A lot of you have been getting in contact with me about my strange upbringing in a cult. I thought it was about time that I shed some light on the matter! It’s difficult trying to figure out what I should write about or where I should even begin so I’ll be making this into a series to save it becoming one giant post! In this first post I want to share a brief overview of the cult, what it was like to leave and some of the many issues within it.

Many of you will have heard of and seen the Westboro Baptist Church so that’s probably the easiest way for you get an idea of what my life was like. Take away the protesting and picketing and you pretty much have the cult that I was in. As far back as I can remember, I never believed in any of its teachings but you were trapped, something I’ll go into later. If you want to take a real good glimpse into the world I used to be in, then go and watch the fantastic Louis Theroux documentary on the Westboro Baptist Church. I remember watching it while I was still ‘in’ the cult and being able to relate to a hell of a lot of what they were doing. The way their service was run was staggeringly similar; the way they spoke to each other and how they related absolutely everything back to the bible, the way they dressed, sang incredibly similar awful, awful hymns and most of all the way they treated the members that had left. By that I mean they cut them off from their lives completely, whether they were family or not. Maybe you watched it and thought ‘they surely don’t do this’. I can tell you right now, they do and they are fucking serious about it. In this cult, it is called being ‘disfellowshipped’ which means you are no longer considered to belong to the cult. There are many ways in which you can be disfellowshipped. You can denounce the religion, a sure fire way to get you kicked out. Or you can lead a life that is considered to not be in line with the cult’s teachings and, after a few disciplinary hearings, you may be disfellowshipped if you do not turn your evil ways around. This is regardless of whether you profess to still believe or not. I could go on.

So what happens when you are disfellowshipped? Within the cult this is played out to be a show of love and concern about your life and beliefs – an act that ‘breaks their heart’ to have to do. It is meant to show you the seriousness of your actions and serve as a kick up the ass to get your life in order. In reality – but this is never spoken of – you are completely shunned. It is an unspoken threat that the cult has the power over all of your relationships and, if you dare to disagree with them, you will lose every friendship and relationship that you have. It is a flex of power and control and one that I found to be all too true.

The period around me leaving was by far the most horrible and painful period of my life that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It caused me to have a complete and utter breakdown and forced me to pull out of university, whilst being on course to graduate with first class honours and just my dissertation left to finish. It has left me broken and with nothing but destroyed hopes and dreams and a worthless 95% completed degree. My closest friends, who I thought would never in a million years shun me, turned their back on me and haven’t spoken to me since. Imagine losing over the course of a month the majority of your closest friends, your degree, your health, your apartment and being left with nothing but a dead end retail job with no prospects for progression. I still suffer from that month now; you can’t put that you were on course to finish your degree with a first class honours. You can’t explain or put any of this on a CV or application form. I’m still stuck in that shitty job 3 years on. Welcome to my life and fuck that cult.

The cult was just like a toned down version of the WBC (Westboro Baptist Church). They held pretty much the same horrible and disgusting views and opinions, but they are far less vocal about it- except within the cult and it’s members. It’s full of hate, hypocrisy and complete and utter self delusion. I remember at one Bible camp, when I was maybe 16-17 years old, a leader complaining that they had to do a Criminal Background Check in order to work with children at this cult camp. He said that the government “should know” that we are in this cult and that therefore he should be able to “bypass” the check because obviously, that meant they couldn’t possibly be child molesters. The level of self delusion was staggering and guess what? You got it – there are child molesters in the cult and, what’s more, it’s probably rife. Even worse is that there were definitely cover ups of cases of child sexual abuse. It was the belief that we weren’t to seek criminal charges or report anything to the police because God is the one true judge and, come judgement day, he will see fit the punishment deserved.

An incredible but horrible example of this belief that springs to mind is when the brother (If you were baptised you became a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’) who was in charge of publishing the cult’s monthly magazine was caught stealing. I’m not talking about stealing a little here and there from a shop, he was syphoning off the money paid by the thousands of brothers and sisters for this magazine over the course of a decade. Not only was he syphoning money from the magazine, he was also syphoning money donated to the numerous cult charities as well as non-cult charities. We are talking tens of thousands of pounds stolen from charities that went right into his own personal bank account. What was done about this? He was ‘disfellowshipped’. No criminal charges, not even a filed police report. He got away with it all. Even better – I’m pretty sure he has now been welcomed back into the cult.

There’s so much left to say but I’ll leave it here for now and continue later in another part in the series. Please feel free to ask any questions either in the comments or by emailing me at misfitvinegaroon@gmail.com as I’m more than happy to answer. Same goes for if you’ve been through something similar and want to share your story or simply want to talk about it or ask for any advice. I’ll try my best to help in any way I can.