CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/18/2024
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Patrick Ryan
Jul 18, 2024, 3:01:56 AM (9 days ago) Jul 18
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Questions and Answers, Legal, Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, Kenya, Gateway Church, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Satanic Temple
WIRED: Former Cult Member Answers Cult Questions From Twitter
"Dr. Janja Lalich, a sociologist who used to be in a cult, answers the internet's burning questions about cults. How did Charles Manson get a cult following? What's the best movie about cults? Why did everyone in the Heaven's Gate cult wear Nikes? How do people get brainwashed?"
Agence France-Presse in Mombasa: Kenyan cult leader goes on trial on terrorism charges over 400 deaths
"The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult has gone on trial on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world.
The self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-defendants.
Journalists were removed from the courtroom shortly after the start of the hearing to enable a protected witness to take the stand.
Mackenzie, who was arrested in April last year, is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”.
He and his co-accused all pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism at a hearing in January.
They also face charges of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and child torture and cruelty in separate cases.
The remains of more than 440 people have been unearthed so far in a remote wilderness inland from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi, in a case that has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”.
Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims – including children – were strangled, beaten or suffocated.
Previous court documents also said that some of the bodies had had their organs removed."
"Dallas megachurch Gateway Church recently settled a lawsuit that accused several church leaders of concealing the sexual assault of a girl who attended the church.
The suit was settled in April, just months before Gateway Church founder Robert Morris resigned over the bombshell allegations that he sexually abused Cindy Clemishire when she was 12 years old in 1982.
The initial lawsuit, filed in Tarrant County Texas in 2020, claims that five pastors and a youth leader were aware that a member of the church assaulted the girl in 2018, when she would have been less than 12 years old. She was not yet 18 when the suit was settled this spring.
However, the leaders concealed this from the victim’s mother and failed to report it to local authorities, according to the lawsuit.
The church leaders “collectively and independently engaged in a concerted effort to conceal the sexual assault accusations” to “subvert the accusations and avoid criminal investigation,” according to the lawsuit."
Bang Premiere: Dan Reynolds gave up Mormonism as he thinks religion was ‘harmful’
"The Imagine Dragons rocker, 36, was raised in what he says was a “really conservative” Mormon household and served a two-year Mormon mission in Omaha, Nebraska – but it has been several years since he quit his worship and he’s now spoken out to slam aspects of the church.
He told People: “There’s obviously parts of the Mormon religion that I feel pretty strongly are harmful, especially to our gay youth.
“At times I feel pretty isolated from my family, but I also love them and am close to them and see them, and there’s no animosity there.
“I’m on a different path. I have to love myself enough to follow my truth.”
Dan founded the LOVELOUD Foundation in 2018 in support of the young LGBTQ+ community and added he has “always struggled” with religion.
He added he spent his 20s and early 30s “really angry” at religion, as he felt he’d been “duped” by the Mormon church.
Dan said: “I saw a lot of the harm that came from it for me personally, but it also seemed to work incredibly well for my family, and they’re all healthy, happy individuals.
“As I’ve gotten older, I'm not angry about it anymore. If something works for someone, that’s really wonderful and rare, and I don’t want to mess with it.”
Dan has chosen not to raise the four children he has with his ex-wife Aja Volkman – daughters Arrow, 11, Gia and Coco, 7, and son Valentine, four – in the church, as he does not want to play with how their minds work.
He said: “My greatest goal every day is to not manipulate my kids. I really don’t want to try to tell them what their spiritual path should be."
The Guardian: Satanists to volunteer in Florida schools in protest at DeSantis religious bill
Satanic Temple objects to the governor's push for more religion in schools and says members could act as student chaplains.
" ... Members of the Satanic Temple say they are poised to act as volunteer chaplains under a state law that took effect this week opening campuses to “additional counseling and support to students” from outside organizations.
Although HB 931 leaves the implementation of chaplain programs to individual school districts, and only requires schools to list a volunteer’s religion “if any”, DeSantis has made clear its intent is to restore the tenets of Christianity to public education.
Without the bill, DeSantis said at its signing in April: “You’re basically saying that God has no place [on campus]. That’s wrong.”
The satanists see the law, which comes amid a vigorous theocratic drive into education by the religious right nationally, as an equal opportunity: if Christian chaplains are permitted access to students, often at the most vulnerable and impressionable stages of their lives, then so are they.
There are, however, no plans to introduce studies of the dark arts or satanic rituals to any classroom. The Satanic Temple champions Satan not as a literal, omnipresent demon, but as a symbol of rebellion and resistance to authoritarianism. It says its strategy here is to highlight flagrant violations of the constitutionally protected separation of church and state."
Mamamia: At 11, Joe Dageforde escaped from a notorious cult. The reason why is horrifying.
"Joe Dageforde's Canadian father was living in Australia, busking on the streets, when he met Joe's mum.
He invited her to a barbecue, run by his church group called, The Children of God. At the time, they were feeling disenchanted with the world and were desperately seeking a sense of belonging. They found it within the church.
That barbecue set the tone for Joe's life, and the life of his siblings, all of whom were born as active members of the church."
" ... The family was constantly moving, but always within the confines of the church, a global operation that still exists to this day.
"We lived in a caravan for a couple of years, communes, even in a tent for a while."
By the time he was 12, Joe had lived in 52 different locations. Each location had one thing in common though. They were cut off from the outside world."
" ... While the church painted a picture of devotion to God and each other, the reality was a sinister world dominated by physical and sexual abuse.
Joe says physical abuse was constant, with beatings and other punishments able to be administered by any adult who lived within the home.
"You could be punished for things as slight as running down the stairs, laughing too loud, being foolish, playing too energetically, not doing what you were asked to do immediately or to the standard deemed fit.
"If something happened and one of the kids wouldn’t fess up, we could all be lined up and hit with fly swats, wooden spoons, paddles, bamboo, belts, anything. Sometimes the welts and marks left from spankings had to be covered up with longer clothing, even in summer, when we went out busking and fundraising. We lived in fear and constantly tread on eggshells."
Then, there was the sexual abuse, perpetrated under the guise of 'showing love' as instructed by God. "
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