John-Roger, a self-anointed spiritual adviser and preacher of human potential who founded a New Age movement that for a time achieved an aura of glamour and attracted celebrity adherents while provoking along the way accusations that he was running a cult, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 80.
The cause was pneumonia, said Mark Lurie, the treasurer and spokesman for John-Roger's church, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Its acronym, MSIA, is sometimes pronounced aloud as messiah.
The church, which was incorporated in 1971, is nondenominational, with familiar religious and New Age tenets at its core. Christ is its leading figure but in concert with some Asian traditions. It holds that the individual soul, mired in the earthly world, can be liberated with prayer and meditation and the expression of unconditional love.
John-Roger, who was known as Roger Hinkins until he adopted his hyphenated name after what he said was a near-death experience in 1963, taught meditations that were intended to help adherents reduce stress, gain confidence, banish negative thoughts and feel a connection to God.
His church attracted adherents including Arianna Huffington, the author, columnist and later founder of The Huffington Post; actresses Sally Kirkland and Leigh Taylor-Young; and Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Scandal hit in the 1980s when the Los Angeles Times and People magazine reported that disenchanted former members of the church had denounced it as cultlike and authoritarian and accused John-Roger of a variety of misdeeds, including betraying a vow of poverty, sexual misconduct and threatening apostates with physical violence. He denied the accusations, though he soon withdrew from the public eye.
A Section on 10/26/2014