My Cultural Awakening: Losing My REM Religion Helped Me Escape Doomsday Cult | culture

IIn 1991, I was living in a commune with 200 other people in Japan, as a member of a sect called the Children of God, which preached that the world would end in 1993. Everything I did—from where I slept each night, to who I was allowed to sleep with—was decided by my mayor. I was encouraged to keep a daily diary, then hand it to the leaders every night, so they could examine it for signs of dissent. I was only allowed to listen to music approved by the sect, and I was only allowed to watch movies with happy endings, because those were the types of films approved by the sect’s supreme leader, David Berg. The Sound of Music was one of Berg’s favorite films, so we watched it frequently.

At the time I was living in Japan, I was in my mid-30s, and had been part of the cult for 20 years. I was indoctrinated by a young hippie couple when I was 16, and was persuaded to run away from my family and join a cult near my hometown in Canada. I was a lonely teenager desperately searching for some kind of meaning. Everyone I knew worked in a lumber mill in my small town, and the idea that I was doomed to live that life scared the hell out of me. The first time I visited town, everyone hugged me when I walked in, just to say “hello.” It was intoxicating.

But by 1991, after two decades of worship, my faith was flagging. It has become clear to me that Berg was wrong about the end of the world in 1993. A whole series of events that were supposed to immediately precede the Second Coming did not happen, and Berg – who lived in secrecy and communicated with his followers through written “prophecies” – kept issuing increasingly unconvincing excuses.

I have also become more resistant to the way cult leaders seek to control the most intimate parts of my life. When I joined the sect, it was very conservative sexually. If you wanted to date another member of the community, you had to ask permission from the leadership. But as the years passed, Berg began to preach the principle of sexual freedom, and ordered his members to exchange spouses. I married another cult member in the 1980s, and was living with her in a Children of God community in Japan. Because I resisted spousal exchange, I was forcibly separated from my wife as punishment – and ordered to live in a different community on my own.

There was also a dark side to God’s children that I was trying to close my eyes to. Berg issued a written decree allowing adult members of the sect to have sex with children. I had never witnessed any sexual contact with children, and although I read this decree when it was issued in the 1980s, I refused to accept it. However, it terrified me.

I was forcibly separated from my wife, and as Berg’s teachings became increasingly distorted, I was in a state of spiritual turmoil. But it was only when I heard REM’s song “Losing My Religion” that it galvanized me into action. Cult members were allowed to own Walkmans, because the Children of God released their own music on cassette tapes, but we were forbidden from listening to “secular” music. As my desire for blind obedience collapsed, I began secretly listening to the American Armed Forces Radio station broadcasting in Japan. (Technically, I’ve always had the ability to secretly listen to music this way, but that’s a sign of how much I’ve received it because I’ve never allowed myself to do that before.) One day, “Losing My Religion” came on, and I remember hearing it for the first time and feeling cold. I physically stopped walking.

It was that lyric, “This is me in the spotlight/Losing my religion,” that struck me. Hearing that line was the first time I had words to describe what was happening to me. Then I heard the lyric “Every whisper of every waking hour/I’m choosing my confessions,” and I started thinking about the way leaders made us write those daily diaries of our feelings, then hand them over for inspection. I learned to practice self-censorship, because I was afraid that expressing my true feelings and doubts would lead to punishment. I have been “picking my confessions” for many years.

In 1991, “Losing My Religion” was a brand new song and was in heavy rotation on the radio station. Every day I would walk and hear it again, and at first, it terrified me. I was 36 years old, a high school dropout with no possessions, nothing to go back to. You had to hand over all your money to the sect, so I didn’t have anything to my name. But with each re-listen, I became more determined to leave. It took me about five months, but I finally escaped the cult in the fall of 1991. I moved back in with my parents, and ended up training to become a lawyer, but my decades with the cult continued to haunt me. I have spent my career advocating for children who were abused by Berg and some of his followers.

A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that according to REM singer Michael Stipe, losing my religion doesn’t mean someone has lost their faith at all; It’s about unrequited love. He explained that this phrase is a common expression in the American South, “and it means losing your temper or courtesy, or feeling frustrated and hopeless.” However, like poetry, songs are open to interpretation by listeners who apply their own meanings to the lyrics. I applied that song to my life and everything changed.