Misguided - reviews, media reports and podcast interviews

In the event you encounter URLs that no longer work (dead links) on this page, you can enter the URLs into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine at web.archive.org/ and read archived copies.
 
The following review of my book is particularly important, because it is written by someone who was born and raised in the Children of God/The Family.  Daniella Mestyanek Young, who became an intelligence officer in the U.S. military after she escaped the cult at age 15, also wrote a memoir, Uncultured, in which she draws comparisons to her life in the cult to her life in the military. This page of this blog has a list of the videos Daniella posted on her social media where she reads excerpts from my memoir and adds her analysis and insights. After finishing my book, she ended that series of videos with this review. Here's the Facebook link where she posted that: https://www.facebook.com/daniella.claire/posts/pfbid0oUUmqAHwSJz4ngr3AgzbmAPTM678eXXp6tvRbPknzeY7va3PVuAFV3ngcE7jBB4Fl

 
Like the review above, here is another particularly important one that I greatly appreciate, because it is  also written by someone who was born and raised in the Children of God/The Family, Verity Teri Carter. I mention Verity in my memoir as one of the very few survivors who successfully brought her abuser to justice. Her story is featured in the documentary series, Children of the Cult, that I also appear in briefly. Here is her review on her Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/Teri.C.Watt/posts/pfbid02oQL1pZa6vz2Sbhvji4dAC3Tw6Tbn83v5b6MPvwNA3MemmhTVD3PGW5KbihTJYuLSl

I got sent this book some time ago by Perry Bulwer. I started to read it immediately however my personal life took some turns recently and I struggled with my mental health for some time so I put all my reading projects on hold whilst I focussed on recovery to the point I could function on a day to day basis.
I felt ready to continue with my reading projects this week and have now completed his book "Misguided".

I just wanted to write a little review of the book from my perspective as a second generation survivor from the same cult which Perry was sucked into. Firstly I want to say I always have had and still do have a massive level of respect for Perry Bulwer as being one of only a select few first generation adults that have acknowledged the suffering inflicted on the generations of children born into the cult and have actually apologised and attempted to make reparations. 
 
The vast majority of first generation survivors from this cult still refuse to acknowledge the harm the cult has caused (and is causing!), continue to gaslight their kids and whitewash their histories, and continue to dump additional layers of trauma on their already traumatized children rather than face the pain of acknowledging the reality of the world they forced their kids to be a part of.
I am happy to say that Perry is one of a few exceptions to this rule and I am proud to think of him as an advocate for justice and as a friend!!

I can honestly say the book was beautifully written. It was well researched and factual throughout and an absolutely fair reflection of life within the cult. Perry lays himself bare on those pages and there was more than one time I cried at the raw pain and emotion within the writing. His story enabled me to get a glimpse of the experiences he suffered as a vulnerable teenager drawn into a toxic world he didn't fully comprehend and falling down a religious rabbit hole in his quest for meaning for his life. Perry's description of his journey from there through to his brave escape from the cult and the work he has put into his recovery and activism is simultaneously tragic, breathtaking, and inspiring.

Highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to gain insight into how anyone can fall prey to a coercively controlled environment such as a cult and the many hurdles on the path to recovery and justice.
If you've not read it yet, I'd recommend getting a copy

 *****

The following review appears in both the print and online versions of the journal BC Studies. From the website: “First published in the spring of 1969, BC Studies, a quarterly devoted to the understanding of British Columbia, has played a unique role in the intellectual life of the province. Housed at the University of British Columbia from its inception, BC Studies is a respected peer reviewed journal, an important publishing venue of original research from a diverse group of scholars, and a training ground for students.”
 
It is an excellent review, my favourite so far, for various reasons. I'm very pleased that it was published in a journal housed at the University of British Columbia, since that is where I earned my law degree. Also, the reviewer really understands what I was trying to achieve with my memoir over all, and succinctly summarizes it very well. He also understands the historical importance of my story, recognizing that some of what I write, particularly the history of the Children of God's activities in British Columbia, has never been told elsewhere. He writes: “Perhaps more importantly, for historians of religion in postwar British Columbia (especially students of new religious movements), Bulwer’s memoir fills an important void. Other than contemporaneous news sources, little has been written concerning the evangelistic work of the Children of God in early-seventies British Columbia.” 
 
Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult
By Perry Bulwer
Review By Bruce Douville July 23, 2024
BC Studies no. 222 Summer 2024 | p. 168-169 
 
From 1972 to 1991 (except for a three-year hiatus in the late seventies), Perry Bulwer was an active member of a cult. Founded in California in the late sixties, the Children of God, later known as The Family, was a new religious movement that combined charismatic evangelical Christianity and imminent end-times prophecy with elements of the youth counterculture and the increasingly bizarre teachings of its autocratic leader, David (“Moses”) Berg. By 1971, the group had established a presence in Vancouver, and fanned out from there, which is how Bulwer encountered the Children the following year, as a teenager in Port Alberni, British Columbia. His two-decade spiritual odyssey took him from Vancouver Island to southeast Asia. When Bulwer left the group and returned to British Columbia, he attempted to write an account of his troubling experiences but stopped when he realized “how little I truly knew or understood about that bizarre life. The more I wrote, the more questions I had that I couldn’t answer or research” (221). In the early 2000s, Bulwer resumed writing, carrying out research to better understand his faith journey. This memoir, three decades in the making, is the fruit of his endeavours.
 
The first five chapters of the memoir centre on his childhood and youth in Port Alberni, and how his upbringing led him to join the Children of God. The title, Misguided, reflects his key argument in these chapters: that his “Catholic indoctrination” taught him to “believe without question” (24), and his schoolteachers failed to equip him with the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate religious truth claims. He contends that “a nonreligious mentor such as a teacher or some other knowledgeable adult” could have helped him employ such skills, preventing him from making “an uninformed, rash decision to drop out of society with total strangers” (54).
 
While the bulk of Bulwer’s account focuses on his years engaged in evangelistic activities overseas (including Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines), there is ample content that will interest scholars of British Columbia. As a Baby Boomer from a working-class home in an historic lumber city, Bulwer does an excellent job of situating his memories of childhood and youth in place (Port Alberni) and time (the sixties and early seventies). His narrative up to the age of sixteen includes many elements familiar to those that study the Baby Boom generation: playing team sports, hitchhiking, experimenting with marijuana and LSD, and listening to the Beatles. Perhaps more importantly, for historians of religion in postwar British Columbia (especially students of new religious movements), Bulwer’s memoir fills an important void. Other than contemporaneous news sources, little has been written concerning the evangelistic work of the Children of God in early-seventies British Columbia. Indeed, there is no detailed historical account of the group’s takeover of Vancouver’s “Jesus People” scene in 1971. Bulwer provides readers with an insider’s view of the Children of God’s activities in Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Victoria, and Vancouver, as well as northwestern Washington state. Furthermore, in the final four chapters, Bulwer recounts his post-cult experiences in the 1990s and early 2000s, as a mature student in Nanaimo, and as a social activist (campaigning for drug law reform and advocating for marginalized drug users and sex workers), law student, practicing lawyer, and client of the mental health system in Vancouver.
 
Overall, Misguided is a compelling and convincing memoir. It is well researched, and the author contextualizes and corroborates his account with primary and secondary sources. Bulwer does not shy away from exploring the sect’s darker side (authoritarian leadership, sexual coercion and exploitation of members, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of children raised in the group), nor does he attempt to conclude his narrative with a contrived happy ending. Moreover, the author’s story is a relevant cautionary tale for present-day readers. As Bulwer argues in his conclusion, charismatic charlatans will seek to take advantage of the turmoil, uncertainty, and social upheavals of our present world. He urges readers to beware “of blindly believing and being misled by persuasive proselytizers of all kinds” (277). Given the disturbing global trend towards political cults of personality and authoritarian nationalism, Bulwer’s advice is very timely.

 *****

"Vancouver Island author recalls ‘Life in a Doomsday Cult’ in new memoir"

Perry Bulwer escaped from the religious cult Children of God

Vancouver Island Free Daily,  September 13, 2023
 
That article was also published in the paper edition of the Alberni Valley News. This link is to the digital version of that paper:

*****

"Book review: Doomsday cult memoir tracks being ‘blinded by faith’ but seeking the light"
Perry Bulwer’s memoir offers innumerable revelations and the price paid for blind faith

by Brett Josef Grubisic, Vancouver Sun  October 6, 2023

Without a glance at the fine print (or, for that matter, even bothering with the publisher’s description), I jumped at the chance to read and then write about Perry Bulwer’s Misguided.

The book’s vibrant jacket — a smiling long-haired ‘70s dude in an ascot who’s strumming an acoustic guitar, that tantalizing subtitle, My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult — inspired me to jump to the conclusion that I’d be amused by material David Sedaris might have concocted after he made a wrong turn into a brief residence at a commune.

Misguided’s not that, it really isn’t. Bulwer’s not a humorist, for one, and irreverent witticisms don’t appear on his pages. Nor does he make light of the damaging events of his past.

Informative and fascinating, the memoir is disturbing and not a little saddening. Bulwer’s well-intended “cautionary tale” recounts a dedicated search for meaning and a promised land that led him to a confining place of falsehood and lasting psychological harm.

Broken, impoverished, licking his wounds, and living in reclusive solitude at the end of the memoir where there’s “no happy ending,” Bulwer’s account of his decades being swayed by “irrational religious dogma” is an exceptional story. How unfortunate, though, that he draws the tale from personal experiences.

Bulwer’s history begins in the early 1970s, with a large Catholic family in Port Alberni, then Vancouver Island’s primary mill town.

Eager to not follow in the family’s tradition of mill work, young Bulwer, a thoughtful if impressionable altar boy, began to question norms. After an impromptu hitchhiking trip to California, he met groovy evangelicals, “part of a wave of Jesus People who came to Canada from California.” Their promises of peace, a new path, and being “set free by the truth” enticed him. Only later would Bulwer — taking the biblical name Obil — learn they considered themselves “endtime Christian soldiers fighting a spiritual war.”

Listless and lacking in adult guidance, the 16-year old quit school, left his family, and moved into the first of many, many Children of God communes. This “teen menace” and “radical religious sect” — as a Vancouver Sun article deemed Children of God — assigned him to a new commune in Nanaimo for basic training. Bulwer did not see his family again for four years.

Bursting with startling information, the memoir chronicles Bulwer’s indoctrination and years of travel across North America and Southeast Asia.

Misguided also describes daily life and routines; and Bulwer explores the effects of toeing the line and remaining obedient to the orthodoxy of his community, where “doubts were devilish.” “It narrowed my worldview, closed my mind, and broke my will,” he summarizes.

The portrait of the self-described “God’s final endgame prophet,” Children of God founder David Berg, a.k.a. Moses, is likewise remarkable. The man’s history as well as his beliefs and claims are never short of astonishing.

In voluminous writings, called Mo Letters — that covered everything from vaccines and homosexuality to masturbation and Ronald Reagan — he both addressed and attracted followers.  Letters included 40 Days and a prediction that the U.S. would be destroyed the Kohoutek comet in 1973, Revolutionary Sex (which celebrates sex, including polygamy and child marriage, but labelled male homosexuality, abortion, and birth control contrary to God), and The Little Flirty Fishy, where Berg approved of prostitution in the name of religious gain.

In hundreds of communes, converts “litnessed” on street corners, asking donations for Children of God pamphlets; all communes tithed income to Berg and his management.

The man — autocratic, paranoid, capricious, punitive, and somehow charismatic, too — proclaimed himself to be clairvoyant and a visitor to the heavenly realm, which he believed was inside the moon; he also had a direct line to God.

He preached that he’d send messages to a wicked world and point to specific events with biblical significance. After the appearance of the Antichrist in Jerusalem, Jesus would return in 1993. His “chosen cadre” would then frolic in paradise for the next 1,000 years.

Needless to say, Bulwer observes, Berg was a “master manipulator.”

Later renamed Mike — after Michael, the archangel named in Revelation — Bulwer continued to work overseas. After a spiritual crisis in 1977, he returned home as “a high-school dropout with no work history, money, possessions or plans.”

Bulwer quit his mill job before his first shift ended and turned to “drinks and drugs.” Finding the “real world” difficult he soon learned the autocratic and paranoid Children of God had rebranded itself as tolerant, inclusive, and sexually progressive Family of Love, albeit still apocalyptic and advocating exorcisms: Reagan and Mount St. Helens proved to Berg that “the end is coming, & it’s getting might close!”

Unfulfilled, sad, lonely, and fearful in 1991 Bulwer returned to Port Alberni, done with the “strangeness of (his) Jesus-freak life” and a stranger to his own homeland. Despite plans and considerable efforts, breakdowns, rebounds, and acceptance of his brokenness ensued.

Documenting a hard-won release from bondage, Bulwer’s memoir offers innumerable revelations and the price paid for blind faith.

Salt Spring Island resident Brett Josef Grubisic is the author of five novels, including My Two-Faced Luck and The Age of Cities.

*****

Perry Bulwer, Author of "Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult" | Iron Dog Books

Podcast talk I gave at Iron Dog Books in Vancouver, British Columbia on October 12, 2023

*****

Nov 8, 2023  IndoctriNation Podcast w/Rachel Bernstein, LMFT:  Misguided w/Perry Bulwer
 

Perry Bulwer was Born in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada, where he joined the Children of God after dropping out of high school at age 16. He then spent the next two decades living in Children Of God communes across the world. In 1991, at the age of 36, he was finally able to escape the cult. Perry now advocates for second-generation cult survivors, and continues to shed light on the Children of God, a/k/a "The Family".

He is the author of the new memoir "Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult", A unique first-hand account of a life spent in the Children of God, the millenarian doomsday cult under the sway of the charismatic leader, David Berg.

In this engrossing and insightful conversation, Perry unpacks some of the indoctrination tactics he came to understand after leaving the cult. He goes on to share some important points about the history of this dangerous group and how his own experience ties in with it outlining how some of the horrors he witnessed became a catalyst for the courageous advocacy work he does today.

*****

Review in BC Bookworld Magazine

BC Bookworld and its associated website ABC Bookworld promote author's and books published in British Columbia, the province with the highest per capita book reading rate in Canada. This review was published in the autumn 2023 edition of BC Bookworld Magazine. It is a free publication distributed to almost 700 bookstores and libraries throughout British Columbia, so it gets directly into the hands of book readers. 

  The review in the print magazine.
 

Here is the review on the ABC Bookworld website: https://abcbookworld.com/writer/bulwer-perry/

Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In A Doomsday Cult, by Perry Bulwer
 
Review by John Moore
 
Perry Bulwer’s account of his 20 years as a “Jesus freak” in an apocalyptic cult should be required reading for those whose children are undergoing the baptism of fire euphemistically described as “young adulthood” in parenting manuals. The combination of adult emotions and ideas with an almost total lack of adult experience is as pleasant to be around as a carafe of nitro-glycerine.
 
So when an idealistic yet listless, unmotivated, young person comes home one day, no longer unpredictably sullen or angry but smiling serenely as if they’ve come through the rapids and hit calm water, parents are inclined to heave huge sighs of relief. Unfortunately, it may mean your child has either discovered heroin or been “fished” by a cult and you should seek help from mental health professionals at once.
 
Like many late boomers, Bulwer missed the 1967 Summer of Love and got stuck with the hand-me-down, tie-dyed, Be-In t-shirt. Growing up in a small Vancouver Island city, Port Alberni, where a stable future meant a good job at the mill, Bulwer was sixteen in 1972 and the vaguely inclusive ideals of universal love, peace and goodwill of the Now Generation were starting to spin into a hedonistic crash dive of careless sex, harder drugs and mindless heavy metal music.
 
Despite his Catholic upbringing and a secondary education that failed to provide him with critical thinking skills, Bulwer was intelligent enough to realize Flower Power had been wilting into something much uglier than an unloved houseplant since the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones Altamont concert where a Black man was beaten to death by Hells Angels gang members employed as “security.” Philosophically and emotionally adrift, Perry was ripe for recruitment by any organized group that claimed to have exclusive copyright on The Truth.
 
At that vulnerable time in his life, he could have become a Marxist, a Maoist, a chanting Buddhist, a Hare Krishna, a convert jihadist or convert Zionist, joined the French Foreign Legion or the US Marines. It would have made no difference. What he was seeking was a world view—a vision of truth and a code of behaviour that would give him a sense of direction, purpose and meaning that he was unequipped and unable to define for himself. For the Children of God, Bulwer was “fresh meat” and they descended on him like vultures who’d missed lunch.
 
He didn’t know the friendly young men he met in a Port Alberni diner were missionaries from a cult group created by a shadowy American evangelical hustler and self-proclaimed prophet, David Berg, a man so immodest he liked to be called Mo, short for Moses. Bulwer didn’t know they had been trained to recognize and target vulnerable young people by a man who’d been literally born and raised in the tent revival subculture that was a popular feature of life in the American South and Midwest for the first half of the 20th century BTV (before television).
 
Born in 1919, David Berg had been involved with that subculture as it evolved from gypsy tents to regular Sunday morning radio broadcasts to televised “crusades” that filled stadiums where self-appointed apostles of God smacked shills planted in audiences on the forehead to cast out demons and demanded they throw away their crutches and rise from their wheelchairs and praise Jesus! It was the age of bogus faith-healing theatrics of mouth-foaming frauds like Jimmy Swaggart (subject of three scandals involving prostitutes in the late 1980s and early 90s), and Oral Roberts (who parlayed his tax-free status into a financial empire including a university).
 
Distrusting the risks of celebrity (no doubt he’d seen the film Elmer Gantry), David Berg chose the darker path of the reclusive prophet. Despite being in his forties in the 1960s, he sensed his moment had come. The most numerous and potentially wealthiest generation of the 20th century were waking up from the Swinging Sixties/Now Generation/Flower Power party with an apocalyptic spiritual hangover. Tattered copies of I Ching, the faux-Tibetan fictions of T. Lobsang Rampa, and Carlos Castaneda’s equally bogus accounts of Yaqui shaman Don Juan weren’t getting them through the existential “morning after.” In spiritual distress, some hippies turned to a guy they remembered from Sunday school, Jesus of Nazareth. The Hare Krishnas and chanting Buddhists who’d replaced panhandling hippies on the sidewalks were joined by Jesus freaks. Berg’s minions were there to welcome them like lost sheep returned to the fold.
 
Cults are always with us. In times of social confidence and economic prosperity they’re mostly harmless, like benign tumours, providing an outlet for people whose intellectual frailty compels them to seek supernatural causes and remedies for their despair. But in times of political, social and economic insecurity and mass despair (the last 50 years, for instance), cults easily become malignant.
 
The most dangerous cults are those that tailgate established religions. In our nominally Judeo-Christian derived culture, co-opting Jesus was a cynical no-brainer for a would-be Messiah like Berg. His Children of God Communes, funded by legions of come-to-Jesus panhandlers, morphed into The Divine Family, then The Family; and lied about rescuing people from drug and alcohol addictions as it practised pedophilia, vicious corporal punishment for backsliders and advocated “flirty fishing” (sexual recruitment) of new converts. Berg’s “Mo Letters” to converts are case studies in opportunistic megalomania, demonstrating the fascism inherent in all cults centered around a leader or “prophet” instead of being based on a depersonalized spiritual doctrine.
 
Despite having wasted twenty of the best years of his life, Perry Bulwer was lucky. He had just enough of the right stuff to walk away at the age of 36. Smart enough to grasp Socrates’ assertion that the first step toward wisdom is to realize you know nothing, he started educating himself at the library and developing critical thinking that might have truly saved him twenty years earlier. He went to university and became a lawyer advocating for cult survivors, especially children born and raised within cults.
 
Numerous accounts by survivors of the Children of God have been published, some more lurid than others. Bulwer’s mostly avoids sensationalism to deliver a true account of the spiritual journey of a lonely soul who took the wrong path but had the sense to recognize it, turn around and survive the long hard walk back to sanity.
 
*****
 
Review in the International Cultic Studies Association: ICSA Reviews
 

Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult  by Perry Bulwer 
 
[Note: there are some inaccuracies in this review]

Reviewed by Nori Muster

I remember the Jesus freaks. They were everywhere in the 60s and 70s, and whenever you ran into them they wanted to pray for you. The Children of God (COG) started in the late 60s and still stands out as one of the most abusive and manipulative cults in modern history. Although it's diminished now, in the late 1960s it was one of the most well-known cults, right up there with the Moonies, Jonestown, and Scientology.

David Berg (1919 - 1994), known to his flock as "Moses David" or "Mo," founded COG in 1968. Over the years the group has gone by many names, including Teens for Christ, The Family, The Family of Love, and most recently, The Family International.

Berg promoted incest and child molestation in his group, along with ordering members to give out sex to raise money and indoctrinate new members. The organization also hosted abusive marriages and random rapists and pedophiles taking advantage of the situation. The sexual abuse in this group destroyed lives, destroyed families, and left a wake of death by suicide. Plus, their lax sexual morals spread through secular communities as "free love."

The sexual abuse secrets were taboo subjects for conversation in the group. To know about the crimes, you would either have to be one of the perpetrators or one of the victims. Word did not get around. Keeping things quiet made it easier for the leadership to pass COG off as a legitimate Christian group. However, they were forever changing the rules about who could have sex and with whom. They published updates to the sex rules in the group's newsletter, but the new rules didn't change much for the victims. It amounted to nothing more than subtle euphemisms to spread the message: "Stop raping children or we could get in trouble."

The author of Misguided, Perry Bulwer, knew nothing about what was going on behind the scenes when he joined the Children of God. He first got involved in 1972 and dropped out of high school. He stayed with the group for 4 years and returned home in 1976. Then he joined again in 1979 and stayed for 12 years, returning home in 1991. Bulwer is about the same age as me, and I was in the Los Angeles Hare Krishna temple during a similar timeframe. (For me, it was 1978 to 1988.)

During his time in COG, Bulwer never became aware of the child abuse. However, there was an incident he describes in great detail in the chapter "The Exorcism of Merry." Due to the group’s belief in demonism and exorcism (p. 190), Merry had to go through multiple exorcisms. She was the 14-year-old granddaughter of David Berg, and Berg himself conducted a brutal exorcism. Bulwer describes the horror of it (pp. 190-191). He says Berg first hugged and kissed Merry (disgusting), then shook her, slapped her, beat her, yelled at her, and after 2 hours of violent abuse, threatened to beat her with a stick.

In Bulwer's last 6 months with COG, while living in Macau, China, he saw Merry. The encounter took place at a COG safe house. The house attendant took Bulwer to the door of Merry's room where he noted she was "lying on her bed half-naked, her hands tied to the bed frame on either side" (p. 194). The attendant explained they had to restrain Merry at night because she was a danger to herself. Bulwer stood by the door watching Merry babble, oblivious, lost in some other world. Bulwer remembers meeting Merry in better days. Seeing her in that condition he says "was permanently impressed on my memory" (p. 194). , to comply, Bulwer knew he had to keep quiet. He explains:

Uncertain who I could trust, I was trapped, wrapped in spiritual chains that made it difficult to escape my indoctrination and kept me from doing the right thing. So I kept what I saw to myself, even as it ate at my conscience (p. 195).
Bulwer had hard times during his years in the Children of God. His main challenge was having to constantly move from one center to another. First, there was a center in Port Alberni, Canada, his home, but once he was on the hook they moved the center 50 miles away. After that, they lured him to another location in Canada, then to Hawaii and Japan. The second time he joined, his life was a mandala of COG centers in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, and Beijing, China.

Moving people around is a hallmark of the mysterious hand of the COG leadership. They manipulate their followers like chess pieces on a board. For example, if two members fall in love and the leadership doesn't like the match, they can move one of them to a faraway location and tell that member to discontinue the relationship. COG leadership may or may not help financially when they make members move; so, like many others, Bulwer endured times of poverty in unfamiliar places. Despite the hardships, Bulwer stuck with COG. However, his doubts started to add up, especially after witnessing the horror of what had become of Merry.

Bulwer takes you along as he goes from country to country. Some of the adventures were fun, while others brought deep sadness or struggle. It was an unpredictable lifestyle with real dangers. He ran into a friend who had spent time in jail when he was arrested in a raid of a COG campus.

I found it an exciting adventure; but on the darker side, he's lucky he survived. I see his subtitle as a cynical nod to the ordeal: "My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult." It's an invitation to hop on the Misguided roller coaster and take a fun but frightening ride.

Another reason I see this as a positive telling of a dark story, Bulwer names all the chapters after song titles or keywords to pay homage to the songs that tell his story.1 When you get about three-quarters of the way into the book you come to chapter 18, "Should I Stay or Should I Go Now," and chapter 19, "Losing my Religion."2 In these chapters Bulwer tells the reader how it ended for him. He leaves COG for good. He found enough to discourage him even without finding out about the child abuse.

In the remaining chapters, Bulwer describes his emotional struggle, including the death of his father who never supported him in life. Bulwer could not come to peace with the years he spent in COG, and that's the way it is for many of us who leave cults disillusioned. There's always that thud that comes after being out for a while when we find out all the things the cult leaders were hiding from us. It's especially difficult if one of the secrets is widespread child abuse.

Child abuse was a factor in my cult too. When I was there I didn't know about it, but 5 years after I left, in 1994, the children of Krishna, then in their 20s and 30s, told me what happened. I spent several years researching the history, interviewing the children, and collecting their autobiographical writings. The first cohort of Hare Krishna children are now in their 40s and 50s.

After getting away from COG in 1991, Bulwer earned his bachelor's degree, then a law degree. He used his education to do altruistic work helping others, then retired. And I get this because we may feel a need to clean up our lives and do something to help the world after we leave a cult. Bulwer still struggles to come to terms with his COG years, and he leaves us with these words:

It's too late for me, but let my story be a cautionary tale. Beware of blindly believing and being misled by persuasive proselytizers of all kinds. Don't allow yourself and your children to be misguided. (p. 277)
Notes

 [1] The chapter titled "The Exorcism of Merry" pays homage to the soundtrack of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a 2005 movie based on a true story from another Christian-based group.

 [2] "Should I Stay or Should I Go Now" is a 1982 song by English punk rock band the Clash, and "Losing my Religion" is a 1991 song by American rock band R.E.M.

About the Reviewer:

 

Nori Muster, MS, Arts Editor of ICSA Today, is an artist, writer, and teacher. From 1978 to 1988 she was a full-time member of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), then left and earned her Master of Science degree at Western Oregon University in 1991. Her thesis is on whether to use creative art with juvenile sex offenders. In 1997, she published her memoir, Betrayal of the Spirit: My Life Behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement (University of Illinois Press, 1997, paperback 2001, ebook 2014), in 2000, Cult Survivors Handbook: Seven Paths to an Authentic Life (Kindle Paperback 2017), and in 2012, Child of the Cult (revised edition 2015; Kindle Paperback, 2017). Her web page for cultic-studies information is surrealist.org/cults/


*****

PODCAST: Perry Bulwer: ‘My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult’


Host Peter McCully chats with Perry Bulwer of Port Alberni.

Bulwer has written a book entitled Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult, taking the podcast listener on a journey through his tumultuous experience with the Children of God cult.

Starting with his initial encounter at a Chinese restaurant in Port Alberni, Perry recounts the allure that drew him into the depths of the cult.

“They saw something in me, something receptive,” said Bulwer. “The dogma and the teachings I learned in the Catholic Church weren’t that much different from what they were preaching and they were taking advantage of that.”

Bulwer explains the origins of the cult, tracing its roots back to California in 1968 and the charismatic leader David Berg, the cult’s radical preaching, its migration to Canada, and the controversies surrounding its practices add layers to the story.

The podcast reflects on the emotional toll of living in a cult, as the author describes the internal conflicts and doubts that eventually led him to leave.

Upon returning to Canada, he faced the daunting task of rebuilding his life, marked by educational pursuits and personal rediscovery. The episode captures the resilience required for post-cult recovery, offering a glimpse into Perry’s transformative journey.

Bulwer has been an advocate for cult survivors since 2004.

“There’s a lot of psychological damage to that generation who were born in the group,” he said. “Once I turned my mind to it and understood what had happened to them, I had to speak up. I started doing that in 2004 and basically have continued to this day to be an advocate in that sense.”

*****
Electric Mermaid: Spoken Word Open Mic at Char's Landing, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, featuring local author Perry Bulwer reading excerpts from Misguided.  https://youtu.be/S-VfoEQAoWI?feature=shared

*****

Emerging from vulnerability - review of Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult
by Perry Bulwer

Reviewed by Ryan Mitchell    February 28, 2024March 3, 2024

https://thebcreview.ca/2024/02/28/2087-mitchell-bulwer/

Perry Bulwer’s Misguided describes his decade-spanning journey of joining and eventually abandoning the Children of God (C.O.G.) cult on 1960s Vancouver Island. A shy teen without a dedicated support network, Bulwer succumbs to peer pressures and becomes withdrawn from school and his family. Encountering a pair of proselytizers at a local diner in his hometown, they engage him in a thought-provoking conversation about faith, and soon after invite him to their commune. Bulwer’s recounting of the events that would lead him into the ‘Family’, are remarkably detailed and candid. Writing his story years after having left the cult for good, he contextualizes his decisions and emotional state throughout his indoctrination. The book forms both a personal case study in the psychology of how vulnerable individuals are susceptible to cults, and how destructive to one’s worldview it can be trying to leave one.

Bulwer describes his upbringing as emotionally stunted, leading him to search for acceptance in others. He did not have any mentors, real friends, hobbies, or much social skill development; leading him to spend most time alone, increasing his alienation from his peers. Bulwer’s school did not offer a world religions class, and failed to teach the critical-thinking skills that he suggests may have prevented his indoctrination. Once Bulwer begins spending most of his free time with the cult members, his parents arrange a talk with the family church’s pastor. This ironically only solidifies Bulwer’s interest in joining the group, as the pastor is shown to be open-minded to many of the C.O.G. and the group’s efforts in principle.

Bulwer balances recountings of his personal experiences with the C.O.G., with depictions of the group in the media at the time. He explains how they preyed on the uncertainty and naivety of its youngest members, claiming they helped turn youth away from drug addiction and criminal behavior, stories frequently embellished or fabricated to gain public sympathy. Bulwer relates the media panic covering the rise in teenage-runaways at this time, which the C.O.G. capitalized on to present their communal religious lifestyle as a preferable alternative for the children of nervous parents.

By the end of 1973, Bulwer states over 2,000 C.O.G. members were present in 40 countries, living in 140 communes. Self-appointed C.O.G. leader David Berg declared himself the prophet of the group within 4 years of founding it, and through a combination of literal biblical interpretation and his personal opinions, predicted Jesus’ second coming in 1993. Berg announced the C.O.G. efforts to spread to Southern and Eastern continents due to America’s supposed ‘imminent destruction’ due to its supposed sinful trajectory. Coincidentally, Berg along with other high-ranking members of the C.O.G. hierarchy were constantly moving to evade authorities, the media, and deflect criticisms from within the group itself. Bulwer was transferred from communes in Seoul, to Tokyo, then Manila; facing occasional trouble with police for not having proper documentation.

Throughout the book, Bulwer includes excerpts from proclamations by the C.O.G. leader, which were avidly read in the group’s communes. Berg’s proclamations covered all topics from proselytizing to permitted sexual activity, and conveniently parroted his own self-interests as he worked to promote “flirty fishing”, a manner of influencing non-members into benefiting the group by using sexual advances.

Bulwer’s missions proselytizing for the C.O.G. in foreign countries also allowed him to be exposed to other cultures, lifestyles and languages than he likely ever would have known had he remained in Port Alberni. However, his travels were never unrestricted; for one, the Family prohibited visiting man-made attractions such as the Great Wall of China, considered blasphemous and contrary to the spiritual importance of God. Despite this, particularly in his early years with the church, Bulwer often found himself able to travel alone and occasionally have private use of apartments while his preaching partners were out. After being discovered engaging in some intimate relationships with non-Family members, the C.O.G. reprimands Bulwer for his disobedience and began monitoring his activities much more closely, causing him some understandable paranoia.

After returning to Canada to live with his family, Bulwer decides to leave C.O.G. for some time and works odd jobs, but is unable to fully integrate back into society and retains beliefs in certain C.O.G. teachings (including the Doomsday prophecy). Faced with few professional prospects, lack of social skills or formal education past a high school level, a run-in with members of the group leads Bulwer back into the same church he previously abandoned. Bulwer eventually takes on a job teaching English at a Chinese university (through forged paperwork provided by another C.O.G. member), while technically still being a high school dropout. Bulwer describes his slow fallout with the C.O.G.; expressing doubts in secret, noting the hypocrisy of the leader’s actions, group humiliations, and physical abuse particularly of its youngest members. As the C.O.G. practices left him spiritually, socially, financially, and psychologically dependent on the Family, Bulwer illustrates his tremendous fear and agitation to leave permanently.

Readers will be interested in the book’s insight into cults from a non-academic insider’s perspective with lived experience. Bulwer writes with compassion for other members of the cult who were forced into circumstances they did not understand or could not control. He also openly writes with disdain about the movement’s leaders who upheld the practices and methods of the group for decades. Bulwer’s transformation throughout the book is self-evident; he starts as a naive youth yearning for life’s answers through any means, then as a mature adult becomes an activist in the judicial system aiming to protect the vulnerable (sex workers, unhoused people, and addicts) in his community of East Hastings in Vancouver. He also attempts to connect with other ex-members of the C.O.G. to archive their stories and perspectives. Parallels can be drawn with Bulwer’s dedication to fighting for at-risk communities and his own former existence on the fringe of society that led to his indoctrination.

*****

 Podcast for Inquiry - Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In A Doomsday Cult with Perry Bulwer

April 3, 2024
 
 
 
Perry Bulwer speaks about his part-memoir, part-exposé book, Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult. Perry describes what first attracted him to the cult, and why he stayed in it for nearly 20 years. Perry recounts the lasting damage from his time in the Children of God, to himself and especially to those born into it.

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada.

*****
BC Humanists Podcast   Perry Bulwer - Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult

August 2, 2024  https://youtu.be/efjAcuDhnwo?feature=shared

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