Dear Mr. Gothard

You would see me across the room when we arrived on Saturday night for staff dinner. You’d signal to me in a personal and private way that you wanted me to sit with you. And you always positioned me just directly across from you. You’d slide your feet out of your shoes and play footsies with me. You would use your feet to feel But rather than offering that protection, you exploited that situation. You asked me to tell you how it felt. To tell you if my body was aroused by their touches. You wanted vivid details. But you didn’t just want them once. For months, we had the same conversations. Repeatedly. Alone. No parent sitting in. No accountability for you. No protection for me.

You violated me in your own way by repeatedly demanding me to talk about those graphic sexual acts with you. You taught me that there are no “victims” in sexual abuse; only people who have un-confessed sin in their life and are now receiving their own. You taught me to feel shame for my body’s sexual responses. You held me responsible for what they’d done to me, telling me that if I did not comply with our “counseling sessions”, you would have no choice but to take my situation to the local authorities. You coerced me. ...my calves and knees and feet all the while, smiling warmly and winking at me in those fractions of a second when no one was watching.

As an adult now – and especially as a parent of daughters – I have gone through tremendous sadness for my young self that there simply was not within me the red lights that should have been flashing. Something inside of me was not right and you were the one who impeded

Seriously, try reading up on what the definition of a Christian cult is.

Are all the men being taught his behavior that have gone through that ministry because I have seen no evidence of it or even run across that type of behavior from the people I know who participated in ATIA.

I can only tell you that they were some of the most impressive and remember-able families I ever ran across home schooling and I ran across all kinds.

While he might be a complete and total idiot the people who went through his program I met were impressive.

I went to one of his seminars while I was still a student at Moody Bible Institute. I learned some useful things, but never even knew he was regarded beyond measure by anyone. I was very naive in those days.

Which is why church discipline is so important. Lots of people in church are naive and idealistic about their leadership, and the elders have a duty to protect them. Groups of any kind, including churches, tend to become defensive of their own folks, and that can lead to some very poor judgment. Better to follow the path set forth in Scripture and endure the pain of temporary chastisement, than to allow evil to fester within the church.

But church discipline is harder to apply to these parachurch organizations. The entity can run on its own, so its not really accountable to a local assembly. That’s bad. That leaves distant third parties trying to intervene in things they have little to no knowledge of, and with no personal investment in the outcome.

So of recent times I have a diminished regard for these churchless ministries. I was in a church once where a pastor fell into sexual sin. They followed the Matthew 25 protocol, dealt with it openly, and did not hesitate, though with sorrow, to defrock the young man. In a culture like that, this error of defending the indefensible becomes much more difficult, and though it carries some short term pain, is really better for everyone.

Peace,

Hey cool, go back and read what you wrote because by you definition Amish and horse and buggy Mennonites are cultist.

Seriously, I begin to wonder what the bee in your bonnet is about these people because you do not know all you think you know to begin with or even how much of some of the things you bash is voluntary.

Special knowledge(not true)

hidden scripture meaning(Not true)

restrictions on associations(not true useless you considered yourself week and easily led and then voluntary and highly encouraged(sort of sounds like commons sense to me(gee, I kind of remember teaching my sons to stay away from bad people because they might lead them into trouble, oh no, I am a cultist....ahhhh!)).

Special dress(voluntary, many ATIA families you would not know by looking at them you are in there presence)

special rules(like what?)

one special guy at the top who “can do no wrong”(gee, if these people only went to one denomination that might ring true but I knew ATIA families that went to Brethren churches all the way to Holy Roller Churches, does not sound like total control to me)

Seriously, have you ever had any contact with the wide variety of Christians that went through ATIA or Basic Training???

Granted I knew many and had access to a wide variety because I ran a home schooling network once but you have way missed the mark with your anger and lack of knowledge.

“far more prevalent” ?

I doubt it. It’s a statistical matter. Find me some real numbers and I’m betting they show the incidence of sexual sin is approximately equal across the board, denominationally. There will be a certain percentage in any population that cannot keep their lusts from, shall we say, fully materializing.

But this “who does it the most” contest I think misses the point MM was originally making, which is not about the numbers, but the excuses offered. And that’s a valid point. Any of us who are jealous for the good name of Christ and His people cannot fall into the trap of rationalizing this awful behavior by those in leadership. It is intolerable. Too many souls for whom Christ died hang in the balance. We need to get back our capacity for shame and outrage. These wolves creep in for lack of fear. They need to get their fear back.

You can lump one man’s sin on an organization when HE is it and runs it.

This is not the Branch Dividians. A man with total control over his flock teaching an corruption of the Bible.

This is a Bible course and a home schooling program where people go back to their own churches all across America and the world and live their lives and are taught weekly by their local pastors in every denomination.

Other than that, unless the Duggards or whatever they are called teaching evil or something un-Biblical, who cares how they live their Christian lives.

Seriously, I am so over some of these constant Christian bashing threads that totally miss the mark paint the whole flock of people with the sins of one man ignore years of good that has been done and are totally unChristian.

The man is a total and complete idiot in his personal life but what he wrought is the families I came across was impressive. Not for me but impressive.

Well, the Catholic church claims to be a single entity and in unity and they ignored the situation with impunity for years until the negative publicity from those who would not be coerced or intimidated into silence spoke up and took it public and FORCED the Catholic church to deal with it.

So your point is what exactly?

Well, then, you run with a different crowd because the people that I knew who were involved with ATI for homeschooling were brainwashed cultists.

They exactly fit the profile of the Duggers.

Scripture gives the qualifications for being a leader in the church and BG’s lifestyle and methods disqualify him from holding those positions.

Sure, some of the stuff he taught was right on, but that’s the way it is with every false teaching by the enemy.

No outright lie will stand, so it’s always mixed with truth and if it’s done *right*, makes it very difficult to separate.

Your objection to others broad-brushing Gothardites, fails, BTW, for two reasons.

One is that you yourself are broad-brushing people involved with his teaching in a positive light, instead of a negative one. And you are broad-brushing those who are speaking up against the wrong he committed and are exposing him

BTW, you never answered the question which was.....

“Which Protestant do you see defending pederast and homosexual Prots?”

You simply went off on a different tangent, trying to change the subject.

You can try again to answer it. It’s still there. Show me where Prots have defended any Prot leaders who engaged in immorality. And provide the link to the post(s).

28 replies into the thread, and no one is volunteering to say three words about what a “Dugger” is?

Is it like an Australian soldier, but past-tense?

I get from the context that “duggers” must be some religious sect, but how about some details? Even a sentence or two?

The problem is, many folks who are attracted to problematic groups have a tendency to be just as you describe, remarkable, exemplary, etc. The extreme regimentation of the group is what is producing all of this “wonderfulness.” I have some direct experience with cults. Not to generalize overmuch, but there is a discernible pattern. You also find this in hard sell marketing. They first discredit anything you may currently rely on for spiritual guidance. Even the Bible is not enough. You need them, and really only them. Then they love-bomb you, try to get you to think you’ve never seen so much love all in one place so this must be it, the place you and Bob Dylan and everybody else is looking for.

But then it begins. You will hear them speak of grace, but it is a fragile grace, and falls apart at the least provocation, and you not only need them to stay in good with God, but now they start to ween you away from any contact, any trust, any relationship, outside of them and the safety of their “shelter.” Then, if you let that happen, they have you, and can damage you beyond repair, apart from a miracle of true grace.

So it is an error to judge these organizations by what you see in the peripheral membership. That always looks good, by design. That’s the honey in the honey trap. Rather, look at their inner life, if you can see it. That’s where you will find the truth.

BTW, the individual I am describing here is not me, but someone I dearly love, and who, even after their escape, is still struggling with deep pain and disillusionment, years after the initial damage was done.

We sure as heck met with different types of people.

The families my sons played with were pretty awesome and from a wide variety of denominations. While the Brethren were the strictest and we had the least contact with them, the bunch being almost Amish, I never once saw them as cultish but then I do not see the Amish that way either.

A Christian Cult screws with Biblical doctrine like mormanism or jehovah witinesses or something like the Branch Dividians and teaches a corrupt version of the Bible. Separating yourself from thing or people or wearing certain clothing to keep away from temptation like the Amish or cloistered nuns and monks does not make you into a cult.

It does not reach into each denomination from Brethren to "Spirit Filled" Churches to Catholics who do not mess with the basic Biblical teachings in the Bible.

Sorry, the families I met are not members of a cult. They were people trying to raise Christians, in a variety of denominations, to stand tall in this world that is getting more evil by the day.

I will not ever paint them as a cult because the man that started Basic seminars and ATIA was weak, they and their efforts deserve better from me.

You go ahead and paint a bunch of very good people with a wide hate filled brush. I find it ridiculous and sad.

I am sorry, the people I knew went every week to very different churches getting other Biblical teaching also.

At some point human error has to be blamed for some problems.

I know I sure can not walk into my church Sunday and find very many people who have a great understanding of the Bible, let's face it after Sunday most people do not even care, and I have moved 13 times and gone to many types of denominations and I can say it about them all. I will say the one I went to for a very short time that had the largest grouping of people with a rather good Biblical understanding had the most ATIA people in it but it was also one of the smallest also, so that helps. Having 3,000 in a service sort of dumbs down the crowd and preaching.

I hate to tell you the extreme regimentation came in some, and I mean only some of their clothing but not their lives, those kids were into everything from beekeeping to national level hockey.

I think being a leader in a home schooling group it gave me a greater advantage point to see a wider variety of these families than some of you got to see or were exposed to.

Bill Gothard himself on Rhemas or special knowledge.

http://billgothard.com/teaching/rhemas

Those who hear the Gospel receive a special message from the Holy Spirit, for no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (I Corinthians 12:3). Therefore, it is appropriate for the message of salvation to be a rhema.

Bill gets lots of rhema’s. It is his specialty.

When we homeschooled, we had friends who did his homeschooling program and they fit right in with that cult mentality about how children were supposed to behave, etc. They had all the answers. Turns out one of their sons moved away from home as a young man and was living with his girlfriend and had rented a separate apartment that he claimed he was living in and his parents thought he was really living there the whole time he was living with his girlfriend. Clearly, God spared us from getting sucked into what he had to offer.

This has been bothering me all night.

I am going to leave you with something my grandmother told me when I got married.

She told me do not ever have children if you are not willing to get them to Sunday school every week.

It is not a guarantee that your children will grow up to do right or remain Christian but it gives them a greater chance if they do fall away into evil to find their way back to God because they will always know what He is expecting of them and that He loves them enough to accept them. It is much harder for the child that has never known God to understand or even find Him. So if you are not willing to take on the responsibility, do not raise children.

Tell me is the teaching at your church so great that you never have a child fall away into sin? If not why does it matter what one boys life mean to the teachings as a whole? Do you judge the teachings of your church this harshly or your family?

Sometimes I really do not understand the logic of others and maybe that is my biggest problem.

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