Can You Survive Religion’s Dark Side?
My journey from blind devotion to truth
How many people come to faith to find freedom but only discover they are puppets to higher powers who pull their strings?
That was my story in Zion Full Salvation Ministry, where I danced to the tune of a woman who claimed to be God for some 16 years. Then, when “God died” I found myself in control of the group and set about trying to make life better for my own family and her followers.
They were all such lovely people and had become family to my wife Meg and me, and our children. The trouble was in finding a new and loving family, we had to lose the ones that bore us.
Subservience to another person based on supernatural belief is however, hard to shake. Whilst life after her death was very much different to when she lived and controlled our very breathing, finding a way to escape the fear of belief in her took five long years.
Happier times - where’s the future joy?
The following photo was taken well before I was born. It shows my dear mother and father, and his mother. I don’t remember Nana ever standing like that. By the time I was born, she had had a severe stroke and was left partially paralysed and only able to stagger unsteadily pushing a chair. Walkers, essential aid of the disabled and elderly, were not available then.
Smiles on their faces speak of happy times. Perhaps taken in 1939 the year mum and dad were married, and even though a world war was about to begin, family would always be the essence of life.
My parents were so good to me and my brother and sister, so what went wrong? Dad was born in poverty. His father was a drunk and so there were many struggles to overcome to be the man he was. Mum came from a family with a long history of people listed in biographies. Her mother suffered from what we know as depression and anxiety — she had had a breakdown at an early age. My parents were simple loving people. Why did I deny them?
So heavenly minded, no earthly use
My commitment to Jesus as an evangelical/pentecostal Christian occurred in 1973 when as a young journalist I was working in Brisbane, Australia for Murdoch’s suburban newspaper network. It was an emotional experience for a 19-year-old who had abandoned the faith of his childhood for a few years.
Then began quite a journey from that commitment and a strong sense of God’s “call” on my life to 16 years in a full-on cult with a literal God in human flesh as our leader, and five years to follow her death with me in charge.
I told my bizarre story with the help of my brother who had known the pain of abandoning family for religion in the book “My Brother’s Eyes”. Descriptions of high-demand control groups (cults) vary but mostly there is a level of the same where every part of your life is under strict control. In my case, the control was greater than the other “believers” in our group because I was one of she-who-must-be-obeyed’s inner circle.
In fact, I was the one “she” spoke to most of all when living in self-imposed exile supposedly fulfilling an aspect of Scripture: “The woman flees into the wilderness where she is nourished for 1260 days, the equivalent of three and a half years or forty-two months (See: Rev. 12:6).” Strange how that woman could claim any obtuse Scripture as her own.
The Anointed’s Home and Away
For her, the Wilderness was thankfully, quite civilised. A millionaire dollar home in Sydney’s leafy and luxurious Palm Beach, overlooking beautiful Pittwater and the ocean below Barrenjoey Lighthouse. You don’t know the area? Well, have a look at many of the scenes of the global phenomena Home and Away as it was filmed there.
She claimed to be God, of course, don’t they all? Absolute, fundamentalist belief is a virus just like Covid and impacts far more people than the world of religious faith realises.
My journey covered 16 years with the she-devil-God, and five years with me afterwards in the driving seat of the church she created. I joke I could have been God too, but when I looked at my resume I realised I was just a tad short on ticking the divinity box. My skills were lacking. Thank God. Or someone.
Her name was Violet Pryor. She was a widow of a man she claimed to have been a saint. Who knows what that meant now? Perhaps he was a saint to live with her? After she died I contacted people she had known in her former life. I was intrigued to find out whether the narcissistic monster with sugar-sweet tendencies that I had known, had always been that way. The responses did not confirm my suspicions. Her brother-in-law was quite upset that I asked. “She was always a wonderful host and kept the house beautifully when we came to visit in the country town of Leeton, NSW”. He was horrified to think that she was anything but a sweet country woman, a good wife who would have made a wonderful mother had she been able to bear children. Perhaps the insanity of fundamentalist belief had corrupted her first?
Born again after a car accident
Her brother-in-law wouldn’t have believed me had I told him that Violet claimed to have been born again as God after a car accident. Not a bad claim eh? And she didn’t drink! (Oh she did take lots of analgesics and sedatives, but that’s another story.)
Prior to this, Pryor claimed to have the stigmata and extraordinary gifts for deliverance (exorcism). The claim about stigmata was a very big one. In fact, it was quite Trumpish for the Frumpish one. (Oh that was a bit nasty. Naughty me.) Actually, she was in her 50’s, when I first met her. I was 19 and she was immaculately dressed, hair beautifully coiffed and dress shoes to impress. She had modelled herself on 1950s American TV evangelist and healer, Kathryn Kuhlman. Never would Kuhlman be seen in public without looking as if presenting before millions, and the same for Violet although with the latter the numbers never added up.
Violet’s full Stigmata
When I first met her she claimed to have stigmata that was greater than any other stigmata anyone had had. Does that sound Trumpish? She claimed to have experienced everything that Jesus did on the cross and in the torture before the crucifixion. She had experienced “a full stigmata” she would often say. The full package included nails in the feet and hands, crown of thorns, lashings on her back and spear thrust in the side. These supposedly bled often but I never saw blood. I did see marks on the back of her hands and sandaled feet. Secretly I always wondered whether they were real or somehow chalked. You quickly learned to keep your doubts and your questions to yourself. Voicing them was not worth the reprimand that would follow.
St Francis of Assisi was one who claimed the stigmata. He still remains a hero of mine today, not in his case because of what Violet would deem his partial stigmata, (hardly worth mentioning really), but because of his radical love for the poor and his amazing sense of the environment where all the animals and the birds of the air were his family. I also loved the way he stuck it up to the Vatican in a time when Popes, Cardinals and Bishops venerated riches and delights in their gorgeous robes and palaces whilst the poor were left begging at the gates. Thankfully all of that has changed, hasn’t it? (Ahem!)
I’m not Catholic, but I was delighted when the current Pope chose the name Francis for himself. No wonder he has been hated by so many power-hungry prelates around him, including the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, of an infamous reputation.
Both my parents died before I was able to oversee the closure of the church. They would have been amazed to know that I came to my senses and that the faithful had come to agree with me. It had all been a terrible lie. It was a liberation for me too because I had been gripped by the fear of “what if she was, who she said she was”. It took me ages to find the courage to examine records and files to which I had access, which revealed that we had all been duped. Duped gloriously of our money, our independence, our free will and yes, even our minds. Did Violet believe this nonsense? I can’t be sure, but I think she did, although in the last months of her life, there were signs she questioned it all.
She died of heart failure and complications of diabetes at 68. I’m 69 now. I’ve just had a birthday and so will turn 70 next, but hey it’s a long way off. The poor old earth has to do just under 940 million kilometres by then as it travels around the sun. (Thankfully with no fundamentalist belief I’m happy to accept the best science on this rather than argue that we are the centre of our universe and the Sun travels around us!)
The Golden Rule beats Cultic Belief
Having come from such a fundamentalist background, my life over many years has taken lots of different turns. The biggest now, aside from the disability business I started during Covid lockdowns, is a charity I formed to help LGBTIQ+ people loathed by too many “God-fearing” people in East Africa. I just don’t get it. Why can’t we just live and let live, love and let love? What is wrong with the golden rule that is in all religions and central to humanitarianism, “Do to others as you would have them do to you”?
The problem is no different to the cult to which my wife and I and our then young children lost so many years. To have a fundamentalist belief of any kind you need something to denounce, something to hate and something to fight against more than something to believe in. Most of you reading this will know that religion falls down when it stands up to fight its seen or unseen enemies rather than injustice.
The Spirit World is the Real World
Violet claimed we were in a spiritual warfare, “the spirit world is the real world”, and being the only one gifted to see demons she held all the cards. So the devil and his demons were the enemy. They were everywhere. They possessed your family outside of the group, the government, the police, your neighbours and you. Followers had all kinds of nasty little spirits cast out of them and you would be amazed at how many of the men and women had those awful homosexual and lesbian spirits of lust removed.
Of course, just like conversion therapy used by so many church groups around the world, it never really worked. People would claim to be healed. The problem was supposedly gone. Lust slithering away in the dead of night, but never for long. And so anyone who came to her for help found themselves in need of her again, and again, and again. Familiar to you and your church experience perhaps?
Conservative Christian leaders will always succeed more when they can visualise and demonstrate the power of an enemy. So queer people don’t just want to live peaceful lives like any of us, they want to take our children and convert every hetero person to their cause.
Rubbish. Isn’t Jesus recorded as saying “Love your enemies”?
While I am no longer captivated by faith I can still value sayings like these:
“I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.” (Matthew 5:44,45 The Message)
As long as I live my life will remain committed to a life of love, respect and acceptance. I will keep loving and fighting for my disabled friends and the same for the LGBTIQ+ outcasts of so many nations. I do it because it's the right thing to do, and I believe the guy we call Jesus would expect it of us.
If you would like to read the excerpt that began this article, please visit “I Wish I Had Never Met God.”
My blog here, and my podcast @nosexplease on YouTube and giggling on audio apps like iTunes, Audible, Spotify, and others, tells the story of the abuse people have received through the church’s sex shaming that in recent years specialises in LGBTIQ+ people.
This blog and the podcast seek to support queer refugees in East Africa who need our help simply to survive. Many of them are killed or die from disease or hunger simply because homophobic cultures don’t merit them as human. So sad.
Please support us if you can.
www.patreon.com/nosexplease or No Sex Please — Chuffed Appeal
