Cults in Taiwan Part 1

The One That Got Away: Cults in Taiwan Part 1
Posted by: Antonio Graceffo on Nov 09, 2003 - 06:46 AM



One might argue that it's Taiwan's policy of religious freedom that has made the island a haven for religious cults such as Falun Gong, Children of God and Shian San. But Leif (not his real name), a cult survivor and long time Taiwan resident, proposed an alternative theory. Namely, that it is because of the unique quality of Taiwanese Buddhism and Taoism, that the cults are tolerated and even proliferate.

"Every neighborhood is a cult," said Leif. "They each have their own gods. They have their own shrines. And they celebrate the birthday of their god."

In every neighborhood in Taiwan, on the respective god's birthday, the residents will burn spirit money and show outdoor movies on a large screen for the god's entertainment, he explained.

"So, the idea of having more than one god is not alien to them," continued Leif.

Additionally, since Taiwanese Buddhism teaches that one can be reincarnated as a higher being, even becoming a god, the Taiwanese are not too put off by a man like David Berg, who went by the name of Moses David and claimed to be god.

The term "cult" can be somewhat confusing in its application. It originates from the Latin term for cultivation, as in growing or farming. Most sociologists and anthropologist define cult as any religious structure or set of religious beliefs. However, the word's association today is that of a dangerous or destructive nature.

Groups which monitor destructive or dangerous cults commonly define them by a specific set of criteria. Firstly, according to FACTNet, a group that has been following the activities of hundred of cults for the last decade, a cult is authoritarian in it's power structure. In addition, the cult's leaders tend to be charismatic, determined, and domineering. Leaders are self-appointed, messianic persons who claim to have a special mission in life. The cult's leaders center the veneration of members upon themselves. The cult tends to be totalitarian in its control of the behavior of its members. The cult tends to have a double set of ethics. The cult has basically only two purposes, recruiting new members and fund-raising. The cult appears to be innovative and exclusive.

The organization Berg founded had all these elements and then some. His group, the Children of God, developed out of the hippie movement of the late '60s. Much like other well-known fringe religious groups of that era, they wore long hair and hippie clothing and listened to rock and roll. Berg died in 1994, but the group he founded continues today under the name The Family. The Family currently claims more than 12,000 members worldwide active on nearly every continent. Their website puts a professional, even mainstream Christian face on the group but their practices and teachings were well outside the religious, or secular, mainstream.

"They basically did everything the hippies did, except take drugs," explained Leif. "Even free love. Sex was a big part of the teachings. David Berg preached that sex was God's gift to man."

Leif spent the better part of his childhood growing up in the insular world of the Children of God. Born in a commune in Europe to American parents, Leif holds an American passport. The family moved around a lot, but Leif spent much of his childhood in China, Japan and Taiwan. He has only spent six months in the United States and yet he has a perfect, if nondescript, American accent.

"The cult started in Southern California," he explained. "That's why we all talk like this."

Leif told me that the church even advocated sex with children. I asked him at what age the children were sexually abused by church members.

"In the beginning, the church was really weird, and they took menstruation as a sign that a child was ready for sex. So, twelve years old. Then they toned it down a bit, and changed the age to fifteen or sixteen."

Leif said that there was actually a schedule on the wall, so you would know who you were supposed to have sex with on a given day.

"By the time I was in my teens, they changed the age to eighteen."

He added, however that sexual abuse of children was still commonplace, even known by the church. But it was no longer officially condoned.

"If someone got caught, the church just prayed for him. But they didn't put him in jail, or even separate him from children. So it just continued."

God's Children lived communally, often having as many as 80-120 people living in a single house. Children were often born out of wedlock and were referred to as Jesus Babies. These children remained with the mother and her husband. The biological father would have little or no contact with the child after birth. Many of the cult families would have as many as ten children.

"One way of retaining female members was to encourage them to marry young and to have a lot of children. If you had a twenty-year old girl with two kids, there was no way she could leave. She could never support her children."

Despite a large portion of Taiwan being made up of sparsely populated mountains where such activities might go unnoticed, God's Children often settled into Taiwan's bustling cities.

"Houses had to be relatively close to urban areas," said Leif, "Because we had to go out and sell our religious tracts and recruit new members."

New members had to sign over all of their earthly possessions to the church.

"The church took everything and then gave you back a little bit of it to show how generous they were."

In addition to selling and recruiting activities, the cult survived by begging.

"Once a month, we loaded up in the cars and went into town to get food and necessities. This was called provisioning. We would go into grocery stores, ask to see the manager and he would give us all kinds of food for free. I ate for free at McDonald's for five years. I would always just go in, tell them I was a missionary and I was hungry. They usually gave me free food. If not, I would just go to the next one."

The church had other, more disturbing sources of revenue.

"Women were sent out to bars and hotels to seduce men," explained Leif.

This was called "flirty fishing," or "FFing" for short. They would pick a man up, have sex with him and then try to recruit him by saying this was God's gift to him, Leif explained

He added that if the man's soul wasn't negotiable, hard currency was also accepted.

"Afterwards, they would ask for a donation. So, it was basically prostitution."

According to the The Family's official website, the group remains active on the island. The site lists a number of recent church-sponsored activities such as delivering toys to Aboriginal families in the mountains near Hualien and visiting sick children in hospitals in Taipei, Ilan and Lodung as part of the group's "Children's Day" celebration.

In addition to active Family communities in Taiwan, there are a number of former members of Children of God/The Family remaining in Taiwan.

"Many of them are half American and half Chinese, and yet, Californian English is their native tongue. And I speak Chinese better than they do," Leif laughed.

Leif is extremely well spoken and comes across as very well educated. He is fluent in English, Chinese and Japanese, and has a great interest in world politics, history, culture and religion. So, it's a bit of a shock to hear that he had never had any formal education. Although the church didn't allow the children to go to school, Leif recognized the importance of education and educated himself as much as possible. He read constantly.

"Almost all books were banned," he explained. "But they did have a set of encyclopedias. I read that thing, volume for volume, several times. Also, I would sometimes find a very old classic, like Ivanhoe, and they might allow me to read it. But something like Tom Sawyer, for example, was completely banned."

"Kids my age were the first generation to be born into the cult," he explained. "The kids who were there before us were from outside. The first time someone touched them or the first time they woke up and said 'this is really boring,' they left. But those of us that were born in the cult, we really believed. We didn't know any other life. So we believed. For us it was harder."

Generally teenagers begin to ask questions and often conflict with the beliefs of their parents. Asked if this wasn't the case in the cult as well, he said the cult's adult members were not really prepared to be role-models for a generation of adolescents raised in their midst.

"A bunch of burned out ex-hippies looking for utopia weren't prepared to raise teenagers," explained Leif.

He ran away from the cult for the first time when he was sixteen.

"I only stayed away three days. I got drunk and saw movies. I cried a lot. Not knowing what else to do, I ran back to mommy."

Leif's punishment was that he was separated from his family and then sent to Taipei for reprogramming. Afterwards, to further isolate him, he was sent back to Japan to work as a missionary truck driver while his family remained in Taiwan.

When he was nineteen, Leif ran away again but this time he had no intention of going back.

"I planned it," he said. "I was the best salesman they ever had. In the mornings they would give me 18 kilos of books to sell. I'd sell them out in a few hours, then go buy myself some liquor or go see a movie and not go back till late at night."

No one suspected Leif because he was bringing in so much revenue. What the cult didn't know, however, was that he was skimming some of the profits.

"I would go to a supermarket and get the manager to give me cases of food that were about to expire. Then I would sell it on the street for a quarter of its retail value. For every dollar I gave the church, I took five for myself."

He saved up five thousand dollars and escaped from Japan. Since he had no real knowledge of the United States, Leif returned to the one long-term home he had known, Taiwan. He admits that the first several years back he lived a wild, lost type of existence, heavily into drugs and petty crime.

"All teenagers experiment with those things," he said. "And then when they go away to college they drink and do drugs. Eventually, they are done with it and they move on. It's normal. But for us, coming out of a cult, we had barely ever watched TV. We had never had a candy bar or a coke. So, we had a lot of catching up to do."

Now, Leif is out of that life. At age 28 he owns several successful businesses. He has a longterm girlfriend and seems very happy. Sitting with him, you can almost hear the gears in his head turning. He is intelligent and analytical. And he is always looking for a way to make money. It is almost as if he wants to regain all of the years that he spent working for free.

"When I was three years old the cult had me performing on stage, singing and playing guitar. At age five, I was working for them doing voice-overs. Then, take all of the years that I went out every day, all day, and sold things for them. There is no way to calculate how much money I made for them. Believe me, I have tried. The one figure I am able to settle on, with some reasonable accuracy, is that in my final five years of working for them I sold over one million dollars of merchandise."

Asked if he is angry at the cult or it's members over taking away all those years of childhood, Leif said he can forgive those who just were looking for a spiritual lifeline and ended up losing the plot.

"They are just good people who were looking for something," he said "They are a little whacked, but they believe what they are saying. I am angry at the administration, in Switzerland. They owe me."

Leif immediately lightened up again and in his typical, carefree way told me the positive side of his time with the Family of God.

"I was public speaking at an early age. Now I am an excellent speaker. I still make money doing voice-overs or reading stories for ESL books on cassette. Also, at age fourteen I used to fudge my way past security and talk my way into government offices or corporation headquarters to get support for the cult. Now, in my business, for me to talk to people or promote myself is easy."

There is a strong bond between those, like Leif, who have left the Children of God behind. Internationally, they run a website for ex-Family/Children of God members not dissimilar to the official site. Taiwan has it's own tightly knit group of former members.

"They stick together," he said. "When I first left the cult, I was afraid of westerners. It was difficult to speak English in social situations. I didn't know anything about manners or comportment. I had never seen the TV shows and things that they were talking about. I needed a mentor basically, to re-assimilate into the world."

The ex-cult members in Taiwan don't want to go to America, because they don't know America. They identify with living in Taiwan. But the Taiwanese government sees them as any other foreigners, even though most grew up here and some were even born here. This means that visas are a constant problem. They can't even get a one-year work permit because they don't have a Bachelors Degree.

Leif is a success story. He made it. Sadly, some of his friends didn't. He says that many never made it out of the wild drug phase. And, there were some suicides.

"A few did positive things like join the army, which is basically like another cult," he said. "It is almost like more of the same. But I respect them for what they have achieved."

Leif said that he would like to be the mentor for the next group who comes out of the Family/Children of God.

"Now, I am in a better position to help." He said.

Leif's cell phone rang, more business to do and money to be made.