Tuesday, October 12, 2010

cult or not??

Both these organizations have already been the topic of much debate over the last 30-odd years as to whether they are cults or not. Smarter minds than mine have done more thinking and research then I ever could, and have come to differing conclusions. Im not really here to take up that debate, or to try to convince you one way or another. Im just writing to share my experience - mostly as therapy for me, and also perhaps to encourages others at different points on the same journey.
Since my first post stated, “I grew up in a cult,” you already know what conclusion I eventually reached. In this post, Im going to explore a little bit more about how I got there.
I once heard a pastor define a cult as “any church with teachings different from mine.” Obviously, he was kidding, but on a functional level, that’s what a lot of people think.

I didn’t get a lot of clarity on the issue until I was in college, in World Religions class. What the professor taught there (and I don’t remember if this came from the textbook, sorry) was that there are 2 key points which distinguish a cult from a sect (a sect is really what you could call a “church with teachings different from mine.”)
1. extra-scriptural teachings
(Obviously in the case of a Christian cult, this would be extra-Biblical teachings, but there are cults in other religions too.) This can include alternate interpretations of scripture, over-emphasis on passages generally regarded as minor, or teaching that flat-out don’t come from scripture. If you’ve been in church for any time at all, you know that Christians have been disagreeing on the teachings of the Bible basically from the moment Christ disappeared in the clouds. However, there are some things thru the ages that we’ve mostly come to agree on that are necessary to be saved or to follow God - but a cult teaches there is more needed.
2. authoritarian leadership
In a cult (as opposed to a sect) the leader or group of leaders have an excessive amount of control over their followers. Often, theirs are the teachings that are emphasized in place of Scripture. Now clearly, a pastor in a healthy church has a leadership role, but in a cult, the leader oversteps the healthy boundaries and takes away the choices of families and individuals.
Sitting in that class, when the professor said that, I felt like a light bulb came on in my head. I realized that both Charity and IBLP really were cults, at least at the level which my parents had gotten our family involved.


Charity
1. extra-Biblical teaching
Unlike some historic cults, Charity did not have a book of teachings which they regarded as sacred or important. Mostly, this applies in that they elevated their (alternate) interpretations of (minor) Biblical teachings to the level of requirements for salvation. One example that comes to mind right away is the teaching of head covering. Certainly, there are and always have been churches which taught that Paul’s message in 1 Corinthians 11 was meant to be followed in all churches, rather than just addressing a cultural issue of the time. Again, Im not here to convince anyone either way. But at the very least, I think we can all agree that head covering has never been part of the core message of salvation. At Charity, tho, it was equated with salvation (at least for women. There was no comparable outward symbol for men.) As a young girl, I remember seeing my friends 1 by 1 begin to cover their heads, and we would all run to ask them, “When did you get saved?” I also remember a few times when a girl or woman would choose to stop wearing her head covering, and word would spread that she had lost her salvation (or maybe never been saved in the first place.) Some of my friends slept with their heads covered “in case Jesus came in the night.”
There was also a strict, unspoken system detailing which head coverings were acceptable. Charity women prided themselves on not wearing the mesh head coverings of their Mennonite and Amish neighbors (because the net did not cover and the cap style was not really a veil.) Also cause for suspicion were coverings that were colored, black, edged with lace, too long, too short, etc. (Basically the style worn by Denny Kenaston’s family was the standard.) My guess is, if you contacted Charity leadership and pressed the point, they would not tell you that a head covering was necessary to be saved, but they certainly practiced that way. The veil is just one example; basically their teaching was that if you did not follow their whole lifestyle, your faith and salvation was suspect. Some of the teachings did come from Scripture - altho usually an extreme minority interpretation - while others were basically cultural or from the teachings of Denny Kenaston in the “Godly Home” sermon series.
2. authoritarian leadership
The whole basis for the congregation of Charity Christian Fellowship was that if you were serious about your faith, you would uproot your family and move there to be under the teaching of Godly leaders (attendance at church plants around the country was also acceptable but regarded as not quite as good.) Once you moved there, you did what the leaders said the way they said if (more on the conformity issue in another post, but it does pop up here.) Questioning was regarded as a mark of a rebellious spirit or lack of faith. The #1 leader was obviously Denny Kenaston, followed by Mose Stoltzfus - but there was a small inner circle of “elders” that also had a lot of power.
Most of the pulpit teachings of the leaders focused on spiritual issues like prayer, Bible reading, personal growth, missions, etc. Away from the pulpit, tho, they did not hesitate to rule on every aspect of people’s lives. Telling families to move to the church (and then where they should live, where the father should work, etc) is just a large example. They went so far as to say striped shirts were ok but plaid shirts were “too worldly.” They told people when they needed to have more kids (apart from the usual, you know, all the time - because birth control was wrong), who to marry, what medical treatments to take, etc.
One of the ironies of this authoritarian/controlling leadership is that, while they preached the authority of fathers over their families, they also happily overstepped that boundary whenever it suited them. Because they believed that divorce was a sin, they mandated that remarried couples had to live apart but the fathers still had to support their children. They also removed teens from their homes at times and sent them to live with more “Godly” families. There were cases where this protected them from an abusive parent, but there were also many times when this allowed the leadership to gain more control over a teen whos parents were not following Charity teachings (and conveniently supplied the more powerful families with live-in help.)
The worst abuse of authority at Charity, tho, was the fact that the leadership believed it was up to them to determine who was genuinely saved and going to Heaven. If they did not feel someone was sincere or their life strict enough, the leaders could renounce their salvation. They would tell people, in effect, “You are not saved until you do what we say, and you will loose your salvation unless you continue to do what we say.” Again the question of if salvation can be “lost” is one for far wiser minds than mine, but at any rate, it cant be taken from you by a preacher. This practice/teaching was the single greatest source of control that Denny Kenaston and others had over the people who attended Charity - the nightmarish fear that they would loose their faith if they ever left, that there was no other way to follow God but that way.
I believe that Charity qualifies as a cult, based on both these points. People can argue over whether their teachings were extra-Biblical or just a different interpretation, but certainly they are a church with abusive authority.

IBLP
1. extra-Biblical teaching
Bill Gothard and any of his followers would tell you that all of his teachings are based on truths that God has revealed to him in Scripture. However, even among conservative evangelical students of Scripture, many of his interpretations are unorthodox, often stretching the point, and sometimes have nothing to do with Scripture at all. Many of the teachings he started with I have no problem with (even if I may disagree): large families, sexual purity, prayer and discipline, etc. As he got older, tho, his teachings got farther from the Biblical base. In his eagerness to get all there was to get out of a passage of the Bible, he sometimes started reading things into it that most people would agree were not there. For example, the difference between 2 Greek words which both meant “word”: logos and rhema. From 1 or 2 lines in a concordance, he extrapolated a teaching that bordered on magical: waiting for the Bible to “jump out of the page at you.“ When he had a “rhema”, he applied it indiscriminately to his life and the lives of those around him. Eventually, even some of his personal preferences became raised to the same level as religious teachings. For example, he told people that curly hair was “not as spiritual” as straight hair.
Some of the stranger teachings of IBLP came from Bill Gothard temporarily adopting the teaching of someone else, and promoting them enthusiastically, without bothering to thoroughly research them. Often those in his inner circle were able to quash these ideas before they got too far, but not always. He has an almost obsessive interest in alternative medicine, and sometimes advocated things that didn’t have much basis in either the Bible or science, but would present them as a “revelation from God” (examples from the last few years include drinking ion balanced water and sleeping with a box under your bed which emitted magnetic signals to revitalize you.)
Within IBLP, there was also a significant amount of what George Orwell’s 1984 called “double-speak” - words and phrases which have taken on new meanings only known to those within the group. One great example is the word “grace”, which most theologians thru the ages have defined along the lines of “Gods unmerited favor towards us.” Bill Gothard’s official definition, tho, was “the power and desire to do God’s will.” The implications of the difference in everyday Christian life are huge! IBLP churned out a huge amount of printed material each year, not only in the homeschool curriculum but also seminar teaching, devotionals, books, and writings of Bill Gothard - which made this sort of double-speak almost universal within the organization. Even now, writing about it, I have to consciously avoid the words and abbreviations I was used to using. 2. authoritarian leadership
Since I just got done detailing how people would change their diets and hair at the behest of Bill Gothard, I feel I hardly need to make this point. However, in such a large organization, there were many more people in positions of power - leaders of individual programs and those who ran “training centers” (physical locations where followers of Bill Gothard, especially young people, could gather for teaching and training.) The official rules in these places were extremely strict, and covered things like diet, dress, music and reading, contact with friends and members of the opposite gender, etc. At home, few people involved in IBLP actually followed these guidelines, altho plenty of parents threw out certain toys, books, or music based on the teaching of Bill Gothard.
The issue of whether or not IBLP is a cult is not as clear as with Charity, partly because there are so many levels to it. If you simply attended a Basic Life Principles seminar, I don’t think you joined a cult. Merely using the ATI homeschooling program doesn’t make you part of a cult. However, my parents were involved much more deeply than that. In time, they left churches because their teaching differed from that of IBLP. They recruited others to join IBLP. Eventually, they even moved into a “training center” where IBLP had a huge amount of control over their lives. At that point, Im not sure what to call it other than a cult.

7 comments:

  1. So incredibly sad! I agree that Charity is a cult based on those two points. My wife and I moved to Grangeville, Idaho for the Jubilee church. From the time we decided to (we were having marital problems and were looking for guidance) move there to the time we got there, two weeks later, the pro-Charity faction had taken-over the church and kicked out the elders we knew. So we got there and it was a different church than we moved there for!

    Mark Brubaker was now in charge, the "Moderator," (what ever that is). He was very kind in a lot of ways in helping my wife and I, but it was always with the idea that his way was the only way. I tended to ignore this until after my marriage was doing better, and by then I could not ignore it any more.

    Mark's idea of leading was to say "Brother Denny would have us do so-and-so." Often, even though there was no way to know what Denny thought on the subject (it just came up for the first time). And when I would mention that the Bible said otherwise he would just blow that off by reasserting what he thought Bro Denny would have - really just what HE wanted, but under the guise of Denny's authority.

    Charity started to "save" folks out of the Amish, Brethren and Mennonite communities, but ended up just as dead, powerless and works-based (under the laws of man) as the other sects.

    Jesus said that He would build His church, but we as men (and women) just have to mess things up with our own versions of righteousness (which are as filthy rags in God's sight), having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.

    Jesus came to set us free from this very kind of man's religion. Satan said to Jesus that he would give Him the glories of all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just bow down and worship him. Jesus declined. But when men get the chance to rule they usually go about it Satan's way of oppression, minimizing the glory of the image of God in the individual by cattle herding them all into some form of conformity, and, certainly, by denying the Headship of Christ over all men by the exalting of man into a role of control not found in the Bible.

    Again, so sad!

    Rory

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  2. I just came across this post and found it really helpful. I live in Lancaster County, PA and know people associated with Charity/Ephrata Fellowship/Ministries. I have personally seen and heard many things about these fellowships that are not good. I also know people who's lives have been destroyed by some of their teachings and leadership. I suspect many children and adults have suffered unneccesarily from these errors, and have been scarred and emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

    The world deserves to know the truth about these types of churches/fellowships/ministries, so that future generations don't fall into the same pits of confusion and despair that many of us have experienced, and become unneccesarily burdened with twisted truth. And most importantly, I want to hear how this actually took you away from the heart of God, from having a healthy, loving, and strong relationship with Jesus. If you don't know already, there is healing available: it starts with learning the basic principles of biblical interpretation, for the mind - and perhaps psychotherapy for any physical abuse that has occurred.

    If you would like to share your story, or know a friend or loved one who's story needs to be told, I would like to publish it anonymously on a upcoming website or Facebook page. You can contact me at: sharemystory@protonmail.com

    God bless, Anonymous R

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  3. Attended Charity in Leola PA.for two years early 2000's worse two years of my life.

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    1. Can you explain more? Are you still walking with God?

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  4. Thank you for sharing everyone. Granted some leaders error at times and others lift them instead of THE ONLY ONE that can SAVE. We are blessed in that, 1- the bible is true 2- it is established forever in heaven already 3- therefore work out your OWN salvation with FEAR and TRIMBLING ...

    May Yahweh give each one the faith and grace they need today and in the future to finish their own personal race.


    Warning, don't leave TRUTH because someone abused it, or changed it, or used it wrongly. The genuine fruit of the spirit is LOVE, JOY, and PEACE then comes LONG SUFFERING... the true gospel is not without suffering, pain, and going the wrong way some times and needing to repent and to truly seek after righteousness for God's name sake, not some preachers.

    Follow Christ for HE is the TRUTH, the WAY, and the LIFE...

    Blessings to each of you

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  5. Is the UPS brother with the huge family 12 kids circa 2005 still attending Leola church

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  6. Is Charity still getting converts from the Amish, Mennonites?

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