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arthurbdd's review
1.0
Despite having written one of the earliest studies of the Process Church, Bainbridge opts here not to produce a follow-up to that (despite the emergence of ex-members willing to tell their stories potentially providing much fodder for study) but instead writes a dull novel about his personal philosophy and uses the Process Church connection to give it a little extra zing. Trash. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/a-feral-process/
ghoulnextdoor's review
2.0
I recall first hearing about the Process Church of the Final Judgement, or The Process Church, when I became aware of the music of Sabbath Assembly, who, at their inception, formed to play the hymns of the Process Church (they have since moved on to write and perform their own, original music.)
An “Apocalyptic religious sect in the 1960s”, The Process Church, from what I can glean, was a movement started by two former Scientologists who ascribed to the theory that people were divided into four types based on the four god forces (Jehovans, Satanists, Luciferians, and Christ, the unifier.) Each was an extreme, and the idea was to discover which path suited you and to follow it whole-heartedly. The Process Church appealed to the tensions of the time, and the mystical communalism of the cult “...drew in refugees from suburban lawns”.
William Sims Bainbridge’s Revival: Resurrecting the Process Church of the Final Judgement is a fictional account revolving around the main character, Robert Anson, perhaps the dorkiest character that has ever been committed to paper in the history of the world, discovering that a dear old friend has been murdered. When his friend’s uploaded AI is delivered to him at his office in the form of four mysterious metal canisters, what follows is a fictional restoration of the controversial group when Anson realizes that his dead pal was actually some sort of Process Church guru, and in attempting to get to the bottom of things, he begins to investigate the Church along with his sort of ex-girlfriend Cora and their equally dorky sociologist friends.
This is such a strange, sincere little book which incorporates its facts in never-ending explanatory asides, and tosses around its ideas in the form of stilted academic road trip discussions and cumbersome conversations over late night Chinese food delivery (this book spends a weird amount of time on food and menus.)
Almost everyone in this little group of investigators seems to be on the spectrum of severe social awkwardness and the dialogue begins to become beyond cringe-worthy the further along you read. And hey, I’m no social superstar, so I am pretty sure I know these things when I see them. However, it did answer a lot of questions that I had about the Process Church and its beliefs, along with providing me a template of how to never act at dinner parties if I don’t want to be outed as an insufferable bore, so the book was not entirely without value.
An “Apocalyptic religious sect in the 1960s”, The Process Church, from what I can glean, was a movement started by two former Scientologists who ascribed to the theory that people were divided into four types based on the four god forces (Jehovans, Satanists, Luciferians, and Christ, the unifier.) Each was an extreme, and the idea was to discover which path suited you and to follow it whole-heartedly. The Process Church appealed to the tensions of the time, and the mystical communalism of the cult “...drew in refugees from suburban lawns”.
William Sims Bainbridge’s Revival: Resurrecting the Process Church of the Final Judgement is a fictional account revolving around the main character, Robert Anson, perhaps the dorkiest character that has ever been committed to paper in the history of the world, discovering that a dear old friend has been murdered. When his friend’s uploaded AI is delivered to him at his office in the form of four mysterious metal canisters, what follows is a fictional restoration of the controversial group when Anson realizes that his dead pal was actually some sort of Process Church guru, and in attempting to get to the bottom of things, he begins to investigate the Church along with his sort of ex-girlfriend Cora and their equally dorky sociologist friends.
This is such a strange, sincere little book which incorporates its facts in never-ending explanatory asides, and tosses around its ideas in the form of stilted academic road trip discussions and cumbersome conversations over late night Chinese food delivery (this book spends a weird amount of time on food and menus.)
Almost everyone in this little group of investigators seems to be on the spectrum of severe social awkwardness and the dialogue begins to become beyond cringe-worthy the further along you read. And hey, I’m no social superstar, so I am pretty sure I know these things when I see them. However, it did answer a lot of questions that I had about the Process Church and its beliefs, along with providing me a template of how to never act at dinner parties if I don’t want to be outed as an insufferable bore, so the book was not entirely without value.
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