In Art Forum, our pal Andrew Hultkrans wrote about a Process Church event held in New York. Several former members of the strange and defunct religion were in attendance, as were our friends, Feral House book publishers Adam Parfrey and Jodi Wille, who have a book about the history of the Process Church, called Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment.
Andrew's article includes a nice brief history of the creepy organization:
Formed in 1963 in London by two disenchanted Scientologists--Mary Ann MacLean, a former call girl from Glasgow, and Robert DeGrimston, a well-educated Englishman of more noble birth--the group made unauthorized use of Hubbard's "E-meter" to identify and exorcise compulsions and complexes. By 1966, the tightly knit group began to believe they were in touch with "Higher Beings" and decamped to an abandoned salt mine in Xtul, Mexico, where the last-minute diversion of a powerful hurricane confirmed to the couple's followers that they were indeed connected to divine forces.Returning to England, the Processeans (named after their "processing" of one another during their encounter-group days) quickly attracted the attention of the hipoisie of Swinging London, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull most famously. (It's likely that the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request and "Sympathy for the Devil" were inspired by Jagger's flirtation with the Process.) As with any successful cult or totalitarian state, aesthetics were key to their appeal. The Process Church regularly published a truly bizarre, groundbreaking magazine--full of lurid, hand-cut four-color collage graphics and baffling yet seductive apocalypse-theology writings by DeGrimston--with blunt issue titles like "Sex," "Fear," "Love," and "Death."
A Processean "Sabbath Assembly Ritual and Salon"
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Scientology has its own Lutherans? Huh.
You had me at "disenchanted scientologists."
Why the German shepherds? My guess: devotees smeared themselves with peanut butter so the dogs could lick away Thetans.
"Unauthorized use of Hubbard's e-meter" brims with devilish wit.
I too wonder about the dogs.
Being raised catholic, I've always wondered if 2000 years from now people will consider all the bizarre scientologist myths as par for the course, as people seem to consider bizarre christian beliefs today. Now it seems that they even have had their own of heretics; although I guess it was to be expected. I wonder if we are witnessing the birth of a major religion. Wouldn't that be interesting?
I like the logos which either hint at swastikas or two letter Ts performing 69.
If you don't care for their dog-centric beliefs, please look up their sibling religion "The Catologists".
When I was in high school in the late '60s, our Baptist youth fellowship went on a field trip to a Processean service in Cambridge, MA. Other field trips went to the Scientologists, Hare Krishna, and other spiritual organizations ranging from absolute mainstream to the lunatic fringe.
A bizarre time was had by all.
I don't think there's much chance of Scientology expanding much. The current new agers are all congregating to bastardized far eastern religions now.
This is a bizarre one. Early Scientologists making a Scientology/Jesus Movement hybrid.
Interesting... According to wikipedia, Best Friends Animal Society is what's left of a retreat they set up. Scientology + Jesus Movement = Beginning of no-kill animal shelters. History is full of wierdness.
Is that Charles Manson?
Why's Jesus white?
Wasn't the Process Church big among the more freaky goths a while ago? Apparently industrial band Skinny Puppy named an album after it.
My partner recalls that in the 70's the Processeans in Toronto wore striking purple capes and buttons that said "Victim of the Press". Don't know what that was in reference to.
there is CLEARLY a cat on that flyer, people. they were equal-opportunity.
and @acb — i thought the same thing. the process was big among goths and industrial-music minded people during the late 1980s, if i recall correctly.
George Clinton was into them as well. The Process wrote the liner notes to "Maggot Brain."
wow, this is utterly fascinating heretical scientologist? How's that for an oxymoron? With latter Skinny Puppy connections no less, I'm hooked.
brainspore: your humor solicits both admiration and, whatever I am about to say it would sound creepy... just that, that was funny...Lutherans!
I guess they took the whole "god spelled backwards" thing seriously.
There's a great chapter on the Process Church that once appeared in Ed Sanders' Book "The Family". A great book about Charles Manson, written by a great member of the Fugs! How cool is that? Well, cool enough that Degrimston issued a lawsuit resulting in the removal of the chapter of the book being removed from all but the first pressings. The chapter described the church as being one of many "sleazo inputs" into Manson's overall person, basically a collection of all the most questionable lifestyle choices he had been exposed to.
I sure would like to see some scans of the original Process magazines.
The Process may have had a slight, passing influence on the general mood of the late 60's London Underground (all those leather coats and shades made dramatic images in the pages of IT and Oz) but the clear and direct inspiration for the "Sympathy For The Devil" lyric is Bulgakov's novel "The Master & Margarita".
Attributing the "Satanic Majesties" album to the cult's influence is reminiscent of the shrill 'Altamont' issue of 'Rolling Stone' mag wherein the band, and Jagger (a/k/a Lucifer) in particular were excoriated for holding the festival whilst the moon was in Scorpio (an event that occurs for 2.5 days every month of every year).
No doubt Sam Cutler also invented The Internets.
Scientology spins off splinter cults on a regular basis and (as we can see here) has been doing so since at least the 1960s. Where I was born in New Zealand there was another called 'Zenith Applied Philosophy' that got a bit of notoriety in the 1970s-80s for the public antics of its members.
The Process church has always fascinated me, after I went to a "service" in someone's apartment in Chicago in the early 80s, when I was still in high school. They always struck me as being an oddly unfocused cult that never had a chance of staying together even though they were financially successful and popular, especially in London.
In addition to Wyllie's book, which is interesting but unfocused, I'd suggest that people interested in their history look up William Bainbridge's Satan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult, which is more coherent, although Bainbridge takes the weird tack of changing the names of everyone involved, including the names of organizations like Scientology and the Process themselves, even though their true names were well-known.
I think this is how Bob and Jeanne from question #2 in "When You Marry" settled their religious differences.
Yup, in the mid-to-late 1980s, any hipster worth his or her salt had to know their serial killers, ego-destruction/reconstruction cults and autopsy procedures. And prominently display their Feral House and Amok Catalogue re-issues of out-of-print craziness.
Read the book. They're not scary or creepy. They're into animal rights, hence the dogs. In fact they went on to become an animal shelter in Utah.
Yep, and Ogre has the not-quite-swastika symbol tattooed on his arm to boot.