New Messiahs Hailed by Youth, Hated by Parents
VICTORIA GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - New messiahs are arising across America, idealized by young converts who seek the truth and reviled by parents who accuse them of brainwashing.
Teachers or preachers, they offer the truth, the way, the light. Holy men or hucksters, they hold out a promise of knowledge, happiness and the path to God.
They offer love and warmth and community. In return, some demand not only souls, but also total devotion and savings accounts. Some call them withdrawal groups.
So tight is the grip on many young recruits that critics accuse them of mind control. Distraught parents have kidnaped their zealous children from groups and "deprogrammed" them.
There are hundreds of groups, but the hest known are the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the children of God sect, the Divine Light Mission of 17-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji and the Hare Krishna movement.
It's a unified family of brothers and sisters," says Ron Johnson, a 19-year-old Moonie from Austin, Tex. "We'll go around and meet people and try to help them out. The whole purpose is to train people to be missionaries."
I've never before felt God's presence so strongly," says Diane Hunt, 26, a former clerk who also found Moonism. "I felt it was either go or stay. I felt it was God's will."
Some, like the Unification Church and Hare Krishna movement, are big business, and young idealistic converts relinquish their possessions to hawk flowers; candles and candy to finance their way to God.
They reflect a growing impulse to establish an alternative religious lifestyle that not only provides doctrine, but also demands total commitment in every waking moment. They employ a multimedia approach to piety that includes teaching, praying, meditating, chanting, exercising, burning incense, raising money for the cause and finding other recruits.
"Extreme groups demand total conmmitment and some provide a total life, completely set off from the :mainstream of society," says Robert Ellwood, professor of religious sociology at the University of Southern California.
He calls them "withdrawal groups" and cites the Unification Church, the Children of God and Hare Krishna.
Many recruits to the new cult scene stepped out of the counterculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience.
Here is a rundown of the major groups:
UNIFICATION CHURCH: Its leader is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a 54-year-old Korean evangelist who claims a world-wide church and an American fol1owing of 30,000, including a core of 7,000. He teaches that Christ will come again, take a bride and father a blessed human race. He is strongly anti-Communist.
The Rev. Moon comes as a spiritual father," says Neil A. Salonen, U.S. president of the group. "He is the individual through whom God speaks" - once at Madison Square Garden.
Moon himself is a millionaire with extensive Korean holdings that include gun and tea manufacturing. The church has $10 million in property in two New York estates.
He demands total devotion from his clean cut disciples known as "Moonies" who regard him as a father. The most devoted live in communes, relinquish their savings and personal property to the church and even permit Moon to select their marriage partners. They proseletyse on streetcorners and sell flowers and candies to raise money.
The group is strongly opposed to free love, alcohol and drugs.
The Unification Church has been vigorously criticized by parents who claim their children have been brainwashed and programmed.
"I'm ecstatic. I'm going to be a pioneer," says Debbie Dobson, a 20-year-old Moonie from Massachusetts.
CHILDREN OF GOD: The Children of God is a secretive Christian sect with an estimated 100 communes in North America and Europe. It is a fundamentalist group that sprang from the hippie and Jesus movements and applies a sexual interpretation to the Bible.
Like the Unification Church it requires total devotion from its members who regard themselves as the enlightened "children of God." Many members have renounced their families and material possessions and many parents have accused the group of imprisoning and brain-washing their children.
They take Biblical names and follow strict schedules, study the Bible and learn a trade.
The sect was founded in 1968 by David Berg, now in Europe. Berg wrote a series of letters giving his views on everything from international politics to sexual mores and techniques.
DIVINE LIGHT MISSION: The Divine Light Mission is an Indian sect led by Guru Maharaj Ji, a plump, 17-year-old compared by his followers with Jesus, Buddha, and Krishha. He is called the Perfect Master of the mission founded by his father in India.
The Mission claims 50,000 American followers and eight million in India. It keeps track of its disciples with a computer, employs a public relations staff and has wide business interests including a janitorial service.
About 3,000 followers are actively involved and about 1,000 live in ashrams - communes for celibate living and meditation.
Maharaj Ji lives with his wife and child in a Malibu; Calif., mansion and has two airplanes, a Rolls-Royce and three Mercedes Benz autos.
His mother has denounced him as a "playboy" who leads a "despicable, nonspiritual way of life" while espousing an aescetic, vegetarian lifestyle.
He has promised to reveal God and establish world peace. Disciples must meditate in order to receive knowledge and practice tongue contortion and eyeball pressure to taste "divine nectar" and see "divine light."
HARE KRISHNA: The Hare Krishna movement is part of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and claims thousands of saffron-robed followers in temples across the U.S.
"Krishna" means Supreme Being in Sanskrit and followers believe they can achieve ecstacy by leading an aescetic life, swaying and chanting "Hare Krishna".
The followers with shaven heads and pigtails are a familiar sight on many streetcorners, in airports and subways where they sell candy and flowers and seek donations for good works.
To lead the righteous life, devotees are required to give up alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea, meat, fish and eggs. Gambling and illicit sex are prohibited.
Many have given up their possessions to serve the movement which has spread tocommunes in most major American cities and maintains some farms.
Concern over youthful converts is widespread, especially for the Moonies, Children of God, and Hare Krishna devotees.