November 19, 2007 CU take stand against ‘cult’ on campus, by Peter Campbell, Nouse, University of York
The group, widely regarded by international press as a cult, also goes by several other names, including JMS, Providence, Setsurireportedly operating on campus. They believe the group, known as ‘The Church with No Name’ or ‘The Wandering Church’, has converted at least one student already…
…The University Chaplaincy has warned that the group is a “dangerous fundamentalist group that take over a person’s life in a cloak of authoritarian teachings, and encourage separation from all who do not agree, family included.”
The group have been known to infiltrate church group meetings…
Join Us: Delving Into the Depths of the Cult Experience in America via avid.com
There are approximately 5,000 cults in the U.S., and they – and their members – may be surprisingly close to home. This is the message behind the new documentary Join Us, which opened to rave reviews at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. The topic and the positive press are familiar territory for filmmaker Ondi Timoner…
…Join Us follows four families attempting to rebuild their lives after leaving a South Carolina cult, Mountain Rock Church, led by Pastor Raimund Melz and his wife, Deborah. The documentary takes viewers directly into the only accredited residential treatment facility in the U.S. for cult victims, the Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center in Albany, Ohio…
Documentary June 25, 2007 Losing the pastor’s religion in ‘Join Us’ – By Rachel Abramowitz, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, California
‘Dig!’ director Ondi Timoner trails members leaving an alleged cult in her documentary…
…Timoner’s interests led to her latest film, “Join Us,” which made its world premiere Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival and will screen again today and Tuesday. Billed as an exposé of one of the roughly 5,000 cults in the nation today, the documentary tracks a group of family members and others as they flee their homes in a South Carolina compound ruled by a self-appointed prophet…
…Timoner’s film hurtles the viewer into the experience of leaving the group, accompanying members as they receive therapy at Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center (described as the only accredited residential “cult-victim treatment facility” in the U.S.) and following as they try to rebuild their lives…
Watch the trailer.
joinusthemovie.com
June 26, 2007 LA Film Festival – Join Us
Join Us – USA, 100 min – World Premiere
Directed By: Ondi Timoner
Featuring: Joaquin Sullivan, Tonya Rogers, Raymund Melz, Deborah Melz, Liz Shaw, Paul Martin
Things only get harder when the supervised gathering is over and they must attempt to re-imagine lives that had been totally dominated by an all-encompassing system.
Timoner includes on-screen testimony from experts in mind-control techniques and…
June 20, 2007 U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Local Church Lawsuit against Harvest House – Press Release, Harvest House Publishers
EUGENE, OREGON — On June 18, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court brought an end to The Local Church’s six–year, $136 million legal battle against Harvest House Publishers and authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon. The Local Church was appealing a January 2006 Texas appellate court ruling in favor of Harvest House. After the appellate decision, The Local Church requested a rehearing, which was denied. The Texas Supreme Court also rejected the case twice.
The Local Church complained that the Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions defamed them by accusing them (and all the other groups in the book) of crimes such as…
…Harvest House and its authors have issued a corporate statement that comments on several key underlying issues of this case…
June 20, 2007 A Call to Keep Theological Disputes Out of the Courts – Press Release, Harvest House Publishers
…The Local Church and its publishing arm, Living Stream Ministry, alleged they had been wrongly accused of criminal conduct in Ankerberg and Weldon’s book Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions…
…A Summary of the Case
The Local Church crafted its case…and attempted to make those words part of the authors’ definition of the word cult. Armed with this altered meaning of the term cult, they then constructed faulty arguments to support their claim that they had been defamed…
…Though The Local Church says otherwise, we believe the underlying issue in this lawsuit has always been that they do not like being called a cult theologically. In fact, they have a long history of attempting to silence those who question their orthodoxy. And it’s tragic when the legal system is used to create a climate of fear that shackles people from speaking their spiritual convictions.
Our hope is that the courts’ rulings will embolden Christian authors to continue to write responsibly about controversial groups and topics…
March 10, 2007 Claims sect using social groups to recruit members, Ben Cubby, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
A FRINGE religious sect, which has reportedly brainwashed young women for sex with a messianic South Korean leader, has been accused of recruiting potential members through a soccer team based at Sydney University.
The Global Association of Culture and Peace, a social group started by the controversial Providence church, has also run dancing and modelling activities to attract students in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and other cities…
Archives 2006
December 13, 2006 Cal State-Long Beach ‘religious’ groups not always what they seem, by Johnny Rundell, Daily Forty-Niner, California State University, Long Beach via HighBeam Research
…A pamphlet from the Interfaith Center stated that the groups tend to recruit students who are new to campus, missing their home, feeling unloved, overwhelmed, hopeless, lonely, hurting, looking for a friend or struggling academically…
…Preventing students from joining these groups is important because it is not easy to leave, Langworthy said…
…Interfaith, Langworthy said, tries to help inform students about high-pressure groups on campus so that they don’t get tricked into joining a group that they are not informed about…
November 13, 2006 Alleged Cult Sows Seeds Via Campus Event, by Matthew McArdle, The Guardian, University of California, San Diego
A religious group hosts an on-campus fashion show, an event that could be linked to a web that includes Interpol, South Korea and alleged rape…
…recently held an event at UCSD…
…The group, known as the Global Association of Culture and Peace, was established by 61-year-old South Korean national Jung Myung Seok, who also goes by the name Joshua Jung. The group, widely regarded by international press as a cult, also goes by several other names, including JMS, Providence, Setsuri and the Bright Smile Movement…