Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: February 19, 2023 04:10PM
A doctor I knew was into the Bill Gothard stuff. He invited me to a seminar once and I went. It is definitely fundamentalist but even attending the gatherings or reading the literature you don't necessarily get how extremist it is. Yes, this is the group the Duggars were brought up in.
Here's an article about it:
From ‘Chicago’ - June 2016
Re Bill Gothard (“Gothardism”):
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/july-2016/institute-in-basic-life-principles-hinsdale/One of the lines from a former member that is really instructive is "you never think you're in a cult when you're in a cult". Yes, that explains a lot. Many or at least some here can likely relate to that. (If you consider Mormonism a cult). Or, I favour the term 'cult-like', although I know that's a deadly insult to them. I don't mean it that way.
The article is long - here are some more excerpts (including the teaching that blue jeans are ungodly, the "whoredom" of the female wink and the wickedness of "syncopated music". And don't forget that females should be obedient).:
“Virtually all of IBLP’s [Institute in Basic Life Principles] teachings are viewed through the prism of male superiority and female obedience. In marriage, for example, the husband is the undisputed leader of the family and his word is final. Elsewhere, women defer to men in almost every circumstance, on almost every level, including in the workplace. This belief system, the lawsuit says, “considers women to primarily exist for the purposes of producing children, caring for the men, and rearing the children. Females in the patriarchal movement are discouraged from attaining higher education of any kind and are told that their sole purpose is to marry a man within the movement.”
“Strict, sometimes draconian, moral codes find purchase in virtually all fundamentalist Christian groups. In the case of IBLP, however, some of the tenets seem downright bizarre: Cabbage Patch Kids are idolatrous, syncopated music is “the antithesis of what God desires in the life of a Christian,” blue jeans are ungodly, circumcised men are morally purer than uncircumcised men. One IBLP article suggests that failing to “render to the Lord” can lead to miscarriage. Another, titled “How Are Eyelids Used for Seductive Purposes?,” rails against the “whoredom” of the female wink: Such an act by “an attractive, but immoral woman” can be used to “communicate lustful desires and sensual entrapments.”
“IBLP’s other teachings could be straight out of Footloose. Rock music, even Christian rock, is unthinkable. Dancing, of course, is out of the question. So, too, are television, movies, romance novels, and drinking. Boys are not allowed to talk to girls in the lobby of the IBLP headquarters. Dating is forbidden. Instead, a boy and girl whose fathers believe might make a good pair must follow a highly circumscribed courting ritual, every aspect of which is monitored by their parents.”
“In Frost’s case, the most disturbing incident came one night while she was riding in a car with Gothard. At one point, the lawsuit alleges, he “suddenly leaned forward and roughly grabbed almost all of her hair close to the nape of her neck in his fist and whispered through clenched teeth, ‘I love your hair.’ ”
“Says Frost: “It was just a shock to me that, like, OK, I can’t explain this away anymore. I remember being in this turmoil, wanting to talk about this with somebody, because I totally felt like he crossed a line there. But you just do not talk against God’s anointed, you know.”
“You never think you are in a cult when you are in a cult,” Micah J. Murray, who was a student in the ATI program and later worked for IBLP in the mid-2000s, wrote on his website. “We talked about how it was a cult, joking at first. … But as I spiraled closer and closer to the center, the realization began to sink in. The jokes became real.”
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The jokes became real.
Yeah. Not funny though.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2023 04:12PM by Nightingale.