Heartbreak and Rage: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, A Cult Survivor's Memoir

Part Three: Justification by Love

In Part Three, Neufeld recounts the dilemma he finds himself in after two years of study at the Unification Theological Seminary.  For the first time in his cult life, he no longer feels he must obey the leaders automatically.  Instead, he believes the cult’s failure to achieve greater success is precisely because the cult leaders require members to repress their feelings.  Neufeld resolves to be an empathetic listener and to encourage other members to express their real feelings; in short, he determines to justify his existence by love, and not by works.  As he wrestles with his dilemma, he writes his thoughts down in a small diary which he keeps while in Boston.  Upon his return to the Unification Theological Seminary in September, he is abruptly sent away by the Seminary leaders.  Neufeld opts to go to Los Angeles to undergo Primal Therapy, a radical treatment he had investigated before he joined the Unification Church.  While working with other cult members, he sets aside money for the treatment.  However, during this waiting time, he is called to a gathering of members in New York, where Moon matches him up to a woman he had never met, who is now to become his eternal spouse.  Yet Moon has not yet selected a date for the actual wedding ceremony, so in the interim, all the matched members must remain celibate.  In Neufeld’s case, he must get to know his fiancée by correspondence only, since she lives in England and Scotland.  Once back in Los Angeles, Neufeld returns to his plans to undergo Primal Therapy.  As time goes on, he realizes that his fiancée is deeply troubled and is at risk of leaving the cult, so he drops his therapy in order to travel to see her.  There, he quickly falls in love with her.  Yet his situation is impossible:  the cult will not permit him to live with his new love, and she must remain in England, while he must return to Los Angeles.  One year later, Neufeld is again abruptly called to attend a cult mass wedding ceremony at Madison Square Garden in New York; yet, even after the wedding ceremony, he must continue to remain celibate and to wait at least three more years before he can live with his beloved.  Gradually, as his financial position becomes more and more difficult, and as his fiancée again pleads with him to visit her, Neufeld concludes that he must abandon his Primal Therapy treatment.  Later, in a desperate effort to raise money to visit his fiancée, he returns to his parents’ home in Canada, so he can work legally.  During his time in Calgary, Neufeld remains loyal to Moon, but he finds himself in a city where no other Unification Church members live.  But before he can afford the trip overseas to see his fiancée, she writes him to tell him it is over.  Now, Neufeld must decide whether to remain in the cult, or to leave.