Tag: Drinking the Koolaid

Cult of Personality – Adventures in Recovery

May 7, 2012

by Calulu

A few weeks ago I took my daughter out for an celebratory lunch at her favorite Greek restaurant. She’s gotten acceptance letters from all of the colleges she’s applied to plus we really needed to touch base, take a time out together from the busy of our lives. Over sovlaki and hummus she started talking about what she would say to our former pastor Patrick if she ran into him again. She had run into him an few months ago and had been so surprised she’d just hurriedly muttered out pleasantries before leaving him as rapidly as a man with his pants on fire would run for the lawn sprinklers.

I had to ask her what she would say to Patrick if they were face to face. She blurted out something like “F**k you, motherf**ker and thanks for ruining my f**king childhood!” before laughing. We both laughed imaging the faces of those sycophants and hanger on-ers Patrick was always surrounded by if she let the F word fly.

That’s one big marker of a cult-like unhealthy church atmosphere, if everyone treats the pastor as if he is either the world’s most famous rockstar or the big toe of Jesus touching down on the earth to be adored. We saw that, participated in the pastor-pleasing behaviors too, perhaps not to the depth that many did but we did it as a family. It’s dangerous business for the most part. When everyone is busy kissing the rear end of the pastor or bowing down to his every whim and word it starts to look like a one man show with no real room for the Lord or anyone else. Plus the pastor starts to think he’s in control or assumes control. It also breeds unhealthy competition among the members all vying for the attention and favor of the pastor.

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Sex Confessions and the Single Fundy: Adventures in Recovery

April 25, 2012

by Calulu

(or be careful who you tell your secrets to..)

Bless me Father for I have sinned… told you I’d been raised Catholic. One of the big rituals from my days in Catholic school was the time of confession. At first I found it frightening, going into that big wooden closet-like structure, sitting down with only a metal grill separating you from a priest. You usually couldn’t make out exactly which Father was hearing your confession.

It was always awkward, trying to scare up a list of all the bad stuff you’d done that week. I was a shy bookish young girl and nervously squirmed in the confessional trying to come up with my wrong doings, only to sometimes whisper out stuff I didn’t even do just to have something to say. I’d blurt out that I’d thrown a rock at a bird or told a lie because I just froze, my brain going into some sort of crazy lock up. The priest would tell me something like it was important to recognize your wrong doings, that the Lord forgave us, give me a simple penitence such as saying the Rosary a number of times before dismissing me with the words to go and sin no more.

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Emotional Incest Part 3: Daddy’s Girl

April 19, 2012

by Libby Anne

[Editors' note: At the time of writing, Libby Anne and Sierra were unaware of the controversy surrounding Hugo Schwyzer. The discussion of his critique of emotional incest is not an endorsement of Schwyzer by NLQ.]

In Part 1 I looked at the definition of emotional incest and in Part 2 I looked at how integral emotional incest is to Christian Patriarchy, but in this segment I want to look at how easy it can be for even ordinary families to be sucked into (admittedly, less intense) patterns of emotional incest.

I recently came upon an article called “Princesses, Princes, Daughters, and Dads: Against Emotional Incest.” The author explains his own experiences as the father of a young daughter and the measures he plans to take to ensure that he does not fall into the trap of emotional incest. It was such a good article that I’m going to quote from it at length and then finish with some discussion.

Becoming a parent for the first time in one’s forties has myriad advantages, not least that one has had the opportunity to watch a great many of one’s peers “do it all first.” And I’ve seen, a time or nine, an unhealthy triangulation occur with dads, moms, and their daughters. While the dangers of physical incest and abuse are real, there’s a kind of emotionally incestuous dynamic I’ve witnessed between fathers and daughters, one in which dads seek from their daughters the validation and affirmation that they feel they are entitled to, but are not receiving from their wives.

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Cereal Killers – Adventures in Recovery

April 14, 2012

by Calulu

Sometimes you really have to measure just how far you’ve come on your journey out of harmful theology. It’s another part of your recovery, looking at how you handled a situation and then thinking back upon how this would have played out in your days of yore. Measure the difference and see where you instinctively line up now.

This week brought another opportunity to do just that. We have ants.

Here in the Virginia Piedmont it’s Spring. Glorious Spring. Beautiful Spring. Yards filled with gracefully blooming daffodils and crocus, shoots of emerald green grass emerging from the red clay earth. Birds singing, trees leafing out, all that jazz. Spring here also means ants, lots and lots of ants if you live in a rural area and haven’t sprayed recently. I always say I know it’s really Spring and we’ll not have any more hard freezes when the ants emerge.

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Thirtyone – Adventures in Recovery

March 25, 2012

by Calulu

I was driving around the other day running a few errands and when I got back to my car I caught the tail end of a some random preacher speaking about the proper role of women in The Kingdom on local Christian radio. I didn’t catch his name or the name of his ministry or sponsor but his message was loud and clear and made my blood boil. Bulls eye. Trigger hit. Buttons pushed.

He started off speaking on the subject of what his ten year old daughter wanted to be when she grew up. She’s crazy for gymnastics and he asked her that question about the future we all contemplate, what did she want to be when she grew up. Her answer to that question was that she would be a gymnastics teacher as an adult.

I had to wonder how she’s come to limiting her own scope as an adult at that young age. I thought it was rather sad that his daughter said she was going to grow up to teach gymnastics instead of saying she dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast or of winning this or that gym meet. She simply wanted to teach her passion. She didn’t dare expand her dreams to include anything like actually being in competition as a gymnast. Her own goals were limited in scope to start with.

It was pretty obvious she wasn’t going to receive the same type of nurturing or encouragement the average ‘worldly’ or ‘atheist’ parent might give their offspring. Her passion and talent would never receive the type of acknowledgment and respect it might elsewhere. It’s hard to develop to the best of your talent without the emotional support of those closest to you. I suspect that is why this child could not see any further than teaching one day.

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An Introduction to Paul

March 20, 2012

By Paul

Vyckie Garrison has asked me to write an introductory post concerning my blog, paulspassingthoughts.com, and the timing is perfect. After researching New Calvinism for five years now, I have recently discovered a relationship between New Calvinism and Patriarchy groups. This is a very significant development.

New Calvinism shapes most of the Christian landscape in our day. It came out of the Progressive Adventist movement in 1970. The base doctrine is the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us. It teaches that all truth is outside of us and encapsulated in the gospel. By understanding Christ and his works in a deeper and deeper way, we manifest one of two realms, Spirit or flesh. New Calvinists attest to what some call the total depravity of the saints.

The project that launched the movement was known as the Australian Forum and their theological journal was Present Truth Magazine. The magazine is no longer published, but at one time was the most widely circulated theological journal in the world. The Forum participants, primarily Robert Brinsmead, Geoffrey Paxton, and Graeme Goldsworthy believed they had rediscovered the lost gospel of the Reformation.

The movement is characterized by exclusiveness (what they call their “scandalous gospel”), a Crusades like motivation (new Reformation), and heavy handed leadership style. These are basic characteristics that result in the tsunami of spiritual abuse that is indicative of New Calvinism. In fact, the list of potential warning signs for spiritual abuse as posted by the Take Heart Project hit close to home for those who know New Calvinism:

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Debunking the Fourteen Basic Needs of a Marriage: Part 1b – Women? Goals? Who Are YOU Kidding!

March 18, 2012

By Incongruous Circumspection

In Part 1a, we witnessed Bill Gothard call a woman who does not obey her husband in everything, never questioning any decision he makes, a “fool”. He based this epithet on a woman while referencing Ephesians 5:22 – 24. Of course, I uncovered the fact that Bill was flat out lying. That passage says nothing of the sort.

Let’s continue discussing Gothard’s first Basic Need of a Husband ([A man needs a wife that is loyal and supportive]).

Gothard continues to expound on the above basic need by stating the following:

[Realize that your husband’s perspective is different than yours.]

Wow. Bill is really smart. Put two or more people together and you have differences. But let’s not give him any credit. That’s not what he means. Patriarchy (the religious philosophy that Bill Gothard bases all his materials on) and the Authority Doctrine (P/AD) requires distinct differences in men and women in order to prove that women need a man to rule them.

[A man’s goals often involve long-range achievement. Therefore, a man is willing to sacrifice short-term convenience in order to meet an important long-term goal. However, a wife’s perspective usually centers on short-term goals associated with her responsibilities in the family and home. During times of pressure, a wife should keep the “big picture” in mind. Accept difficult situations from God without giving Him a deadline to remove them]

While reading the above, did anyone think about sex? I would posit that most men have short term goals in mind when it comes to rolling around between the sheets. Well, of course, he probably wants to last a while, but that can still hardly be called “long term”. But Bill protects himself from this argument because he cleverly uses the words “often” and “usually” when referring to a man’s “goals” and a woman’s “perspective”.

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Debunking the Fourteen Basic Needs of a Marriage: Part 1a

March 11, 2012

by Incongruous Circumspection

In the Introduction, we looked into the general idea that Bill Gothard is trying to get across in this series. He attempts to list seven basic needs of a husband and seven, also, of the wife. We discuss the flaw in this logic, which is, Bill treats life as if all men and women are exactly the same. Worse yet, Bill positions this series, as well as all of his “truth” in all of his materials, as the non-optional, unquestioned, standard for finding favor with God.

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