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"Allen Tate Wood, grandson of Poet Allen Tate and novelist Caroline Gordon, has written an absorbing account of his four-and-a-half years as a member of one of the most controversial of the new religious movements, the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon." Thus Ronald Enroth began his review of Wood's Moonstruck: A Memoir of My Life in a Cult that appeared in the June 1980 issue of NewOxford Review (Enroth is a Professor of Sociology at Westmont Collegeand an authority on contemporary cults.) Wood, who served as highest member of the political arm of the Unification Church in the U.S., describes its behind-the-scenes political influence and psychic/occult preoccupations. According to Enroth, "The book concludes with a too brief discussion of the author's gradual drift toward severing all ties with the Moonies. Wood was 'deprogrammed' by reading C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength. According to Wood, "the book struck a deep emotional chord. . . . the spell was utterly and finally lifted from my shoulders. . . . When I finished the book I knew I was out of the Moonies." |
