CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/3/2025

Premanand Maharaj, India,  Guru Wars, Legal,  Zizians, Singularism, Religious Freedom

LatestLY: Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Makes Open Challenge to Premanand Maharaj, Says 'Speak Even One Word of Sanskrit or Explain the Meaning of Sanskrit Shlokas That I Have Said' 

Spiritual leader Jagadguru Rambhadracharya has challenged Premanand Maharaj over his knowledge of Sanskrit. In an interview that went viral on social media, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya also said he does not consider Premanand Maharaj a miraculous saint. A viral clip shows Rambhadracharya giving Premanand Maharaj an open challenge and saying that if he is really miraculous, then he should come in front of him and speak in Sanskrit. When asked about Premanand Maharaj, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya told journalist Shubhankar Mishra, "There is no miracle. If there is any miracle, then I challenge Premanand Maharaj to speak even one word of Sanskrit in front of me or explain the meaning of the Sanskrit shlokas that I have said. Today I am openly saying that he is like my child. It is a miracle that he knows the scriptures. He is living on dialysis." As the video moves further, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya says that he considers Premanand Maharaj like his child. "I am neither calling him a scholar nor a miracle worker. Such popularity lasts only for a few days. However, saying that this is a miracle is not acceptable to me. Sing bhajans and read and write," Jagadguru Rambhadracharya added.

AP: Prosecutors seek death penalty against cult member linked to Chatham County raid, border agent's death

"The Justice Department said Thursday it will seek the death penalty against a member of the cultlike Zizians group accused of killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont in the latest Trump administration push for more federal executions.

Teresa Youngblut, 21, of Seattle, is among a group of radical computer scientists focused on veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence who have been linked to six killings in three states. She rented a house in rural Chatham County raided in February by FBI agents.

She's accused of fatally shooting agent David Maland on Jan. 20, the same day President Donald Trump was inaugurated and signed a sweeping executive order lifting the moratorium on federal executions.

Youngblut initially was charged with using a deadly weapon against law enforcement and discharging a firearm during an assault with a deadly weapon. But the Trump administration signaled early on that more serious charges were coming, and a new indictment released Thursday charged her with murder of a federal law enforcement agent, assaulting other agents with a deadly weapon and related firearms offenses.

"We will not stand for such attacks on the men and women who protect our communities and borders," Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti said in a press release."

KJZZ: Singularism, a religion that uses psychedelic drugs, is testing Utah's religious freedom law

"Last year, Utah lawmakers passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which gives people more power to challenge the government if it interferes with their religious beliefs.

Religious freedom is, in many ways, the backbone of the major religion in Utah — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and the Republican-sponsored measure passed easily.

But that law is being put to the test in the courts by an unexpected group — a very small religion that's been targeted by law enforcement for using psychedelic drugs as part of its practices. The religion is called Singularism.

In 2023, police carried out a warrant at its Provo headquarters, seizing its sacramental psilocybin and, later, hitting its founder with criminal charges. Singularism founder Bridger Jensen is suing, and citing this religious freedom law as his argument."

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/3/2024 (Scientology, Millah Abraham, Malaysia, Legal, Misinformation )

Scientology, Millah Abraham, Malaysia, Legal, Misinformation 

ENDEVR Documentary: The Dark Side of the Scientology Cult

"It is one of the world's most secretive and controversial cults… brought to light by one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Tom Cruise. Since its creation in 1953, Scientology has won millions of disciples, up to 40,000 in France alone, according to its leaders.

Scientologists follow the teachings of a former bestselling Science Fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard. They believe in reincarnation and undergo extraordinary practices to gain enlightenment. Scientology is also an institution plagued by headline-grabbing scandals when former members go public about their experiences with the sect. While it is recognized as a religion in some countries, others consider it a dangerous cult.

How does this organization, often convicted of fraud, manage to recruit and retain followers? What are its beliefs? Who was L. Ron Hubbard, its charismatic proto-messiah? How did Scientology become a recognized religion in the United States? And what influence does it have in France? Join experts and former high-ranking scientology members as they unmask one of the most powerful self-proclaimed religious organizations on the planet… the church of scientology."

Free Malaysia Today: 8 suspected Millah Abraham cult followers arrested in Melaka

"Three married couples and two men were detained during a midnight raid on a house here on suspicion of being followers of the deviant Millah Abraham sect.

Melaka education, higher education and religious affairs committee chairman Rahmad Mariman said the suspects, aged between 28 and 71, were retired civil servants, private sector workers, self-employed and housewives.

"The authorities received a public complaint about the spread and practice of the Millah Abraham teachings, which have been declared deviant and contrary to Islamic teachings in Melaka through a fatwa.

"A raid was carried out by 70 Melaka Islamic religious department staff and police officers to inspect and search the house believed to be occupied by Millah Abraham followers," he said in a statement here today."

Study: Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online.

Misinformation evokes much more outrage than trustworthy news sources do, outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, and people are much more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without even reading it first.

Don't spread misinformation! But how would you know?

Science: Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online

Misinformation evokes much more outrage than trustworthy news sources do, outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, and people are much more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without even reading it first.

News, Education, Intervention, Recovery

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Thanks

Top rights court upholds Swiss ban on UFO group's posters

AFP News

13 July 2012

Members of the Raelian movement take part at a ceremony in front of the bronze statue of Giordano Bruno in downtown Rome in 2004. More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated.

Raelian movement founder Claude Vorilhon, also known as Rael, answers questions during a press conference in 2004. More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated.

More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated. Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters.

The local ban came after other authorities in Switzerland had allowed the posters. Neuchatel officials said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and "geniocracy," a system where leaders are picked according to their intelligence.

Additionally, a Swiss court found the Raelians had "theoretically" advocated paedophilia and incest, the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement Friday. The group had also been the subject of criminal complaints about sexual practices involving children, the court said. Swiss high courts affirmed the ban and Europe's top rights court in January 2011 upheld the decision. The Raelians then appealed the Strasbourg-based court's decision, ultimately winning an appeal for the Grand Chamber to hear the case. The 17-member chamber ruled Friday, nine to eight, that the Raelians' freedom of expression was not violated. "Authorities had not overstepped the broad margin of appreciation given to them in view of the non-political dimension of the poster campaign," the court said. At a November hearing, a lawyer for the Raelians argued that cloning is not illegal. He said the religious movement had repeatedly condemned all acts of paedophilia and said it was contradictory to ban a poster when neither the sect nor the website were barred. The court also noted the ban only applied to putting posters on public property, "allowing the association to use other means of expression." The Geneva-based sect, which claims tens of thousands of members worldwide, was founded in 1976 by Claude Vorilhon, known as "Rael". According to its constitution, the group aims to make the first contacts and establish good relations with extraterrestrials. The poster in question was about one-metre (three feet) tall and across the top in big letters were the words: "The Message from Extraterrestrials", according to the court. Underneath was the Raelians' web address, a French phone number and the phrase: "Science at last replaces religion." The middle of the poster showed alien faces and a pyramid, together with a flying saucer and the Earth.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/top-rights-court-upholds-swiss-ban-ufo-groups-170347355.html

CultNEWS101 Articles: 5/10/2024 (Geelong Revival Centre, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Transcendental Meditation, Legal, Religious Freedom)

Geelong Revival Centre, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Transcendental Meditation, Legal, Religious Freedom

Geelong Advertiser: Geelong Revival Centre church leader Noel Hollins receiving medical treatment as leadership change looms

"Leadership changes loom at a shadowy, ultra-conservative Geelong church as former members hit out at the contradictory behaviour of its long-serving pastor.

A controversial Pentecostal Geelong church described by some as a "cult" is facing a forced leadership change, with its 93-year-old founder and long-term leader gravely ill, according to multiple sources."

RNS: Why faith-based groups are prone to sexual abuse and how they can get ahead of it

As Sexual Assault Awareness Month comes to a close, there are a few steps experts say every faith group can take to improve safeguarding protocols.

" .. With more victims coming forward and more research done on abuse within religious contexts, the evidence has shown that when sexual abuse happens in a place designated not only safe, but holy, it's a unique form of betrayal — and when the perpetrator is a clergy member or spiritual leader, the abuse can be seen as God-endorsed.

As the scope of this crisis has been revealed, houses of worship and religious institutions — from Southern Baptists to Orthodox Jews to American atheists — have looked to shore up their safeguarding protocols and protect their constituents against abuse.

But rather than scrambling to respond in the wake of a crisis, faith groups need to adopt policies tailored to their setting and connected to their mission, says Kathleen McChesney, who was the first executive director of the Office of Child Protection for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

LifeSite: Christian student gets $150k judgement in lawsuit stating she was forced to participate in Hindu rituals at Chicago school

"A high school student recently obtained a judgment in the amount of $150,000 that was entered in her favor and against the Chicago school system, which forced her to participate in Hindu practices, amounting to idolatry in violation of her Christian beliefs.

The Board of Education of Chicago, the University of Chicago, and the David Lynch Foundation were sued by Mariyah Green, a former student at Bogan High School, for mandating student participation in Hindu rituals, despite conflicting religious beliefs. She was granted a $150,000 judgement on October 23 by the clerk of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Bogan students were required to participate in a program titled "Quiet Time," which consisted of two 15-minute periods each day dedicated to the practice of "transcendental meditation" (TM), which was popularized by Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and involves concepts used in Hinduism, such as mantras.

Green, a 2020 high school graduate, told LifeSiteNews in a phone interview that in addition to the 15-minute periods of "meditation" each day, the school sponsored a three-day class to teach students "the way that they want you to meditate."

During the 2018-2019 school year, Green attended the first day of this three-day lesson, which she described as "very uncomfortable." Students came into a "completely dark" classroom with "curtains closed [and] candles around the picture of [a] man," which had been placed on a table in front of them.  

"I was actually scared for a moment, like, what is going on? Why are the lights off? Why do the candles light the man? Of course, the picture kind of threw me off because it wasn't [anything] that I had ever seen."

Additionally, Green and her peers were instructed to "repeat a mantra" that they were told to keep "to yourself." After the first day, Green told LifeSiteNews that she was able to opt out of future participation in the three-day lessons by avoiding going to the class, but not the 15-minute periods each day.

Aside from teachers casually asking when she would be returning to the class, she didn't receive backlash for opting out of the lessons. She described them as "nice people, but it was against my religion."

On the other hand, the "very mandatory" 15-minute slots designated for TM were linked to student grades, leaving Green feeling obligated to participate so she wouldn't lose the academic standards required for her to play basketball at the school. During these times, Green said she "didn't do it their way" and "didn't keep the mantra in my head," instead closing her eyes so it "looked like I was meditating" to receive the participation credit."

" ... Over the past few years, multiple lawsuits have been filed against DLF accusing the organization of being aware of TM's link to Hinduism and enforcing the practice of worshipping idols rather than allowing students to read or rest during the 15-minute 'quiet time."'"

LifeSite: Student reportedly forced into Hindu rituals at Chicago school granted class action status

"A former Chicago public school student alleges that her school coerced her into Transcendental Meditation and Hindu practices, including a ritual invoking pagan gods, as part of a program run by the David Lynch Foundation.

A petition for class action status by a former Chicago Public School student, Kaya Hudgins, who alleged that her school coerced her to participate in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Hindu practices has been granted by a federal judge in a lawsuit against the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation. Attorneys at Mauck & Baker, representing Kaya Hudgins, received an order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois awarding class certification to Hudgins and her peers.

The class action lawsuit alleges that while minor students were attending certain Chicago Public Schools that chose to participate in the David Lynch Foundation "Quiet Time" program, they were required to participate in Transcendental Meditation that incorporated Hindu religious rituals, which Hudgins claims on behalf of the class is an egregious violation of their constitutional rights."

" ... Hudgins, by her own declaration, was made to take part in Quiet Time.

"A Chicago Public Schools teacher told me and my entire class to sign a consent form to participate in Quiet Time," Hudgins wrote. "My entire class and I signed the consent because we felt pressure to sign. Our teacher told us that we would get in trouble and be sent to the dean if we did not consent. The teacher also told us that not signing the consent would affect our academics. We also received the same kind of pressure to participate in the Quiet Time program on a regular basis."

Hudgins was 16 years old at the time.

"Additionally, I, like many of my classmates, signed a nondisclosure not to tell anyone, including our parents, about the program," added Hudgins. "My classmates and I were particularly warned by a David Lynch Foundation representative not to tell our parents if our parents were 'religious.'"

"Not only were these minor school children coerced by Chicago Public School teacher into signing a document they had no business signing," shared John Mauck, a partner at Mauck and Baker, 'They were duped into practicing Hindu rituals and Transcendental Meditation during class time and instructed to hide their mandated participation in them from their parents.'"

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Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.

How after-school clubs became a new battleground in the Satanic Temple's push to preserve separation of church and state

The Conversation
July 21, 2023


Author: Charles J. Russo, 
Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton

Disclosure statement

Charles J. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

As the start of the school year rapidly approaches, controversy can’t be far behind. But not all hot-button topics in education are about what goes on in class.

Over the past few years, conflict has trailed attempts to establish After School Satan Clubs sponsored by the Satanic Temple, which the U.S. government recognizes as a religious group.

Organizers have tried to form clubs in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Organizers in Broome County, New York, also formed a summer Satan Club that meets at a local library.

Though there are estimates that only a handful of Satan Clubs are up and running, the groups raise significant questions about freedom of speech in K-12 public schools, particularly around religious issues – topics I teach and write about frequently as a faculty member specializing in education law.

More ‘science’ than ‘Satan"

Members of the Satanic Temple, which was founded in 2013, do not profess beliefs about supernatural beings. The group emphasizes “the seven tenets,” which celebrate ideas like rationality, compassion and bodily autonomy.

What often draws attention, though, are the temple’s political and legal activities. The group has a history of filing suits to try to gain the same rights afforded to Christian groups, in an attempt to highlight and critique religion’s role in American society.

Because organizers of Satan Clubs object to introducing religion into public education, they try to offer an alternative at schools hosting faith-based extracurricular groups. The Satanic Temple promotes clubs that focus on science, critical thinking, free inquiry and community projects, emphasizing that “no proselytization or religious instruction takes place” in meetings.

Litigation around Satan Clubs arose in 2023 when a school board in Pennsylvania refused to allow a club to meet in an elementary school. In May, a federal trial court ruled that the school board could not ban the club, since it allowed other types of clubs. By allowing groups to use school facilities, the court explained, officials had created a public forum. Therefore, excluding any group because of its views would constitute discrimination, violating organizers’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Equal access

The principle that all student-organized extracurricular groups have equal access to educational facilities was established in 1981 with Widmar v. Vincent, a dispute from a public university in Kansas City, Missouri. The Supreme Court determined that once campus officials had created a forum for the free exchange of ideas by student groups, they could not prevent a faith-based club from meeting solely due to the religious content of its speech.

That requirement was extended to secondary schools under the Equal Access Act, which Congress adopted in 1984. The act applies to public secondary schools where educators create “limited open fora,” meaning non-instructional time when clubs run by students, not school staff, are allowed to meet. Officials cannot deny clubs opportunities to gather due to “the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”

The Equal Access Act specifies that voluntary, student-initiated clubs cannot “materially or substantially interfere” with educational activities. Further, groups cannot be sponsored by school officials, and educators may only be present if they do not participate directly. Finally, the act forbids people who are not affiliated with the school, such as local residents or parents, from directing, conducting, controlling or regularly attending club activities.

The Supreme Court upheld and extended the Equal Access Act’s logic in two major cases. In 1990’s Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, for example, the justices reasoned that because allowing a religious club in a public school in Nebraska did not endorse religion, it had to be permitted. Afterward, federal courts in California, Indiana, Florida and Kentucky expanded the act’s reach to GSA Clubs, formerly known as Gay-Straight Alliances – clarifying that “viewpoint discrimination” was impermissible against other nonreligious clubs.

In the recent dispute from Pennsylvania, the Satan Club’s organizers relied on Good News Club v. Milford Central School, a 2001 case from New York. The dispute arose when a school board refused to permit the Good News Club – a non-school-sponsored, faith-based group that has several thousand branches in the U.S. – to meet after class with participants’ parental consent. Yet officials allowed the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and 4-H Club to meet and talk about similar topics from secular points of view in an elementary school, so the Supreme Court decided that its refusal constituted unlawful viewpoint discrimination. Given students’ ages, parents or other adults are allowed to be involved in elementary school activities.

Expose children to new ideas?

Following the Equal Access Act, some boards banned all non-curriculum-related clubs in attempts to avoid controversy. Perhaps the Pennsylvania board will go this route as well.

In an increasingly intellectually diverse world, though, children are bound to encounter ideas with which they disagree – and I would argue each encounter can sharpen their critical thinking. As a federal trial court judge in Missouri once observed, provocative speech “is most in need of the protections of the First Amendment. … The First Amendment was designed for this very purpose.”



https://theconversation.com/how-after-school-clubs-became-a-new-battleground-in-the-satanic-temples-push-to-preserve-separation-of-church-and-state-209579

DEFINING RELIGION IN THE COURT

Mark Movsesian
First Things
June 2023

Here is a snapshot that captures an increasingly important issue in law and religion in the United States: In August 2021, four parents sued a school district outside Philadelphia for violating the free exercise rights of their children. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the district had required all students to wear masks and refused to allow religious exemptions. The parents—from four separate households—argued that covering the face violated their religions, and that the district’s requirement therefore violated the First Amendment.

In one sense, Geerlings v. Tredyffrin/Easttown School District was nothing new. Several lawsuits across the country had claimed, with varying degrees of success, that anti-Covid measures violated the Free Exercise Clause. But the Pennsylvania lawsuit was atypical in one important respect. Unlike the plaintiffs in most cases, who based their objections to anti-Covid measures in the teachings and practices of traditional religious communities—churches and synagogues—the Geerlings parents raised objections that were rather idiosyncratic.

Two of the parents belonged to no religion but described themselves as “spiritual.” Of these two, one believed in “something else out there,” not “just us,” which convinced him that his daughter should not wear a mask; the other maintained that masks mocked “the gift of life.” Two parents were Christians with unusual beliefs. The first, a deacon in a local Presbyterian church that had itself required masks during the pandemic, stated that, in her view, masks dishonored God. The other, an Episcopalian whose parish likewise had required masks during the pandemic, maintained that masks violated the “temple” of the body. Both of these plaintiffs apparently stopped attending services when their churches began to require masks.

With some hesitation, the court concluded that none of these claims qualified as “religious” for First Amendment purposes. Even if the parents’ objections were sincere, Judge Mitchell Goldberg wrote, they were too idiosyncratic to merit constitutional protection. Goldberg conceded that a claimant need not belong to an organized religion or hold the same beliefs as others in order to raise a free exercise claim. But there were limits. The First Amendment did not require exemptions for plaintiffs who objected to legal requirements on the basis of personal intuitions that failed to correspond with the teachings of any religion.

Judge Goldberg’s hesitation was understandable. The Supreme Court has never settled on a definition of religion, and its decisions down the centuries point in different directions. Some of the Court’s rulings indicate that idiosyncratic personal convictions can qualify as religious; others suggest the opposite. Until recently, the question has been mostly academic. Although solitary seekers like Henry ­David Thoreau have always been with us, most Americans have tended to identify with specific religious traditions. Few have sought legal exemptions based on purely personal spiritual commitments.

That seems likely to change. A fast-growing percentage of Americans, the so-called “Nones,” now tell pollsters that they have no religious ­affiliation—roughly 30 percent of the population, up from only 6 percent a generation ago. Like the first two Geerlings plaintiffs, most Nones are what one might call unaffiliated believers, people who reject organized religion but believe in “something else out there” and follow their own spiritual paths. Moreover, many Americans retain formal religious affiliations but combine orthodox teachings with other commitments, like the Christian parents in Geerlings who objected to face coverings on ­spiritual grounds. Tara Isabella Burton refers to this group as “religious hybrids.” Together with unaffiliated believers, she estimates, they may amount to more than 50 percent of the American population.

Geerlings is not the only recent case in which unaffiliated believers and religious hybrids have sought religious exemptions—and it will not be the last. Simply put, there are a lot more Henry ­David Thoreaus than there used to be, and some of them seem quite litigious. The time is ripe for the Supreme Court to clarify the meaning of “religion” for free exercise purposes—specifically, to clarify whether it covers purely individualistic spiritual pursuits.

Of course, many American constitutional scholars argue that religion is too amorphous a concept to be defined at all, or that privileging religion at the expense of other deep personal commitments—making religion “special,” for constitutional ­purposes—is immoral. I lack space to address those arguments here. Suffice it to say that the Free Exercise Clause itself speaks of “religion,” not of “deep personal commitments,” and the Supreme Court has made clear that it continues to see religion as a distinct category meriting special constitutional protection. Avoiding a definition of religion for First Amendment purposes is not sustainable, and recent changes in American religion make the issue only more salient.

Little evidence exists of what the Framers meant by the word “religion” in the Free Exercise Clause. In 1791, when the Clause was adopted, “religion” could refer to conventional faith communities, especially Protestant ones, but also to non-institutional beliefs such as Deism. Nonetheless, the drafting history suggests that the Framers intended the Clause to cover communal rather than purely idiosyncratic phenomena. The Framers famously chose to protect the “free exercise of religion” rather than the “rights of conscience.” Although the Framers did not explain why they preferred the former phrase, “religion” connotes a community of believers, as Michael McConnell has observed, whereas “conscience” suggests individual judgment. The fact that the Framers chose a word with communal connotations over the more personal “conscience” suggests they had collective phenomena in mind.

Down the centuries, the Court has failed to offer consistent guidance. The handful of decisions that address the definition of religion point in different directions. In a couple of nineteenth-­century cases involving the LDS Church, the Court indicated that religion entailed a system of beliefs consistent with traditional Christianity. “Religion,” the Court said in Davis v. Beason (1890), “has reference to one’s views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will.” The Court scoffed at the idea that the LDS Church could be a religion for constitutional purposes—notwithstanding that it held a belief in God—because it advocated polygamy, a practice condemned “by the general consent of the Christian world.” To call advocacy of polygamy “a tenet of religion,” the Court stated, would “offend the common sense of mankind.”

The Court has never repudiated these cases (though it would surely consider the LDS Church a religion today), yet subsequent decisions cast doubt on the idea that religion denotes traditional, organized religion, much less traditional Christianity. In two conscientious-objector cases from the Vietnam Era, the Court construed statutory language referring to “religious belief” to cover personal, non-theistic convictions. In United States v. Seeger (1965), the Court read language in the Draft Act exempting persons who objected to war on the basis of “religious belief” as covering a “belief in and devotion to goodness and virtue for their own sakes.” The test, the Court held, was “whether a given belief that is sincere and meaningful occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God.”

Seven years later, the Court reverted to a more conventional definition in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), a case involving the Amish. ­Unlike the Draft Act cases, which collapsed the distinction between the communal and the personal, ­Yoder insisted on a bright line. “Religion,” the Court indicated, denotes a commitment to a traditional faith community; merely personal convictions would not qualify. The Court offered Thoreau as a counterexample. Thoreau, the Court explained in dicta, had engaged in an “isolated” and “­subjective” quest—an alternative lifestyle all his own. By contrast, the Amish had a three-­hundred-year history as a tight-knit religious community; they lived according to strict and detailed rules enforced by a formal church structure. The Amish exercised a religion for constitutional purposes. Thoreau had not.

Nonetheless, in two cases following Yoder, the Court suggested that religion could indeed be a personal phenomenon—in some ­circumstances and within limits. In Thomas v. Review Board (1981), the Court held that a Jehovah’s Witness who worked at a steel factory could claim a religious exemption from making weapons, even though Jehovah’s ­Witnesses apparently did not consider making weapons to be a sin and another Jehovah’s Witness at the same factory did not object to making weapons. The Free Exercise Clause does not require that religious beliefs be “acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others,” the Court explained, or “shared by all of the members of a religious sect.”

Several years later, in Frazee v. Illinois Department of Employment Security (1989), the Court ruled unanimously that the Free Exercise Clause protected a claimant who argued that he could not work on Sundays because he was a Christian—even though he did not belong to a church. “[M]embership in an organized religious denomination, especially one with a specific tenet forbidding . . . work on Sunday, would simplify the problem of identifying sincerely held religious beliefs,” the Court explained. But the Clause did not require a claimant to show that he was “responding to the commands of a particular religious organization.”

Thomas and Frazee are in tension with Yoder, but neither case disavows that earlier ruling, and neither suggests that religion can be an entirely idiosyncratic matter. The Thomas Court explained that some claims might be “so bizarre, so ­clearly non­religious in motivation,” as to fall outside the protection of the Free Exercise Clause. ­Thomas itself did not involve such a claim. The debate among ­Jehovah’s Witnesses about whether one could permissibly work on weapons was a typical “intrafaith” dispute, an apparently good-faith disagreement of the sort “not uncommon among followers of a particular creed.” Similarly, in Frazee, a person who considered himself a Christian claimed that he could not work on Sundays. Though not all Christians shared it, his Sabbatarianism was hardly a “bizarre or incredible” conviction in the context of Christianity. A more singular claim, the Court implied, one that departed more seriously from a religion’s conventional baseline, would receive different treatment.

As this quick survey demonstrates, the Court’s decisions on the definition of religion are muddled. According to the cases, religion entails a conventional belief in God—except when it does not. Religion entails a commitment to a traditional, organized faith community—except when it does not. Religion excludes purely individualistic spiritual convictions—except when it does not. And a court should not evaluate whether a particular belief is “bizarre” or is shared by others in the claimant’s religion—except when it should.

Until very recently, one could dismiss the tension between communal and individualistic religion as peripheral. Notwithstanding occasional litigation like the Draft Act cases, few Americans have ever sought exemptions from civil law on the basis of entirely personal spiritual commitments. Courts could avoid deciding whether the Free Exercise Clause protected idiosyncratic beliefs and practices. The issue almost never came up.

But the rise in unaffiliated believers and religious hybrids has begun to change things. A recent study by scholars Michael Heise and Gregory Sisk reveals that Nones brought about 6 percent of the religious-accommodations claims in federal court from the years 2006 to 2015. About 40 percent of those claims were “loosely religious or spiritual in nature but not associated with a recognized religious grouping.” The numbers are still small, but they will probably increase as unaffiliated believers and religious hybrids become more entrenched in American society. One could imagine all sorts of claims based on idiosyncratic spiritual commitments: a vegetarian diet in prison, for example, or the right to wear certain clothing or insignia in the military. Or, as in Geerlings, an exemption from public health laws.

It’s time for the Court to establish that religion, at its core, denotes communal beliefs and practices rather than idiosyncratic personal commitments. A communal definition makes sense for several reasons. First, the existence of a community captures something important about the social reality of religion. In lived experience, religion suggests a group of people linked with one another, through time, in worship. As sociologist Christian Smith writes, “religions are almost invariably social activities—communities of memory engaged in carrying on particular traditions.” Without a communal structure to give them meaning, religious practices such as prayer, fasting, and so on are incoherent, “simply the strange doings of odd people.”

Second, a focus on community accords with an important goal of religious freedom: the promotion of private associations that encourage cooperative projects and check state power. As Tocqueville explained, the despotic state desires nothing more than for individual citizens to feel isolated from and indifferent to others, so that it can divide and dominate them all. By encouraging people to identify with and look out for one another, private associations militate against self-centeredness and social isolation and help keep the state in check. Religious groups perform this function especially well. No associations have been better, historically, at promoting cooperative social projects and defying state oppression—as dictators down the centuries have learned.

Third, the existence of a religious community reduces the possibility of fraud. Everyone agrees that courts need not honor a religious claim that a litigant does not genuinely hold or raises merely as a pretext. But sincerity, which depends on a claimant’s subjective state of mind, is notoriously difficult for courts to evaluate. The existence of a religious community to which the claimant belongs can provide objective evidence of the claimant’s good faith. A continuous tradition of teaching and worship, and an organized body that enforces discipline, can go a long way toward demonstrating the claimant’s genuineness about his religious convictions.

Fourth, the existence of a community helps ensure that religious commitments are not frivolous and fleeting, but serious and lasting. It is one thing for the state to accommodate a citizen’s profoundly held beliefs. To do so honors the citizen’s dignity and accords him respect. It is another thing to defer to commitments that may be temporary and superficial. Not all idiosyncratic commitments fit that description, of course, and beliefs can be religious even if novel. But the existence of an established religious community can screen out passing whims that the state need not honor.

Finally, making the definition of religion turn at least in part on the existence of a religious community reduces the potential for administrative disorder. Long ago, the Supreme Court warned that if personal spiritual convictions were sufficient to override legal obligations, “every citizen [would] become a law unto himself.” One should not overstate this concern, but the rise of the Nones makes it important today. Requiring a claimant to show that his or her objections are not merely personal but derive from the teachings of an organized body of believers can reduce the potential for conflict with state laws—especially in a society in which very large numbers claim to follow their own ­spiritual paths.

In short, the existence of a community is crucial to a plausible definition of religion. Nonetheless, categorically limiting legal protection to collective beliefs and practices would create two serious problems. First, excluding non-­institutional, idiosyncratic beliefs would contradict a long American tradition of honoring individual religious conscience. Unaffiliated believers like Thoreau and his spiritual descendants reflect something important about the way religion has historically been understood in America and the way it is understood today. Moreover, notwithstanding the problems of alienation, anomie, and unserious claims, honoring individual religious conscience promotes the important values of autonomy, dignity, and personal well-being. Categorically declining to protect individualistic claims would scant those important values and depart too far from our long tradition.

Second, limiting religion exclusively to communal beliefs and practices would create difficult line-drawing problems. Of course, civil courts lack competence to determine which religious expressions are correct in a metaphysical sense; that question is not at issue. For these purposes, courts would identify religion in an empirical sense—­describing things as they are. Even so, in many cases, courts might have a hard time identifying whether a community exists and what it teaches about a specific question. Most religions, ­especially if they have existed for a long time, have both majority and minority strains. Determining which expression among many qualifies as the “true” representative of a religious tradition can be difficult and may entangle courts in internal theological squabbles. These line-drawing problems will not always pose insurmountable obstacles. Law frequently relies on generalizations, and in many situations, courts should be able to fairly identify a religious community and its teachings as empirical matters. But the problems are significant enough to give one pause about categorically limiting free exercise protection to religious communities.

Thus, the proper constitutional definition of religion would be a flexible one with community at its core. The more a plaintiff can tie his beliefs and practices to those of an established religious community, the more his claims should qualify as religious for constitutional purposes. By contrast, the further a plaintiff diverges from a religious community, the more idiosyncratic his spiritual path, the less plausible his claim to practice a religion becomes.

Thomas and Frazee are suggestive in this regard. Thomas, recall, concerned what the Court characterized as a genuine “intrafaith” dispute among Jehovah’s Witnesses about the permissibility of making weapons. In the context of the religious tradition to which he belonged, Thomas’s objections were not novel and unique to him, but a matter of good-faith disagreement with his fellow believers. The Court was correct in recognizing his objections as religious.

Similarly, Frazee involved a claim by a person who called himself a Christian and maintained that he could not in good conscience work on Sundays. In the context of Christianity, this was hardly a “­bizarre” position, even if most American Christians no longer shared it, and even if the claimant did not formally belong to a church. Purely as a descriptive matter, refraining from work on Sundays is not an idiosyncratic position for someone who calls himself a Christian; it suggests neither fraud nor a lack of seriousness. Once again, given the faith tradition to which he claimed to subscribe, Frazee’s objections were properly characterized as religious.

The claims in Thomas and Frazee had plausible links to religious communities and did not implicate concerns about hyper-individualism, fraud, and lack of seriousness. The Court correctly concluded that the claims were religious. Contrast those claims with the claims in Geerlings, the recent Pennsylvania case involving the Covid mask mandate. The Christian plaintiffs in that case argued that medical masks dishonored God and violated the temple of the body. In the context of the Christian faiths to which the plaintiffs claimed to belong, and speaking only descriptively, those claims do indeed qualify as bizarre. They do not reflect genuine intrafaith disputes and do not cohere with historic beliefs and practices. Judge Goldberg was correctly skeptical that the claims qualified as religious.



Or consider the claim of the unaffiliated believers in Geerlings who sought religious exemptions because of personal views that masks mocked “the gift of life” and intuitions about a vague supernatural force beyond “just us.” Courts should be especially chary of such claims, which lack even a purported connection to a religious tradition. To treat such claims as religious for First Amendment purposes would contravene the common understanding that religion is a communal phenomenon and fail to advance the important associational benefits organized religion can confer. It would increase the potential for fraudulent and trivial claims and administrative disorder, in a country with millions and millions of unaffiliated believers, each of whom could make similar claims about the requirements of “something else out there.”

To be sure, the flexible approach I advocate here would not settle questions in the manner of a categorical rule. It would consider specific facts and depend a great deal on judgment; in any particular case, whether a claim qualifies as religious may be genuinely uncertain. Line-drawing problems will remain. Nonetheless, by placing the existence of a religious community at the core of the definition of religion, this approach would offer the benefits of tying religion to common understandings and avoiding at least some of the problems associated with defining religion in idiosyncratic terms, while remaining true to our cultural and legal traditions and minimizing the difficulties that a more categorical ­approach would entail.

Mark Movsesian is the Frederick A. Whitney Professor of Contract Law and Co-Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University. A longer version of this essay, “The New Thoreaus,” appears in a forthcoming issue of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal.

Defining Religion in the Court by Mark Movsesian | Articles | First Things

US: Chinese agents paid bribes in plot to disrupt anti-communist Falun Gong movement

Michael R. Sisak
National Post
The Associated Press
May 26, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. authorities have arrested two suspected Chinese government agents in connection with an alleged plot by Beijing to disrupt and ultimately topple the exiled anti-communist Falun Gong spiritual movement.

John Chen and Lin Feng were charged in an indictment unsealed Friday with scheming to revoke a New York-based Falun Gong organization’s tax-exempt status and paying bribes to a undercover officer posing as a U.S. tax agent.

The undercover officer recorded multiple conversations with Chen, and investigators obtained a wire tap to record phone calls in which Chen and Feng discussed instructions they purportedly received from Chinese government officials, prosecutors said.

In one recording, prosecutors said, Chen referred to Chinese government officials as akin to “blood brothers” and, in another, he said Beijing would be “very generous” in rewarding the undercover officer’s help cracking down on Falun Gong’s non-profit status.

Chen, a 70-year-old U.S. citizen, and Feng, a 43-year-old lawful permanent resident, are charged with acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government, bribing a public official and conspiracy to commit international money laundering.

Chen and Feng were both born in China but now live in the Los Angeles area, where they were arrested Friday. Information on an initial court appearance or lawyers who could speak on their behalf was not immediately available.

Messages seeking comment were left with the Chinese Embassy in Washington and with the Falun Gong movement.

China banned the Falun Gong movement in 1999, classifying it as an evil cult and one of the “Five Poisons,” or chief threats to its rule. Since then, Falun Gong practitioners have found refuge at a 400-acre compound called Dragon Springs in upstate New York.

In the U.S., the Falun Gong movement is known mostly for its ties to Shen Yun, a touring performing arts group, and The Epoch Times, a newspaper that has been marketed as an alternative to traditional U.S. media while also coming under fire for amplifying misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The Justice Department has made a series of prosecutions in recent years to disrupt China’s efforts in the U.S. to identify, locate and silence pro-democracy activists and others who are openly critical of Beijing’s policies. Such practices by foreign governments are known as “transnational repression.”

“The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the (People’s Republic of China) here in the United States,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

The U.S., Garland added, will “continue to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute” China’s efforts to “silence its critics and extend the reaches of its regime onto U.S. soil.”

In seeking to undermine Falun Gong, federal prosecutors allege, Chen and Feng’s urged the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the organization’s non-profit tax status. In a whistleblower complaint to the tax agency in February, Chen described Falun Gong as a “gigantic mega cult” — echoing language China’s government uses to describe the movement.

Chen and Feng then turned to the undercover officer to make sure the IRS acted on the complaint, offering a $50,000 reward — and handing over $5,000 in cash as a down payment — if the tax agency conducted an audit, prosecutors said.

Chen met with the officer at a restaurant north of New York City on May 14, prosecutors said. A few days later, the officer sent Chen a letter on fake IRS letterhead that stated the agency had opened a case on Falun Gong, prosecutors said. Chen relayed the news to Feng in a wire tapped phoned conversation, indicating that he was planning to update Chinese government officials on their progress, prosecutors said.

Chen and Feng’s arrest comes a month after the Justice Department charged two men with establishing a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government. Around the same time, federal prosecutors charged about three dozen officers with China’s national police force with using social media to harass dissidents inside the U.S.

In 2020, the Justice Department charged more than a half-dozen people with working on behalf of the Chinese government in a pressure campaign aimed at coercing a New Jersey man wanted by Beijing into returning to China to face charges.

—-

Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.



https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/us-chinese-agents-paid-bribes-in-plot-to-disrupt-anti-communist-falun-gong-movement

To regulate churches or not? The big question after cult deaths

Kibor Bundotich

Standard
May 17, 2023

In the wake of Shakahola deaths suspected to be linked to cultism, the question of whether or not to impose stricter regulations on churches has generated heat in the court of public opinion.

Some churches have been accused of brainwashing and manipulating innocent, desperate congregants including children. Others are now suspected of being tax havens and money laundering schemes for unscrupulous thieves and fraudsters.

In the heat of the debate, the government now finds itself in an awkward position, with a number of critics feeling that the State is plotting to use Shakahola tragedy as a disguise to interfere in the operations of churches in violation of Article 32 of the Constitution of Kenya that provides for the freedom of religion, thought, belief and opinion.

Sub-article 2 of the same article protects individuals and communities who manifest any religion, belief through worship, practice including observance of any practice and or day.

As such, the Constitution never envisioned a situation where preachers would be dragged to court for their sermons. Today anyone can be blaspheming against God and get away with it. The assumption is that God himself will try such a man in the life after.

This is the headache facing Kenya today in the wake of the sad events at Shakahola where the body count at a place that few Kenyans knew until April of 2023 is rising every day. Granted-these men, women and children may be unfortunate victims of blind faith. Which begs the question, is it illegal to have faith in something and be ready to die for a cause?

There are some who will argue that the question of right or wrong is not for us to judge; and that we cannot determine whether the people suspected of dying for their faith were worshiping the real God or not; or even whether they met the God they believed they were dying for.

But it all boils down to one big headache for the government - at what point should the State come in and regulate religion, when on the same ink and paper - the Constitution protects the right to conscience and religion?

At what point should the government come to the rescue of people that declared theirs a secular state? To what extent should religious leaders be criminally culpable for the deaths or injury of their followers?

No freedom is absolute, including the freedom of religion. The right to manifest belief may be subject to such limitations as maybe prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

But the world over, these limitations, in some cases come face to face with the freedom of choice; the defence of consent. In New Zealand for example, the case of R versus Lee brought to the fore [the] issue of consensual self-harm and exorcism.

Lee was a Korean national living in New Zealand who founded a church he called Lord of All at a time when the gospel of exorcism and deliverance was rife.

There were between 15 between and 20 members in Lee's Church, most of them Korean. Seven of the church members lived in Lee's home. One of them, Joanna Lee who suffered from vitiligo, a disease characterised by discolouration of the skin.

When Joanna experienced low mood and persistent negative feelings, she and Lee attributed this to demonic possession and prescribed exorcism.

The exorcism process took place over a number of hours and involved Lee and other church members applying pressure on Joanna's neck, chest, stomach and face, sitting, lying and bouncing on her. When Joanna shouted at them to stop, they assumed that it was the devil rather than Joanna talking.

At the end of the process Lee told his followers that Joanna was cured and fallen into blissful sleep. In reality, she was dead. Still, church members watched over her body for the next six days, washing her body with alcohol in the hope that she would wake up.

Eventually, a visitor came to the house and alerted the police.

Lee tried to convince police that Joanna was 'regenerating' and would come back to life. The police would hear none of it, and he was arrested and convicted for manslaughter.

During the hearing, witnesses painted a picture of a meek, compliant and self-sacrificing woman. Who was also emotionally vulnerable, given her medical issues and the fact that she had only arrived in New Zealand from Korea a few weeks before the exorcism.

In an appeal case that followed, the jury returned with the verdict that the defence of consent would stand unless there were public policy reasons not to make the defence suffice; that there was no suggestion that Joanna might have lacked legal capacity to make decisions.

Back home in Kenya there has not been a proper authority on consent to self-harm. While common law has weighed into the matter, the jury is still out on whether consent to self-harm a proper defence is or not.

Still, something needs to be done urgently in the wake of Shakahola deaths. For starters, we need to insist that all religious leaders undertake theology courses.

Religious institutions, including churches, should not be private or personal establishments. Instead they should be public, set up to benefit all members of society under the laws of land.

Those that do any other business besides preaching ought to either pay taxes to the government or separate the business entities from the churches they run.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001473119/to-regulate-churches-or-not-the-big-question-after-cult-deaths

CultNEWS101 Articles: 3/20/2023 Advanced Training Institute, Martial Arts, Legal, Religious Freedom, Unification Church)

Advanced Training Institute, Martial Arts, Legal, Religious Freedom, Unification Church

SALTWIRE: How a Newfoundland woman found herself trapped in a cult by her ex-husband: Christine Faour sharing story of her life with the Advanced Training Institute

"Looking back at her life as a follower of the Advanced Training Institute, Christine Faour believes she was "ripe for the picking" to be swept into a life in what she now recognizes as a cult.

Born and raised in Corner Brook, the daughter of Danny and Freida Faour, she now lives in Coldbrook in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia.

In June 2022, she released her memoir "Behind the Dress," sharing the story of her life in a religious cult.

"I didn't have much confidence in myself," Faour told the SaltWire Network as she reflected on how she was so easily brought into the cult by her ex-husband.

She had been raised Catholic and attended university at St. Francis Xaiver University in Antigonish, N.S., then went out west teaching.

Every time she'd visit home, she'd hear of friends who were either getting married or having children and Faour felt like she was being left on the shelf.

She was 29 when she met her ex on a plane and remembers him asking her if she was a Christian. She said yes.

"But he was talking about being a born-again Christian," and Faour said she was interested in that.

He told her about an Institute in Basic Life Principles seminar that he had attended.

"And that was the beginning of the cult," she said.

The beginning

The Institute in Basic Life Principles was founded in the United States by Bill Gothard. In seminars. Gothard taught people how to lead successful lives according to his interpretation of Biblical principles.

His followers have included the Duggar family, led by parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, and has been featured on TV in shows like "14 Children and Pregnant Again" and "19 Kids and Counting."

Gothard stepped down from the organization in 2014 after being accused of sexual harassment."

Toronto Life: The Guru of Mount Nemo

"On a quiet country road outside Toronto, a charismatic martial arts teacher built a megamansion for his entourage of disciples. For 15 years, he preached peace and love. Then, one morning, the police stormed in and secrets came spilling out.

Christian Dombkowski grew up riding horses on his family's farm in the ­German countryside. He had a happy childhood, but then his idyllic life began to unravel. In 1984, when he was 12, his mom and dad separated. Four months later, his older brother died in a car crash. His parents decided to give it another try and start a new life in Canada, but after they arrived, they split again: mother and son in a townhouse in Milton, father in Alberta. Young Christian learned English and made friends hanging around Trevi Pizza, a strip-mall shop that was popular with students thanks to $1.25 slices and a wall of arcade games. He spent so much time there that, when he turned 16, the shop hired him as a delivery driver.

Christian loved Bruce Lee movies, so he was intrigued when he noticed a martial arts dummy in the back room of the shop. He asked around and discovered that it belonged to one of the owners, Mohan Ahlowalia, whom everyone called Jarry. He was in his mid-20s, and like Christian, he'd come to Ontario as a boy. He taught Wing Chun, a form of close-quarters kung fu popularized by Bruce Lee, in a small studio in the basement of his modest bungalow. Christian asked for a lesson, but Jarry declined. When he kept asking, Jarry eventually relented.

As agreed, Christian arrived at Jarry's house at 7 one evening, but Jarry wasn't home. His wife, Priti, told the young man that he was welcome to take a seat in the living room. He waited as the clock ticked on—20 minutes, an hour, then two. He was sure that Jarry was doing what martial arts masters always did in the movies: testing their students' resolve. When Jarry finally arrived, around midnight, he acted like he'd never scheduled a lesson. But Christian seemed committed, so Jarry gave him a brief history of Wing Chun and demonstrated its first stance, a pigeon-toed position called Yee Jee Kim Yeung Ma. If Christian wanted to learn the art's swift and deceptively powerful movements, he'd have to come back.

He returned for a second class, then a third. They were gruelling. Jarry demanded that Christian repeat movements until he was on the verge of passing out. When he made mistakes, Jarry directed him to do push-ups. It wasn't punishment, he'd say; it was part of the training. Jarry extended his instruction to the pizza shop, showing Christian how Wing Chun footwork could help him move around the kitchen more nimbly."

Tablet: Religious Liberty Behind Bars

"Two court cases involving Rastafarian inmates attract the attention of legal advocates of other faiths."

"Last year, two separate cases were filed with the Fifth and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, respectively, by Rastafarians seeking damages. Both litigants, Thomas Walker and Damon Landor, said that their dreadlocks were forcibly shaven while they were inmates, violating their religious liberty. At the center of both cases, which have attracted the attention of other religious groups who have filed amicus briefs in support of both Walker and Landor, are different interpretations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The 2000 legislation says that prisoners may "obtain appropriate relief" for violations of their religious liberty. But just what constitutes appropriate relief—or Rastafarianism, for that matter—is still up for debate.

According to the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic, which filed an amicus brief for Walker in the Seventh Circuit, together with groups representing Anabaptists, Muslims, and Sikhs:

Walker began growing dreadlocks in 2013 after taking the Nazarite vow of separation, thus committing himself to never drink alcohol, never eat meat or dairy, and never cut his hair. In 2018 he was incarcerated at Stateville Northern Reception Center, where he was permitted to keep his dreadlocks. In early April 2018 he was transferred to Dixon and registered in the prison system's online database as a practicing Rastafarian. He kept his dreadlocks for the first six weeks with no incident.

On May 25, 2018, a corrections officer informed Walker that his dreadlocks had to be removed for 'security' reasons. Despite telling the officer that cutting his hair would violate his religious beliefs by 'sever[ing] [his] physical connection to Jah [(God)],' Walker ultimately had to relent and allow the prison barber to sever his dreadlocks or else face severe disciplinary action and the forcible removal of his dreadlocks."

SBS News: 'I married a stranger at a mass wedding': Life inside the Unification Church

"The Unification Church is under investigation for its role in Japanese politics following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Some call it a cult, while others say the church's aim is world peace.

When Jinae first met her husband, she could hardly communicate with him. He was from Japan and she was brought up in the US, but according to Jinae this "was kind of normal in the church".

She was born into a religious movement called The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, more commonly known as the Unification Church.

Founded in Seoul, South Korea in 1954, those who are faithful to the Unification Church are often nicknamed 'Moonies', after their leader Sun Myung Moon. Jinae says she was taught to believe that Reverend Moon was the "Messiah" and the "True Father".

Moon was staunchly anti-communist and his church spread internationally during the cold war. Today, the church operates in 120 countries and has around 600,000 members. It gained notoriety for its so-called "mass weddings", blessing ceremonies of thousands of couples, often held in indoor arenas or outdoor sports stadiums.

Jinae's parents matched her with her future husband, and they were married in a mass wedding ceremony in Korea. Jinae says this ceremony signifies the change of blood lineage from Satan's lineage to God's lineage.

As a "Blessed Child", second-generation member of the Church, she had known her whole life this was her fate. On her wedding day she says she was miserable.

"I couldn't disappoint my parents and I couldn't lose my community."

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