The following was originally posted in September of 2008. Since then, recordings of the church service this article is based upon has been removed from the SRF web site. Most likely because they embarrassed themselves. Oddly though, they posted it on their perverted Live365 channel. Anyway, I added some information to this article and updated a few things. Otherwise, it's basically the same as it was back then.
Oh, I forgot to add I have a page displaying excerpts of the actual church sermon where the Bishop of SRF utters the infamous "Jesus Effing Christ", and gives the prouncement to just blow off your non-cult friends.
And the whole "Effing" thing is right here:
Happy Listening!
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I still host regular gatherings at my home that are open to all. In addition to our friends and neighbors, we invite ex-members and leave the door open for current members to attend. It's all about enjoying each other's company and having a social space. We do not conduct active attempts to draw people out of the Spiritual Rights Foundation and are not de-programmers or exit counselors. We are hosts.
I still follow the activities of the Spiritual Rights Foundation.
SRF has a web presence with recordings of church services, radio shows and other material.
Looking at the church page at celestia.com, I found a link to a church service in July 2008. I decided to listen in as they made the effort to post it. I think they posted it so people would listen to it. In this recording of the July service, the bishop of SRF delivered a sermon that you probably never heard at church before.
It it, she rails against speaking with people who do not accept what the Spiritual Rights Foundation practices or have left as a result of how they were treated. Using biblical references, she went on to say how members should walk away if they are speaking with someone who "can't have the teaching" and advised that members should not "hang out" with anyone who is not interested in what SRF teaches.
You see, if members spend time with people like us who are not followers of SRF, they risk losing their information. And, they risk serving two masters (!).
She railed against people left SRF and particularly those ex-members who have contact with current members who want to leave.
Some have asked ex-members for moral support via conversation. But I can tell you that those outside SRF who contact current members were only responding to conversations initiated by discontented current members. No one has gone in guerrilla-style to create a mass defection or even initiate an individual one.
After some more ranting and raving the bishop says that people who couldn't make the teaching work for themselves have a problem with "Jesus Effing Christ" because the Spiritual Rights Foundation and it's founder Rev. William Duby (Rev. Bill). are "the picture, the icon of Jesus. It's not Rev. Bill. It's not SRF. Jesus Effing Christ."
Wow. SRF and it's founder are the icon of Mr. Jesus Effing Christ himself! And all this time, I thought that the icon of Jesus Christ was, you know, Jesus Christ.
Anyway, she spoke of how everyone wants the good feeling that comes from SRF. That's fine. That is why people join and that is why people stay. (by the way, if you listen to the service you may notice that the people who speak sound awfully flat. I guess it shows how good they feel). However, her sermon states that if you were to socialize with anyone who has had a bad experience at SRF, you are saying that "the bible is not true in that all their complaints are OK".
And quoting Matthew 7:6 (don't cast your pearls before swine or your words will be trampled and turned against you) she says that anyone there will be insulted by the ex-member if they associate with that person out of loyalty. And that leads to people doubting their lives with SRF and they will start complaining about their lives at SRF. Doubt and discontent leads to departure.
Of course, the ex-members the bishop alluded to were highly offended. The current members initiated the conversation regarding their doubt about SRF. The ex's were just being a friend during a time of need. Offering a friendly ear and support. Clearly, it was the members who were looking for counsel outside the church - the ex-members were not attempting to pull a member out.
The difference between the SRF faithful few and the rest of the world is that the world is content letting the average SRF-ie believe what they want and do as they please. As long as those SRF believers are acting within the law and are behaving in a way that follows regular and established morals and ethics (which, I understand, is difficult for them) we would all just leave them alone.
In fact, we would be happy to overlook a lot of crazy behavior just for the opportunity to continue the friendship that existed before or during our lives with the Spiritual Rights Foundation.
There are people there who have had close relationships with people before their "sojourn" at SRF. And because of the message to keep ex-members and in fact, anyone who isn't at the SRF "vibration" away from their feel-good lives, I wonder how many of them are maintaining those relationships. One person wrote a comment here saying she knows a person at SRF who has been there a decade and claims to have seen the "warm and nurturing" environment SRF provides. Of course, she didn't say how long ago that visit took place. Probably a decade ago.
At any rate, there is discontent in the SRF ranks. There was a year ago and there is even now.
My impression is the church sermon is a sign of desperation and an attempt to stem the flow of departing members - nothing more. The bishop was trying to instill some fear and doubt about contact with people on the outside. But the way the sermon was presented ruffled some feathers and got a few people inside the SRF gulag thinking about themselves and their situation.
I started thinking as well.
I believe that sermon is a way to tell the members that all the real experiences people had at SRF, those who suffered abuse (Steve Sanchez's book speaks of that more strongly than I) those who exhausted life savings, lost spouses, lost children, lost their lives were just unfounded complaints and that their experiences should be ignored or minimized.
It seems that people who left, fed up with the dysfunction, are non-persons and their real experiences are non-events. Congratulations everyone! By the power vested in the holy Bishop of the Spiritual Rights Foundation, we don't exist and all the things so many people wrote and spoke about in all the media we have available to us in this modern world are mere projections and figments of our imaginations.
But the sermon is real and the message is real and it came from the real lips of the real bishop of the presumed real Spiritual Rights Foundation's MP3 recording of their monthly church service. That service is SO real, when the Spiritual Rights Foundation finally found out I listened to their church broadcast and commented on it in an unflattering manner, they promptly removed it. And they didn't stop there. Presently nearly all recordings of SRF radio shows have been removed, and all church services are removed. They followed-up by removing their videos from YouTube.
Considering how the Spiritual Rights Foundation is removing their audio and video recordings from the airwaves and internet and also considering how they are having less and less public contact, I'd say they are becoming more and more fearful of the blowback that will happen when the public discovers what that content really stands for.
Their attempt to change history by erasing it, won't have the effect they want. Not for as long as this blog is active. And this blog will be active for a long time.
That's no projection.
Matthew 7:6, it seems, was an appropriate verse to quote. No matter how much they are confronted with the real experiences of real ex-members and no matter how SRF is confronted with the real effect of their conduct, the more SRF tries to discredit the people who speak out.
Ask Steve Sanchez. He wrote a book on his experience. SRF called him mentally ill (in a public statement on their website - Google it using: Steve Sanchez SRF).
Others who spoke out faced retorts as well. Those who speak about their true experiences at SRF have their words trampled and turned against them only because those experiences are not of the kind that SRF would like the world to hear.
And because those experiences are the truth.
Ask me and Joy. We speak truthfully of our experiences with the Spiritual Rights Foundation. I have strong observations and commentary based on those experiences. I speak honestly about the experiences of others who are still too frightened to speak and give them support. I provide a public service, like Consumer Reports, where those seeking their own spiritual path can find information on the Spiritual Rights Foundation and decide for themselves if they want to travel with SRF or not.
But to SRF, we are infidels. They tried to sue us. They lost. Badly.
To know how badly, all you have to do is to read this blog.
It's still here, unabridged.
No retractions.
No apologies.
No limits on the truth.
No limits on our First Amendment right to speak.
And not one penny paid to the Spiritual Rights Foundation, Robin Dumolin or Angela Silva.
Steve, Joy, myself and several other courageous ex-SRF members have spoken out and cast our pearls onto the world. We have been released from the bonds that have imprisoned us in our own silence. And we know that message is being heard by seekers and the Spiritual Rights Foundation alike, whether they like it or not.
You see, in the toxic waste dump of the SRF mind, the freedoms of the First Amendment applies only to the Spiritual Rights Foundation. Not you. To SRF your pearls of truth not only don't count, they don't even exist.
Was that an "oink" I heard?
Since that sermon, I have learned that more members are now ex-members. I believe there will be more exits. Probably not many more as there aren't many left. And I can't see too many others wanting out. I could be wrong, though. Every time I think the departures will end, more happen.
I wonder what effect that sermon had on those who since left. Probably not what the bishop intended.
But I guess that illustrates something: SRF is their own worst enemy. When they open their mouth, their foot goes in.
Hello Mike, I admire the tone of your comments. You are not afraid to say what you mean, and yet you still care about your friends and the people in there. It is keen awareness the way you expose how they treat people as non-persons. They seem to succeed in trying to insulate themselves from feeling what it must be like for someone to be treated that way. They don't want to know about the unjust pain they are causing other, but you are careful in the way you introduce your blog and in your overall tone to not do that
ReplyDeleteI also love that you and Joy are so willing (in the blog called 'the pledge') to greet people who are in there and that leave with forgiveness. It is a great and true balance to be able to say it like it is and at the same time have compassion for your seeming adversary. I admire this in you and Joy, because it has been a ling time learning this lesson for me, and I have a long way to go.
As abnoxious and aggressive as Debbie's behavior was - she still seems like an ultimate victim. It was no doubt Robin and Ang that gave her license to admonish like Bill. Nevertheless, she is playing a horribly dangerous game - using the Word, spoken from her mouth, to intimidate others.
Thanks for what you are dong. For those who have great need to sort out their experience, you and Joy are of great service, even while you are sorting out your own traumas.
In forgiveness,
Steve Sanchez
This post regarding the infamous church service not only was in a mocking nature of an ex minister who they made fun of, but deliberately made fun of the way they talked. Debi Livingston pretended she was this person talking. Imagine going to any other religious service in their buildings and the clergyman pretends they are someone who had left that church and you had only contempt for them as you sprayed the whats left of the congregation with that blasphmy!
ReplyDeleteOnly DEBI LIVINGSTON decides that they will make fun of someone who can't even be there to defend themselves. So its ok that they rant about us ex members that defame Bill Duby's legacy, but they do the same and its part of educating the public. Huh???
The church services were nothing more than having ministers give an inner meaning of what verse of the bible we would be focused on during the month. Debi Livingston would promote this to the congregation and members of the public of how we meditated on the verses, transcribed them from the literal verse to a spin of what they saw fit.
The funny thing is, when we decoded it and how it related to us, we would be ordered to rewrite it, too numerous to count until it fit first Bill Duby's vision, then after his demise, Bishop Debi Livingston vision. So in actuality, we would be kept up late the few nights before church service because it didn't fit with what they wanted sprayed... So in reality, we were projected at to get with the program and get unstuck on the projection or mental image picture that they wanted us to make in our personal revelation. Again, they had a vision of how we should write it, minus our own vision, realization, psychic interpretation etc. So if Debi didn't think you got it, she reedited it for public consumption and put our name on claiming it to be in our words. So for years, we were supposedly channeling our own information as she stated to the public, but in reality, it was Rev. Debi Livingstons own words with our byline in the monthly church bulletin. Never mind we were invalidated for having our own understanding, psychic reading, personal revelation. Rev. Bill then Rev. Debi would channeled it for us already edited in his or her own words through us. How does SRF, via BPI saying goes, YOU ARE CAPABLE!
I got fed up being invalidated by Rev. Debi Livingston and subjected to late night re writes again and again, or humiliated by not recognizing pretty much all the original content I personally wrote by the time the church bulletin was printed out at 3am the morning of church service.
So I went back and noticed a previous bulletin with the same verse we were to decode a year or so earlier. And just a hunch, I copied word for word a previous ministers assignment of decoding the same verses. This minister had the reputation of never having there assigned verse redone. They were told they had the information come easily to them and were a stalwart when it came to completing it in the SRF vibe/vision.
As I suspected, I was redlined by Rev. Debi Livingston as out of the body thinking, astral plane traveling if you will, stuck in ego, in effort and plain rejected as something the public would not want to read or hear.
I then cleaned it up a little bit, but still was given a thumbs down. So just to make sure I wasn't spiritually profiled in perceived projection of being stuck in my natural mind or reputation by Rev. Debi Livingston Boushey, I went back and dug up another previous bulletin. Only this time, it was one that I remember Debi rewrote herself on my behalf. Obviously, she decided I just didn't get it, and copied it once again, hoping she wasn't red lining me just because I was the usual suspect of being in my analizer. It was Rev. Debi's written version that was attributed to me, and she thought it was out of the body thinking as well.
I never made mention of this until now, but I got inspired reading this blog from over a year ago.
SO I GUESS BISHOP DEBI LIVINGSTON WAS OUT OF THE BODY WHEN WRITING IT? There is no one to edit her, so I guess she's perfect and I'm stuck.
As an addendum to the whole Jesus Effing Christ story, when current students in the Associated Minister's training class recently asked their teacher about that church service and how the bishop could say that, the teacher said that she would ask Rev. Angela (President of SRF) about it. Rev. Angela told this teacher to tell these fellow staff members that she personally reviewed the MP3 files and that Debi never said that. It didn't happen. So the official SRF story now is that Rev. Debi never said this. For people there who heard it, it is an insult to their intelligence.
ReplyDeleteAnyone with half a brain can listen to the MP3 link of this church service on your blog. It reveals the self-serving, ignorant and abusive nature of the leadership. You didn't hear it with your own ears. If we say it didn't happen, it didn't happen. If that isn't a controlling and very unhealthy environment, I don't know what is. In fact, this story is the very definition of abuse. How can you call yourself a spiritual leader when the people you lead are watching you lie and manipulate them? How many degrees of separation are there from this and the information control practiced by Hitler and other dictators, communist governments, etc. who rewrite history and control the information people can receive?
Oh by the way, who ever edited Rev. Angela Silva or Rev. Robin DuMolin? NO ONE! Some of there words were not in the spirit of what there vision was, but since they had a higher title no one said anything. They have free reign while the rest of us were subjected to their whims.
ReplyDeleteI remember Rev. Bill supposedly channeled Angela Silva and passed of his writings as her own words. Not once but many times. I guess he channeled her inner 4th grade education?
Oh man, I did listen to this yesturday morning and I got so sic that I had migrens and throw up several times yesturday. Oh good, what a scam. Im going out to eat today, and Im going to take it easy now for some days. That was a reminder, I cant stand the falseness.
ReplyDeleteBye the way, a lot of people that have been in a cult or sekt have to have professional help from a psykiatrist afterwards, it doesnt mean that the person has a mental illnes. This is called in my country for the "sekt illness" and you might even have to spend time in a mental institution. This is also why cults and sects are so dangerous, they make people ill by brainwashing them. Like for SRF it is serious that a person that become a member dont take care of their health for several years, and they dont take care of their children. They breake with their family and so on. Of course if you leave after years from such a life you need help.
ReplyDeleteThe anonomys dont say what kind of mental deasease that they have mentioned that he has, this is because there is no mental illnes execpt the sect illnes, and that they have caused.
When I read about cults and sects in sociology, one of our theachers said that you can not blame mental ilness, because that is just a way to not deal with the real problem. The real problem is someone being taken advantage of in a very evil manner, and this is what sects and cults do.
Today we dont have terrorists like before. Terrorist leaders have found a more powerful way to get power throught religion, and thats when religion becomes evil. The religious terrorist is a much more dangerous terrorist, he is not afraid of dying. This person is a person who will just think that he will go to heaven or to a higher plane. He will make a great development loosing his body and go into the astral.
I have once in another place heard that it would be better to leave my body wich is not whole and go on. A recomended suicide by a beliver in new age. Im not angry with this, but it is the way it is in new age and spiritism sometimes. Thats whay they use you over and over again, they think you should just take your lusy life and end it. There is no great healing in the end after years of work and no paycheck either.
Religion can be used in a very ugly way, of this not religious religion like in SRF too.
Wow!! That is so disturbing to listen to. They take an icon like Jesus which many relate to and incorporate a f===ed up rose. The agenda is so obviouse to an outsider.. I am not a Christian. by the by it sounds like there are 3 people clapping in the background.. I hope the bankruptcy is soon, before the three left loose much more.
ReplyDelete