Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult

Review By Bruce Douville

July 23, 2024

From 1972 to 1991 (except for a three-year hiatus in the late seventies), Perry Bulwer was an active member of a cult.  Founded in California in the late sixties, the Children of God, later known as The Family, was a new religious movement that combined charismatic evangelical Christianity and imminent end-times prophecy with elements of the youth counterculture and the increasingly bizarre teachings of its autocratic leader, David (“Moses”) Berg.  By 1971, the group had established a presence in Vancouver, and fanned out from there, which is how Bulwer encountered the Children the following year, as a teenager in Port Alberni, British Columbia.  His two-decade spiritual odyssey took him from Vancouver Island to southeast Asia.  When Bulwer left the group and returned to British Columbia, he attempted to write an account of his troubling experiences but stopped when he realized “how little I truly knew or understood about that bizarre life.  The more I wrote, the more questions I had that I couldn’t answer or research” (221).  In the early 2000s, Bulwer resumed writing, carrying out research to better understand his faith journey.  This memoir, three decades in the making, is the fruit of his endeavours.

The first five chapters of the memoir centre on his childhood and youth in Port Alberni, and how his upbringing led him to join the Children of God.  The title, Misguided, reflects his key argument in these chapters: that his “Catholic indoctrination” taught him to “believe without question” (24), and his schoolteachers failed to equip him with the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate religious truth claims.  He contends that “a nonreligious mentor such as a teacher or some other knowledgeable adult” could have helped him employ such skills, preventing him from making “an uninformed, rash decision to drop out of society with total strangers” (54).

While the bulk of Bulwer’s account focuses on his years engaged in evangelistic activities overseas (including Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines), there is ample content that will interest scholars of British Columbia.  As a Baby Boomer from a working-class home in an historic lumber city, Bulwer does an excellent job of situating his memories of childhood and youth in place (Port Alberni) and time (the sixties and early seventies).  His narrative up to the age of sixteen includes many elements familiar to those that study the Baby Boom generation: playing team sports, hitchhiking, experimenting with marijuana and LSD, and listening to the Beatles.  Perhaps more importantly, for historians of religion in postwar British Columbia (especially students of new religious movements), Bulwer’s memoir fills an important void.  Other than contemporaneous news sources, little has been written concerning the evangelistic work of the Children of God in early-seventies British Columbia.  Indeed, there is no detailed historical account of the group’s takeover of Vancouver’s “Jesus People” scene in 1971.  Bulwer provides readers with an insider’s view of the Children of God’s activities in Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Victoria, and Vancouver, as well as northwestern Washington state.  Furthermore, in the final four chapters, Bulwer recounts his post-cult experiences in the 1990s and early 2000s, as a mature student in Nanaimo, and as a social activist (campaigning for drug law reform and advocating for marginalized drug users and sex workers), law student, practicing lawyer, and client of the mental health system in Vancouver.

Overall, Misguided is a compelling and convincing memoir.  It is well researched, and the author contextualizes and corroborates his account with primary and secondary sources.  Bulwer does not shy away from exploring the sect’s darker side (authoritarian leadership, sexual coercion and exploitation of members, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of children raised in the group), nor does he attempt to conclude his narrative with a contrived happy ending.  Moreover, the author’s story is a relevant cautionary tale for present-day readers.  As Bulwer argues in his conclusion, charismatic charlatans will seek to take advantage of the turmoil, uncertainty, and social upheavals of our present world.  He urges readers to beware “of blindly believing and being misled by persuasive proselytizers of all kinds” (277).  Given the disturbing global trend towards political cults of personality and authoritarian nationalism, Bulwer’s advice is very timely.