|
ocCULT: They Didn't Think It
Could Happen in Their Church
June Summers
Las Vegas, NV: Global Strategic
Resources, 2005. Fiction. ISBN 0-9754214-8-4
(soft cover) $13.95. 372 pages. Available online
at
http://www.globalstrategicresources.com/pg14.htm#new
Reviewed by
Joseph P. Szimhart
Although I found some
valuable insights about cult behavior in this
self-published novel, I would not recommend it
for general reading. The author, June Summers,
reports that she escaped from a cult 20 years
ago. I assume that she belonged to a charismatic
Christian church much like the one in her novel.
Summers adopts a definition of cult as any
religion that does not comply with a particular
form of evangelical Christianity. Among her
“signs” of a cult is “emphasis on experience and
emotion instead of scriptural truths.”
In the story, Penny, the
main character in the novel, moves from her home
in the Midwest to the Portland, Oregon area to
try to find herself. She quits her job and has a
conflict with her boyfriend Rick, who is
dedicated to his golf career and does not wish to
relocate with her to Portland. In Oregon, Penny
encounters a lively Christian community in Grace
Church. Mark, a man who speaks with an impediment
that some women find irresistible, leads the
independent church.
Throughout the book, the
author writes Mark’s words as “pwetty,”
“spiwit,” “pwaise,” “pwoblem,”
and so on. Mark has piercing blue eyes, but
is otherwise a frumpy sort of fellow with a
pompadour hairdo. Early in the story, we learn
that Mark has illicit sexual encounters with
women in the church, and some of them have
complained. Dissidents are “handled” or
disfellowshipped and shunned by the community.
Strict about marriage and sexual misconduct at
first, Penny begins to experience changes in the
church and herself over time. She succumbs to
these changes as they happen gradually after
certain charismatic bursts that surprise the
congregation. She convinces her boyfriend Rick to
marry her, drop golf, and join the church. He
does so reluctantly. Part of the reason he agrees
to marry Penny is that he is really horny after
not having seen her for some time, and she will
not have sex with him until they are married.
Sexual tension is a prominent theme in this
book—sex between Christians who fight their
impulses to comply at first with the rules. No
frontal hugging is allowed, for example, until
the pastor changes the rule.
During charismatic leadings
from “God,” some people in the church begin to
dance spontaneously in an erotic fashion. At
first, Mark, the pastor, is confused and wants to
stop this behavior; but because of his own lewd
propensities, he allows the “spiritual connection
move” to thrive. Mark gets caught up in it, too,
especially with a few of his closest female
prayer partners. Mark is married, as are most of
the characters, but soon the spirit dancing leads
to illicit encounters. Couples dance and make out
in the “mega connection” room, and many succumb
to the “mistake” of intercourse with someone
other than their spouse. The “connections” are so
powerful that church members enter a kind of
ecstasy that they interpret as God’s energy
flowing through them.
Tragedy hits the
congregation when one member drowns her young son
to spare him from possibly becoming an active
homosexual like his father. The
already-controversial church is now thrust into
the news. Ex-members speak out about the sexual
abuse and erotic activity, some threaten
lawsuits, and many begin to doubt the holiness
they felt in the group.
Despite her efforts to be a
good “churchite,” Penny struggles with the
obvious flaws in her community. She gets away for
a while to think. She stays with an aunt who had
been trying to convince Penny to leave the group
for some time. While attending to her aunt’s
garden, Penny picks up an apparently good
cucumber that has been hollowed out by a worm. At
that moment, she hears the voice of Jesus tell
her that the fruit is rotten, like her church.
She has a disturbing dream about the occult
nature of her church. After five years of
devotion in the church, she can finally admit to
herself that it is a “cult.” She talks with
dissidents who convince her to leave. She, in
turn, helps others to quit the cult.
After the end of her story,
Summers offers help through her Web site for
people bothered by cult experiences, but she is
nonspecific, save suggesting they contact her
through email.
Summers uses an odd spelling of occult for
her title, but she clearly intends to convey that
the devil can work through spiritual (occult)
experience, even in a born-again, spirit-filled
Christian community. She implies that the devil
can turn a church into a cult through occult
experiences that do not square with scripture.
For example, illicit sex violates the
commandment, “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s
wife.”
In my estimation, the book
fails as a novel. I did not enjoy reading it.
Perhaps the challenge was the tedious dialog
among mostly humorless characters too simply
developed. Mark, the misguided and perverse
pastor, remained in caricature throughout for me.
I struggled to believe that any woman would fall
for this guy. In contrast, Frank Peretti’s occult
fiction (This Present Darkness) also feeds
the fundamentalist Christian imagination, but
Peretti manages to entertain the reader with his
comic-book notion of evil and the occult. I felt
little richness of place throughout the Summers
book, so it was less believable.
The author missed great
opportunities to create suspense and sympathy.
For example, when the distraught wife of a gay
parishioner drowns their son Willy, I felt
removed from the child. We have no insights into
little Willy’s character, whether he had friends,
his hair color, how he played. The author inserts
sexual tension between characters, but not enough
for it to feel more important than creepy adult
behavior. Exorcisms described in Chapter 7 offer
little dramatic power. Occult activity amounts to
eyes locked in trance and group ecstasy with
erotic touching. I was not convinced that the
devil had anything to do with what seemed more
like loosened libidos. Descriptions I’ve read
about Umbanda or Macumba dance rituals are far
more interesting.
In the genre of
fundamentalist Christian literature, cult and
occult carry the same sinister though equivocal
spiritual warning—they both are “of the devil.”
However, there are other ways to view cult
behavior, and to portray occultism more
realistically as not only deceptive, but
ridiculous, and sacredly sublime, as well.
See
my review of another novel,
Imaginary Friends, also based on a real
cult experience.
Related
|
