It is customary to say that the church has no name.

Early church members in Northern Ireland had excommunicated* Mr. Irvine. They'd stopped speaking with him — and then they stopped speaking about him.

Down a few short generations this organization had entirely lost knowledge of its history — at least officially. In other words, if anybody who was living while I was growing up knew about the real origin of The Truth,* they did not talk about it. Fear. The loss of salvation. Hell — eternal damnation, they call it; unhappiness without end. There's no description for this kind of fear, which is not unique to myself nor to my particular religious education.

"Wecome to the club, grew up in same faith left and have survived long enough to become a grandfather so there is hope for you" — from my guestbook april 2008

In 1993, my brother introduced me to a book that was circulating within members and aquaintances of The Truth. This book — entitled "Has the Truth Set You Free?" — was crap. Its notable feature was the bibliography — pointing almost exclusively to one other book.

This other book, "The Secret Sect," (Doug and Helen Parker, 1982, Sydney, Macarthur Press) seemed objective. It was the most credible explanation for the existence of the religion in which I was raised. And, in my mind, "most credible" is the best.

The details in that book are not as important as the book's existence. The importance of its details is that they illustrate, with journalistic protocol, the essential fact that my childhood religion is not originally and eternally right, exclusive and inescapable. The importance of learning of the history of "The Truth" is in learning that the church has a history. That history had been lost — shunned and forgotten. It was only my generation, in adulthood, that regained any such information.

At 29 years old, with this knowledge, I began to feel differently about my long failure to attend the meetings. The guilt began to decrease.

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