Are You Trapped in a Religious Cult?

It’s happened to a lot of good people with high ideals hoping to make the world a better place, but it usually doesn't end well.

Apr 17, 2023

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

Right wing evangelical megachurches are burgeoning across the country, relying on simple yet powerful techniques that razzle, bedazzle and bewitch those who walk through their doors.

The process is tried and true.

Bedazzlement

Strobe lights, big stages, rock bands, ecstatic crowds, preachers in skinny jeans… It’s not your grandparents’ church. It’s more like a music festival filled with “spiritual hipsters.”

Love Bombing

From the moment you walk in the doors, you are love bombed. Embraced like long-lost family. Given the impression you’ve found what you’ve been looking for all your life. This is your tribe. Your new home…

Indoctrination

Charismatic preachers cherry pick scripture to warn of dark forces out there that must be overcome. Even vanquished. It’s a struggle of good versus evil. They are doing God’s bidding. The entire future of humanity is at stake. It’s time to save the world.

Glorification

You are special. A chosen one. A warrior for liberty. A fighter in a righteous battle that will result in good vanquishing evil. You now have moral and spiritual agency. You once were lost and now you’re found. Blind but now you see.

Exploitation

God wants you to give an ongoing portion of your income and assets to this great cause. This holy battle. By doing so, any and all curses you face in life will be lifted. Abundance will rain down on you from heaven. The more you give the more you receive. Salvation will soon be yours.

“Regardless of doctrine, extremist organizations and movements — e.g., religious cults, violent street gangs, terrorist groups and racist movements — use common methods of manipulating, recruiting, controlling and taking advantage of vulnerable people.” Diane Benscoter, Cult Expert

Before you know it, you drink the Kool Aid

You get trapped in an information silo, a vortex of propaganda and disinformation designed to keep you wildly committed.

Without realizing it, you have become exactly what was intended all along: A completely malleable convert whose rational thought, basic logic and common sense are out the window. You are now susceptible to believing “alternate facts” and astonishing absurdities.

For example, Awaken Church of San Diego founder and lead pastor Jurgen Matthesius claims he stopped the tanks in the Tiananmen Square protests by speaking in strange tongues from 1,000 miles away, healed a child from advanced cancer overnight the same way, and claims that if you give him 10-percent of your money, the remaining 90% will be greater than the 100% you had to begin with.

Believing such nonsense necessitates an extraordinary leap of faith and profound self-delusion. Yet, if you know someone in this situation, they will most likely be utterly adamant about one thing:

They are not in a cult… Absolutely not in a cult…

Awaken Church

While outwardly professing a commitment to “faith, hope, and love,” Awaken’s founder and lead pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, pours forth a fountain of disinformation, condemnation and raging hatred in his social media feed on the right-wing platform GETTR.

He calls his perceived enemies idiots, vile, and demonic. He suggests that torture, hanging and public execution is appropriate. He denies science, promotes conspiracy theories embraced by QAnon, continues to claim Trump won the last election and that Dominion software was used to steal the election despite this claim being thoroughly debunked.

Reposts from Jurgen Matthesius GETTR Feed

Here’s My Take

This is the sort of disinformation that, along with the hate and vitriol of Pastor Jurgen, will be readily ingested by those who have already consumed the Kool Aid.

It has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Christofascism, which is not a religion.

Christofascism is a radical political movement using “faith” as a cover for its dangerous ideology in which disinformation trumps facts and violence is justified as a righteous crusade… the very definition of a totalitarian state.

While it’s next to impossible to reason with a loved one, family member or friend who is in such a group, my hope is that others who might be lured in are forewarned… especially with Awaken seeking to establish itself in Coronado.

Also, perhaps, some already in over their heads might begin to reflect on what’s really going on. This could prove the beginning of the process of them deciding on their own to reevaluate their circumstances and extract themselves… before it’s too late.