Welcome everyone who has joined recently, it’s been good to see all the activity and discussion here in the last month or two. Keep talking and sharing your thoughts and experiences at whatever pace suits you best. I have read each post on here and have found them insightful and useful. FalkirkBairn, I’m really sorry to hear about what happened to you, that is truly awful. Thanks for sharing about it here. I have also heard separate murmurings from local filmmakers regarding a possible SMC documentary, I don’t know if this is tied into the recent enquiries being made by the BBC. Either way it seems there is definitely interest in the topic.
Thank you Rensil for the info on AS leaving the church, it's very interesting. No surprises that no one is allowed to talk about it; just another day in SMC.
At age 14 I too received lots of intense, trauma inducing prayer (deliverance I assume?) on a Wednesday night at youth camp. I was told by Diana Rutherford that she could see demons in me, and that this was simply due to my own bad, worldly way of life. I, a normal child, had somehow brought this upon myself. I didn’t feel like I had much choice in the matter when people started to pray for me during the prayer session, loudly praying in tongues and laying their hands on my head and shoulders to expel the demons from within me, in the manner that all of us have experienced. This traumatic experience messed me up for many years; I actually believed that there was something seriously wrong with me and that it was all my fault. I couldn’t understand how I had failed so badly at life, at just such a young age. Only many years later did I realise how utterly absurd and just plain wrong this whole experience was. Among other posts here ThePetitor on 23 April discusses very well how absurd the SMC obsession with demons is, in the context of demon possession being mentioned in the actual bible itself.
I suggest any interested filmmakers reading this forum to investigate this particular matter further; the way that immense pressure is created by adults of SMC onto minors to accept and participate in these types of events that cause long-lasting psychological effects and trauma to them. When you are actually there in that camp situation, there is simply no way to refuse. Your parents are at home, the adults running the show are telling you over and over and over again during the course of a week-long camp that you must accept and do certain things to be right with God. Pressure from your peers is also very much a thing. If you dare skip a meeting, you will get in trouble both with the church and then again when you get home at the end of camp. So you try to play along and go - only to be subjected to this type of behaviour from the very adults meant to be looking after you. If any of these people have PVG’s, they should be revoked immediately.
Newcomers to this forum may not know about the
Latigo214 site. It ran for many years and whoever made it clearly put a lot of time into the information they published there. A lot of the content seems to be missing now, it looks like it might be in the middle of a redesign. But you can still view the whole site on Wayback Machine here: [
web.archive.org]
I highly recommend a read if you haven’t already.
The SMC website actually has some sermon recordings for all to download on their homepage. I just had to listen to a few from the 2023 camp.
As usual there is a lot of the usual directly instructing the audience to do the right thing, get your life on track, come to God etc. It's not that hard to see even from an audio recording how the congregation, including young people, feel pressured into doing what they are told to do from the pulpit and conforming to the SMC norms of the day. And of course as recently mentioned, the words of former leaders such as Hugh Black seem to be taken as gospel.
The subtle theme of the persecution complex is evident throughout these sermons. Everyone will know the ‘us vs them’ mentality that is cultivated, where the good church of Struthers is the only shining light in a world full of evil, temptation, and people who want to persecute them because they are part of this super holy church. This creates a very insular environment and only serves the congregation to dig in deeper, build more walls around themselves and isolate themselves even further from society, friends, and sometimes even family.
In one of his sermons G Rutherford talks about other religions where there are rules about how many times you have to pray. This is laughably ironic given the Struthers tradition of a permanent exhausting and strict schedule of meetings and camps that one is expected to attend in order to not backslide and stay right with the Lord & SMC leadership.
The prayer voice is still there among some of them even after the departure of AS. It’s very dramatic, as if the speaker is in great distress. It really helps emphasise the alleged importance of theri point - whether it is a story/interpretation of something in the bible, or a lecturing of the audience present. At times one of the speaker’s voice even starts to tremble into sounds mid-sentence for extra effect.
I truly worry and feel for the regular attendees of SMC. Many joined at such a young age and seem to have lost any frame of reference of what the real world actually is. They are told and believe they have been set free, but yet most of the current congregation will be there for life, trapped in their own prison of belief. Walls built in their own minds on top of strong foundations laid by the destructive church leadership. It’s really sad.