For the past few months, my girlfriend has been hanging out with a friend from work and her church group on the weekends. She says she has been learning a lot that has changed her views on things, but doesn't go into a lot of details. She says the things she has been taught would "sound crazy" if she told me because she isn't well versed enough to really back them up with evidence but that she is impressed with how much this church seems to have answers to questions. She also has not told her parents about these things. Strange, but no biggie. I try to be open minded about things as I am not religious at all, but I don't claim to have any big answers either about god or anything like that.

Tonight I found out she has some "special meeting" with someone important in the church. With further probing I found she is meeting with someone from Korea in the World Mission Society Church of God. I know very little about this group, but from what I can tell they are relatively culty and tend to aggressively recruit young vulnerable/lonely women going through a big life change. There are some past controversies with the group possibly being a doomsday cult, but idk how big that plays into their belief system really, they seem far less scary of a group than Scientology but something gives me the impression that they are manipulating her. I am already trying to tow a fine line of not pushing her away as we have been struggling with other relationship/mental health issues, but I really don't want to let her go deep down a rabbit hole here if it is something that is dangerous. FWIW, it also looks like this group does a decent amount of legitimate charity work.

  • FidelCastro [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Alright, I spent a couple minutes digging into this and they are checking the boxes for being a cult.

    Do your own research, but here’s a subreddit of people who have gotten out of the cult or are dealing with losing people to it:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/WMSCOG/

    Note: The first pinned post on there mentions the cult is monitoring that sub and is pissed that it exists. Assume any mention of them will eventually get on their radar, so don’t dox yourself if you do post there. If the cult is aggressive enough, they will eventually capture that sub and use it as a way to identify and dox critics.

    Quote from one of the threads:

    I have five years experience inside this cult as a devoted believer. I have now been out of it for a little over a year and a half. As long as your are confident that you won’t be swayed by their teachings, you would be fine with even doing “Bible studies” with them. Their “Bible studies” can seem quite convincing to someone unfamiliar with the Bible. But if you take it all with a grain of salt and don’t intend to actually gain any religious/spiritual information from it, you could do very well as an undercover infiltrator.

    They will try to love bomb you. They will seem like the nicest people you could find. They will invite you to numerous events. Just make sure you don’t agree to be baptized. Once baptized, you’re locked in and then the love bombing ends and the guilt shaming begins. Also don’t agree to sign anything or fill out any forms with personal info. They don’t need your info so don’t provide it.

    If you want access to any of their books or more intense studies, you will likely be required to be a baptized member. Don’t do it. It is possible to leave and just walk away after being baptized, but it will be harder and then they’ll have your info. If you need specific info about them, DM me and I will provide what I can.

    They are only dangerous to someone willing to allow themselves to truly believe and follow their teachings. For an undercover infiltrator, it would just be annoying having to pretend all the time that you are a real believe since real believers are expected to do a lot for the church. They will want as much of your time and money as they can get.

    So yeah, none of this is standard for a normal religion / faith. Pulling at the edges of their actual beliefs, it’s a korean cult that believes their current living leader is “god the mother”, the reincarnation of the Christian god. They utilize some version of the Christian bible and publicly identify as Christian.

    Thing to especially watch out for with cults is them being jealous of your time and attention. They try to bring people in and then pry away / alienate the person’s other social supports so that the victim is isolated and dependent on them.

    It sounds like you’ve caught this early enough you can potentially help your girlfriend get away from it. Read up on cult deprogramming steps, etc. Don’t blame yourself if it doesn’t work, cults either get very good at recruiting or they collapse.