account is consistent with those of multiple others who said Bushnell had told them about his childhood in the religious group or who had heard about his affiliation from his family members.

The group, called the **Community of Jesus,** has faced allegations of inappropriate behavior, which it has publicly disputed. In a lawsuit against an Ontario school, where many officials were alleged to be members of the U.S.-based religious group, former students called the Community of Jesus a “charismatic sect” and alleged that it “created an environment of control, intimidation and humiliation that fostered and inflicted enduring harms on its students.”

The school, now defunct, disputed the allegations. *Last year, an appeals court in Canada awarded 10.8 million Canadian dollars to the former students, who attended the Ontario school between 1973 and 1997.*

Former Members Of Cape Religious Group, the Community of Jesus, Allege Emotional Abuse, 'People Don't Realize the Mind Control That Goes On in the Background’ | 4 November 2021

"You just exist in fear because you feel trapped," said the anonymous former member, who was raised in the Community of Jesus. The person alleges a disciplinary practice in which people were singled out and placed at the center of a circle. "And they're yelling at you about something you did, and making you feel like the worst person on Earth."

Ex-students win suit against former Grenville Christian College in Brockville for physical abuse | 27 February 2021

The school’s philosophy of strict discipline was part of a “tough love” program, as the school’s first headmaster, Alastair Haig, described it to the Brockville Rotary Club in 1973.

Grenville Christian College, which is in Augusta Township just east of Brockville, opened in 1969 as Berean Christian School to offer elementary and secondary education to boys and girls.

The school closed in 2007.

The complaints of the former students start in 1973 when the school adopted new programming from an American Christian community known as the Community of Jesus, or COJ.

Airman’s Death Is Both a Protest and a Loss | 6 March 2024

”Aaron Bushnell’s extreme act reverberates in the community here.”

[lizardho]

I came out to my dad as bisexual at 14 and I was PANICKED because I had a crush on a guy in my Boy Scout troop and thought I was Going To Hell Forever and he was so kind and understanding of my distress, but he had NO idea what bisexuality was. He just said “yeah but you like girls too? This is normal. Everyone is like this.” And I love my dad and trust him with my life to this day and the idea that the concept of bisexuality had not occurred to him had not occurred to me so I put it off.

By 16 though I had a crush on like THREE boys. Three entire boys in my Boy Scout troop. I felt like my sin was slowly advancing, until like an untreated cancer it had become metastatic. I remember bawling my L’il limp-wristed sissy eyes out in his big rumbly truck on the way home from a scout meeting and him telling me that it was OK, that he still loved me if I was gay, but that he knew I wasn’t gay because I still had crushes on women and that meant I was straight. I didn’t quite know how to explain that those felt *~*different*~* and that I felt like I was losing a fight to evil inside me but I again felt comforted by his reassurances and his genuine fatherly love.

At 18 I was like “hey I’m realizing all my friends are going on missions. I don’t wanna do that. Idk how to say that and I don’t have a ‘good enough’ reason to not wanna go.” So I just put it off. Again, my parents were extremely supportive of the information I gave them (I blamed it on perpetually forgetting to start the paperwork.) and one day my mom texted me that she had done the paperwork for me! And that all I needed was to get a physical! So I did that (it was awkward af tbh, my hernia check was done by a trainee doctor and she spent like 3 minutes fishing around my inguinal canals before her attending rescued me) and was sent to Mexico City where I learned that in addition to dipshit himbos with strong hands and scruffy guys with artistic hearts I was REALLY into chubby Latin men with strong personalities who bullied me a little when I lived in Mexico.

I remember my first companion got annoyed with me during an argument and said we were just gonna wrestle and whoever won the wrestling match won the argument (I stg I am dead serious this happened.) I was like…SWEATING when he tore off his tie and threw his white button-down shirt onto the ground (I won btw, don’t ask me how).

I remember one of my companions with this really intense, almost manic energy telling me that he was gonna make sure I was safe in a new area I didn’t know very well. He cooked breakfast for me and we’d go shopping together on P-Days and in the mornings before breakfast he’d jog around and do pull-ups with his shirt off and I’d do anything but look at him because my face would break out in a sweat so intense he’d think I was crying and come over to see if I was OK and somehow make it worse. He let me play D&D with myself in the evenings even though it was against mission rules because he knew how lonely and stressed I was.

I remember one of my companions was a big chubby man with a loud voice and a great sense of humor. He was kind and direct when addressing conflicts with me, and always bragged about how he knew the secrets of women’s minds and it felt like he really did since it almost always boiled down to “Treat Them Like People and Love Them a Lot. Don’t Stop Being A Person For Them. Also Eat Them Out Sloppy Style.” Our P-Day activities sometimes felt like dates, and it seemed like he was more attentive to my emotional state than I was since he was always the first to suggest we slow down our Divinely Mandated, God-Ordained, Super Sacred Work and Wonder to get a snack or check out a Pawn Shop (I love Pawn Shops).

I remember another companion who asked me to bully him every time he did something against his goal of losing weight. It was like he gave me Carte Blanche to take out my crush on him by being a nuisance and I LOVED that. I remember having a breakdown one day after we’d spent the afternoon frantically cleaning our disgusting-barely-habitable mission house to make it look less vile that it was (not our fault imo?) and I started bawling and he pulled me into a hug and he smelled good and he told me he knew it wasn’t just the house and that I was mad at him for being a Huge Dickhead for about a week (true) and that he would work on it. (He’s also a huge chaser but that’s a separate thing.)

I remember one of my companions waking up early (and our schedule is already built for sleep deprivation) to make me a “birthday cake” from knock-off Nutella and bread. He used matches for candles and woke me up, lit the ‘candles,’ pulled them out, then smashed it in my face and took a bunch of pictures while I was still madrugada and disoriented as fuck. He had the same sense of humor as one of my HS crushes and I could push his buttons pretty easily which was so fun.

I came home from my mission and started back at BYU where I became actively and aggressively suicidal. I had a stalker the year I moved up there and my dad’s solution to that was to get me a gun. I know he wouldn’t have bought me a gun if he could have read my mind, but I had a loaded pistol under my bed during a trifecta faith/sexuality/gender crisis and that was not helpful. I remember that the day I decided to kill myself I figured I’d call the BYU CAPS and see if I could get into therapy because it felt like what I was “supposed to do” so I could check my suicide boxes. My therapist was the guy who’d helped me pick a major the year before and was this drop-dead gorgeous Hawaiian man who cried when I told him how I’d been feeling.

A few weeks into therapy I met another stunning man with soft eyes and a scruffy illegal-at-BYU beard he kept pushing his luck with. He was funny, kind, patient, married, and wouldn’t give me the time of day if he knew I was crushing on him. We were in my history of psych class, which was inarguably the worst psych class I have ever had, and we studied together for every assignment and test and I realized that my feelings for him and for all the men I’d already mentioned were in direct conflict with my faith and relationship with God. My already agonizing spiritual conflict became even more wretched and as a result of this plus some other tightly-packed experiences with Mormonisms bullshit, I left the church.

After leaving the church I decided to move back to AZ and transfer to ASU. My mom helped me get a dog since I think it had started to dawn on my family that my mental health was barely getting me through the day, and she knew that we both loved dogs. Madi made my last year at BYU livable while I got my shit together and transferred. In that last year, I went on a date with quite possibly the only semi-openly-out trans person on BYU campus. It was not a great date imo, I was not doing well, but the person I spoke with was fun and fascinating and talked to me about Gender Dysphoria and it really cemented my need to go. To leave and never come back to that fucking school.

I started at ASU a month after my last semester at BYU and within a very short time frame it felt like I was coming back together, like a puzzle magically putting itself together in an environment that wasn’t slowly draining that puzzle’s will to live.

On the 4th of July, the year I started at ASU, I saw a transition timeline photo of a gorgeous happy beautiful happy radiant happy woman and her former Mormon missionary self and I realized the light that was on in her eyes was the light that was off in mine. I looked into transitioning for 3 days, sleeping about 10 hours total during that time. I started talking to other trans people on Reddit (one of whom is now my beautiful fiancée @cintailed) and after about a month of making preparations to be disowned and kicked out, something I was not sure would happen but was ready to go through to Turn On The Lights, I came out to my family and it was amazing. I started HRT a month after that. I secretly dated some dorky guys for about a year while I applied to grad schools. I got into a great grad school for me and my needs. I got FFS. I did my trainings and classes. Me and my fiancée moved in together after some LDR shenanigans. We’ve lived together now for 4 years of basically marital bliss. We have a cat named Grandmother Esmeralda Weatherwax who bites the hell out of my feet about three times a day. My bi-cycle continues to be part of my life but now it’s not as scary. Baby gays in my life have started to look to me for advice. Idk how this all happened so fast. When the years, months, weeks, days, and hours seems to crawl by so slowly now they are rushing past me so fast it’s almost bewildering. Whereas before I felt like I was living on borrowed time, past my ��expiration date,’ now it feels like I can Fucking Breathe. I’m training myself to slow down now and it feels worth it to Live In The Moment.

Idk why I wrote this. Idk why these thoughts only seem to come up on Sundays when I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation. Idk why I’m crying rn or why I feel so happy. I’m gonna post this shit then get on with my dissertation I guess. Read more Terry Pratchett and give yourselves the time you need. Get a pet. Talk to someone. Re-examine the events that brought you here. Be gayer. Love y’all 💕

[reptilia2003]

i really think some of you are just lazy…like omg what do you mean I have to do the dishes again I just did them yesterday?!?

[dailyeffectiveprayer]

Be so confident in God's plan that you don't even get upset anymore when things don't go your way.

[volvolts]

caleb made all of these

[daughter-s-of-cain]

[holygirlforjesus]

Jesus was perfect and people still hated Him. Stop caring so much about what people think of you.

[seraphim-eternal]

She will bear a son, and you shall call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1:21

[dorrance30]

The Holy Spirit.

[rottendust]

[godisgreat555]

Jesus, fill me with faith that moves mountains. Amen 🖤

[banishedchildofeve]

‘Jesus Christ in Sorrow in Gethsemane’ - Carl Heinrich Bloch

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ♰

[magdalenism]

[the-jonestown-holotape]

[dailyeffectiveprayer]

God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good. God is good.

[wolfythewitch]

what reason would you give someone for them to convert to christianity? /gen i’m very curious to hear your answer as an atheist(?) going to a catholic school where every chapel boils down to ‘jesus can solve all your problems’. hope this isn’t taken in an offensive way, i’m genuinely curious what reasons people have!

See I don't really want to convert anyone to Christianity? Nor am I looking to. Need to make that clear before I continue.

A lot of people believe in a god because it offers to them a sense of comfort. Some people do it because they genuinely believe in a higher power. Religion is a very personal thing, you can't really boil it down one way or another. That's why any church who tries to tell you why to believe in God, well they might get some people but they won't get all. Believe in Jesus cannot solve all your problems. Or, well. I'm sure he can. But you will still hurt and life is a bitch. You can't reel people in with the promise of a perfect Christian life because then people will be sorely disappointed.

And. That's not even really getting into how corrupt a lot of the churches are out there. Unfortunately the problem with any organized religion is belief in a higher power can only go so far when any institution acting as its mouthpiece is human. The language of the gods tends to get a little mistranslated along the way. And then hypocrisy starts wading into the mix. And people like to use god to excuse their own actions.

And I mean I don't even really know why I'm religious. It could be many things. I've said before my relationship with faith is complicated. It could be guilt making me stay. It could be my parents converting me at a young age. It could be because I do believe there's a higher power out there. It could be because it's easier. Who knows? But my reasons will not be your reasons.

I'm not trying to dissuade you or anything haha but. Well. If you're ever thinking about converting, you can get a second opinion, join a community, go to Sunday church, but you can only ever really ask yourself why