![]() The thing is, I think people who are fascinated by the Process want them to be “darker” than they actually were. Christians LOVE them a little end of the world, right, so how surprising would it be that something like The Process would sprout up in postwar Britain, where the participants were probably all raised as Christians? (This is a very difficult thing to shake, as many of you reading this can no doubt attest to.) That Charles Manson’s prophecy of a coming race war would find inspiration in DeGrimston’s end of the world sermonizing isn’t that surprising, either. I’m not saying this is exactly the same sort of energy that’s been channeled into the Left Behind book series, but there IS a certain similar impulse at play. This idea of the trio’s endtime “unity” comes from a not-so-esoteric reading of The Book of Revelation. After what had just gone down, would this have seemed so incredibly far-fetched? In this sense, the poetic Process theology, most of it coming via the inspired pen of the group’s charismatic leader, Robert DeGrimston, was firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian imagery and the thanatonic impulses of eschatological beliefs in general.ĭeGrimston’s “Game of the Gods” described a universe where Lucifer, Satan and Jehovah battle it out on a cosmic chess board where we-and all of history-are just their pawns. Christ would return and team up with Satan for the final judgement of mankind. The Processean tenants sought to harmonize the notion of the Christian eschaton with the carnage the cult’s young adherents had literally been born into, the bombed out ruins of post-WWII Europe. What weirdos! Although they appeared at first blush to be a Satan-worshipping cult-something Ed Sanders’ lurid Manson book The Family is partially to blame for-this view is very widely off the mark. ![]() The Process is the subject of fascination for many people-I’m one of them-because of how dark their theology was, and a desire to understand what caused the well-educated middle class members to join up with such a group in the first place. Bainbridge’s sociological study of the organization, Satan’s Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult, which came out in 1978. When I say small, I refer only to the handful of books-well, three-that includes Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment and Propaganda and the Holy Writ of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, both published by Feral House in recent years, along with William S. ![]() ![]() Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Charles Manson family trial, comments in his book Helter Skelter that there may be evidence Manson borrowed philosophically from the Process Church, and that representatives of the Church visited him in jail after his arrest.Alessandro Papa’s excellent new book, The Process: Archives, Documents, Reflections and Revelations, is an indispensable addition to the small number of publications devoted to the 60s apocalypse cult, The Process Church of the Final Judgement. Their belief is that Satan will become reconciled to Christ, and they will come together at the end of the world to judge humanity, Christ to judge and Satan to execute judgment. They were often viewed as Satanic on the grounds that they worshiped both Christ and Satan. Originally headquartered in London it had developed as a splinter client cult group from Scientology, so that they were declared “ suppressive persons” by L. The Process, or in full, The Process Church of the Final Judgment, commonly known by non-members as the Process Church, was a religious group that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, founded by the English couple Mary Anne and Robert DeGrimston (originally Robert Moor and Mary Anne MacLean). ![]()
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