Glenn Close Reveals She Was Raised in a Cult: "You Basically Weren't Allowed to Do Anything"

http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/glenn-close-reveals-she-was-raised-in-a-cult-you-basically-werent-allowed-to-do-anything/ar-BB9j1yj

Anyone familar with this cult ? She calls it "Moral Re-Armament".

Looking at Wikipedia it seems they had Christian roots. The basis was to re establish moral values. It was started in the the late 1930's. Thats really all I got from wikipedia, it did not seem to really say much about the controversy behind the group. It did say that a group of them had made themselves exempt from military service for political reasons or something like that. seem like a pretty generic boring group.

I read their book once. It was sort of a political religion that claimed to be against politics. I didn't know they had strict rules; I though they just talked about faith and morality.

There were the "Four Absolutes:" Absolute Honesty, Absolute Love, Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute Purity. It was a mix of non-denominational Christianity and pacifism, and a response to the growing military buildups (Germany especially) in the 1930s. Remember, World War I was incredibly devastating to the moral culture of Europe. Many groups have thought that widespread individual renewal could reform the world and eliminate war, poverty, oppression, etc.

Hasn't happened yet.

Some of the concepts of Moral Re-Armament worked their way into the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, especially a belief in God independent of denominational creed. Note this, from Wiki:

"To be spiritually reborn, the Oxford Group advocated four practices set out below: 1. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian. 2. Surrender our life past, present and future, into God's keeping and direction. 3. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. 4. Listening for God's guidance, and carrying it out."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Group#The_Four_Absolutes

I've never heard it referred to as a cult. Sometimes individual practioners or families of an ideology get intense and cultish.

I didn't look yet but are Alcoholics Anonymous meetings try to shoulder off responsibility of their actions to sky daddy in order to help their wretched selfs and get cleaned up?

Is there an Atheist Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous ?

YEP: http://aaagnostica.org/2012/08/12/an-atheists-guide-to-12-step-recovery/

Looks like it was problamatic enought for someone to write a guide.

While I was agnostic, after my leaving the church, it was an excuse I gave for not attending meetings. I would say that I felt like I was a hypocrite because I didn't believe in a higher power. That was just an excuse to keep on drinking and making others miserable. Upon returning to an understanding that I did believe in God, I was finally able to work through my drinking problem and stop. It was not an automatic thing but was part of the process for my recovery.

As a large, international movement/organization, I'm sure there are exceptions, but people do not spout doctrine or theology, either agnostic, atheist, or explicitly religious.

Atheists' issues are specifically addressed in "the Big Book," with the *suggestion* that such people use the group or the program as their "Higher Power," in place of God. Some peoples' atheism has a certain zeal, and even this is too much. As MichaelC1945 points out, this may just be an excuse to avoid the program--and sobriety.

A.A. is very clear that people have to take individual responsibility for their actions; note

5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

You'll see how these correlate to Moral Re-Armament, as mentioned in my post, above. I read a fair bit of this, 37 years ago during my early sobriety and spiritual explorations, so it's been a while. I'm inclined to think Glen Close's experiences were that of an over-bearing household or offshoot of the movement.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2014 12:27PM by caffiend.

I found it funny recently that someone asked me if I had been raised religious. I answered with, "well, I was actually raised in one of the religious cults." They immediately came back with "Mormon or Scientology?"

Funny that they don't equate mormonism with mainstream religion. I'm sure after they see "Meet The Mormons," they will have a different idea. Yeah, right.

Funny NormaRae. FLDS didn't even come to that person's mind.

With only 2 to 3 million active in the state you can see the membership is pretty low. However, the mormon PR machine seems to make it look like mormons are everywhere. Just take a look at the theaters.... they have their own movie.

That explains Glenn Close.

She was in UP WITH PEOPLE, which was a faux "folk" group created as a copy of the Young Americans pop group (Los Angeles, 1962). BYU copied the UWP group as the Brigham Young University Singers on MGM in late '67 using a lot of UWP's 1965 material, which morphed into the Young Ambassadors/Sounds of Freedom group(s), which was in turn duplicated as the Grand Land Singers back in SoCal.

Moral Re-armament was right-wing cult-y. Glenn Close was one of three singers in a fake group as part of UWP, The Green Glenn Singers. She's on the cover photos of the UWP SING OUT! THE MUSICAL album sponsored by Schick (razor guy), which was on TV and had an Lp which charted at the bottom in 1966.

http://www.amazon.com/Colwell-Brothers-People-Records-Stereo/dp/B00C5H1OMO/ref=sr_1_7?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1413521700&sr=1-7



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2014 12:55AM by snagglepuss.