Chapter 4: The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

Continued from Chapter 3: Discord.

IBLP distributed a letter, supposedly signed by Peter Peters, pleading with American churches not to export Christian rock music. Below are some excerpts from the letter:

For thirty years we have suffered intense persecution. Now freedom is bringing another great harm to our churches. This damage is coming from Christians in America who are sending rock music and evangelists accompanied by rock bands. 

We abhor all Christian rock music coming to our country. Rock music has nothing in common with ministry or the service to God.

We were in prison for fifteen years for Christ’s sake. We were not allowed to have Christian music, but ROCK MUSIC was used as a weapon against us day and night to destroy our souls.

Now it is Christians from America who damage our souls. We do not allow this music in our church, but these “evangelists” rent big stadiums and infect teenagers and adults with their rock music. We, the leadership and congregations of the Unregistered churches urge you to join with us, and we advise you to remove rock music from America.

We call this music, “music from hell.” We urge all Americans to stop giving money for the organizations of such concerts in Russia. We only want traditional Christian music in our churches. This is the unanimous decision of all our leaders.

Peter Peters and Vasilij Ryzhuk, Unregistered Union of Churches, Moscow, Russia, April 15, 1992

I had grown up on Iron Curtain stories. Nothing motivated me like a martyr! In solidarity with the suffering of the unregistered church of the former Soviet Union, I was determined to stand against this soul-destroying music, alone if necessary.

And it was necessary, at Drivers' Ed. My parents sent me to the public high school for driver training and I was immediately on guard. I hadn't been inside a state school since second grade and I was uncomfortable in a group of my worldly peers. On campus in my long skirts and prairie dresses, I definitely stood out. Since this was my first encounter with the "unsaved" in a long while, I brought a few tracts to distribute to my classmates. And I tried to control my laughter at the jokes that seemed risque but still struck me as funny.

I had no trouble learning the highway signs and proper following distance, but a problem arose when the instructor popped in a videotape. The overhead lights were switched off and the intro music swirled through the room. In no time, my heart was racing and I was suffocating. I left my seat and walked out to the hall, warm, still, and empty on a summer morning. During the next break, I explained to the instructor that my faith in Jesus Christ did not allow me to sit through the training videos. Whenever he played one after that, I would wander the campus outside or diligently study my book. My parents were proud when I reported back on my time out in "the world". Heck, I was proud! My convictions had been tested, and I had stood firm.

A few weeks after my driver's license arrived, I boarded an Aeroflot jet to Moscow with a group of bright-faced, homeschooled kids dressed neatly in matching white and navy blue. Our parents were followers of Bill Gothard and we shared a common coded vocabulary from his seminars: "motivational gifts", "birth order", Wisdom Booklets, "clear conscience", "umbrella of authority", Wisdom Search, "courtship", and "Godly music".

Rock music was very much in vogue in the post-Soviet era of glasnost and perestroika. Eurodisco and technopop blared from kiosks everywhere, as ubiquitous as stumbling drunks and softcore porn posters, as we traversed the city making presentations in the schools. Often the schoolchildren would have cultural presentations prepared for us, as well, and we would thank them graciously. We were there to teach them good character: truthfulness and attentiveness and obedience and gratefulness, with a smattering of American history and Bible stories thrown in by way of illustration.

During my 10-week stay, I was taken to several different Russian evangelical churches. The ones our group attended used fairly traditional hymns, but one Sunday there was another American group visiting the same service. They presented a special musical performance that I found rather appalling--"Listen to the Hammer Ring!", in English. Disturbing lyrics aside, I felt uncomfortable. Was not this the sound Pastor Peters had denounced, the beat we had been trained to resist? My instinct was to flee, yet as a foreign female minor representing "the Institute" in a school building I didn't know, it hardly seemed appropriate to leave. Feeling like a caged animal, I tried to distract myself by focusing on the interpreter signing the lyrics for the deaf (pause here to savor the irony!).

Back at the ship, our floating hotel, leadership piped soothing or inspirational instrumental albums from Majesty Music over the sound system into our rooms and we felt cleansed. The closest any of the approved recordings came to syncopation was an Easter album with a choral cover of Annie Herring's "Easter Song". This very slight variation of timing lifted our spirits in the same way that Bill Gothard's arrival with a Snickers bar for each of us cheered us like Christmas. We prayed, we fasted, we had hymnsings on the upper deck, we learned to sing hymns in Russian, we rehearsed testimonies and prepared evangelistic skits and practiced Gospel piano duets, we invited teachers and students to our weekly evangelistic meetings. We were there to do spiritual battle in a formerly atheistic communist nation, after all.

We were not there to find spouses, as the leadership reminded us often. Though most of us were high school age, and we lived and worked in very close proximity to one another, dating was strictly forbidden. Dress was professional, never less than semi-casual, and girls and boys maintained a physical and emotional buffer at all times. If a boy asked us to as much as sew a button on his shirt, we were instructed to refuse and direct him to one of the married chaperones instead.

IBLP Russia Team, 1993

IBLP was officially working under the Russian Department of Education, so we were sometimes asked to participate in special events. That spring our group was "invited" to attend an inter-school performance in a crowded arts center auditorium. Even the Patriarch of Moscow was in attendance. The lights beyond the stage were dimmed and the show began. Children in colorful costumes and bright hair ribbons danced and sang and performed puppet shows. Then a teenage couple took the stage. A rock song began to throb through the auditorium and they danced--a beautiful but intense and [to me] sensual dance.

I was agitated. I looked around to see how the others in my group were responding. Some seemed as uncomfortable as I was. I thought about Pastor Peters' letter and I felt terribly, terribly guilty. I leaned over to the Russian interpreter beside me, "We did this to your country, Sveta," I whispered. "I'm so sorry." Then I began shaking in my seat, my heart was racing, a full fight-or-flight response. I felt sure I was feeling demonic oppression. How long could I resist? I left my seat and fled for the outer concourse where I found the matrons of our group trying to calm several other girls who were in similar states. Twenty years later, I realize I was simply having my first real panic attack.

I had been conditioned to fear a certain beat, and I developed a fear response. It was as simple as that.

My experience with the outside world was fraught with unseen dangers. By now, I only really felt safe within the safe bounds of ATI and those who shared my beliefs about music. It would take years, rejection by Bill Gothard, and another missionary venture to free me from the legalistic bondage.

Continued at Part 5: Cognitive Dissonance

Voiceless Women: Arda J. Rushdoony

Arda June Gent Rushdoony has become an invisible woman.

When her youngest child, Mark Rushdoony, wrote a 20-page biography to celebrate his famous father's 80th birthday, he made no mention of his mother. Not a word about the couple's marriage, their life together, or their divorce.

How does a woman vanish so completely?

* * * * * * 

Born in 1915, Arda Gent (sometimes misspelled Orda) was in Moffat, CO with her parents at the time of the 1920 census. A Lionel Albert Gent (her father's name) was buried in the Moffat cemetery that same year, at the age of 51. By the 1930 census, the young teen Arda and her mother Ida May (Hall) Gent were living in Los Angeles.

Arda Gent's yearbook photo, 1941

The trail picks up again in Spokane, WA where Miss Arda Gent was enrolled in the Presbyterian school Whitworth College (now Whitworth University) in 1939. She was active in the Volunteer Fellowship there, and in demand as a speaker.

Sunday morning the [Whitworth college] male quartet will sing at the Knox Presbyterian church. Sunday evening a gospel team from the Volunteer Fellowship will conduct the senior Christian Endeavor service. On the program will be Carl Blanford, Eugene Marshall and Arda Gent, speakers, and Ellen Menge, pianist. The theme will be "The Christian Life".
Spokane Daily Chronicle, Nov. 1940

In February, The Spokesman-Review listed Arda as an honor student near the top of her class. She was a senior that year; the Whitworth yearbook for 1941 tells us that Arda was the "proud owner of a Ford" but hated "any kind of flat tire".

"A gospel team from Whitworth College Volunteer Fellowship will conduct the Christian Endeavor service Sunday evening at Fourth Presbyterian church. Taking part in the meeting will be Miss Arda Gent and Roy Howes, speakers; Miss Marianne Dresser, soloist; Miss Eleanor Hunter, pianist; John Hook, song leader, and Sydney Eaton, violinist."  Spokane Daily Chronicle, March 8, 1941

Roy Howes was the treasurer of the Volunteer Fellowship at Whitworth in 1939. He graduated in 1942, married a member of the Whitworth women's drill team, and went on to seminary in San Francisco. Eventually, he returned to pastor Millwood Presbyterian Church in Spokane. Ten years after graduating from Whitworth, Roy was still in demand at Whitworth--as a chapel speaker, or toastmaster for the college alumni association banquet. In 1960, Whitworth awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Did sharing a platform with Roy make Arda nervous? Did she blush when their names appeared together? At what point did she plan on becoming a missionary wife--a calling held in high regard at Whitworth? When and where did she meet the philosophical idealist scholar Rousas Rushdoony?

Rushdoony had received his M.A. in 1940, then attended Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and had a ministry to Chinese Americans in San Francisco. Rousas and Arda June married in San Francisco the week before Christmas in 1943, at the beginning of the winter college recess. The following year, at 28 years old, Rousas graduated from seminary, was ordained by the Presbyterian Church, and was sent forth as missionary pastor to the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Owyhee, Nevada. Together he and Arda packed his extensive library into a truck and headed for the wilderness mission where they would live for the next eight and a half years.

Rousas found the wild beauty and the isolation of the desolate reservation just south of the Idaho border awe-inspiring. He found he enjoyed hunting and would wander off on lengthy fishing trips by himself, apparently leaving his new bride back at the parsonage ("manse", in Presbyterian parlance).  He wrote to a friend, "I love it here and would gladly remain all my days if God so wills."

Conditions were difficult, however--even primitive. Snows arrived in November and would continue for weeks without respite. Travel was impossible until spring, and even then the muddy roads were frequently impassable. Communication by telegraph and telephone was limited. The mission church was collapsing, with snow drifting through cracks in the walls. Finances were tight. As the months passed, the missionary's enthusiasm predictably cooled.

Rousas reported that the social order of the reservation was threatened by alcoholism, excessive gambling, teenage sex, marital infidelity, and rape. On a Saturday night, Arda would be out till 9:30 using her elocutionary abilities to persuade girls off the street. Then it was Rousas' turn: he would send drunken teens home or put them to bed himself, break up knife fights, and rant about the rampant lawlessness to the government superintendent. At 6 a.m., he would collapse on the day-bed, still fully dressed, for an hour's sleep before getting up to conduct the Sunday service. Rousas described his ministry there as "harsh and ruthless"; he was waging war in God's name, but he wasn't at all sure their side was winning.

Restless and impatient with the work, Rushdoony let his ambitions soar beyond the reservation. He submitted a manuscript to the University of Chicago Press for publication and dreamed of a career in academia. When his work was ultimately rejected, his disappointment was sharp. His dreams shattered, the shepherd felt lost and his letters took on a pessimistic tone. Even as he continued to preach and write, the Reverend Rousas Rushdoony was depressed.

And Arda was exhausted. How could she not be? She bore Rousas four daughters during those eight years and each was given a strong Biblical name: Rebecca, Joanna, Sharon, Martha. Did she deliver at Owyhee's little 20-bed hospital, the one built of native stone? Did Rousas hold her hand, or wait properly outside, or maybe he stayed at the manse to care for the other children? Was Arda's mother ever able to come visit her granddaughters? Was her mother still living? Could she get emotional support from the Native American mothers around her carrying their infants on cradleboards? Or were the cultural differences too vast? Did she learn to speak Paiute or Shoshone?

Owyhee must have been lonely for Arda, especially when Rousas was off traveling. He was invited to speak in New York and made the long journey from city to city by train while she stayed in Nevada waiting for spring. Did she envy his freedom? Did she remember her own popularity as a speaker? Could she still recall, between dishes and diapers and naps and runny noses and quick trips to the latrine, what she'd said at those church meetings back in Spokane? Besides their own little girls, Rousas and Arda had adopted a Native American boy, Ronald Rushdoony. The missionaries had their hands full, at home as well as serving the mission congregation.

In 1953, the Rushdoonys left Duck Valley.* Rousas took a Presbyterian pastorate in Santa Cruz, CA, a retirement town. Their three-bedroom home was adequate, but cozy, especially after Arda birthed another baby. A boy at last! They named him Mark.

Arda and R.J. separated in 1957. According to the court documents, R.J. had custody of the the six children (aged approximately three to eleven years by this time) at their home in Santa Cruz. A year later, Arda filed for divorce, custody, child support, and court costs. She charged her husband with "extreme cruelty" and inflicting "grievous mental suffering" on her. The fight must have been bitter. When the divorce was finalized in 1959, R.J. kept the house, the Plymouth, and custody of the kids. Arda was awarded $1 a month in alimony, and the freedom to be single again.

Around the same time, Reverend Rushdoony transferred his membership (from PC-USA ) to the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. The OPC has a comparatively narrow interpretation of the Biblical texts dealing with divorce, remarriage, and post-divorce ministry. Supposedly, the presbytery investigated the circumstances of R.J.'s divorce and pronounced him the blameless party (and thus still qualified for the ministry).

In May of 1962, The Presbyterian Guardian reported: "Rev. R. J. Rushdoony has resigned as pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, reportedly to devote his time to writing and lecturing." He also remarried--to Dorothy Barbara Ross Kirkwood**.

That year, the court granted Arda custody of the three older children, while R.J. kept the younger three. Both parents were forbidden to discuss, or even mention, each other in front of their offspring. Perhaps this is part of the reason Mark was silent about his mother at his father's birthday celebration.

The divorce, and its terms, certainly scarred the children deeply.

In a 1986 Chalcedon publication, Mark wrote about divorce: "The divorce problem will be solved in a society under God's law because any spouse guilty of capital crimes (adultery, homosexuality, Sabbath desecration, etc.) would be swiftly executed, thus freeing the other part to remarry..." This statement echoes his father's own advocacy for Old Testament-style capital punishment in Institutes of Biblical Law: "Divorce by death made remarriage possible, and freed the innocent partner from bondage to a guilty and unclean person."

Rousas J. Rushdoony died in 2001.

He is remembered in many ways: as the father of Christian Reconstruction, father of the home schooling movement, prolific author, controversial theologian, founder of the Chalcedon Foundation, philosophical influence on America's religious right, and more.

Arda June Gent Rushdoony died in Santa Cruz in 1977.

She is not remembered at all.





*A Wycliffe linguist named Ed Andrews arrived at Owyhee in 1953. He and his wife, Neva, were tasked with translating the New Testament into Paiute. They parked their house trailer behind the Presbyterian "manse". Did Neva get to know the Rushdoonys, or did she arrive after they'd gone?
Lester Pontius replaced Rushdoony as the Presbyterian missionary pastor at Owyhee. He and his wife Margaret had also attended Spokane's Whitworth College, graduating together in 1948. The church's outhouse was in poor repair when Lester's brother visited in 1954, so he dug a new one. He later attended Whitworth College as well.



**[Edited 8/4/13] A Dorothy Barbara Ross was born in Pennsylvania.  She and Thomas Gilbert Kirkwood, both aged 21 and residing in Pittsburgh, PA, were issued a marriage license from Brooke County, WV in August of 1932. It appears Dorothy had at least one son: Thomas Kirkwood, Jr., born in 1946 and later living in Santa Cruz.
Mr. Tom Kirkwood was an elder in Rushdoony's new Orthodox Presbyterian Santa Cruz congregation. Dorothy Rushdoony died in California in 2003 and was buried beside her husband, R.J. Rushdoony.

Reflections On My Childhood, Part III

I have been a bookworm since I learned to read at five years old. I loved Little House on the Prairie, Heidi, and Little Women, as well as history and pretty much any biography: inventors, spies, soldiers, presidents, escaped slaves, authors, businessmen, missionaries, and influential women.

I liked to play in an imaginary world of my own. In my imagination, I always went back in time. I was a pioneer, a forerunner on the prairie, an explorer, a scout sent to tame the wilderness ahead of modern civilization. Or I was blind, exploring my world through other senses. Or I was a conscientious mother to my doll baby, whom I carried on my back while performing my chores, papoose-style. What looked like my pink bicycle was actually my horse, Rosalind, stabled in our garage. Sometimes she was a bay, sometimes a chestnut.

My brothers and I, along with the two kids next door, would go mining in the sandbox. We created a miniature river, waterfall, and reservoir for our play figures to explore. We set up a tent in the backyard and cut up young cucumbers, baby carrots, and tiny onions from our mothers' gardens to make soups in little pots on our imaginary campfire. I can still taste the savory warm water and the tender onion-seasoned vegetable chunks, softening in the summer sun.

Nina was my "best friend". Our parents went to church together. When I was about seven, we joined several families for a Fourth of July picnic at her house and I got to try riding a bike without training wheels. I remember Nina's dad and another dad in the group patiently helping me balance and gently giving the bike a push down the path toward the barn, over and over.

I spent the night at Nina's house several times. We would giggle and play and stay up too late listening to cassette tapes or just reading. Her dad would come in and pray with us before we fell asleep. I remember being surprised that she prayed directly to Jesus ("put angels in my pillow") while I always prayed to God, "in Jesus' name". It was a small distinction, perhaps, but I puzzled over it.

I thought Nina's dad was terrific; he was at ease with kids and his sense of humor kept me laughing. He was a veterinarian and we once got to watch while he performed an emergency c-section on a cow. When he taught our Sunday School class, in a classroom full of desks that also served the church's private school, I repeated his puns in the car all the way home.

Homeschooled during the week, Sunday School was my place to shine. I knew all the answers and memorized Bible verses easily. When I completed one class memorization assignment, the teachers presented me with my own copy of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I showed my parents my prize, they wouldn't let me keep it. Fantasy was frowned upon in our home, as were witches--which were not considered fantastic. We returned the paperback to the local Christian bookstore and exchanged it for something safe, without witches.

When Nina came to my house, we were known to spend most of the visit swapping books and reading together. Once, I had to run down to my dad's study, where our fathers were deep in conversation, to find the book I wanted. They looked up as I slipped in and headed straight for the bookshelf. Nina's dad seemed a bit surprised when I selected Tortured For His Faith, by Haralan Popov. I was rather proud of my grown-up taste in literature.

By that time many of my favorite books were about danger and suffering, about spirit and faith in the face of terror. The villains in these stories were communists, atheists, Nazis, Russians, Romans, Germans, southern slaveholders, Catholic prelates, or animistic "uncivilized" tribesman. I learned a lot very young about torture--both physical and mental, about cruelty, about interrogation techniques. I read and reread stories of measured starvation, of brainwashing, of monotony, of forced labor, of families kept apart. I was aware of the psychological effects of isolation, overcrowding, and sleep deprivation. I devoured tales of codes, smuggling, and covert communication.

I also read of missionaries who spent years getting themselves into dangerous situations, then prayed and struggled heroically to save themselves or their families from near-death. Some, like the five New Tribes men in Bolivia in 1942 and the five men who died in Ecuador in 1956, went into the heart of the jungle never to return to their wives and small children. I read vivid accounts of men dying alone (Dave Yarwood in Bolivia in 1951) or being murdered in front of their wives and children (John Troyer in Guatemala in 1981). They were all my heroes.

David Brainerd kept a depressing diary while he tried to save the Indians, but died of tuberculosis (at 29) before he could marry his girlfriend, who followed him to the grave a few months later. William Carey left a great linguistic legacy in India, but the poor wife he dragged there after God "called" him suffered so much trauma in the process that she went mad. Adoniram Judson buried two wives and numerous children in Burma. Bill Borden died of meningitis in  Egypt at age 25, long before reaching the Muslims in China that God had called him to convert.

When we got a video player during my teen years, many of our movies weren't any more cheerful. In one of my favorites, a Japanese man threw himself under a runaway train, saving the other passengers. In the film, his fiancee took it even better than I did, glowing in the memory of his selfless love. Roman Catholics were the bad guys in BJU's gruesome "Flame in the Wind" and the Reformation histories of William Tyndale and John Hus, while other Protestants were the perpetrators in "The Radicals", cutting out Michael Sattler's tongue before burning him at the stake.

We never skipped the martyrdom scenes, though we often jumped over romantic parts of movies, especially if the women's costumes even hinted at cleavage. We even fast-forwarded through scenes in movies produced by Worldwide Pictures (Billy Graham's film production company)! Tenderness and sexuality--beyond a chaste married kiss--were repressed, but cruelty and violence were commonplace. Satan was our enemy, after all, out to destroy us. We were soldiers for Christ and had to be ready to lay down our lives for his standard.

Even at ten years old, I took my responsibilities as a missionary rather seriously. Since I didn't often leave my own yard except to go to church or the grocery store with my parents, my evangelization opportunities were few. My Grammie didn't seem terribly receptive to converting, and she didn't seem very unsaved anyway. My neighbors were all churchgoers. But their friends didn't quite look like Christians. Two girls near my age would come over (to my neighbors' house) from time to time and we would all occasionally play together. A. & A. went to gymnastics and would practice cartwheels on the lawn. Somersaults were the limit of my flexibility, but I had a greater gift: eternal life.

One afternoon when A. & A. were visiting next door, I talked to them across the fence and said I had something important to share with them. They should come to my window in an hour and I would have it ready. As luck would have it, Mom was serving dinner when the appointed time came. I slipped away from the table, opened the window, and began to earnestly try to explain to the girl outside why she should care about what I was about to give her. One of my parents came looking for me and wanted to know what was going on. Embarrassed, I handed A. a pocket-size Gospel of John, shut the window, returned to supper, and indefinitely postponed my illustrious missionary career.

Of Isolation and Community

I took the bus to Willow Hill Elementary for kindergarten and first grade. At recess my friends and I would play hopscotch, jump rope, explore, or make-believe together. Occasionally, they would invite me to their homes to play or for a birthday party. I was active in Sunday School, too. Though I was too shy to say much to them, I knew many adults at church and in my neighborhood. My parents were part of a small fellowship group and the families did lots of things together: picnics, fireworks, a hayride, swimming at the lake.

When my parents became homeschoolers, our social circle tightened. Mom was afraid the state might “take us away” if anyone reported us. One sunny morning she hauled all of us to the grocery store at what seemed like the crack of dawn to get her shopping done before “school hours”. I still played with the kids next door, but only on designated “play days”. We had the same church friends for a while, and I looked up to my Sunday School teachers, but we left our church because some people there were displeasing God. Yes, it was confusing. I rarely attended Sunday School (or youth group) after that, even when we were in churches with other kids my age. Most of my socialization now was with other homeschoolers: sledding parties, picnics, occasional field trips and converging on fields and orchards to glean free produce.

As homeschooling gained popularity, we became less concerned about being put in foster care. But then my parents joined a new group: ATIA. The Advanced Training Institute (of America) was an elite level of membership for followers of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles (formerly Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts). My parents had attended his seminars for years. Now his homeschooling program offered a way to get the loyal, loving, godly family you always wanted. Financial freedom, stronger character, better health, and fulfilling family relationships included! Plus, all the educational materials, from math to language arts, were based directly on the Bible!

  

We moved across town that summer, to a farmhouse in the country. My dad started his own business: it was different to have him working from home all day. And we embarked on the new ATI adventure. Our social circled narrowed even more from that point, consisting of church acquaintances (we changed churches every few years) and conservative homeschooling friends. We saw my grandparents twice a year at most; while skeptical of many of our religious quirks, they tried not to rock the boat or criticize my parents to us kids. There were no trusted adults in my life that didn’t defend my parents’ beliefs and lifestyle choices.

We joined a larger evangelical church and my parents were admired for their dedication. With six children now, we could really fill up a pew.  Now in my mid-teens, I longed to make friends but had little in common with my peers there. Many of their activities (movies, concerts, parties, sports, even jobs) were forbidden in my family. There were hardly any other homeschoolers.  I looked forward to ATI conferences where I could meet others my age that dressed, behaved, and thought like I did. A few became penpals and are still friends today.

Later, we moved to even more conservative churches where homeschooling was the norm.  At home, there were babies to change, toddlers to feed, and children to educate; my help was sorely needed, and often appreciated. I had a friend at church, and meeting for lunch together was a rare and special treat.  There were no boyfriends, no dates. St. Paul said we should be content with food and clothing. I had a bed and three meals a day and could earn a little spending money from my dad besides. Now in my 20’s, I tried to use my loneliness to push me closer to God. I tried to mentally prepare for a life of singleness if necessary, while yearning for a soulmate of my own.

I was 22 when I moved out of state to work (unpaid) for one of Gothard’s “ministries”. My social network was limited to other cult members (we attended only churches that had been “approved” by the leadership and shopping outings were on an as-needed basis). Chores at the center were mandatory, as was scripture memory and attendance of daily morning Bible studies. Still, I made new friends from all over the country and savored the chance to live and work with peers.

After six months of volunteering for room and board, the law dictated that the Institute put me on the payroll. With only $13 left in my checking account, I was relieved to hear this! I was a minimum-wage employee for one year, moving from the Oklahoma center to the Indianapolis compound to the “Headquarters” campus in Illinois, working in three different departments before I was summarily fired because Gothard felt my 20-year-old brother threatened his authority. My parents called me late one night to tell me that Bill Gothard wanted them to pick me up the next morning and take me home to Michigan. He didn’t tell me himself, nor did my boss. Being ignorant of life “on the outside”, I had no idea how abnormal this was, but it hurt like hell. I started packing my belongings. My dad arrived at noon, I shook hands with the man I would marry two years later, and we headed “home”.

After a year and a half of full-blown work for the cult, this trip was surreal—like going back in time. I sipped my Arby’s Jamocha shake and tried to sort out what was happening.  I felt discarded, displaced, separated from friends without a chance to say goodbye. For weeks, I cried myself to sleep. I was in a place I did not want to be, and I’d had no say in the decision. In my grief, I found comfort in stroking one of the new barn kittens; it died. My mom miscarried what would have been a 12th baby. We heard that another young man who had also been exiled from the cult had drowned on the Fourth of July. The ATI director left his wife for his secretary. The whole world was going crazy and it was taking me with it.

Over the next year, I started taking more responsibility for my own life. I had my first job interview, worked part-time, visited other church groups, began to consider college courses, and applied for short-term placement with an overseas missions organization (Wycliffe Bible Translators). I spent a summer studying linguistics at the University of North Dakota and meeting all kinds of cool people from around the world. I loved college, even the exams! Away from my parents and the cult for the first time in my life, I bought my first pair of jeans, my first pair of shorts. I went to the movie theater with friends! I had my first sip of wine, my first taste of beer. I explored different churches, and enjoyed music that had once been forbidden. I spent time with guys who intrigued me, and turned down a guy who didn’t. I played my heart out on the piano. When my parents tried to exert control over my [male] friendships from hundreds of miles away, I was conflicted. I cried, but I complied.

In the fall, I flew to the Philippines where I spent ten difficult yet glorious months learning from the best mentors I could have asked for. The Wycliffe base at Nasuli was a humming multi-cultural haven set in a natural paradise. Though I assisted the missionary-linguists in their work, mostly I was being healed. From the security of friends and coworkers who loved and accepted me, I began dissecting my past and daring to think for myself. Tentatively, then with greater confidence, I let myself question the cult. I let go of deeply-embedded fears. I allowed myself to grieve over my experience with the Institute. I saw what a respectful, caring community looked like.

Nasuli was so unlike the churches and training centers I’d been part of. Here, individuality was valued; the group drew strength from diversity of opinion and expression. Instead of pasting a smile on the surface, these men and women spoke honestly of their emotional experience, both positive and negative. Rather than demanding perfection and informing on those who failed to measure up, these people tolerated each other, quirks and all, often making excuses for a neighbor’s idiosyncrasies. And nobody ever minded having fun.

Deconversion

This Tuesday, allow me to introduce Kenneth Daniels, a former missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Ken was born in Africa to missionary parents. I could so relate to his story of praying to receive Jesus into his young heart during a frightening thunderstorm. (I prayed through every thunderstorm I experienced between the ages of about 5 and 12.) When Ken was a teenager, the movie Peace Child inspired him to prepare for missionary work himself and after years of preparation, he ended up in Niger as a linguist and Bible translator.

But Ken had lots of questions. And kept looking for the answers. He documents his struggles with the Bible's reliability in this chapter and with the whole issue of Biblical prophecy here. The account(s) of David and Goliath gave him particular difficulty. Needless to say, his wavering belief in the Bible did not make him a model member of WBT. In his marvelously honest and detailed book Why I Believed, Ken records some of his poignant prayers from that period when he still believed in God but had serious doubts about the accuracy of the Bible. 

Ken and his family returned to the U.S. so he could spend time in counseling. His faith was temporarily restored, but he ended up resigning from Wycliffe and later embracing his atheism. 

"It's so sad." This is the most common response I have heard from family, friends, and other interested believers upon learning of my loss of faith on the mission field.

I have been told that if I had embraced a slightly different brand of Christianity, I could have avoided coming down this path....

Ken's experience feels so familiar to me. I, too, wanted to believe for many years. Like Ken, I was able to sustain it for a long time. I hear "It's so sad", as well. 

But while losing faith in God is associated with some painful adjustments, the freedom to think honestly and to make choices fearlessly is an earth-shaking relief. I imagine slaves traveling north on the Underground Railroad. When they arrived on free ground, who would say to them, "It's so sad"? Indeed, they may have left loved ones behind and suffered on the journey, but the destination--a new life to be lived in freedom--was worth the price. 

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes

And it’s Testimony Tuesday again! 

I met Dan Everett and his wife Keren in 2000 at  the Summer Institute of Linguistics (University of North Dakota), when his atheism was apparently still in the closet. All the missionaries on the faculty were impressive in their own right, but Dan stands out in my memory. Besides being a serious linguist, he played a mean electric guitar for our chapel services and his stories from the Amazon betrayed a mischievous streak, plus more than a hint of admiration for the Piraha people. 

A decade later, I was surprised to encounter his name in another context. You can read about Dan’s work with the Piraha here and here. And if you are interested in linguistics theory, definitely check out his book.

In Dan’s words: 

“[Bible translation] did not work out very well from the missionary perspective. In fact, the effect was that I abandoned my own faith in the face of the Pirahas’ happiness, demand for evidence that I did not have, and their respect and warmth for me. I talk about all of this in detail in Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes.”