“I was so brainwashed”
A ‘chance’ meeting with the friend of a friend led Zoe* to months of involvement with a secretive cult during her time at university in Dublin. Now Zoe and her mother Carol* are keen to warn others of the dangers of Shincheonji and their tactics. They shared their story with VOX magazine. (*names changed)
In the summer of 2019, Zoe was doing an internship at a Dublin university. Part of a close and loving Christian family and an active member of the university Christian Union, Zoe is an intelligent young woman who is keen to go deeper in her faith.
“I was in the city one evening and I bumped into a girl who was friendly with a close friend of mine. When she asked to go for coffee with me, I was a bit surprised but I thought she was just being really friendly,” Zoe said.
After the coffee, the young woman suggested meeting again but this time to study the Bible. The following week, they met in a local park. The young woman asked if Zoe had questions about the Bible. Afterwards, she messaged to say she had met a man who could answer Zoe’s questions.
Although initially cautious, Zoe says, “because I knew her, I agreed to meet up with them both. [This man] seemed to know the Bible really well and the three of us began meeting two or three times a week to study. He would jump from place to place [in the Bible] and it impressed me that he was able to do that. I was amazed at his knowledge.” Eventually Zoe was invited to take part in an intensive six-month Bible study programme and she agreed.
“They began saying how you should not tell anyone and used Micah 7:5 to back it up. The other girl was very sure that she would not tell her family so I did not tell anyone either,” Zoe said. “In October, I began the lessons. There were six of us. I didn’t realise then but there was always one who was learning and one who had brought them along (a recruiter like the girl who brought me).
“Eventually, I started to have lessons on my own. I was told that I was learning quicker than the others. The man was very respectful; it wasn’t dangerous in that sense but it was very important that I was never late and if I was, they were really annoyed. I couldn’t miss a single session and they wanted to know everything I was doing. I wasn’t able to go home as much and I had to lie to my parents.”
Keeping secrets
Zoe was told that she needed to make sure she was learning without interference. “To be able to go to the main meetings twice a week you had to ‘pass over’ from darkness into light. They also used the Passover from Exodus to justify this. After my Passover, I realised that many of those who I thought were learning were already SCJ members. After this there was the graduation ceremony in London, which was called the light graduation and celebrated the many people who had come to know the ‘truth.’” Attending the graduation meant travelling to London (a trip that Zoe was to keep completely secret from her family even though it meant missing a family event).
There was increasing pressure to attend meetings and give money to the group. Whenever anyone asked a question, the leaders always had a verse from the Bible and an assurance that Zoe would learn in time. “They did not want us to ask questions. I think I was brought on quicker because I didn’t question [so much]. In hindsight, I wish I had!” Zoe said.
“They told me I had never really understood the Bible before this and that my life was so much better now that I was part of the group.”
Back at home, mum Carol became increasingly concerned that Zoe didn’t seem to want to visit anymore but the family still had no idea about what was going on.
There was more pressure to attend studies and meetings even to the detriment of Zoe’s university degree. “They laughed when I talked about college grades and said they are not important. They told me I had never really understood the Bible before this and that my life was so much better now that I was part of the group,” Zoe explained. “I didn’t see the people I loved and I had to stop meeting with friends but they really make you believe that your family will be going to heaven because of you. That was a big motivation. I wanted the best for my family. I thought if I didn’t do that I would be making my family lose out on eternal life. I hate lying but I kept on going with it.”
The group expected Zoe to be at a meeting on Christmas Eve and told her to lie to her parents about where she was going, something they described as ‘wisdom’. Carol begged Zoe not to go back to Dublin. “I told her, ‘I want you here for Christmas Eve’ but she went anyway. I could not understand it. I thought, ‘This is not Zoe.’”
The meetings Zoe attended were all presented from the Shincheonji ‘church’ in South Korea and everything was translated. “We had to wear black trousers and a white shirt and we all sat on the floor. You had to bow your head when the leader, Lee Man Hee came on. This man thought he was the new ‘John’ that it talks about in Revelation. He also referred to himself as the ‘advocate’ - and said he was the only person who could interpret scripture and that he alone was able to unlock the true meaning of the Bible.”
Zoe discovered that the girl who had recruited her into the group was called a ‘harvester’ - the original invitation to coffee was a deliberate attempt to draw her into the group.
“The man I was meeting in Ireland was from Austria. He had been ordered by the group to move to Ireland with only two days’ notice to become a ‘harvester’ and a teacher for Shincheonji. There was a lot of importance placed on me becoming a harvester too - going out to find people who were potential new recruits. We would stand on Grafton Street and ask people questions. We had to figure out if people might be suitable and write a report,” she added.
The group would target young men and women in Dublin churches or Christian Union meetings, befriending them and then persuading them to come along to Shincheonji meetings, in the same way Zoe had been recruited.
Everything finally came to a head in February 2020. The whole family had been invited to a party but Zoe told them she could not go.
“You will think I’m crazy.”
“We were out for a walk and I told her, ‘Surely you can miss one week’ but she kept making up excuses,” Carol said. “I kept pushing her until eventually she said, ‘you will think I’m crazy.’”
Zoe’s father reassured her, gently and patiently encouraging her to tell them the truth about what had been happening.
“Whenever I was trying to tell my parents, it was so hard. I felt guilty telling them because I was told I wasn’t supposed to. Telling them was such a relief but I was so brainwashed at the time. Thankfully they stayed calm and didn’t overreact,” Zoe said.
Carol and her husband could tell something was seriously wrong and suggested that Zoe should talk to their church minister. After months of manipulation and repetition of the same ideas, it wasn’t easy to get through to Zoe. “I think the key issue was that they were telling her to lie to her parents. They depended on secrecy but it was quite easy to show Zoe that this is disobeying one of the Ten Commandments (honour your father and mother),” the minister said.
Gradually he was able to show how the group had been misusing scripture and to highlight how the claims they were making were not right. “It was evident that these teachings were destructive. They manipulated the deep love she has for her family. Telling Zoe that her grandparents’ salvation depended on her obedience to the group was a complete twisting of the word of God.”
Although there appeared to be a breakthrough, Carol was still concerned. “I was so afraid to let Zoe go back to Dublin. If she had met with the wrong person, they would have pulled her right back in.”
Together with their minister, Carol and her husband supported Zoe as she left the group. They encouraged her to re-connect with friends and also began to search the Internet to find out more about Shincheonji. What they discovered was an alarming pattern of manipulation and spiritual abuse.
“We’ve learnt about other students from all over Ireland and Northern Ireland who’ve got involved with the cult. These were intelligent young women and men with a real desire to know God’s word. In most cases, they came from loving Christian homes. They were deliberately targeted. Some of them have not been able to get free.”
At this point, the pandemic was beginning to hit and Zoe returned home for the remainder of her degree course. “Being at home was really helpful,” she said. “It was important to cut connections until they knew they would not be able to pull me back in. I got back in touch with my own church and reconnected with friends from the Christian Union.”
Today Zoe feels she is fortunate to have escaped because she sees the impact on others who have been unable to break free and has realised how she was being taken away from her family and all her friends.
“Like other cults Shincheonji take texts out of context,” Zoe’s minister added. “The way that they teach is controlling and manipulative and add to that all the secrecy, they are putting people into bondage.
“What is alarming is the number of dedicated young Christians who have been allured into this group without the knowledge of their families. I contacted the head of Christian Unions Ireland (CUI) to alert them to the danger of Shincheonji and also spoke to church leaders in Louth, Dublin, Wicklow, Down and Antrim - the pastors of people Zoe had met in the group. In each instance, none of the families were aware of their child’s involvement with Shincheonji.
“I genuinely believe that we must be able to engage with our committed young adult Christians who have a great desire to grow in grace through sound teaching and doctrine. We need to ask some serious questions of ourselves in Church leadership about how we are equipping our people to face the challenges of a secular world but one in which false teachers are preying on our most committed young Christians with enticements to false teaching which distorts the Gospel.”
Things to watch out for in friends or your son/daughter
They become vague about where they are going or who they are meeting
Cancel plans to meet with friends
Stop going to the Christian events they would usually go to
Less time to go home to family
Home late and up and away early
Not so keen to talk about faith anymore
Late to events
Making up excuses which they would not normally
About Shincheonji (SCJ)
The group originates in South Korea and has been operating in Ireland since November 2018. It typically recruits young Christian students through cold contact 1-2-1 interviews on university campuses or by acting under the guise of Alpha, with the aim to take the person for a coffee. (Since Covid they’ve also used social media). The group refers to a method of “unlocking the secrets” of the Bible. It is controlling, secretive, teaches a false gospel and requires high levels of commitment and engagement. They operated in a similar fashion beforehand in the UK and Nicky Gumbel shared about them on Premier Christian News. You can read a testimony of someone previously involved to get a flavour of how and why someone gets involved and the progressive nature of the cult, The NY times also ran a piece on them at the start of the pandemic when the SCJ ‘church’ became a Covid super-spreader.