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.

  • Pezevenk [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    Oh fuck I'm pretty sure these weirdos randomly called us once, trying to get the word out about "human rights abuses in SK due to COVID-19", pretty sure it was some denialist shit. Not 100% sure it was them or some other SK cult. But looking them up it seems like they are indeed a doomsday cult so yikes.

    • Barabas [he/him]
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      3 years ago

      Remember them showing up at my doorstep about a decade ago and making me watch some video about the god mother. Was annoyed and hung over, but I usually just let these recruiters do their spiel and take the pamphlet to get rid of them.

      Not surprised that they're sketchy, they seemed like it compared to the usual Jehova's Witnesses or Mormons and they're already bad enough.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
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        3 years ago

        My dad had a good system for these sorts of people, he just told them something like "no thanks, we're Muslim/Buddhists" or something like that, which tilted them quite a bit and then they left.