The Process Church of The Final Judgment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since June 2006.

The Process, or in full, The Process Church of the Final Judgment, commonly known by non-members as the Process Church, was a religious cult that flourished in the 1960s and '70s, founded by the Englishman Robert DeGrimston (originally, Robert Moore) and Mary Anne MacLean. It originally developed as a splinter client cult group from Scientology, so that they were declared "suppressive persons" by L. Ron Hubbard in December 1965. In 1966 the members of the group underwent a social implosion and moved to Xtul on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, where they developed processean theology, which differs from process theology. They later established a base of operations in the United States.

They were often viewed as Satanic on the grounds that they worshipped both Christ and Satan. Their belief is that Satan will become reconciled to Christ, and together will come at the end of the world to judge humanity, Christ to judge and Satan to execute judgment. They are comparable to the Yezidis, both in their worship of a being generally considered evil but which they believe had become good, and this has created the impression that they are Satanists. The prosecutor of the Charles Manson Family trial comments in his book that there may be evidence Manson borrowed philosophically from the Process Church, and that representatives of the Church visited him in jail after his arrest. According to one of these representatives, the purpose of the visit was to interview Manson about whether he had ever had any contact with Church members or ever received any literature about the Church. Subsequently, the publisher of Ed Sanders's book The Family agreed to remove the chapter about the Process from this book.

In April, 1974 Robert DeGrimston was removed by the Council of Masters as Teacher. They renounced The Unity, his exposition of the above-noted doctrines, and most of his other teachings. After this the group fell apart and the Council went on to form the Foundation Church of the Millennium, later called the Foundation Faith of God. This group moved further away from the original processean beliefs, and increasingly resembled a traditional Christian denomination. Eventually religion was dropped altogether by The Foundation and they went on to become The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary near Kanab, Utah, where some of the original Process members can be found even today (such as Faith Maloney, a.k.a. Mother Hathor) caring for over 1500 cats, dogs and other abandoned animals. De Grimston attempted to restart the Process Church several times, but he could never replace his original following.

A detailed account of the history of and life within the Process Church as told by a participant-observer is contained in William S. Bainbridge's book Satan's Power. (He employed a pseudonym for the name of the group, referring to it as "The Power", and disguised the names of people to hide their identities, possibly in an effort to head off potential lawsuits.)

As of September 2003, an internet-based effort to form a new group following the original "The Process" teachings was underway. People claiming to be part of the Process Church are still around.

Some members now softpedal their involvement in the Process Church of the Final Judgement citing juvenile misguidance. The goal of what remains of the original group now is to save animals. The large compound in southern Utah is their testament to that endeavor. The animal sanctuary is also very profitable. In 2003 the Society raised more than $20 million. Records of The Louisiana Secretary of State's Office show that the group now known as The Best Friends Animal Sanctuary was originally incorporated as The Process Church Of The Final Judgement in 1974. Robert DeGrimston currently works in New York City as a business consultant.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Processean theology

The term "processean theology" distinguishes these ideas from the process theology derived from the thoughts of Alfred North Whitehead.

At Xtul was the first 'channeling' of God. After Xtul, Jehovah was the only recognised God. Later, with Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan were recognised as "The Three Great Gods of the Universe" and Christ as the Emissary to the Gods. The Three Great Gods represent three basic human patterns of reality:

Jehovah, the wrathful God of vengeance and retribution, demands discipline, courage and ruthlessness, and a single-minded dedication to duty, purity and self-denial.
Lucifer, the Light Bearer, urges us to enjoy life to the full, to value success in human terms, to be gentle and kind and loving, and to live in peace and harmony with one another. Man's apparent inability to value success without descending into greed, jealousy and an exaggerated sense of his own importance, has brought the God Lucifer into disrepute. He has become mistakenly identified with Satan.
Satan, the receiver of transcendent souls and corrupted bodies, instills in us two directly opposite qualities; at one end an urge to rise above all human and physical needs and appetites, to become all soul and no body, all spirit and no mind, and at the other end a desire to sink beneath all human codes of behavior, and to wallow in a morass of violence, lunacy and excessive physical indulgence. But it is the lower end of Satan's nature that men fear, which is why Satan, by whatever name, is seen as the Adversary.

In between these Three Great Gods and man, is an entire hierarchy of Gods, beings and superbeings, angels and archangels, demons and archdemons, elementals and guides, and fallen angels and watchers.

There is all this and more too, in heaven and in hell and on Earth.

The Process believes that, to varying degrees, these "God-patterns" exist within all of us. The main doctrine of The Process is the unity of Christ and Satan, who exist as opposites. Jehovah and Lucifer exist as opposites and when Christ and Satan are united this will unite Jehovah and Lucifer.

(The descriptions of the Gods comes from a teaching called "The Hierarchy" published in December 1967, as a part of "The Tide of the End".)