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weddings. Matching ceremonies where people meet their future spouses
for the first time. Desperate flower-sellers approaching bar customers
late at night. Isolated farms where young men and women are rapidly
transformed into fanatical devotees of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
All these are well-known aspects of life in the Unification Church,
often called the "Moonies".
In Heartbreak
and Rage: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, a Cult Survivor's Memoir,
K. Gordon Neufeld recalls his own participation in all of these
events in a powerful and engrossing, and occasionally wistful and
tender, memoir. Neufeld recounts his own rise in the ranks of the
Unification Church to the position of a leader-in-training at the
Unification Theological Seminary, a promotion that indirectly led
to his growing disillusionment.
Yet
even when he found himself rejected by the woman Moon had chosen
for his bride, and by the church to which he had been unswervingly
dedicated, he refused to give up, but carried on until there was
absolutely no way to continue. At last, demonstrating great courage,
Neufeld broke free from his state of mental transfixion without
the aid of deprogrammers.
This
is an unforgettable story of persistence, devotion, love and loss.
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