Apologies in advance if this is long, but you asked about my family’s involvement with the Universal Humanitarian Church and how I came to leave etc, so here it is.
My mother joined the UHC when I was 3 and my sisters were 6 and 8. It’s important to say that my mother – I was raised to call her Louise, because the UHC forbids naming blood relationships – isn’t stupid. She grew up poor and never got the chance to go to university or anything, but she’s bright. She married my dad really young but he left the family when I was 1. I remember Louise being very pretty when she was younger.
I don’t know when she first heard Jonathan Wace speak, but I know she fell in love with him. Loads of the women in the UHC are crazy about him. Anyway, she packed up our council house and took us off to Chapman Farm. (I’ve had to piece all this together from stuff my sisters told me later, because I’ve got no memory of our life before the UHC.)
After that, we had nowhere to go other than UHC accommodation. This is really common. People sink everything into the church, as proof of their commitment to their new lives. Some members even sell their houses and give all the money to the church.
Chapman Farm is where the UHC was founded. The five prophets are buried there and because it’s in deep countryside as opposed to a city, it tends to be where members are sent for re-indoctrination if they need it. There are other centres and my older sister Becca spent three years at the one in Birmingham (she’s quite high up in the church now), and Emily was allowed to go out collecting money, but Louise and I never left the farm.
The UHC teaches that normal family relationships or monogamous sexual relationships are a form of materialist possession. If you’re a good person, you’re spirit-bonded to everyone inside the church and you love them all just the same. Louise tried to stick to that once we were inside, but the three of us always knew she was our real mother. Most of the kids’ education consisted of reading UHC tracts and memorising them, but Louise taught me, Becca and Emily things like our times tables on the sly, while we were cleaning out the chickens.
