I've had a few brushes
I joined a Christian Youth Fellowship once when I was about 16, I was an atheist ostensibly it was a way to meet girls and socialise, I knew quite a few people who went. On my first weekend away with them, they decided to re-enact a morality play around me where one of the older lads - I'll name him as Lee Plummer, as he was a fucking cunt* - tried to convince me that he was selling drugs. When I asked "What kind of drugs?" he was like, "You know, drugs." Riiiiight, I thought. Then this girl, I think it was Vicky Sheppard (who had grassed me up to the missus for getting off with someone else a couple of months earlier) came in and started acting all strung out. And he was pretending to sell her stuff, but all the time they kept looking over at me, as if to make sure I was getting all this. Then the play progressed to the weirdest stage - they were trying to convince me that Vicky was dead in the outside toilet and that Lee had strangled her or something. And I'm kind of like, "What the fuck are you doing? Is this for my benefit, 'casue if it is, you can just stop now. But no, they wouldn't stop, they kept on with their little play saying "Vicky's dead, what do you think about that?" And to be honest I probably didn't help myself by saying I was kind of glad. What made it particularly traumatic was that they wouldn't stop when I asked them to, I was miles away from (real) friends and family, trapped with these lunatics, and...well, what was the point of this exercise? It's not like I was going to turn around and suddenly go: "Wait I was wrong, God and Jesus do exist after all!"

Anyway, 10 years later, and I'd forgotten all about this weekend until a particularly lethal dose of liquid acid drew it back into my consciousness, thus sparking off one of the very worst trips of my life. For a couple of months afterwards I thought I was going mad with all these ideas of "Christians in disguise trying to test my morality", until I bumped into a friend who had been at the same YF and told me she had the whole weekend written up in her diary and could even confirm the names of the people who were in my particular "morality group".

Incidentally, I attended some of her pagan ceremonies (much more fun, alcohol and nudity) later and the two of us often discussed setting up a cult together. It never happened, but it could have been great.

[edit] I am also a member of Join Me and have a friend wo was raised in the Family - that's a real free love/Christianity cult, and I'd advise anyone to steer well clear. Very scary stuff.

*he was also responsible for ripping my PWEI "sample it, loop it, fuck it and eat it" faux Pepsi logo shirt.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 20:15, Reply)