The Process Church of the Final Judgment: Mary Ann MacLean & Robert De Grimston

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by tpksstories

by tpksstories

Mary Ann MacLean (November 20, 1931 - November 14, 2005) was a co-founder of The Process Church of the Final Judgment.

Early life

MacLean, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, grew up under poor conditions with a single mother who often left her daughter with relatives.

Career

In the early 1960s, MacLean moved to the United States where she lived an immersive life with the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. After one year, she returned to the UK and London, working as a call girl after getting involved in a prostitution-ring scandal, and then joining the Church of Scientology. Among Scientologists, she met Robert Moor, later renamed by MacLean as Robert DeGrimston. They married in 1964, created their version of auditing (Scientology) called Compulsion Analysis. The next year they introduced the cult, The Process Church of The Final Judgment, to a small group of friends and like-minded people. DeGrimston named himself "The Teacher" and MacLean "The Oracle" in the cult that slowly grew in the numbers. MacLean took care of the ideology as well as the strategy, while DeGrimston's face became the trademark of the business activity.

In 1974, MacLean overpowered her husband by excluding him from his own church. Robert DeGrimston disappeared into the United States while Mary Ann MacLean tried to further develop a cult organization, relocating the group to Arizona and renaming it The Foundation - Church of the Millennium. The church group relocated in 1984, with animals they had at their Arizona ranch, to a property it purchased in Kanab, Utah. Then, in 1991, The Process Church of The Final Judgment was dissolved and the church renamed Best Friends Animal Society, on the group's Kanab, Utah, property. MacLean continued to engage, with a low profile, in spiritual and political life in Utah. In 2005, MacLean died, and the management of her charity was left to her second husband, Gabriel De Peyer, a former Foundation Faith of God Church member and co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society.

Robert de Grimston (also known as "The Teacher," and Robert Moor) (born August 10, 1935) was a founder of The Process Church of The Final Judgment (popularly referred to as The Process) in the 1960s. He was born in Shanghai, China.

Created in partnership with Mary Ann MacLean ("The Oracle") (born 20 November 1931, Glasgow, Scotland, died 14 November 2005), they met while they were members of the Church of Scientology in London. The Process held that God is made of four separate parts equally worthy of worship -- Jehovah, Christ, Lucifer and Satan --- and that a person must worship all four in succession to gain enlightenment. Their newsletter was in vogue during the era of flower power and featured articles about the Rolling Stones, Charles Manson and the like.

While de Grimston is remembered as "The Christ of Carnaby St." and as the head of the Process Church, some scholars believe that, "far from being the uncontested leader of The Process, Robert de Grimston was but the mouthpiece of Mary Ann. [Robert was] the (not-so) charismatic facade, behind whom the real leader of The Process [Mary Ann] could act, detached and isolated from the majority of members."

Robert and Mary Ann divorced in 1974, at which point Mary Ann and several original members of the group continued as the Foundation Church of the Millennium, which later became Best Friends Animal Society.