A melancholic metal take on the Process Church
June 13, 2011 7:09 PM   Subscribe

Several Hymns sung by The Process Church of The Final Judgment, a religious group that worshipped both Christ and Satan, was rumored to be related to Charles Manson, and eventually became the Best Friends Animal Society, have been covered by Sabbath Assembly, producing a nostalgic psychedelic gospel project. Here is a interview of the band, from Terrorizer magazine. In Mefi: The Process on two funkadelic album covers.
posted by Tarumba (19 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
from the wiki:

"Later on, many of these same believers went on to support Gilles Deleuze in his leadership of the Anti-Oedipal movement of 1968."

this, i like.

also:

"Lucifer, the Light Bearer, urges us to enjoy life to the full, to value success in human terms, to be gentle and kind and loving, and to live in peace and harmony with one another. Man's apparent inability to value success without descending into greed, jealousy and an exaggerated sense of his own importance, has brought the God Lucifer into disrepute. He has become mistakenly identified with Satan."

this, i really like. gotta dig into this one...
posted by facetious at 7:35 PM on June 13, 2011


Rock and roll is the Devil's music.
posted by The White Hat at 7:39 PM on June 13, 2011


Thanks-- I quite like this group.
posted by darth_tedious at 7:40 PM on June 13, 2011


Isn't that special?
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:43 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]


Process Church of The Final Judgment

Sounds the like slang equivalent of after grog bog.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:45 PM on June 13, 2011


... The Process Church of The Final Judgment, a religious group that worshipped both Christ and Satan, was rumored to be related to Charles Manson, and eventually became the Best Friends Animal Society ...

Animal Liberation Front has an article on this weird history.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:51 PM on June 13, 2011


"Lucifer, the Light Bearer, urges us to enjoy life to the full, to value success in human terms, to be gentle and kind and loving, and to live in peace and harmony with one another. Man's apparent inability to value success without descending into greed, jealousy and an exaggerated sense of his own importance, has brought the God Lucifer into disrepute. He has become mistakenly identified with Satan."

"A strict reading of the Bible shows Satan to be less like Darth Vader and more and more like an overzealous prosecutor," said Kelly, a UCLA professor emeritus of English and the former director of the university's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. "He's not so much the proud and angry figure who turns away from God as [he is] a Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. Satan's basic intention is to uncover wrongdoing and treachery, however overzealous and unscrupulous the means. But he's still part of God's administration."

- Henry Kelly, author of Satan: A Biography.

I was Googling for a book that says pretty much the same thing. But I thought it was written by a priest or ex-priest. So I'm not sure if this is the same book review[ed] I read.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 8:20 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]


Cool. I've enjoyed some Jex Thoth songs in the past but I've never gotten any of her stuff, thanks for reminding me.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:21 PM on June 13, 2011


Aah! Skinny Puppy's final album before Dwayne Goettel passed, The Process, was a concept album loosely based around this outfit. That's a piece of the puzzle I've wondered about for a while. Thanks for the FPP!
posted by Philby at 8:31 PM on June 13, 2011 [2 favorites]


The Feral House is publishing a cloth bound book of the magazine The
Process Church used to hand out on the streets.
posted by alteredcarbon at 8:31 PM on June 13, 2011


I have an off-and-on fascination with the Process that goes back about thirty years. I stumbled across William S. Bainbridge's book Satan's Power in my local public library; it's a fascinating book that gives an insider's view on the rise and fall of the Process, although Bainbridge maintains the irritating habit of giving pseudonyms to everyone and everything in the book, even well-known entities like Scientology (I think he called it "Technicity") and the Process itself (the "Power Church"). At about the same time, a guy in our class with a minor interest in the occult, and a major interest in getting any sort of attention any way he could, invited some of my friends and I to a "Process mass", which turned out to be the sort of slapdash living-room witchery that any reasonably bright kid could put together with a little imagination and some black candles. (My classmate later archly informed us that the man was really just interested in getting into his pants.)

Much later, a former Process insider, Timothy Wyllie, wrote Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, which used a very different and much more personal and informal style than Bainbridge, but seemed to agree in most respects on the arc of the cult: it started off pretty promisingly, branching out to several cities in North America and abroad, but eventually sputtered out as a result of the eventual schism between Robert deGrimston, the charismatic but weak figurehead, and Mary Anne deGrimston, a power-hungry control freak who went on to form her own cult, which eventually morphed into Best Friends. It was pretty unique and quirky--they proselytized in capes, had a theology that synthesized Jehovah, Jesus, Lucifer, and Satan into a sort of Quadrity of different aspects of the Godhead, ran coffeehouses, and of course wrote some bitchin' hymns.

They were probably too silly to last for long, but I really don't think that there was anything sinister about them, infighting and Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's insinuations notwithstanding.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:08 PM on June 13, 2011 [4 favorites]


One of the things that I think is really interesting about scientology, is that it is a synthesis of a wide variety of new religious movements that grew fat and weird in southern california--Hubbard then becomes an example of curating new religious movements in order to perserve what was useful in them, and then cut off the bits less likely to grow.

His connection to the Process church is part of that tradition. (Process church is also interesting in how it devolps its own vernacular culture as a way of reinforcing non traditional beliefs--The Family did something similar)

Also, yeah capes!
posted by PinkMoose at 10:14 PM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]


One of the things that I think is really interesting about scientology, is that it is a synthesis of a wide variety of new religious movements that grew fat and weird in southern california--Hubbard then becomes an example of curating new religious movements in order to perserve what was useful in them, and then cut off the bits less likely to grow.

Interesting interview with Hubbard's son. [SFW -TEXT ONLY]

Hubbard: Sure. It was pretty tame back then compared to very sophisticated operations like they have now. When we hid assets, for example --I remember being in Philadelphia when the FBI anc the U.S. Marshall's Office were after my father on a contempt-of-court charge. There I was running across town with my father with our complete mailing list and a suitcase full of money! Heading for the hills!

Penthouse: Where did the money end up?

Hubbard: A lot of it went abroad. But my father always kept a great deal of it around his bedroom so that he could flee at a moment's notice. In shoe boxes. He distrusted banks.

Penthouse: What kind of money are we talking about?

Hubbard: Back then? Hundreds of thousands at least. The last time I saw my father, in 1959, he mentioned that he had at least $20 million salted away.

Penthouse: Did he invest the money?

Hubbard: No. He wanted to stay really liquid. Very fluid, so he could cut and run at any time.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:51 PM on June 13, 2011


There's a group trying to restart the Process Church right now, apparently led by an original member in New York. They have a page on Facebook that I liked on a goofy whim, and I asked them what the deal was when a lot of activity started happening on it, and that's what I was told. Don't know how serious/true it actually is.
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:08 AM on June 14, 2011


Neat! My dog Gus is from Best Friends. That makes him even more awesome....
posted by ph00dz at 5:41 AM on June 14, 2011


Can we talk about this band? Because 'Holy' Shit they are good/nuts.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:48 AM on June 14, 2011


I know, they are! We've been listening to them almost non stop for a couple of weeks now.

Also, I hear they will be playing in NYC soon.
posted by Tarumba at 6:54 AM on June 14, 2011


I saw them live in Paris, last month. Jex Thoth is the perfect heavy psychedelic female singer.
posted by SageLeVoid at 7:11 AM on June 14, 2011


Thank you, this post made my morning!
posted by jtron at 12:05 PM on June 14, 2011


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