Does anybody here know what happened to Allan McNaught
on, a contributor at MRR?
I stumbled upon his blog by the links at MRR's website. He stopped updating it abruptly in April 2011. He seemed to abandon punk/MRR in favor of this new cult/movement he was 'leading'.
Children Of July (MRR # 335 - April 2011)
You might have noticed it?s been a couple of months since I contributed a column to this magazine. I?ve been doing a lot of soul-searching and have discovered a few truths about myself that I think I?d been avoiding, to the point that I debated whether or not I should really continue writing this column; whether or not I really have a place here. But I?ve discussed it with Layla and Mariam, and they?ve assured me that MRR is a place for diverse views and opinions, and that they welcome all sorts of opinions.
I?ve mentioned in this column before that I grew up in a Protestant household, and I went to church regularly as a child. I was a member of an after-school Bible study group called Scripture Union, and have read the Good Book cover to cover. In fact, even as I grew disillusioned with organized religion as a teenager (primarily due to the ugliness of religious sectarianism in the west of Scotland) I still have always turned to the Bible for support during difficult times. As I became a punk rocker and involved in the class struggle I soon learned to keep this part of my life a secret, as religion was extremely unpopular amongst the punks, but I consoled myself with the realization that who was Jesus, if not the first punk?
Okay, so you may expect him to simply have been 'born again'. Nope.
More recently, I have branched out; towards the latter half of 2010 I was having something of a crisis of spirituality. A lot of evil is said and done in the name of Christianity. I had a hard time reconciling the Jesus I thought I knew with so many of the acts done in his name. In something of a tailspin, I reached out desperately for solace. First, I studied the Torah and the Koran. Then, I attended introductions to Zen Buddhism and practiced yoga. I read the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred text followed by the Hare Krishnas. I devoured books on Rastafarianism. With each chapter, with each class, I was slowly realizing something that, deep down, I knew all along: at their core, all religions share pretty similar tenets, but each has seen their message distorted along the way to serve the needs of some human leader. Religion is not the problem: hierarchy, leadership, human frailty. The scales had fallen from my eyes.
My calling, then, seems to be to create a world religion that distills the natural goodness from the existing religions, but which has no hierarchy, no difference between the oldest sage and the freshest acolyte. Since the beginning of the year I have been holding daily prayer meetings with similarly-minded people I have met here in San Francisco: disillusioned Christians, alienated Muslims, angst-ridden Buddhists, and assorted soup-kitchen celebrities. We have been sharing ideas, thoughts, and fears. Fear is probably our biggest enemy, but the very depth of our fear tells us we have stumbled upon something righteous and holy. Something essential: something that will finally change the world for the better. We call our group The Children Of July, for reasons that will become clear later.
Anyone with any experience of working in cooperatives will tell you how difficult it is to run any kind of organization without a hierarchy. For the purposes of keeping things moving efficiently, the group unanimously voted to appoint myself as temporary ?coordinator?, or de facto leader. Everyone involved has accepted my assurance that I will step down as soon as we feel we have a sufficiently strong grassroots organization.
The reasons I was chosen so unanimously are somewhat important to the story of the genesis of the Children of July. While the group started with around twenty members, the less committed among us fell away as the pressures of daily prayer meetings became too demanding; eventually we were left with a hard core of seven members. As I learned about the world?s major religions, I discovered that the number seven is significant not just in the Bible, where it appears many times over (Seven days of creation, seven days of famine, seven spirits of God mentioned in Revelation, the seven deadly sins, etc) but also in Hinduism (seven Chakras), Islam (e.g, seven levels of heaven and hell) and Judaism (the seven branches of the Menorah to give but one example). This felt especially significant to me, as I was born on the seventh day in the seventh month (July). In fact, I was born in 1970, so I turned seven years old on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year 1977. Therefore, the number seven has always carried a little extra weight for me.
The more I read the holy scriptures of the world?s religions, the more I realized why: I was put on Earth to unite the people of the world under one umbrella of peace and love. I say that not as any kind of religious guru: I am just a regular guy. I?m not the second coming of anything. But I feel this as my calling and I can no longer fight the urge to share this with as many people as possible, starting with you, the readers of Maximumrocknroll. I hope that over the coming months I can use my column to disseminate some of the findings that come out of our regular prayer meetings, and to encourage readers to form their own chapters of the Children Of July.
This makes me sad. Does anybody know what happened with the Children of July, or Allan? It sounds like a bit of numerology, spiritual guru, and the rants of a man in desperate need of medication or therapy. I hope I don't sound overly judgmental, but I hope Allan no longer adheres to this 'movement'.
It also strikes me as similar to some of the rants I've seen from meth addicts. They start seeing patterns in things that aren't there, and acting impulsively based on nonsense. To be honest, I hope somebody here 'knows' it's meth-related, as at least that has a more viable cure/treatment (stop using).
A google search reveals that he wrote again for MRR in 2015. No mention of his movement, that I could see. Then he vanished again.
I just wonder if he's okay.
I don't know Allan, nor am I even a long-time reader of his. I was just trawling the MRR links for more shit to download, and I stumbled down this rabbit hole. I sent an email to MRR asking if he's okay a week ago, but so far have not gotten a reply.
For posterity, there is more about his cult at that post from April 2011. It goes over his 'five core tenants' (not seven?). It's mostly harmless, and an amalgamation of various world religions. 'Syncretic', I think is the term?
Does anybody here have any information?
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