Guest Post: Memories of Knoxville

So happy to introduce a guest post from my husband! 

Chris devoted five years of his adult life,  from 1994 to 1999, to Bill Gothard's cult, working at IBLP training centers in Moscow, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, and Oak Brook, Illinois. 

We have been unpacking a lot of memories this month. This is one of many that was jarred loose. 

In 1997, I was living in a sort of lock-down facility for juvenile delinquents in Indianapolis, Indiana. I wasn't delinquent; I was supposed to be a mentor. But this was in no way a normal facility. It was an old hotel that a religious organization bought and remodeled with our slave labor. (We paid to be there!) Then they convinced some judges to assign a few young offenders to our facility. Each of these teens was paired with one of us. We lived together nearly 24/7 and we were supposed to teach them wisdom, character, etc. 

IBLP had a large home schooling program (ATI)  and every summer they had a week-long conference in Knoxville, Tennessee where families from all over the country would gather on the University of Tennessee campus to hear speakers drone on about how bad rock music was, or how great breasts were, er, I mean, breastfeeding was, or tell us how to avoid the "high places" of modern education by basically screwing over our teenagers. Apparently homeschool parents aren't supposed to educate their children about reality.

In June that year, I got to go to this conference, with the juvenile delinquents from the Indianapolis center. I really have no clue why leadership felt the need to send these kids to a conference for homeschool families, but it was what it was.

A few days before we went down we were "given the opportunity" to go out into the neighborhood around the center in inner-city Indianapolis and clean up litter in the streets and vacant lots. We worked at this for a few hours, and then we went to some church for lunch. I peed, washed my hands, and ate. Later, we loaded up the vans and drove down to Tennessee for the conference. 

On my first day in Knoxville I found out why you wash your hands before you pee if you suspect any contact with poison ivy. Because I washed my hands, they were not affected, and I had long pants and shirt sleeves on, so I had no poison ivy outbreak anywhere else--just my crotch!

We stayed in old dormitories on the university campus, without air conditioning. In the June sun, the rooms were stiflingly hot and we had to have the windows open. Outside the window, about three feet out, was a road, and on this road was constant traffic, car horns and fire trucks--big hook and ladder trucks--rumbling back and forth every fifteen minutes or so with their sirens wailing. If that wasn't enough, the car alarms in the parking garage would go off periodically.

I lay there in bed in the stifling still heat night after night,with my crotch burning and itching and the constant noise outside, just staring at the ceiling, hoping for . . . and then eventually exhaustion take over and I would startle awake an hour or two later to find everything had gone deathly quiet.

For some reason the street outside would just die sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. It was almost spooky. I'd get up and walk to the window and be amazed at how still it was. Where had everybody gone?

But then I had had just enough sleep for my brain to pay attention to the heat and the itching again. So I got to stare at the ceiling in quiet for hours drifting back to sleep only an hour or two before the sun came up and rallied us to our feet again.

The rooms were gross, by my standards. Someone had apparently come in with a power sprayer and painted white over everything, including the dust and dirt. The showers were small and moldy, and it was an unpleasant job to try to get oneself clean enough every morning to start sweating the day out in a dark suit.

One solace in all of this is that we sometimes got to eat at the cafeteria at the arena where the conferences were held. The food wasn't great, but it was cafeteria-style, so we could pick our poison.

One day I sat with a friend of mine. We got along well, but could only talk once or twice a month because our assigned delinquents were not allowed to talk to each other. So we treasured our rare moments together.

He told me once about his grandfather, who as a kid had gone out into the woods with some friends and they all cut off one of their toes, because it seemed like a cool idea at the time. That is the kind of stock some of us came from.

I remember both of us getting these ridiculously enormous strawberry-flavored milk shakes. We sat over them and talked about how many terrible chemicals must be in them, how they probably had nothing related to milk in them, how they were probably just big vats of artificial plastic something. I guess that conversation was as close as we could muster to cutting off our toes.

We spent much time walking up and down the hills of Knoxville in the sweltering heat, in suits and ties. Going to our rooms, staring at the ceiling at night, walking to meals. And then the purpose, the event, was to sit for hours in the back of a stadium watching some old man in another navy suit go on about... well, whatever. Maybe about how America was going to hell, but we were going to save it... or something.

Then one evening, some overweight blowhard was going on and on about God or something when he just fell over. He fell hard and even from the back we could hear his body hit the stage. Part of me thought maybe it was a stunt, and everyone kind of froze, but a guy that big couldn't pull off a stunt like that without hurting himself. Some guys on the front row jumped on stage to practice their CPR training on a real cadaver and the rest of us sat back kind of stunned, and hoping this meant we could leave early.

Mickey Bonner's last moments

One of the guys we had brought from Indianapolis was saying, "I knew that dude was going to have a heart attack. Did you see how his face was turning completely red and then blanching white, over and over while he was talking?" Wow, who knew this delinquent was paying so much attention to the speaker?

Eventually someone got to the podium and asked us all to kneel and pray. Everyone got up and turned around to pray at their seats. I'm sure I did, too, but I had to wonder, What do we pray for a dead man? Maybe I just prayed for my crotch to stop burning and itching so badly.

Eventually an ambulance arrived and they took the body away. He was quite dead, probably before he hit the floor. Honestly, he wasn't doing much better when he was speaking. What was the point? What was it all about? Why the hell?

So that was Knoxville '97: poison ivy, living in a noisy shit hole, while we watched people talk themselves to death on stage.

P.S. from Jeri: That night was the only time either of us have seen someone die. Something like that sticks with you. And, strangely, we were both in the auditorium that night, with no idea that we would be introduced a year later. But more on that in a post soon!

John Stancil: Scripture, Sex, Success

John Stancil--IBLP Board Member

A little history

Curtis Hutson was a mailman who started preaching revivals in his free time. When he was just 22, he preached at Forest Hills Baptist Church near Decatur, GA.  The story goes that by the end of the week the pastor had resigned and the church had called the kid mailman with no formal training to replace him. Inspired by a message by Jack Hyles, Hutson eventually quit his post office job to focus on evangelism full-time.

Hutson pastored Forest Hills for twenty years, bringing the membership to nearly 8,000. (His lack of education did not prevent Hutson from serving as president of Baptist University of America from 1974-1980!)
  
John Stancil was 14 when he "trusted Christ as his personal savior" and joined Hutson's church. Young John worked his way up from janitor to director of the bus ministry, which brought in over 2,000 attendees on a given Sunday. He also married Brenda Cannon, with whom he had three children. The couple wrote a booklet on bus ministry (Busing--the Real Bring) which was published by Sword of the Lord in 1975.

1n 1978, Dr. John Rice invited Curtis Hutson to come to Murfreesboro, TN, to help edit "Sword of the Lord". Hutson edited the publication from 1980 until his death in 1995. Hutson also tapped his friend John Stancil to join him in Murfreesboro. The Stancils moved to Tennessee where John worked as Sword of the Lord's conference director and circulation manager for several years.

Scandal

In 1988, John and Brenda Stancil divorced. Five months later, Jack Hyles himself officiated at John's marriage to Yullie (Yuok) Chong, a Korean student at Hyles-Anderson College.

According to one source:

Brenda said she later learned that "he had been seeing Miss Chong in Indiana for quite a while before his divorce became final and that he had spent Christmas of 1987 with her and her family after telling our children he would be home alone. She was in Murfreesboro on at least four occasions . . . ." All this was while the Stancils were still married.

One of those visits calls attention to an even more unfortunate and unsavory matter. Since college regulations called for Miss Chong to stay with someone else while at Murfreesboro, arrangements were made for her to visit in the home of Mrs. Doris Roberts, a Sword employee of long standing and Stancil's secretary, business manager and close confidant. Conveniently, the latter was given a plane ticket to visit her son in Florida at that time, leaving Miss Chong without proper chaperone.

A lady who went to the house to meet her and get acquainted relates, "When I got to the door, I found she and John there alone making love on the sofa." (She defined "making love" as "lying fully prostrate, clothing in disarray, with movement, stroking, kissing, and bodies touching"; she said she could not "say for certain if sexual intercourse was occurring or had occurred," a matter that seems immaterial when considering the fact Stancil was still married to another woman.) The lady watched for a while, then left and went to a friend's house nearby and asked her to return as a witness, finding "the two were still on the sofa." The lady placed her business card on the window of Stancil's Mercedes-Benz and left.

The affair made waves in the wider Independent Fundamental Baptist community. John Stancil's career as a Baptist conference speaker was over.

Buses and Music

Months after their wedding, John and Yullie Stancil took stock of their their marketable skills. 
Buses. Religious publishing and marketing. Music. 

They bought their own bus and began conducting charters for schools and churches around Murfreesboro. They called their new company Anchor Trailways & Tours. By 1995, their fleet had grown to about ten buses and they were ready for the big-time. They moved their company to the Nashville area where it has grown to a fleet of more than sixty vehicles. 

Stancil is reported to have “a doctorate in transportation” and calls himself a “stickler for detail.”  Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne Division, is Anchor Trailway’s largest account.

On the side, John Stancil also runs his own IFB publishing/evangelism company--Anchor Bible Concepts. ABC sells King James Bibles (including the Scofield Bible) and soprano Yullie Stancil's three musical recordings.  One of these albums was produced by IBLP's offshoot Principle Music in Indianapolis, with orchestration composed by Loren Elms and Tracy Ann (Collins) Biddle. The album was released in 2002. According to the IBLP website, Yullie Stancil "has a beautiful singing voice and uses it to promote Godly music." John Stancil currently serves on Bill Gothard's Board of Directors at IBLP. 

Another of Yullie's albums was produced by The Crown College of the Bible in Powell, Tennesee. John Stancil is also chairman of the board of Crown College, which was founded by Temple Baptist Church's pastor Clarence Sexton.  Sexton, a speaker at Bob Jones University's Bible conference last year, has been criticized for praising Jack Schaap, who is now serving prison time for having sex with a minor.

On a happier note

John's ex-wife Brenda Cannon Stancil became a reporter for The Examiner in Beaumont, TX. As an award-winning journalist, she writes with compassion and grace. She has championed single parents, battered women, those treated unfairly by the justice system, and others--offering them hope. After years raising her three children alone, Brenda married Ted Henley in a shipboard ceremony.

Just for fun

I am personally amused by this photo of John Stancil donating a $10,000 check and bus services to a country music charity concert.  Apparently Anchor Trailways has a close relationship with the Nashville music scene, frequently shuttling artists to shows in Muscle Shoals, AL. This despite the strong stance taken by IBLP and Stancil's conservative church against music with a backbeat!

A Snake for a Fish: My life following Gothard's principles

There has been a lot of buzz this week about Bill Gothard. This article, which I wrote for Homeschoolers Anonymous, first appeared on the HA website on December 17, 2013. 

It describes my experience as a child enrolled in Gothard's homeschooling program, as a teen participating in his cult, and as a young adult rejected by the man I'd been taught to follow.

“So I tell you, ask, and God will give to you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will open for you. Yes, everyone who asks will receive. The one who searches will find. And everyone who knocks will have the door opened. If your children ask for a fish, which of you would give them a snake instead? Or, if your children ask for an egg, would you give them a scorpion? Even though you are bad, you know how to give good things to your children.” 

Luke 11:9-13a (NCV)

*****

My parents had only been married five years when they attended their first Youth Conflicts seminar: 40 hours of lectures over six days. Living in a new city with three preschoolers but few friends, they were lonely, stressed, and probably sleep-deprived. They were eager to be “real” Christians, to differentiate from the mainstream Protestantism of their parents, to keep their marriage intact, and to raise the best family possible. They went searching for truth, and Bill Gothard and his Institute offered them an ideal, peppered with scripture references. Surely this was bread indeed!

They became avid Gothard fans, my parents. Not into sports or other strong alliances, their allegiance was to God and the Bible. Where an extreme sports fan might display the mascot or colors of their favorite team, we had an enormous sign over our garage proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” in hand-painted crimson letters on a white ground. And they were always eager to invite people to attend IBLP seminars.

It is difficult to tease apart the teachings my parents first heard from Gothard from those they picked up elsewhere.

Suffice it to say, Bill reinforced much that they had already accepted and added plenty more of his own. When they decided to enroll in the new Advanced Training Institute of America (ATIA) in 1987, I was not enthusiastic. I had had enough of Bill Gothard’s anecdotes and teachings, which Dad often reenacted with our Fisher-Price people, from his notes.

I knew Gothard was behind Dad throwing a rock through the face of our television. And making me wear dresses instead of jeans and my favorite pink shorts. And not letting us eat sausage anymore. And our sleepy pre-breakfast attempts to hunt for “nuggets of wisdom” while reading Psalms and Proverbs aloud to each other. And selling our big, new house with four bathrooms because having a mortgage was unbiblical. Instead, we moved to a rented farmhouse with its very own cattle lot and temperamental plumbing. The good things my parents wanted us to have were intangible: good character, the blessing of God, spiritual protection, true wisdom, eternal life. Everything else was worthless when compared with these.

I had already adapted to homeschooling, using workbooks we ordered from conservative religious publishers. Mom had her hands full with potty-training, breastfeeding, checking papers, feeding five kids, and teaching my little brothers to read. I was largely on my own. My subject assignments were written on cards for each day of the week, and once they were completed I had the rest of the day to do what I liked. It was far different from my two years in public school, but I didn’t mind.

Now, everything changed.

For at least an hour every morning, month after month for years, my poor mother tried to study the Sermon on the Mount with us via the Wisdom Booklets sent from ATI Headquarters. We reacted to the questions—which seemed designed to manipulate or to trip us up—and even more to the answers that made no sense. We knew the Bible well, and trusted it; this “material” coming from Gothard was something else entirely. Thus began endless debates and arguments. Mom identified personally with the ATI program and felt her authority was being challenged when we criticized Bill Gothard’s [mis]interpretation of scripture and the “educational” projects we were required to complete together: learning to judge other people based on appearances and reading sermons about what wretched sinners we were (Charles Finney), what a monster God was (Jonathan Edwards), and how puny our minds were compared to his (A.W. Tozer).

With the exception of grammar, school wasn’t a lot of fun after that.

It didn’t feel like “school”, with every aspect of my life (social life, entertainment, exposure to music & literature, transportation & shopping, academic grades, political bent, bedtime, menu & meal portions, time in the shower, chore list, sex education, and religious guidance) all in the hands of the same two people who had been entrusted with my soul by God himself. I argued with Mom a lot, and she called me a scorner and I got plenty of spankings and I blamed Bill Gothard for making all of us miserable. I hit puberty and had new questions, new interests, new desires, and new guilt. I was desperately lonely and looked forward to summer when I could spend more time with other girls my age.

After two years of protesting and challenging, I was tired of feeling like an outsider in my own home. I really did want to be on God’s side, whatever that was. My parents noticed that my resistance was crumbling. They decided it was time for me to attend my first Seminar. I sat beside my very pregnant mother and dutifully raced to fill in all the blanks in my workbook. When we closed our eyes and Gothard asked us to raise our hands for each of his Seventeen Basic Commitments, I was keenly aware of my mom’s presence. Would it be possible for her not to know if I had raised my hand or kept it in my lap?

I didn’t follow everything Gothard said—some of his euphemisms went over my head—but I made a lot of commitments. I gave God my right to have friends. And I was brought many degrees nearer to the inner circle of the Institute in Basic Life Principles cult.

I was looking for a fish, but had unknowingly grasped a snake.

Over the next two years, I was thoroughly assimilated. Pressured by guilt within and parents without, I gave up my own interests and desires and adopted the cult mentality. I accepted, until I truly believed, that my parents were God’s voice to me. I dressed in navy skirts and white blouses whenever I could (the dress code for Mr. Gothard’s staff), grew my hair according to the style Gothard recommended, and listened to cassettes from IBLP headquarters while I did my chores. I now tolerated the Wisdom Booklets, though the inconsistencies and poor writing still bothered me. And, to keep my Walkman, I even agreed to follow Gothard’s rules about avoiding rock music, though I still puzzled over how my favorite Christian tunes could be tools of Satan.

My dad led us through the "Financial Freedom" seminar, an IBLP program taught by Jim Sammons, a successful Texas real estate developer who served on Gothard's Board of Directors and was deeply involved in the ATI program. Dad also took groups to the Basic Seminar each year, and taught the "Follow-up Course" at our church to deepen the hold Gothard's principles had on our lives.

We attended several ATI conferences in Knoxville, TN—pep rallies where we dressed in navy suits despite the July heat and heard about the latest nations begging for instruction in good character. Knoxville conferences were exciting for teens because there were thousands of others who also did Wisdom Booklets and wore long dresses and had umpteen siblings and knew what their motivational gift was.

With a grueling schedule and impossible logistics, the week was an effective brainwashing tool.

There was a choir for students who wanted (or were forced) to participate, an orchestra, and special music performances on pianos, strings, handbells, and more. Families in matching clothes sang harmony together, dozens of “reversal babies” were put on display, and the ALERT team made emotional mothers cry by rappelling from the ceiling in their uniforms unfurling an enormous American flag.

One year we all clapped when a speaker announced that Clarence Thomas had been nominated to the Supreme Court. He was young and conservative, we were told, so we rejoiced. In another session, a pastor with three grown daughters (Gary Fraley) outlined a model daily breastfeeding schedule while we all took notes. A woman with no children of her own (Inge Pohl Cannon) offered a hypothetical schedule for homeschooling a brood of five. Jim Logan made us shiver with tales of his encounters with talking demons. David Barton fired rapid-fire historical quotes at us to convince us that we could take America back for God.

In the separate meetings for students (where 12- to 28 -year-olds sat segregated by gender), we listened to Gothard tell stories about his girlfriends in high school and college. We raised our hands to commit not to marry a divorced man, and to postpone dating so we could serve the Lord longer instead. Gorgeous young men and women gave “testimonies” about quitting college to come home and learn with their families, about submitting to parents and not keeping secrets from them, about getting along with their siblings, and about putting off marriage in favor of ministry. Gothard showed us film clips about England’s Civil War, warning the girls to close their eyes if the violence was too much. “Fellas, drink it in,” he said.

It wasn’t long until I was teaching Gothard’s materials myself–to children in Russia and in the United States. I memorized Bible passages by the chapter. I completed my Journal of Faith and started working on my Journal of Virtue, an introspective study of Gothard’s 49 character qualities, with examples of how I had demonstrated (or failed) each one. I read the ATI newsletters carefully and studied the photos of the girls held up as godly examples. I prayed and waited and wondered when I would be called upon to teach character to the nations, or assist government leaders with changing the world.

College was strongly discouraged as a place where youth rebelled against authority, yielded to lust, and lost their faith but I did spend a year and a half enrolled in ATI’s unaccredited and spanking new correspondence law school. The stress of three weeks at an IBLP training center landed me sick in bed for weeks with headaches that lingered for months. A few months later my mother had a postpartum mental health crisis. For a week, while studying for a state exam, I was left in charge of a house full of younger siblings so my parents could seek “counsel” from staff at an ATI training center in Indiana. Though my grades were good, I found solitary “homeschool college” to be incredibly stressful. I wearied of fighting anxiety and boredom simultaneously and eventually gave up on getting a degree.

At age twenty-two, I was finally invited to volunteer my services for IBLP.

I spent more than a year working at training centers in Oklahoma and Indiana. By the time I attained my dream and landed a job at Bill Gothard’s headquarters, I was jaded and disillusioned. Gothard was a salesman who was not strictly honest, and was a poor judge of character. He cared little about the credibility of his sources, which he rarely documented. He was quick to discharge staff who expressed alternative points of view. He overworked employees and made it difficult for them to participate in local churches. Gothard was embroiled in legal battles with partners in ministry as well as with the neighborhoods where the Institute operated. He disdained government authority, only following the rules (construction permits, building codes, employment regulations) when pressured. Employees were encouraged not to report overtime. Despite the “non-optional principles” that were supposed to ensure loving family relationships, Gothard was estranged from some of his siblings.

Gothard was controlling of his staff to the point of criticizing the hue of a female employee’s fingernails, (while coloring his own hair a noticeably unnatural shade of burgundy). Gothard surrounded himself with willowy, long-haired, very young women. Appearance mattered a lot to him. One young woman who had been invited to join the ATI staff in Russia got a fresh and cute haircut right before her trip. When she reached Chicago, she was pulled from the group and hidden away at a small campus in Indiana until her hair grew out to an acceptable length. I was appalled by her story, but she blamed herself for not considering her hairstyle more carefully.

I could look past many disheartening inconsistencies because I had been trained to believe that God himself spoke through men with power.

I was doing God’s work at IBLP, God had sent me there at last. And in spite of the overbearing rules and constant meetings and curfews and dress codes, in many ways I still had a lot more autonomy than I had ever tasted at home. So it was a blow when Gothard fired me late one night—by calling my parents hundreds of miles away instead of speaking to me, though I slept just yards from his office. Gothard found me the next day, after I’d packed up my belongings from my room and emptied my new desk. My parents wanted me to come home, he said, though they’d told me Gothard wanted me gone. I felt rejected and lied to.

Since “bitterness” was a great sin to be feared, I tried to absorb the blow and see God’s hand in it. But I cried myself to sleep for weeks afterward. It was years before my husband (whom I met while working for IBLP) and I could admit we had given years of our lives to a cult. Years of unlearning the guilt, of trying to push away the rubble of legalism to find out if our faith still survived, of accepting our humanity instead of trying to live as spiritual beings, of rejecting abuse in the name of love, of discovering that women have as much right to autonomy as do men and that children are not possessions, or extensions, of their parents.

The “Bread” we had asked for turned out to be nothing but rocks, dead weight we carried for too long. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned his followers to be “fruit inspectors”. And, more clearly as time passed, we could see that the fruit of Gothard’s teaching, even when followed with the best of intentions, was of terrible quality. Humbling as it was to realize, we had been raised in a religious cult that drew in our parents and then absorbed our youthful energy, feeding on our desires to please both God and our parents.

I no longer identify as a follower of Jesus, but I am still a fruit inspector.

*****

You will know these people by what they do. Grapes don’t come from thorn bushes, and figs don’t come from thorny weeds. In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. 

Matthew 7:16-18 (NCV)

On Feeling Betrayed, Validated, and Brave

And since your history of silence

Won’t do you any good,

Did you think it would?

Let your words be anything but empty

Why don’t you tell them the truth?

Say what you want to say

And let the words fall out

Honestly 

I want to see you be brave

Show me how big your brave is

--Sara Bareilles, "Brave"

Watching the Grammys was a last-minute decision. We'd kissed the kids goodnight but knew our congested sinuses wouldn't let us sleep yet. So we turned on the TV and I'm so glad we did!

I had never heard of Sara Bareilles--no, I really don't keep up with popular music--but I recognized Carole King right away. I sat absolutely enthralled with their amazing duet performance, only to be surpassed by their comments of mutual admiration afterward. Somehow the three minutes of interaction between those women affected me deeply. I have watched the segment again and again and replayed it in my head countless times.

Carole King's words, her music, the emotions she shared with Sara and all of us in the audience, along with Sara's passion and her song, felt like a gift with miraculous powers to repair some damage done to my heart long ago. I feel like a more complete person than I was before hearing them sing. The rest of the show was fun and amazing in its own way, but that one piece represented to me the magic of Art: sharing a gift with enriching powers of its own.

Perhaps "Brave" struck me the way it did because the last week has been so emotionally turbulent. Not in a bad way, but still...

Last week a shocking new series of revelations appeared on the Internet, exposing Bill Gothard, our cult leader of days long past, for the pathological fraud he was (and is). Reading the story as it dribbles out in serial form has been surreal. With each installment, I can picture my bedroom in Oak Brook, picture window facing Gothard's office across the driveway.

I learned while working on Gothard's staff that he was not what he appeared to be. Not what many of his followers took him for. Not who my parents thought he was. While we his brainwashed army of second-generation devotees mentally flogged ourselves for every potential breach of the cult protocol, Gothard did not adhere to his own "non-optional, universal life principles".

My husband and I each slipped away from IBLP quietly. I was sent away by Gothard in the summer of '99, Chris left on his own six months later. From that point, we set about freeing ourselves from the legalism and reprogramming our poisoned minds. We weren't aware of the poison at first, though. We were still nostalgic about our years at the Institute. It was where our relationship began, after all. We'd go back to visit friends occasionally, or just drive around the grounds reliving the good memories. Over time the locations lost their pull on us. We had dreams--sometimes nightmares--about going back to work there.

Judging Gothard's teaching by its "fruit", we concluded that many of his ideas were downright toxic. It was hard to speak out, though. So many of our friends, family members, and even new acquaintances were Gothard supporters, or had been exposed to his seminars in their youth and didn't see anything dangerous in them. We just sounded "bitter", the strongest pejorative in Gothardom.

When we felt safe we could sometimes talk about how "inconsistent" Gothard was in practice. Even this made some uncomfortable. People feel defensive when you question the authenticity of someone they trust, or trusted once upon a time. The more distance we put between ourselves and the past, the more clearly we could see that Gothard was just another manipulative cult leader. Sadly for us, he was a slick fellow who convinced our parents he had the answers.

I started this blog partly as a safe place to question the Gothard narrative and to recount my experiences and the "bad fruit" it produced. I tried to maintain an even, journalistic tone, even as I personally came to regard William Gothard as a fucking asshole, a sham and a predator hiding under a guise of exceptional holiness.

Reading the firsthand account of Gothard's former secretary over the last week, and watching others come out to corroborate her story, has been tremendously validating to me. While her tale might not seem all that offensive on the surface, it is damning when read in light of Gothard's own teaching and strict standards for others. He made generous allowances for himself, while tolerating nothing less than perfection and submission from his subordinates. He patently violated his own rules, which he marketed as the very wisdom of God. Nothing I have ever said about my former employer was as harsh as he deserves.

An IBLP seminar in Atlanta

As satisfying as it feels to be validated and to watch Gothard's house of cards collapse, it is exquisitely painful at the same time. I rejoice to see his empire fall, much as a former prisoner would applaud the demolition of the walls of his captivity. And yet, that empire was built of my blood, sweat, and tears. Thousands of us can point to pieces of our selves that we sacrificed to advance that sick man's vision. We lost much of irreplaceable value.

And that is why tears rolled down my face this week as I stood in my kitchen spreading cheese on lasagna noodles, listening to "Brave" and the rest of Sara Bareilles' album The Blessed Unrest. They were tears to memorialize the things I was encouraged to "yield" in favor of Gothard's ideal, for God's sake. These things died before drawing breath, miscarriages I never knew in an adolescence I never had: my first date, holding hands, a boyfriend, my first curious kiss in a quiet corner, even talking to male peers without feeling queasy, pulling on an old pair of jeans, experimenting with makeup, realizing I was a free adult in the eyes of the law, choosing a college major, getting a degree, a high school graduation for that matter, a prom dress, high school pictures, a wedding dance with my dad, my favorite artists in concert, feeling sexy as I became a woman, feeling the sun on my legs, getting tan lines before stretch marks, years when I could have been earning money or college credits...

And the pain of steeling myself to believe in "God's will"! Against my emotions. Against what my body was sensing. Of giving myself fortifying speeches in the corner every time I felt my heart would come out of my chest, reminding myself that my heart was deceitful and wicked and not to be trusted. The times I cried myself to sleep, or pounded out my frustration on the piano in the dining room because the rest of Christendom wouldn't see "the truth".

My friends and I made these sacrifices and others to serve our God by working for his "servant" Bill Gothard. Now, I want Gothard's empire to collapse, for the good of humanity. I am more than willing to help bring it down. At the same time, I recognize that each brick I tear out represents a child's education, a man's career, an abused child, a couple's budding relationship, all burned on the IBLP altar in the belief that God would be pleased.

But Bill was a fraud and his empire was built on lies. And we are all breaking the silence. So after I cried over my lasagna, I danced in my kitchen. Because bravery is a beautiful thing.

Jim Logan, the Stephen King of Fundamentalism

Did you know that demons can be sexually transmitted? That many Vietnam veterans' problems are caused by demons picked up from prostitutes? That a person can be "demonized" through listening to music, watching TV, or by playing Dungeons & Dragons?

Welcome to the world of Dr. James Logan, "the demon whisperer", "the Stephen King of ATI", pastor, adviser to missionaries, and conservative fundamentalist exorcist.

Jim Logan

Logan told one audience that he gets calls about house hauntings every day: "We dedicate the ground. Many people miss the ground." He tells about a missionary in Vienna, Austria who had to leave Europe because his "fourteen-year-old son got full of demons from listening to rock music". Logan claims parents in Missouri are teaching fourth and fifth graders to call up demons in the mirror and he believes government officials have demons assigned to them to influence them to oppose Christianity.

I would not know Jim Logan's name were it not for Bill Gothard. Gothard's signature teaching on the "Umbrella of Authority" taught followers that obedience and submission to the will of "authorities" (husbands, parents, employers, pastors, law enforcement officers, and government officials) would protect them from the attacks of Satan, which could not penetrate the "umbrella". Thinking for one's self or acting against the wishes of authorities was venturing beyond the safety of the umbrella and would expose one to the invisible danger of demonic influences.

But the Umbrella of Authority teaching would have had no teeth if we had not been convinced that demons were real, and scary. And that's where Jim Logan comes in.


Jim grew up in an "ungodly" home; years later his stomach still knotted at the sight of his father. Logan was drafted during the Korean War; he converted to Christianity when he was 19, through the ministry of Dawson Trotman and the Navigators. He attended Biola University, and then Biola's seminary, Talbot School of Theology. But he received his training in "deliverance" straight from Fred Dickason at Moody Bible Institute. Dickason, a professor and theologian, authored Angels: Elect and Evil and other books on demonology and "warfare".

Jim Logan spent over seven years with Child Evangelism Fellowship in Warrenton, Missouri where he served as a vice president. He also pastored at least two churches.

In 1987, Dr. Mark Bubeck founded the International Center for Biblical Counseling (ICBC International) in Sioux City, Iowa. (Read more about Bubeck's belief in demons here.) Jim Logan joined the ICBC staff in 1989 and stayed for sixteen years. Eventually, new centers were started in Indiana, Colorado, and Texas, becoming independent over time. (ICBC International has since merged with Deeper Walk Ministries to become Deeper Walk International.) Logan started his own Biblical Restoration Ministries in Sioux City in 2005. According to Logan's website, none of the counseling staff or their associates are "professional or licensed counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, medical or psychological practitioners." Logan has carried his "expertise" to numerous countries counseling missionaries, working especially with CEF, Navigators, and J.A.A.R.S.


Somewhere along the way, Logan became pals with Bill Gothard. Gothard was stuffy compared to the irrepressible Logan. Logan liked to tell how he was the last member of his family to give up television, watching his favorite shows alone in the garage after his wife and kids refused to have anything to do with it anymore. Logan like to joke and tease (behavior that would earn IBLP staff a rebuke for "folly"), and he would frequently interrupt himself with loud laughter, releasing the tension in an auditorium made anxious by tales of noises in shadowy rooms and men's voices coming out of small children.

The two men had at least one thing in common: a love of stories. Gothard soon invited Logan to speak at numerous Institute in Basic Life Principles seminars around the country, addressing homeschooling parents and pastors. Logan and Gothard frequently told each other's stories and recommended each other's teachings and materials. Logan helped Gothard write an IBLP publication (Life Purpose Journal Vol. III) that is no longer available. More recently, Logan helped lead IMI, an IBLP program developed to train young men to be pastors.

Gothard and Logan shared similar views of "iniquity", "warfare", and "ancestral spirits". A fetus conceived out of wedlock, for example, had to be prayed over to break the ancestral demons passed on by his/her conception. The brightness of the eyes were supposed to reveal an individual's spiritual state: "The eyes show me if Satan's clouding your mind" (Logan). While Gothard tended to avoid talking about demons directly, he had a lexicon of coded terminology he was comfortable with: carnality, evil, spirit of rebellion, heaviness, darkness, principalities, ground, hedge, attacks, tormentors, protection, and deception. Logan didn't beat around the bush; he was matter-of-fact about strange voices coming out Christian missionaries who had been invaded by demons.

Logan became a fixture at Gothard's ATI conferences. After listening to his tales of hallucinations, seizures, and demons being let loose in homes because of Cabbage Patch Kids or evil art objects received as white elephant gifts, or even "twin beds gotten from homosexuals", families would go home frightened. Some parents burned their children's toys, even putting dolls on barbecue grills while the kids watched in anguished terror. Parents like mine cleansed our home of Winnie-the-Pooh and all other "talking animals". Others banished Cabbage Patch dolls, My Little Ponies, clowns, superheroes. We knew our parents were dead-serious about our welfare: they were willing to make burnt offerings to keep us safe.

Despite having no credentials, Logan was frequently sought out by ATI parents at a loss to "fix" their rebellious or depressed sons and daughters, who must be affected by demonic influences. But he could be contradictory. Despite recommending Gothard's book against Christian rock music, calling it "awesome", Logan still found some Christian artists acceptable. He told one family that he listened to Amy Grant, and recommended Michael Card's "Sleep Sound in Jesus" album of lullabies at an ICBC conference, saying that the songs would keep children from having nightmares. Far more disturbing is the allegation that he failed to report claims of sexual abuse made by those he "counseled".


Gothard had been teaching his "Umbrella of Authority" for decades, when he had a new breakthrough. In 1992, Gothard introduced his Strongholds concept. He soon developed it into a fancy new package complete with diagram illustrations explaining how any sin or disobedience or "bitterness" could "give ground" to Satan in a person's soul. And if Satan had enough "ground" on this imaginary chessboard in the mind/heart, the victim would be plagued by temptations and troubles.

Notes from a lecture by Gothard, 1992

For years, Logan says, he helped people gain freedom from demons using the "direct confrontational method": he would speak to the evil spirits and command them to speak back. With the discovery of Strongholds, he could switch to a "less invasive" approach, helping people pinpoint the acts of disobedience whereby "the enemy" had been given permission to invade their inner being. By confessing and renouncing these "sins", a Christian could be "freed" from cross-dressing, anorexia, depression, "bondage" to masturbation, or any number of "torments".

In 1995, Moody Press released a book by Jim Logan entitled Reclaiming Surrendered Ground. Though written by a ghostwriter (provided by Moody), it was based on Logan's messages, with a foreword by Baptist preacher Charles Stanley. The book, along with some of Neil Anderson's writings, is still a standard resource recommended by Gothard for those who want to conquer "lust". It also received endorsements from Erwin Lutzer and Warren Wiersbe.

That same year, Dr. Kenneth Copley joined Jim Logan and Mark Bubeck to open an ICBC branch in Carmel, Indiana. In 2001, Moody published Copley's book on spiritual warfare, The Great Deceiver. Jim Logan himself wrote the foreword. Besides offering "counsel" in spiritual warfare, Copley was an instructor for teenagers in Gothard's EQUIP program at the Indianapolis Training Center. The ITC worked closely with Judge James Payne of the Marion County Juvenile Court, who sent young offenders to the ITC to be mentored by graduates of the EQUIP training.*

In one talk available on YouTube, Logan addresses a group of young people at an unspecified IBLP Training Center. Uninhibited as usual, he rambles about "helping" counselees with anorexia, who can never have "victory" as long as they have pride in their life, because God resists the proud. "If God himself is resisting you, you're doomed." Likewise with rebellion: "When I push away authorities, God will push me away," says Logan. However, Logan then turns to complaining about the food served at the training center, seeking support from his listeners who dare not express their  "rebellion" for fear of unpleasant consequences.

"If I'm nasty, it's for fun. If I didn't like you, I wouldn't be nasty... I've earned it," Logan bluntly reassures his nervous audience. One minute he is claiming that he came upon an altar where human sacrifices had been made in the woods on on the JAARS campus ("human bones, that used to have meat on them"), and minutes later he is mocking the modesty of Islamic women.

Logan seems to find Hell particularly amusing. At one point he chuckles, "Look at all the brilliant people going to hell". At another conference he breaks out in a loud belly laugh describing a small child being threatened with eternal torment in flames. Could it be that, deep down, this "good news of the Gospel" is just a joke?

The people who come to Logan may be suicidal, homicidal, depressed, or mentally ill. His office provides a data sheet where they are instructed to mark if they have hostility toward those in "deliverance work", if they gossip, if they have practiced any martial arts, and if they have desires for bestiality or premarital or lesbian sex.

While he may not come across as especially bright, Logan captivates audiences with his rambling yet spellbinding yarns of what he describes as encounters with demons.  And far from being politically correct, Logan can sound downright racist, warning against the "animism" inherent in native American, African, and Filipino culture. He has a story of demons "throwing dishes out of cupboards" because a house was built over an Indian burial ground and another of an African musical instrument causing a child to threaten a sibling with a butcher knife. The sister of the Ambassador from Togo asked Logan to come pray for her children and bless their new home. Logan says his interpreter saw Chinese spirits in the house, which had formerly housed a family from China.

Sometimes, Logan progresses from simply rambling to incoherent, weaving yarns that don't even make sense. For example:

In Indiana, they wrap an egg with yarn and put the egg in fire but the yarn doesn't burn and they bury it; "...and that group of people has the highest suicide rate of teenagers in America".

"The same spirits that stalked the Philippines walk in the Caribbean and terrorize the people on the island of Maui."

Logan claims one of his CEF missionaries, Larry, was a "self-styled Satanist" before converting and going to Indonesia. To break ties with his old life, Larry got rid of a glass pendulum he had used in Satanism, throwing it into a city dump near Seattle--but it beat him home, sitting back in its box at his house when he returned. So Larry and his family took it back in the dump and prayed that God would keep it there and this time it stayed. According to Logan, Larry still has "spooky eyes" from his previous occult involvement even though he is "clean".

These stories, and many others like them, are what I grew up on. When I ask myself how I could ever have accepted some of Gothard's most egregious "principles", I think of Logan. That's how. Because Logan claimed to have evidence that the spirit world existed, that Satan wanted to kill me, that there were real unseen dangers I needed to be kept safe from, that obeying my parents would keep strange voices from coming out of my mouth, or books from flying off my shelves. That the name of Jesus was my talisman against evil (unless God wanted me to learn a larger lesson from suffering).

My parents believed it, too. To them, Logan was just another Christian voice telling the truth, like Hal Lindsey (author of Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth) and Mel Tari (author of Like a Mighty Wind). That's why we turned the placemats upside down when we ate at a Chinese restaurant (don't read the zodiac!) and asked the waiter for almond cookies instead of fortune cookies. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary that I've owned since I was twelve, the chart of zodiac signs is scribbled out in black marker. We never took a newspaper because it would be too easy for someone to read a horoscope.

Mom chose to give birth without assistance rather than trust midwives who might be into "Eastern religions". We left church services when demonic music was played under the guise of worship. We did not acknowledge Halloween.We said a prayer for safety before each and every road trip, even we were only headed to the post office.  And Mom refused to consider using the Saxon math curriculum (popular with other homeschoolers) because she had seen "ghouls" in a word problem.

So it was huge for me to reconsider the nature of Satan. Ultimately, my faith in God required a cosmic enemy--an evil being trying to snatch my soul and longing to drag me into hell. My theism rested on a belief in a "personal" devil, and when I lost my fear of the demonic, my fear of god went tumbling after! My husband, who sat under Ken Copley's instruction for an entire week in the EQUIP program, lost a lifelong fear of the dark after finally reaching the conclusion that the "spirit world" is nothing more than a fantasy of human imagination.

Jim Logan has spent his life alternately frightening people of, and presuming to rescue people from, a phantom menace. Despite his lack of credentials, many badly hurting individuals have unfortunately been led to believe that Jim Logan's teaching could provide the help they sorely needed, and many more children and teens were further scarred in the process.






*Last year Dr. Copley's adopted daughter came forward, accusing him of sexually abusing her even while the family lived at the Training Center. Another victim has come forward accusing Copley of sexually abusing her while she was seeing him for counseling at ICBC. By the time Copley's daughter decided to seek legal action, Indiana's Department of Child Services was being run by Judge James Payne himself. Dr. Copley is currently a pastor at The Cross in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Of Beef Stroganoff and Italian Subs

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

Scene from the film "Babette's Feast"

Funny how our senses are tuned differently. While my husband is so sensitive to musical detail even his dreams can have soundtracks, my brain assigns high priority to flavor.

So many of my memories revolve around food, transporting me to times and places far away.

Sitting here in my kitchen on a cloudy afternoon, I can recall the tang of Russian black bread, of calamansi juice squeezed over sweet ripe papaya, of the Vitamin C lozenges Mom used let us suck on when we had sore throats. I can compare the tastes of three different bread recipes Mom used during my childhood. I can travel back in time to taste her favorite chocolate cake with coconut sprinkled over the icing, her homemade turkey stuffing, the broccoli casserole she used to make with blue cheese in the sauce and Ritz cracker crumbs on the top.

Mom taught herself to cook after she was married, and then she taught me. From the time we were able to crawl, we were allowed in the kitchen (there was always a drawer or cabinet the babies were allowed to play in) and she got us involved in food preparation quite early. We helped plant and weed the garden, snap the beans, husk the corn, pit cherries, and turn the handle on the food mill when Mom made gallons of applesauce or tomato sauce. Of course, she had us help with the clean-up afterward, too.

Food became part of my childhood identity.

Mom was zealous about serving her family nutritious food, so while my classmates brought sugary snacks and brightly-colored fruit leather to school, I brought a Tupperware bowl of Mom's strawberry-rhubarb sauce. She made sure even our desserts had "redeeming value" most of the time: all-natural ice cream, peanut butter cookies, peach cobbler, pumpkin pie. I eventually learned that some other children's mothers were "health nuts" and that put me at ease. There was still a place for treats: Mom enjoyed Pepsi on occasion, and pizza was a craving we were all happy to indulge. We ordered it from a place in town or made our own, with mushrooms from a can labeled "Pennsylvania Dutchman". Since my parents and I were born Pennsylvanians, I felt a kinship with the brand every time I opened a can.

But when I was seven or eight, our lives--and menu--changed dramatically.

My parents had attended Bill Gothard's Basic Seminar, but about this time they must have attended the Advanced Seminar. Mom quit wearing jeans, and got rid of all my pants. It was jumpers, dresses, and skirts for us females from then on. There were no more bathing suits, and my parents informed my grandmother that she could make the boys pajamas, but the girls needed nightgowns. Dad put a rock through the front of our television so there were no more evenings of "Little House of the Prairie".

And just like that, we developed our own Talmud.

Mom stopped wearing her prettiest cardigan vest--a lacy blue garment I loved but whose scalloped pattern was knit of cotton & ramie yarn. In those days before Google none of us were quite certain what "ramie" was, but it sounded suspicious. God had instructed Moses not to let the Israelites wear clothing of mixed fibers: the American colonists' "linsey-woolsey" was a direct violation of God's Law. Cotton and polyester, we decided, was not a problem since polyester wasn't actually a fiber but a petroleum product.

Leviticus prohibited hybrid animals (mules, for example) and planting two kinds of seed in the same field. So Mom stopped buying tangelos. Oranges, yes; tangerines, yes. But not tangelos. I remember trying to reconcile my confusion over the Burpee catalog, which was bursting with hybrids.

Genesis said God gave us "every seed-bearing plant" for food. Well, what of mushrooms then? They may be sold in the produce aisle, but seed-bearing plants they are not. No more little Pennsylvania Dutchman cans. No more of Mom's favorite omelettes at the best breakfast place in town. No more steaming cream of mushroom soup with a winter lunch. No more of Mom's rich and creamy beef stroganoff. How I missed them all.

The stroganoff was out on two counts--because it also mixed meat with milk, which was banned under one strict interpretation of an obscure rule repeated three times in the Torah. Mom adapted her meatloaf recipe accordingly, omitting the mushrooms and substituting water for the milk. For a while, her caution against fungi extended to blue cheese, resulting in the demise of her flavorful and creamy broccoli casserole. (I rebelliously continued to choose blue cheese dressing at salad bars and to argue that the yeast that made our bread rise was essentially another fungus.)

And then there were the unclean meats. Seafood wasn't a big deal for us--living so far from the coasts, we weren't used to crab cakes, shrimp, or lobster. But our German ancestors loved sausage. It was a sacrifice to lose bacon with pancakes, ham sandwiches, Mom's baked orange pork chops, and pepperoni pizza*--not to mention hot dogs!

Thus began a new era in our family history. Eating out became an exercise in selection by elimination. If six of out of eight entree choices contained pork, shrimp, or mushrooms, and one had something else you hated, you knew what you were ordering. When we were invited to other people's homes, which became a rarer event the larger the family became, Dad was sure to mention to them that we followed certain dietary restrictions. Church folks volunteering to bring us meals after Mom had another baby got the same information (resulting in three variations of chicken and potato salad in one week).

There were exceptions, of course. When our new neighbors invited us across the street for hot dogs the day we moved in, Mom was glad enough not to cook and we were permitted to receive with thanksgiving what was set before us, without inquiries as to the ingredients. When we were visiting family out-of-state and a sweet elderly relation baked a ham, there was a whispered discussion behind the scenes. Dad told us that it would be okay for us to eat it. Seeing that she had prepared it out of generosity and ignorance, it would be gracious of us not to turn it down. I stepped up to that table in her blue dining room with mouth watering, endeavoring to mask my anticipation. It was the last ham I would taste for over a decade.

Our hot dogs were all-beef. (Soy weiners were nasty.) We cheered when turkey pepperoni hit the market, and when we could serve turkey bacon planks as a salty side to a breakfast of waffles. By then our parents had relaxed on combining meat and dairy, so we could enjoy cheeseburgers again, and browned hamburger on our pizza. We found the stores that sold beef sausage links and became adept at rapidly scanning labels for offensive ingredients. Jiffy cornbread mix and some refried beans contained lard, which was "unclean". Mom once came home with frozen Salisbury steaks. When I found them in the freezer, I dutifully read her the ingredients. When she realized they contained pork, she threw the boxes in the garbage in exasperation.

When Dad accompanied me to San Francisco where I sat for a law exam in 1996 (required for students of Gothard's unaccredited correspondence law school), we were served breakfast sandwiches aboard the jet. I remember being annoyed that the diced ham was cooked into the egg, so it was nearly impossible to separate the two. I would have happily eaten the sandwich all together, but dared not appear to do so with my dad watching from the seat next to me. I remember looking sideways at him to see how he would handle the awkward situation, but I think he felt the same way. Sightseeing later on Pier 39 in the Fisherman's Wharf district, we carefully avoided the clam chowder that smelled so delicious in sourdough bread bowls. Shellfish, having neither fins nor scales, are an abomination, no matter how beguilingly disguised.

Ironically, the only times I was served pork during that long period was when I was volunteering for IBLP and they ordered pizza for the staff! (IBLP training center kitchens did not ordinarily serve pork products.)

I knew from my own reading of the New Testament that I had never shared my parents' interpretation of the Old Testament code. When I left home for the first time at age 22, I lost no time shedding the "standard" I had resented for so many years. My first day as an IBLP staff member was spent traveling from Chicago to Oklahoma City. When we stopped for lunch at a Subway, I ordered the Italian sub, chock full of forbidden salami, pepperoni, and ham. Two years later, I savored every morsel of the first real breakfast bacon I'd tasted since childhood. Each first made an impression: crab Rangoon, New Orleans shrimp, Maryland crab cakes, scallops in a pasta dish, calamari, lechon, pulled pork, BBQ ribs.

When I tell my kids about the way I grew up, they are aghast. They know religious kids in their classes who are vegetarian, or don't eat pork, or don't get candy at Halloween. But it always jars them to imagine their mother swimming in a dress, or kept from eating bacon, because of what an ancient scroll said that God told an old man on a mountain in a middle eastern desert.




*The famed Duggar family--equally zealous followers of Gothard--also stay away from pork. One episode of their "Nineteen Kids & Counting" showed them visiting a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. and enjoying pepperoni pizza. Curious viewers looked up the pizzeria's website and discovered that Jumbo Pizza uses all-beef pepperoni.

Spanking

Do not withhold correction from a child,
For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.
You shall beat him with a rod,
And deliver his soul from hell.

Proverbs 23:13-14

The problem, of course, is that children do die.

One Christian minister includes a disclaimer with his sermon on discipline: "Of course, you must not be too severe. It’s possible to beat a child to death." But even if their bodies survive, their spirits are wounded and something beautiful and trusting inside their hearts has died.

In recent weeks and months, numerous bloggers have discussed the abusive child training methods advocated by Michael Pearl. Below are just three examples of adult children reflecting on the way spanking was utilized in their homes.

Samantha, from her post "Raised to be a Monster":

What is so frightening about these teachings is that they blur the line so badly. They’re insidious, because to parents who have absolutely no desire to harm their children, these teachings, on the surface, seem alright. There seems to be cautious admonishments for parents to have discernment– all the while telling them that if you do not drive rebellion out of their heart you are damning their very soul.... Parents are sucked into viewing their child as the enemy– you are in a constant, never-ending battle for the fate of your child’s soul, and you cannot give up.  

Rochelle, in "When Love Means Hitting":

“I spank you because I love you” is the same thing as “I hit you because I love you.”

Saying this gives children confusing messages about what’s ok and what’s not ok. In fact, more than just abusing the child by hitting them, spanking tells the child that they are worthless and sets them up to more vulnerable to being in abusive situations their whole life, because they don’t know boundaries of abuse.

Quick Silver Queen, writing at The Eighth and Final Square: 

You know, the verse in Proverbs that says foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of correction will drive it from him. And the verse that the heart is wicked and who can know it. So the first problem is, they don’t come to parenting with the view that these are people. They come to parenting with the view that these are wicked little sinners who need a radical change, whose thoughts and feelings and opinions and likes and dislikes don’t matter because it is all selfish willfulness.

My parents were taught about spanking as their Christian duty very early in their parenting when someone gave them the pamphlet "Children, Fun or Frenzy?", written by Al and Pat Fabrizio in the late 1960's and still a standard of parenting guidance in many Christian circles.

My obedience to God to train my child requires that every time I ask him to do something, either "come here," "don't touch," "hush," "put that down" - or whatever it is, I must see that he obeys. When I have said it once in a normal tone, if he does not obey immediately, I must take up the switch and spank him enough to hurt so he will not want it repeated. Love demands this.

It wasn't long before we all knew the biblical arguments for spanking. "I'm doing this because I love you", my dad would say earnestly as he pulled out his belt or a wooden spoon. After all, "He who spares the rod hates his son..." (Prov. 13:24) and "whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives."

"For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons." (Hebrews 12:7-8)

When Dad spanked us, the session usually ended with prayer. Spanking was a common subject of conversation when we got together with other homeschooling families. Out of earshot of our parents, we would compare experiences and swap tricks for getting more leniency. At our house, Mom spanked harder, and longer. She thought not crying was a sign of resistance and pride. But screaming at the top of our lungs didn't seem to lessen the spanking's severity.

Some years later the whole family sat through a series of evening lectures at the local Mennonite church listening to Ray Wenger describe how a godly family should look. His own family was a shining example, singing in harmony together in matching dresses. Afterward, my parents got copies of the lectures on cassette. I listened to them when I was bored while doing the family ironing.

In his message on discipline, Wenger gives very specific guidance for hitting children who "resist the parent's will". As soon as an infant can understand words like "no" or "stop", he says, they are old enough to spank. If they are uncooperative at diapering time, for example, "They're very exposed--give them a good crack where it counts."

Wenger believes the rod should be a parent's first resort. (He recommends a 3/8" wood dowel from the hardware store as a "symbol of authority".) “It needs to be severe enough to be worthwhile. The child needs to learn that the way of the transgressor is hard," urges Wenger.

According to Wenger, "Time out" takes too long and requires a busy parent to monitor the child the whole time. Spanking, on the other hand, is quick and simple. And because the technique is in the wrist, a wife "can spank just as effectively" as her husband: "Your wife can learn to do that with great gusto," Wenger assures the Christian dads in his audience. Quoting the Old Testament, Wenger repeats his formula: the rod, combined with reproof, gives wisdom. Withholding the rod deprives the child of this wisdom.

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child;
but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. (Prov. 22:15)

Another voice for spanking was the late Denny Kenaston, founder of the Charity Fellowships. Another ATI family gave my parents a collection of Kenaston's sermons, in which he advocates "The Holy Art of Spanking our Children", and "The Rod of Love".

Kenaston's version of spanking is both creepy and utterly theatrical. "Bring the Bible along with the rod", he says, and then recommends the parent start crying with the child before the spanking begins. The parent is to calmly assure the child that the parent is not angry with them, but that the spanking is directed by God: "Open up your heart to this spanking and say, 'I'm going to get everything I can out of this spanking!' Then, "maybe let them have a little prayer... after that, it's time for the spanking." Kenaston does not permit any wiggling or kicking. The child is to put his/her head into a pillow or into the couch cushions and take the spanking quietly. Not one swat or two, but a "thorough spanking": "Spank them till you sense in your heart that the work is done....the work is in the heart."

Kenaston's last step involves the parent kneeling beside the child, weeping, putting an arm around the child, and praying. "Maybe sing a song with them... Tell them, 'You are my dear son, you please me in so many ways, you bring so much joy to my life'... Isn't that how God spanks us?" Kenaston's widow Jackie is now a part of Michael and Debi Pearl's speaking "ministry".

Debi Pearl & Jackie Kenaston

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and his brother Steve released a parenting study in 2006. The workbook stated, "Our children are sinners", and went on to quote an 1888 book by John Charles Ryle:

Parents, determine to make your children obey you--though it may cost you much trouble--and cost them many tears! 

They also quoted the more popular Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child's Heart:

The rod underscores the importance of obeying God.

And John MacArthur's Successful Christian Parenting:

Short, stinging strokes to the backside... should be painful enough to make the consequences of disobedience sufficiently distasteful and unforgettable.

Larry Tomczak, who helped co-found Sovereign Grace Ministries, is another well-known advocate of spanking. In 1982, he published a book disturbingly titled: God, the Rod, and Your Child's Bod.

Sounding like an echo of Bill Gothard, Tomczak explains, "The primary goal in loving correction is to produce godly character..." Tomczak stands by his parenting advice today, despite being named a defendant in a lawsuit alleging decades of abuse, and continues to sell his book The Little Handbook of Loving Correction.


"Were your parents abusive?" my counselor asked.

I didn't know what to say.

For decades, I accepted the answers given. They didn't want to do this; spanking us was what God required. My parents were showing me how to obey by being obedient to him. Like Abraham, they were also showing God how much they loved and trusted him.

Yes, it involved hitting us and causing us physical and emotional pain. Yes, it left bruises that they didn't want others to see. Yes, we closed the windows before spankings so neighbors wouldn't be concerned. Yes, spankings went on and on until a child's will broken. Yes, many meals were interrupted and the rest of us suffered from indigestion. Yes, we stopped alongside the road on trips and the rest of us had to get out of the van so the offending child could be spanked in private. Yes, we kept a wooden spoon by the changing table, and one in the diaper bag, and one in the car. Did I grow up in a abusive home?

In my mid-teens, I gave my first spanking. I had been left in charge, and my toddler brother defied my authority. Having studied Gothard's material on taming lions in a Wisdom Booklet, I quite calmly followed the instructions I'd been taught. I'd seen it done so many times, it felt natural. My sweet and precocious little brother was surprised, and never caused a bit of trouble for me again. The hierarchy had been established.

When I had children, my husband and I discussed spanking. We set limits for ourselves, to keep from repeating anything so drastic as my childhood experiences. But as time went on and we recovered from old wounds, any kind of spanking became increasingly distasteful. We doubted its morality as well as its efficacy, and sought out other approaches to parenting that better suited both our goals and our values.

I regret spanking my children. I regret being harsh or violent with them when there is more than enough harshness and violence in the world. I regret thinking they were born broken sinners I needed to fix.

I am glad my kids still love to cuddle with me now, glad they are learning that inflicting pain is never a valid way to control another person, glad they protest bullying and injustice--no matter who's doing it. I'm glad they are patient as we navigate this adventure of parenthood that is more an education for us than it is for them.

Because of getting to know my children and glimpsing life through their eyes, I am a more compassionate human being.




Related posts:

The Mask of Modesty

Not on Your Side, Debi

13:24

Violence Against Children

Children, Fun or Frenzy

Reflections on my Childhood, Part II