{"id":14704,"date":"2011-10-31T10:31:08","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T14:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=14704"},"modified":"2011-10-31T10:31:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T14:31:08","slug":"girls-cults-and-healing-past-wounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2011\/10\/girls-cults-and-healing-past-wounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls, Cults, and Healing Past Wounds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Christopher Owens is a former member of Children of God<\/a>, a religious sect most people consider to be a cult.\u00a0Owens is now the lead singer and main songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Girls, who recently released a new album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost<\/a><\/em>. Listening to other tracks off of their new album, like the happy-go-lucky, Beach Boy-influenced tune \u201cHoney Bunny,\u201d I\u2019d never have guessed at Owens\u2019s dark past. But as I listened further, I realized that the band\u2019s exploration of such a wide spectrum of genres, song structures, and emotions felt more and more like something of an explosion of freedom and creativity that could have only been the result of being liberated from some sort of heavy-handed oppression. In what is now considered indie rock lore, Owens was born and raised in the Children of God which was formed in 1968 amidst the blossoming Jesus people and charismatic spiritual movements. While I\u2019m hesitating to call the group a cult, the truth is that Children of God (or Family International as it is known today) was one of the primary groups that sparked much of the contemporary anti-cult debate now present in the Church.<\/p>\n

The group had become infamous for its extreme missionary tactics that included a strategy devised in 1974 known as \u201cFlirty Fishing.\u201d This practice encouraged female missionaries to be \u201cbait\u201d or \u201cfisherwomen\u201d who used sex appeal to proselytize men to the group. Women who engaged in sexual acts resulting from the \u201cfishing\u201d were rewarded for what they called \u201cdeep witness\u201d to the point that many consider the practice prostitution. Among these women was Christopher Owens\u2019s mother, who is said to have prostituted herself in front of him on multiple occasions in his childhood. Furthermore, because of Children of God\u2019s anti-medicine stance, it is said that Owens\u2019s mother (who has since left the Children of God) had let another son of hers die of pneumonia. For the first time, in Father, Son, Holy Ghost<\/em>, Owens dives deep into his complicated relationship with his mother and addresses the issues in surprisingly honest and graceful ways.<\/p>\n

Girls has been known for making music that feels dosed in an ironic sincerity, making it hard for them to be taken seriously. Upon my first listen of Father, Son, Holy Ghost<\/em>, the guys seemed to be up to their same antics. In songs like \u201cMy Ma,\u201d frontman Christopher Owens sings, \u201cOh God I\u2019m tired\/And my heart is broken\/It\u2019s so hard to feel so alone\/And so far, so far from home\u201d and \u201cI want to see the light of love\/I\u2019m looking for meaning in my life\/And you my Ma.\u201d And while those lyrics might seem like they\u2019re sung clearly with tongue firmly planted in cheek, the more I learn about Owens, the more his longing for the healing of his relationship with his mother and for his concept of home seem like painstakingly sincere statements.<\/p>\n

In an action of both rebellion and redemption, he fled the group from where he was living with his mother in Slovenia after turning 16 and moved back to America all on his own. But Owens is far from the kind of ex-cult poster child Christians would normally look up to. In fact, in some ways, it seems that with his liberation from one set of chains, he has inherited a host of new ones. Indeed, he has given incredibly open in interviews where he regularly professes to be addicted to highly potent opiates and details his sobering-up process before going on tour. In a recent interview with Pitchfork<\/em><\/a>, Owens said, \u201cMy whole approach from day one has been to be honest. It\u2019s been disastrous to talk about my past and drugs in interviews, but it\u2019s honest. It\u2019s also been a good strategy for me, because it means I\u2019m never at a loss for words.\u201d In that same interview, Owens even finds time to make some interesting claims about the Bible and faith that includes everything from calling Jesus the first rock star to calling Luke 12:27 a \u201cZen\u201d idea. While these anecdotes are entertaining, the thing that popped out most to me was the astounding forgiveness and acceptance he projected toward his oppressive religious past.<\/p>\n

When asked if the title of the album had anything to do with his religious upbringing, Owens responded with this:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that. In churches, you repeat these phrases, and they become very key. But that wasn\u2019t the kind of lingo we used in the Children of God. We said, \u201cI love you, brother; I love you, sister.\u201d We just read the Bible, and then talked very normally to each other. It was very anti-church, very much just people living together and being good to each other, essentially. Things got out of control, I guess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Earlier in the interview, Owens admits that if he hadn\u2019t adopted this positive way of viewing his past, he would have probably ended up committing suicide in his depression. While I have no idea what it would have been like to grow up in that kind of oppression, the fact that Owens doesn\u2019t walk around bashing the Church and God is simply beyond me. But Owens\u2019s God-given understanding of his past is just the kind of work-in-progress redemption that I as a Christian love celebrating and encouraging, knowing that the Spirit is always at work in the \u201creconciliation of all things.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the song \u201cVomit,\u201d Owens sings, \u201cI\u2019m lookin\u2019 for love\u201d with all the sincerity of a lonely high schooler, indicating his search for love and meaning is still very much in progress. And while Owens might be far from converting back to Christianity, we can all be encouraged by his story and music to view our pasts with a little more grace and also view our futures with a little more miraculous potential. If Christopher Owens can reconcile his relationship his mother and look back on Children of God as people who had good intentions, how much more should we be loving our families and churches that nurture and love us in the Spirit of God? How much more should we, as followers of Jesus who have been forgiven, have forgiveness for those who have hurts us most?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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