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The Good Girl: Atarah’s Story

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

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HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Atarah” is a pseudonym.

Black strapped shoes, white stockings, pleated navy skirt, peter pan collared white blouse, brown pig tails, a splash of freckles, and wide, eager eyes completed my look. I was a mini version of the apprenticeship students. I was gonna be just like them someday.

After all, I was a good girl.

My parents counted the days till they would be allowed to join the program. Their excitement was palpable, and I still remember it, as a four year old. As a child you are unaware of how your parent’s decisions affect you. You just go with it. You trust, and you know nothing else. Thus begins my journey through Gothardism that spanned over 20 years.

I don’t know how much detail to give. You know the logistics — I won’t bore you with our family’s particular brand. But we were ATI through and through. I don’t say this lightly, but my parents worshipped (and still do) Gothard.  My early years were grounded in his principles, and my formative years saturated with his teachings.

I really was a good girl. My impressions of my childhood were that I was an easy child to parent, as I was obedient to a fault.  I remember having anxiety over wanting to obey every rule perfectly.  I rarely got in trouble, and unlike many ATI survivors, wasn’t often spanked. (As I remember it.)  I developed this identity as being obedient and perfect and never questioning authority.  In fact, I backed authority.  Vehemently.  This made me my parent’s favorite, and an enemy of sorts to my poor younger siblings, who were not in the least so perfectly inclined.

As I grew into young adulthood, this good girl image brought with it an oversensitive conscience and hyper spirituality. No surprise there.  I actually thought it was a good thing.  I thought I was on track.  Meanwhile, I never felt satisfied with myself or my spiritual walk.  How can you, when nothing less than perfect is acceptable?

I remember I first questioned the whole Gothard thing at about age 21. It was very mild, very gentle, but in utter desperation to fix our falling-apart-family, I timidly asked my parents:

If we believed all these things, why weren’t they helping us? Why weren’t our lives matching up?

That was the first time I questioned Gothard in the slightest, but it wasn’t the last.  Over the years as I watched my family sink deeper into dysfunction, as I experienced pain in my own life, and as I grew a little courage, I would start to turn over these things in my mind.  Even if I was afraid to speak much about it, I was thinking.  It was a necessary process.  The time came when I did find courage to bring my concerns (albeit largely unformed) to my parents, but they were always dismissed.

After all, Gothard is never wrong.

When I say my parents idolize Gothard, it is hard for me to write about that.  They didn’t hang framed pictures of him around the house or say blatantly that he was always right, or that his teachings were as good as the Bible.  Those things were unsaid.  The absence of these things almost makes it worse, because it was so hard to see through.  Perhaps this is why it took me so many years to see the light.  To me this shows even now, what a web of deceit was spun in our home.  How manipulative the whole thing was. Gothard manipulated my parents, then my parents manipulated me and my siblings.

I was the brain-washed good girl.

In no way will I, or have I ever, blamed Gothard or ATI entirely for my family’s dysfunction.

There were and are issues that no doubt would have been there regardless.  But without question the teachings of Gothard and the ATI way of life (after all, it dictated our whole lives) were an over-arching realm of control.  Gothard’s teachings had alot to do in making my parents the kind of parents they were.  Whatever problems lay with them, Gothard’s program exascerbated to the breaking point. I do blame Gothard for his part.  I do blame my parents for their part.  I blame my parents for letting him in, and never questioning it.

To write personally about this now, isn’t easy for me.

It makes me think about things that are buried deep in my psyche. And the scary thing about that is, Gothard’s way was so inscribed in my thinking, that it may take a lifetime, to unearth every single lie, to overturn every corrupt stone.  When I was married in my mid to late 20s, I was finally set free to think for myself. Almost immediately the detox began.   It is hard to separate my family’s issues and problems from the Gothard/ATI problem.  Because they are so entertwined.  But healing from my past meant facing the truth about Gothard and his teachings.  Don Venoit’s book was a huge help to me in breaking free.  Also the book Boundaries.

The biggest healing I found was in thinking, writing, and verbalizing.  I was able to pick up the story of my past, piece by piece, and evaluate it in the light of truth.  The freedom came, and it was wonderful.

I remember the day I said those turning-point words to my dad.  

I had been married about two years, and in some ways still needed to “cut those strings.”  We were having a huge conflict, that spanned many topics, but Gothard of course came up.  I told him one last time how I felt.  Or at least a little of how I felt.

And then I said it.

I said “I don’t believe Gothard is a godly man.”

My reasons for saying that are many.  Take your pick.  (Twisting scripture, manipulating thousands, the deceit, the many allegations of inappropriate behavior with young women and abuse in his training centers. ) But saying that, actually saying that to my dad, was a turning point.  I have no regrets. I can only hope that one day Gothard will be exposed for the true person he is in such an undeniable way that even my parents will be able to see the truth about him.  They will be the last to believe it, I promise you.

I am sad to say that as of a month ago, Bill Gothard knows me by name. When I was told he asked about me, I almost shivered.  I was horrified.  I have no idea why he should remember me after all these years or why he even knew me by name in the first place. It’s been many years since I saw him last.  I make no bones about it, I have no respect for him.  He is a deceitful old man, who is responsible for his manipulation, lies, and the many homes and lives wrecked by his corrupt power.

As I have moved beyond my ATI past, one of the biggest changes that came in my thinking was in regards to this “good girl” identity.

I’ve finally come to realize I don’t have to be the good girl.  I’m just me.  I don’t have to be perfect, I don’t have to always have it together.  It’s ok to make mistakes. I remember many, many times while I was still at home, my father speaking angrily to me, pointing his finger and glaring with dark eyes “You’re prideful.  You’re full of pride.” My spirit shriveled up within me.  I would beg him to understand I wasn’t trying to be prideful, I really wasn’t.  I was just trying to be the person he always expected me to be: Perfect.  My identity was The Good Girl , and I felt trapped.  Here I was trying to please him, but in my struggles I still failed to be good enough, and I was the recipient of his anger.

So realizing in my late 20s that I didn’t have to be The Good Girl anymore, well, that was revolutionary!

I’m still on a journey.  I haven’t arrived, I don’t have everything all sorted out. But I’m on that journey. I’m moving from The Good Girl who has to be perfect to just being me.  I am loved, I am valuable, I am unique, I am accepted, I am beautiful.  Simple statements that were once Greek to me.

I share my story (and this is only a small part of it!) because I think it is good for me to write about my experiences.  But I also want to share because I want to be a help to the other Good Girls out there.  If you’re reading this, and you can relate to my story, know that you are not alone.

Know that you can change, and you can move beyond your past to be a new person. 

Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story, Part Two

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Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Selena” is a pseudonym.

*****

Trigger warnings: threatening and emotionally abusive situations.

*****

< Part One

Part Two: Imprisonment

Soon, my mother was determined to fix me.

By this point my label as the rebellious child might as well have been tattooed to my forehead. My efforts to find some safety had backfired in the worst possible way. Now my father was gone, but I was still considered the little demon child. My mother placed me into heavy counselling, and even took me all the way to Indianapolis to see a particular counselor who was pretty deep into ‘spiritual warfare’. For days and days he performed multiple exorcisms, interrogations, and vigilant attempts to hunt down every demon he was sure resided in my soul. I went home feeling empty and ashamed. During this time almost every last bit of my personal possessions were burned, considered tainted by Satan’s influence upon me.

I had almost nothing but my clothing and basic school supplies left.

Time passed. We moved away, found a new church alongside one of the ATI directors, and what few friends had been hand-picked for us in our old town were just a distant memory now. Here in a quiet neighborhood in a tiny little town, we had nobody but ourselves. In an attempt to find us some ATI friends and reconnect a bit with her own past, my mother began talking with an old friend she knew in her high school days. He had fallen on hard times and she felt bad for him, and started trying to help. Once a week he’d visit us, we’d all watch a movie, have dinner, and chitchat. These weekly visits went on for close to a year. During that time it became clear, at least to my sister and I, that this guy was very, very creepy. A few veiled advances on both of us, and eventually, we called our mother into the living room one night and told her that he was “very scary” and begged her not to let him visit anymore in a formal, ATI-approved appeal. We never told her the truth, that he was behaving very inappropriately toward us.

The incidents were too close to home for me. I started spiraling into depression, and became suicidal. I started questioning everything; why were we putting ourselves through this hell on earth? What if we were wrong? My mother was horrified; I no longer accepted “because God says so” as an answer. I started asking too many questions, wanting to really understand why we lived this way; things I had never really questioned all these years. She made a call to the family coordinator, explaining that her daughter was “out of control” – and was put in touch with the LIT program.

I don’t feel very comfortable going into too much detail, as this time period is one of the more difficult for me to cope with. I will simply say that I was put into the LIT program, held captive for two years against my will, and systematically tortured and brainwashed. I realize “tortured” is a very strong word, but I feel it is appropriate – leaders were expected to carry out extreme punishments to brainwash their “students”, and those who did not were demoted or ejected. It was a calculated effort and there were many terrible things that happened there, to myself and others like me. I was permitted no contact with my family for the first few months; all correspondence was monitored heavily, my mail filtered coming in and going out. I was to send glowing reports of the program every week, and nothing more. I was never to speak with her on the phone unless watched closely. I was never, ever going home for a visit until they thought I was “ready” – until I was brainwashed enough to not beg to stay home or speak of what happened.

I was frequently starved, dehydrated, sleep deprived, humiliated, sick, neglected, interrogated, and working grueling hours every day on top of being swamped in ATI and ATI-endorsed materials 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Punishments came on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day, and sometimes long-lasting, cruel and unusual punishments. I lost over 40 pounds in just a month and became pale, sickly, malnourished and perpetually mute. Several times I stole food out of severe hunger, only to be punished again. I was placed into solitary confinement for two and a half weeks just for singing in the car. Sometimes I was ordered never to speak, for weeks or even a month solid or more – to never speak unless spoken to, or to ask “May I please ask a question?” or “May I please speak, Ma’am?” I was given tasks designed to fail, punished when I failed, and then humiliated further. It was a nonstop effort to break me down, and even after I was broken down, they would never stop.

When in desperation I tried to escape through a tiny window and run away from the compound, my leader just laughed and said, “Where are you going to go?” I attempted another time and was threatened by the director who stated that he had a shotgun and that if I tried this again, it “might be open season” for me. That was one of the turning points. I began to realize the horror of the situation – I was a prisoner. I was outnumbered, outmuscled, and the director had a gun he was not afraid to use. They told me they were registered with the state, in good standing with the cops, and the police would gladly bring me back to their doorstep if ever I managed to escape. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nobody to help me.

I was terrified for my life every single day.

So, two years of this went by. I became what they wanted me to be, at first just to survive, and then I got lost in it. The pale vacant smiling face became everything I was. I sang the songs, worked tirelessly, and bent over backwards for my leaders. Eventually, I was praised as a success. I was even promoted, here and there – the photogenic face, so happy to be here, doing so well.

I started being invited on strange exclusive trips to other training centers. We called ourselves the Cavalry – we were called in to lend extra hands in the places that were short staffed. A call would come in, the best of the best of us were gathered together; we’d swoop in, work tirelessly and silently, and suddenly disappear. Many times the staff at the other training centers didn’t even seem to know who we were; with tired smiles, those in charge would greet us, usher us to our rooms, direct us, and ask few questions.

It was through this that I was able to see some aspects of ATI that still shock me to this day. I was never told what we were doing; it was a simple order to pack up and head out. I rarely knew what we were working for, exactly. It wasn’t our job to know, just work. It was God’s work, after all. That being said, what I witnessed is very difficult for me to comprehend. I just had such a terrible feeling. Something was wrong.

Again, I’m going to gloss over a few things, because I don’t feel safe going into too much detail. We spent time in the North Woods training center, I believe during Gothard’s yearly trip up there to plan for the next year’s events and programs. He was always talking about this time – the time when God gave him new messages, scriptures, teachings that he would later proudly announce to us all. Unlike the image I had in my head of a lone cabin and Gothard quietly meditating, it was more like a business meeting among Gothard and a lot of people I didn’t recognize. We were invited to a lot of the meetings, and I didn’t like the way we were looked at. For once, we weren’t told to work – it almost felt like we were like furniture accessories, just to be there and look pretty. Some of us were told to give our testimony, but it was very uncomfortable.

Then out of nowhere, a boy was brought to the lodge. He just appeared one day, Gothard announcing the boy’s exciting “discipleship opportunity” while hugging the frightened boy up against his side. I had a sinking sick feeling in my stomach. The boy was by Gothard’s side for days on end, utterly silent and looking afraid. Gothard spoke for him. He never said a word. Eventually, Gothard was going to take the boy on a trip – I wish I could remember where. We all accompanied Gothard, in this little entourage, to a small landing strip. He ushered the boy, still glued to his side, into a small, brightly-colored airplane. And they took off, to the cheers and appluads of everyone.

I never saw the boy again.

On another strange trip across the country, we found ourselves in the Deep South, working in an abandoned building. It was a wreck – short, tattered carpets covered in drywall dust, room after empty room in disrepair. We weren’t here to build, they said. Just clean the place, spotlessly, and never speak to anyone who speaks to us. We were prepped for days beforehand, reminded again and again that this was very important, rehearsing the rules. No speaking to strangers, you are God’s servants, this is an important work, Bill Gothard will be there but is not to be bothered. So we worked ourselves sick (quite literally).

One day as I vacuumed a hallway in the harried, obsessively tedious manner I had grown accustomed to – I spotted a policeman sitting at the end of the hall. He watched me intently, curious. I must have been a strange sight – this little girl in an ankle-length khaki skirt and uniform-like polo, keeping her head down. He struck up a conversation and I nervously kept my head down, replying with as short an answer as I could manage, smiling and afraid: “Yessir. No sir. Yessir.” He squinted at me, curious. “Well,” he said finally, “You girls’re doing a great job. Thanks for your help.” He gave me a keychain in the shape of a police car – one of those things they pass out in schools, I guess – with the name of the police department on it. And he went on his way. As silly as it may sound, the genuine kindness this officer showed had a profound effect on me. I still sometimes wonder what went through his mind, and whether he suspected something was very wrong.

When all of our cleaning work was finally done, we still had more to do. We put on our best clothing, and started work hosting a banquet for the grand opening. We worked tirelessly throughout the event, never eating that day except for mere bites of food amid the flurry of activity. That night we stood aside as a ceremony was held. The entire police department, city officials, and more were all gathered. Bill Gothard spoke about how glad he was for this opportunity, and hinted at a bright future working with this police department and more. The city officials and chief of police thanked him for his support, in turn, joking about how cramped their former office had been. Hands were shaken, toasts were made. We were ushered quietly to our bedrooms for a few precious hours of sleep before we disappeared in the morning, off to another training center.

I have held onto the keychain all these years, to remind myself what I witnessed.

It’s one of the hardest things for me to wrap my head around.

Eventually, my prison sentence came to an end. I was sent home, praised as a success story, a great turnaround for Jesus. I had done God’s work, diligently, humbly, as they say. They even threw me a farewell party.

I returned home to a changed family. My mother had dyed her hair, bought a new car, and started finding a little bit of liberty from ATI’s rigorous standards. She was even wearing pants regularly now, and seemed so much happier. She and my sister were the best of friends.

They had learned to live without me.

I, the rebellious child, would never again be truly welcome in their home.

Part Three >

Thoughts From a Regretful But Healing ATI Mom

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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HA note: The following contributor has asked to remain anonymous.

I’ve thought about writing ever since I stumbled upon this site.

I am going to be short, although I could share my thoughts and reflections for hours. I am a college educated  capable mom of 58 who has seen my life, and the life of my children, turned upside down as a result of, at least in part, our years in ATI.  My husband and I stumbled upon the pilot project of ATIA (as it was known in the early years) during our attendance at an Advanced IBLP Seminar. At the time, we were both somewhat disillusioned with the church world and the way that there seemed to be no real commitment to “walking the talk” among Christians.

Looking back, I can see where we were unconsciously looking for a “formula” that would help us be successful with our precious 2 kids.

Fast forward 20 some odd years… just within the last 5 years have we become aware of how we caused much harm in the lives of our oldest 2 children, especially. They were given a view of God that was so legalistic and formulaic that the whole concept of a God who loves and forgives became problematic for them. We are still working through the damage caused by those many years in ATI. I cannot speak for other families.

But I know that I, at least, have come to really grieve over what happened to our family as a result of our years in ATI.

Lovingly,

“A Regretful But Healing Mom”

Seeing Shades of Blue: Holly’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

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HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Holly” is a pseudonym.

< Part One

During the 1990s, ATIA/ATI had annual conferences in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee. Mega-families crowded the hotels and university facilities to hear Bill Gothard and other staff and lecturers tell us God’s will for the upcoming year. During the daytime, adolescents and unmarried young adult men and women were separated from their parents for apprenticeship sessions.

My family and I attended Knoxville in the years 1993-1995, although we were in ATIA/ATI longer. During one of those years, I remember a particular afternoon apprenticeship session. Although it isn’t unusual for young adults to be taught in schools separate from their parents, Gothard was a tremendous proponent of family togetherness, except during his apprenticeship programs.

I noticed during the week that, when I would tell my parents about the often unusual content of the apprenticeship sessions, they had a ready answer such as “I don’t think you understood what the speaker really meant,” or “that speaker came to the parents’ session and explained the topic differently,” or even, “I don’t believe anyone would say that.”

One particularly muggy afternoon, the young ladies and young men loaded up into different vehicles for transportation to separate facilities on the university campus for our sessions. I remember the room was very cold and had bluish drapes around the stage. The seats were angled upwards, and there was a mezzanine, so we must have been in a theatre. We were a sea of navy and white, modestly dressed young ladies, with long hair and bright eyes. I can’t remember who spoke first, but Gothard was the main speaker of the afternoon.

As difficult as it is for an outsider to understand, Gothard was a real celebrity in our world.

Teenage girls became giggly and nervous around him. Conference attendees were in awe of him. For him to be the speaker to a young ladies’ apprenticeship session was impressive. Although we initially whispered among ourselves at the wonder of it all, Gothard was able to silence us when he began speaking.

I don’t remember how he began, but I know the topic was moral purity. Gothard frequently spoke to women about purity, so this was not a surprise. In his mind, men lusted after physical things and women lusted after emotional things. For this reason, he often encouraged us not to read romance novels, or any books including romantic ideas.

Books such as Anne of Green Gables were even considered too romantic and defrauding in Gothard’s eyes.

He taught us to save our hearts for the one man we would marry, and to be sure to let God and our fathers pick that man for us.

On the afternoon in question, Gothard began to discuss divorce. To me, this was odd, because, as a prerequisite for being an apprentice, none of us had been married. He continued to convince us of how damaging divorce was in God’s eyes. I tuned out, as I often did. I was young, why did I care about this? Besides, I knew divorced people, and they were not damaged. My aunt was engaged to a man who was divorced. I was the only one of my siblings who even knew that, because my parents were so anti-divorce, but my future uncle didn’t seem damaged to me.

As Gothard brought his talk to a close, he asked us to do something. He wanted us to make a promise for our fathers, our future husbands, and ourselves.

He asked all the young ladies in the room to commit to never marry a divorced man. 

All of a sudden, I was paying attention again. This wasn’t one of the regular commitments! Did that mean there was no end to the number of commitments we could be asked to make? Did we have to make this one? As I waited in my seat, assuming that I could just be quiet and avoid unwanted attention, Gothard asked all of us to close our eyes and stand quietly to indicate our agreement with the commitment. He said that the commitment would be personal and no one would know, because everyone would have her eyes closed. We needed to stand to indicate our commitment to God. At first I thought I would just sit unobtrusively, but I soon realized that I could feel and hear my friends standing around me. Could they tell I was not standing?

Of course I peeked. I saw male ushers walking up and down each row, looking at who was sitting and who was standing. I also saw other girls, standing girls, peeking at me. I quickly stood and redeemed my good name, but as I did I said, “God, I don’t mean it. Don’t hold it against me. I am not promising this. I am just doing it so I don’t get punished.”

Late that afternoon as I rode back on the bus with my five friends from home, I brought up the afternoon session. I tried to talk about how some people can be really great and still be divorced, but none of the girls understood. I had to drop it, or I would be out of the group, the one morally compromised adolescent who had never even kissed anyone. Something didn’t seem right, though.

I knew that marrying a divorced person couldn’t be wrong.

Everyone was seeing the world in navy and white, but I saw shades of blue.

Memories from Bill Gothard’s Indianapolis Training Center: Latebloomer’s Story

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on November 10, 2013.

In my early 20s, I had my first experience living away from home.

It was a Really Big Deal.  Me–a weak, vulnerable, easily-decieved woman, according to the teachings of my family’s pastor Reb Bradley–out on my own, flying to a faraway state.  I was going to spend a few months living and studying music at Bill Gothard’s Indianapolis Training Center.

ITC was a tall drab brick building surrounded by a parking lot, not much to look at.  But that didn’t matter.  As I soon learned, the people staying there rarely ventured outside.  I personally only went outside about once a month during my few months there.  In order to leave, as a legal adult, I had to sign out, state my purpose for leaving, and verify that I was not leaving alone or with a male peer.  For a walk in a parking lot or a view of a run-down part of town, the hassle wasn’t worth it.

Inside the building was where all the excitement and drama played out.  For me, my time at ITC was a huge social challenge. I had almost no experience participating in conversations, eating meals with non-family members, or learning in a class setting. As a result, my stress level was nearly unmanageable from the challenge.  Mealtimes were the worst; I would try to eat when no one at the table was looking at me, and I would have a panic attack if anyone directed a question at me when I was chewing.  I was always the last one at the table, with a plate still full of food, wishing for privacy.

It didn’t help that, even though I was surrounded by hundreds of other fundamentalist homeschoolers like me, I was still the odd one out, because my family was not part of Bill Gothard’s homeschooling program, ATI.  Many of the rules of ATI were new to me, and I’d had lots of trouble finding clothing that fit the extreme and very specific modesty standards, even though my own wardrobe was incredibly conservative.  One of the biggest challenges had been finding a long navy skirt and a plain white button-up shirt, Bill Gothard’s required “uniform” for special sessions.

At ITC, lost in a sea of people with years of experience dressing to ATI standards, I felt even more hideous than normal.

However, I found that many of the other girls in attendance were incredibly sweet, considerate, and fun people, and I considered many of them friends by the end of our time there.  We bonded over late-night candy binges (smuggled in! candy was against the rules!), hallway races with *gasp!* no nylons or shoes (we weren’t allowed to leave our rooms without nylons and close-toed shoes!), and gossip about the “flirtatious” girls who dared to have a conversation with a guy.

We couldn’t stay up too late though, because every morning we were woken at dawn by two songs from the speakers near our beds: first a classical instrumental piece, followed by a boisterous march.  That signaled us to get up and get ready for a day of learning.

The music program was, in my opinion, fairly well done.  I learned a lot about music theory and composition, including how to write 4-part harmony!  But there were definitely some strange reoccurring themes that made an impression on me.  We were taught, for instance, that heavy drum beats in music was demonic because it originated in African music, which was demon worship.  Additionally, we heard that syncopated rhythms, which emphasize the offbeat, would affect our brains and cause us to have a strange shuffling gait.  The “scientific” proof of this was drawings of plants gradually wilting and dying next to a radio–killed by prolonged exposure to rock music.

The emphasis on authority and submission in ITC culture meant that not a single student ever challenged the teachers or expressed doubt at such bizarre, racist, arbitrary, and unsubstantiated teachings.  

This attitude affected me too, even though I was an ATI outsider, and I did not spend any time mentally refuting the ideas that were presented.  Gradually, these ideas began to seem “wholesome” to me, associated with the wholesome image that ATI maintains (now, most famously through the Duggar family’s TV show and blog).  The clothing standards, the early rising, the music standards, the sea of smiling white faces–it all began to feel normal and right, and I wondered what was wrong with me that I felt deeply unhappy and “unwholesome” most of the time, under my forced smile.

The authority culture had another dark side as well.  ITC had what it called a “Leaders in Training” program, separate from its music program.  An ITC young adult volunteer would be paired with a juvenile delinquent from the “outside world”.  These two were never allowed to be apart, and the volunteer was supposed to model good character while making sure the juvenile delinquent followed the ITC rules.  People pointed out to me the “prayer rooms”, with doors monitored by cameras, where “rebellious” juvenile delinquents would be held in solitary confinement until they were repentant.  While I was at ITC, one of them tried to jump off the roof.  It was unsettling, but at the time I couldn’t identify the reason.  Now I realize that it must have been incredibly dehumanizing for them to be forced to accept Bill Gothard’s version of Christianity, which gave them a painfully rigid exterior of rules and no tools for dealing with their inner turmoil.

When my time at ITC came to an end, re-entering the outside world felt incredibly strange and foreign.  

Almost all music felt oppressive and stressful, which is ironic for having just spent a few months studying music.  People wearing typical clothing looked strange and dangerous, after a few months of seeing nothing but a strict “wholesome” dress code.  And there was so little smiling!  It took quite awhile to acclimate to my regular life again, and to begin to question the culture and the teachings from ITC.

Once I let myself question it, one of my first thoughts was, “Why do people think so highly of Bill Gothard??” He visited ITC a few times while I was there, and I found him to be a strange, short little man with a judgemental face, jet black dyed hair, and a creepy vibe.  At no time did I ever wish to meet him or talk to him, which was very unusual for me, since I typically had to resist idolizing spiritual leaders.

Now I just have distant memories of this experience.  It feels like another life and another person, not me.  I wonder what happened to the others girls I studied with.  I wonder what happened to the “leaders in training”.  I wonder if ITC is the same now as when I was there 10 years ago.

And I wonder if this extreme experience was actually just what I needed to push me to start questioning all my beliefs…

NOTE: I recommend the website www.recoveringgrace.org for anyone who is trying to get out of the cult mentality of Bill Gothard’s programs.

Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story, Part One

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Nightmare in Navy and White — Experiencing the Dark Side of ATI: Selena’s Story

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Selena” is a pseudonym.

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Trigger warnings: graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and sibling abuse.

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Part One: A Childhood Destroyed

It was the early 1990’s. My family was fairly happy, and attended a church full of vibrant, hopeful people excited about Christ. Everything felt so alive. Even as a child, I never felt like church was drudgery, and every service was full of excitement with a very down-to-earth approach to Christianity that made everyone feel right at home. When I remember those days it is shocking to see how much has changed. How did we get this far? Where did it start?

It’s difficult to answer that fully. I was so young, I only remember the little things. I remember my mother and father having meetings with other members of the church. Quiet meetings – sad meetings. I remember my mother crying. As I was told years later, they were having trouble in their marriage and looking for any answers to keep this family together. My mother was hospitalized after having a breakdown, and for a time, we were sheltered at my grandmother’s house, kept safely unaware of the strange trouble that had befallen our home – circumstances nobody has really spoken of since. I remember someone telling my parents about a ‘seminar’ that seemed to give them hope. I remember the desperation in my mother’s eyes.

I remember when my parents came home with arms full of books and papers – and then, what seems like a short time later, they announced that we were going to start homeschooling.

The transition was difficult. My siblings and I were yanked out of school without any real explanation, and told never to speak of it to anyone, not even other family members. Our house immediately turned into a prison. Suddenly we were watched more and more closely if we played outside. It felt like the whole world collapsed into just the square of our yard, and everything outside of that suddenly became terrifying. It all happened so fast, but felt like a train wreck in slow motion. And it was just the beginning.

I don’t remember when my father took a turn for the worst, exactly; it was a progression more than a singular event.

When we were little, he had a remarkable temper – in an instant he could go from calm to screaming. He’d threaten to beat us, to leave us outside, to kill us; over time, though, the threats and behavior got stranger and stranger, more and more disturbing. Specifics on how exactly he’d kill us and make it look like a hunting accident; strange punishments, like being told to pick up a piece of wood swarming with fire ants and carry it around; working beside him and being left without relief or hydration in temperatures over 100 degrees. Throughout all of this, the teachings of Bill Gothard were being fed to us non-stop. We jumped in headfirst, and my father was quite happy to take the role of Umbrella over us – the hammer that pounded us into submission and into a “diamond” for Christ.

Around those early days, my father began sexually abusing me. He had hand-picked a few verses from the Bible that he felt gave him the permission to do so. He’d had a revelation from God, that it was his right, perhaps even his duty. Several nights a week, he would take what he thought was his. I learned how to keep my eyes open at bedtime, and started throwing fits (even if it meant being called ‘rebellious’) until a light was left on in the hallway – his shadow appearing in my doorway would stir me from sleep and give me enough time to try and turn over. I started staying awake at night, for hours on end. Sometimes I even put things haplessly in front of my door to make it more difficult for him to enter, trying to make it look like an accident or just a messy room.

Most days I had precious little sleep.

And if it wasn’t terrifying enough that my father was doing this – it was worse to think of an angry God who would send misfortune, curses, danger, even demons from Hell to torture me if I dared step out from under my father’s tyranny. I was told that this was what God, omnipresent, infinitely powerful, wanted.

How could I ever dream of escaping that?

My mother worried about her daughters. She was, perhaps, nearly as much of a victim as we were. She knew she was expected to submit to his will, and they, too, had left behind most of their friends. In retrospect, I believe she put on a brave face and tried to help us when she could – until she, too, became brainwashed into believing she was inferior, that she must answer to my father and to Bill Gothard’s angry God. I don’t believe she knew about the sexual abuse; if she did, she certainly never spoke of it. And, truth be told, I don’t think she would have stopped it if she knew – at the time, she was as much under my father’s iron fist as we were. She became quiet, sad, afraid – and then, she painted on a big vacant smile, and forced a cheery laugh.

We were expected to be cheerful, after all. Enthusiastic!

By the time I was about 11 years old, I had developed the best system I could think of to try and gain some semblence of safety from my father. I would come up with an issue, any issue at all, just before bedtime (after all, we were taught never to let the sun go down on your anger – always resolve all issues before bedtime!), and try to drag it on into the night. I’d make it as dramatic and urgent as I could; I needed prayer and I needed it now! I was bitter and really really had to confess something! Hey, maybe we can pray a hedge around the house! As long as it kept my father awake well past his bedtime, to the point of all but cursing at me – it sometimes meant one more night safe from his sexual advances.

Still the guilt burned inside me that I was going against God’s will by trying to keep my father at bay.

I was torn between guilty shame, and desperation. Some nights desperation won out, and my act would resume; I would sleep safely, but worn down by my guilt. Other nights I would accept my fate, even going to bed early in the hopes it would be over with soon. Unfortunately, he got downright vengeful about trying to break me down in response, often calling family meetings or trying to humiliate me in front of everyone. I was too afraid to tell anyone what was going on and he certainly didn’t mention it, so the only thing they got out of it was that I was the trouble child who had a real problem with the almighty patriarch of our family.

It was a daily war between myself and my father, and he usually won out.

I was the youngest in our household. Under Gothard’s strict sense of hierarchy, and because of my efforts to stave off some abuse and their interpretation as ‘rebellious’, my family readily interpreted these teachings to mean that I was the very bottom of the totem pole. As such, when I was about 7 or 8, my two older sisters began to abuse me as well. The middle sibling was hesitant, sometimes going along in fear with the oldest, and other times secretly trying to protect me. Quite in fact, she taught me how to open my eyes just a little bit so that it looked like they were closed but I could keep an eye out. She taught me places to hide, what to say, what to do. She tried to stop me from fighting it so hard, feeling that it was better to play along than to create problems and receive more abuse. She would often shush me or try to rein me in. She made fun of me when others were around, but in secret, she was my best friend and ally.

Caught literally in the middle, she took it all quietly and kept it all inside.

The oldest of us tried to stay out of the house a lot, but when she was home, she did a lot of her own abusing. I think her way of coping was to feel powerful by abusing those she saw as being beneath her, while claiming to be their best friend to keep them close. Using her rank as the oldest, she would order us to humiliate ourselves, perform sexual acts, or tell her embarrassing details of our lives, or divulge inappropriate details of her own sex life and make us swear to secrecy, all the while laughing and pretending it was all a joke or a game or just normal girl talk. She babysat frequently and turned the same pattern of abuse outward onto those children as well.

She liked to get others to gang up with her on her abuse – so when the middle sibling didn’t want to go along, she pressured me into going with her to babysit.

I was far too uncomfortable to join in on teasing and bullying the kids while pretending to be a nice person…it gave me a sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach. I usually stuck to the corner of any given room and quietly whined that I just wanted to go home.

Since all three of us slept in the upstairs portion of the house (a portion often neglected by our parents), most of this went on up there where they were blissfully unaware. I believe Gothard’s teachings of authority gave my oldest sister the feeling that she, too, had the right and perhaps even the duty to treat us in this way.

Every year, our family attended Knoxville conferences religiously. We would make it into a family trip, veering off into Colorado for a while (our other favorite vacation spot) or just sightseeing along the way. Each time we returned home, for a while we were high on Gothard’s teachings and on our best behavior. The abuse would sometimes stop for a while, but other times seemed to be worse. Knoxville was something I simultaneously dreaded and anticipated.

The Knoxville conference in either 1998 or 1999 really changed everything for us. During the side-seminar reserved for fathers, Bill Gothard revealed what I can only guess was some kind of new teaching about the dangers of demonic attacks. (I don’t really know much – my father was very secretive about any material reserved for men-only or fathers-only.) A checklist was handed out to each father. If your child exhibited a certain number of traits, the fathers were told, it was safe to say they were being targeted by Satan. There were specific steps to take, of course, to rid your home of these demonic influences – most notably, burning possessions.

That night, my father was wearing a big grin on his face.

He reached for his binder and pulled out the checklist. He described the teaching in brief, went through each item on the checklist, and then sat back looking at me over his glasses as if to say, “What now?” I was floored. I started to cry. Well on my way to being brainwashed, I wasn’t even sure what scared me worse: That demonic influences had taken over my soul, or that my father made a vague promise to bring ‘big changes’ into our house after we returned home. What was he going to do?

As soon as we returned home, my parents went to work. They started burning dozens and dozens of things in our home. About half my possessions were taken and burned, my sisters’ left virtually untouched; I was forced to watch the few shreds of joy I had go up in flames. Even a couple of my favorite shirts – just polos I liked – were burned away. I was prayed over. There were exorcisms with the help of the leader of the local fathers’ meeting and some local church and ATI members – hands laid on me, men shouting, my mother weeping for my soul. I shook in terror. My whole world was collapsing around me.

I felt something from those hands pressed on me, but it wasn’t love. It was hate and fear and punishment.

Weeks stretched into months that passed in a blur of numbness. It was October 1999. Y2K was looming, and my father had sunk into paranoia, vowing to prepare us for the worst. We were almost completely stocked with foodstuffs, guns, supplies. I stopped my attempts at safety; it was reduced to the occasional weeping reluctance to go to bed, and nothing more. I had been broken. The night of October 4th was one of the few nights I put up a fight. Dad had picked me up from basketball practice and driven me home, and when bedtime came, I sat at the top of the stairs saying I wouldn’t sleep. He looked up at me in disgust from the bottom of the steps, shook his head, sighed and went to bed.

I wasn’t even worth it anymore. Finally, I went to sleep in relative peace.

I woke to the sound of my mother calling tearfully up to me and my sister. She frantically told us to come downstairs, “your Dad’s not breathing!” She said she was afraid he might be having a heart attack, and she’d called the paramedics. She tried to assure us, and gathered us into a circle where we clasped hands and prayed. I looked up into her eyes, screwed shut and full of tears, and somehow I knew we would never be the same again. I knew Dad was never going to wake up. He was gone.

At the hospital, the news finally came. They couldn’t revive him, and he had passed away. My mother and sister wept. I sat there in stunned silence. Was it really over? That night we returned home, and for the first time, I broke down completely. Years of emotions and trauma came rushing to me at once, and I spent the entire night crying and violently sick.

After that, things were very different.

What little activities we did outside the house were clamped down. My mother received direct help from a few members of the ATI board of directors at Bill Gothard’s direction. I still don’t understand how it happened – she just received a phone call one day and that’s how it began. My best guess is that it had something to do with Bill Gothard’s teachings about caring for the “fatherless” and “widows”. The idea that a family would be without their powerful patriarch was almost taboo – we were more open to sin and Satan’s attacks, they said. The tone people took was one of pity, but often condescending.

It felt like we had become second-class members of ATI.

Part Two >

Is This a Discussion?: Sarah Jones Says No

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

conversation

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As we all try to make homeschooling better, are we having an open discussion?

Sarah Jones says no, Lana Hope says yes.

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Jones’ blog Anthony B. Susan.  It was originally published on December 7, 2013.

This post began life as a pensive reflection on my life as a homeschool apostate. I’ll be blunt: I’m too angry to write that post. I spend so much time trying to separate myself from extremism and militancy that’s personally frustrating to be so stymied by anger now. But that is where I find myself.

I am furious with homeschool parents who, for days, have been telling me that I’m just bitter: a barely competent child whose rage can be invalidated and debased as ‘lashing out.’

I am weary of Christian patriarchs like Chris Jeub who feel obligated to repeatedly insert themselves into the narrative emerging from our stories of homeschool abuse. This week, Jeub hastened to assure his fellow homeschoolers that we “apostates” haven’t really abandoned the faith; that we’re just asking questions. In doing so, he reduced our entire movement to a monolith more palatable to his fundamentalist audience. It didn’t matter that many of us, like myself, have abandoned the faith and are happy for it. But we’re here, patriarchs, and we’re not going anywhere, so you might as well admit we exist.

Jeub’s post is so distressing to me because I see it as a ploy to retain some control of the narrative we’ve tried to produce. Let me be very clear: this story is not about Chris Jeub. It’s not about any patriarch, for that matter. It is about us. Don’t you dare re-center this around yourselves.

It is time for you to sit down and pass the mike. The guinea pigs are talking.

You had your chance to run your social experiment. Now the results are in and patriarchs, it doesn’t look good for you. You deliberately created a cultural hierarchy that enshrined your place of privilege as divine right. The people you’ve oppressed for decades are trying to speak, and every time we make a sound you drown us out.

I am not looking for a conversation. I think the time for conversation has passed, if it ever existed at all. If you’re not willing to discard Christian patriarchy completely, to acknowledge the horrifying damage it has wreaked on those rendered powerless by it, then you are not my conversation partner: you are the enemy in my fight for liberation. If you are not willing to stop viewing your children as property to be controlled, there is no discussion to be had.

Moreover: I think it actually endangers the fight against Christian patriarchy to view its proponents as conversation partners. They actively perpetuate oppression, and I don’t see it as my responsibility to train them in the ways of allyship. Their voices have been so dominant for so long that I believe it will be impossible to make ourselves heard as long as they’re still speaking. There have been calls for conversation. But conversation is only really possible if both partners are operating as equals; those of us who left Christian patriarchy aren’t yet equal to those who perpetuate it.

Some day, yes, that might change. But in order for that change to occur, Christian patriarchs are going to have to recognize that it’s not their turn to speak.

They’re going to have to cede power.

Ready for Real Life: Part Nine, Concluding Thoughts

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Ready for Real Life: Part Nine, Concluding Thoughts

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. Part Nine of this series was originally published on November 25, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Botkins Launch Webinar | Part Two, Ready for What? | Part Three, Are Your Children Ready? | Part Four, Ready to Lead Culture | Part Five, Science and Medicine | Part Six, History and Law | Part Seven, Vocations | Part Eight, Q&A Session | Part Nine, Concluding Thoughts

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After receiving a tip from one of my readers, I purchased access to the “Ready for Real Life” webinar, hosted by the Botkin family of the Western Conservatory for the Arts and Sciences. After listening to the seven-part webinar, I was struck by how paradoxical the content was.  On one hand, Christians are to teach their children to take dominion of the world and assume positions of leadership, according to the Botkins. On the other hand, their instructions on how to raise homeschooled children would make this next to impossible.

The Botkins place little value on college degrees or certifications, but without degrees, advancement to leadership positions in most fields would be difficult if not impossible. Geoffrey Botkin speaks coldly about the so-called “slave economy” in which most mainstream jobs are situated, discouraging homeschooled youth from working at such jobs. The Botkins’ distrust of secular academia, the mainstream scientific community,the modern art and music scenes, the military, and the secular state (evident in Geoffrey’s hostility toward so-called “statism”) precludes young people from working in those fields as well.

How can youth raised with the Botkins’ ideology be leaders in the world if advanced educational opportunities and multiple career fields are off limits?

Furthermore, leadership involves understanding and working alongside the people one intends to lead. The Botkins, however, are wary of people and ideas outside of their immediate subculture. People who think differently than them are viewed at best as “sheep” in need of a shepherd, and at worst as enemies. In the Botkins’ day to day lives, such people are largely avoided. How can Botkin-aligned youth lead other people if their ideology prevents them from interacting with others at length or learning about them?

It goes without saying that in the Botkins’ vision, such leaders will be men.

The Botkins’ ideology relegates women to the home, where they are assigned the tasks of homeschooling children, keeping the house in order, possibly running a home business, and accepting the blame when things go wrong. College and careers outside the home are off-limits, and gifts are to be put aside in favor of marriage and motherhood, as in the case of Geoffrey’s daughter-in-law. Women can help their men, but not serve as leaders in their own right. How do the Botkins expect their fundamentalist Christians to rise up as leaders when half of their number are barred from meaningful participation in the outside world?

In conclusion, the Botkins’ webinar encourages Christian homeschooling families to take dominion, but fails to provide realistic instructions for doing so. The ideology they preach is not only inadequate for achieving the dominion they crave, but inadequate for preparing young people for real life.

Life in a fundamentalist bubble simply isn’t good training for leadership in the real world.

Coming Out About My Unbelief to My Sister

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sheldon, who blogs at Ramblings of Sheldon. It was originally published on November 27, 2013.

As I’ve said before, I’m really growing weary of the charade I have to keep up in order to remain in the atheist closet. I had been talking to my fellow ex-fundamentalist bloggers on Twitter about whether I should come out to my sister, who has always been there for me throughout my life (she even helped to raise me as a young boy, long story there I won’t get into right now.

On Sunday, I was debating whether or not I should come out, but then lost my courage at the last minute. Well, finally, Tuesday night, I finally worked up the courage to finally come out to her.

My sister, in recent years, has gone from the Independent Fundamental Baptist cult to what would be considered more mainstream beliefs in the fundamentalist/evangelical world (beliefs more along the lines of the Southern Baptist denomination).

I’m glad she’s out of the IFB. She fell into that group because of the influence of the IFB ran “school” I went to in my elementary years. She was there too — though, because of the age gap between us, she was in her high school years at the time, and fell prey to them pushing Hyles-Anderson College as a great place to go.

Still, I wish she would give up fundamentalism altogether, especially for the sake of her kids. Right now, she is homeschooling her kids with ACE.

That’s the same awful curriculum I grew up with.

I talk to my nephew and two nieces on the phone, and when I’m visiting her in northern Indiana. It kinds of breaks my heart to see how they just seem more childlike, than other children their age.

They do get to spend time with other children at their church, and with some young neighbors, but still, the isolation inherent in fundamentalist homeschooling is taking its toll. She doesn’t even realize it. She doesn’t realize the effects of that because she wasn’t home schooled herself.

I’m wondering that if in 10-15 years, I’m going to be getting that coming out call from one of her kids. She means well, and isn’t hostile or abusive towards her kids by any means, like our mother was. She just doesn’t know the difference. Really, it’s unfortunate. I wonder how many young fundamentalist mothers like her are out there.

I called her, and I just spilled it to her. I didn’t use the dreaded “A word” (Atheism). I didn’t know if that would distract from the whole conversation. She was surprised as I expected, and she said that it would have “blown her socks off if she was wearing them”.

I started from the beginning, from the nervous breakdown, being told that my depression was “guilt” and not having a “right relationship with god”, the unfortunate falling for that cruel lie, doubling down on Christianity, soaking up as much as I could about the Bible again, studying it and the works of various theologians, and eventually coming to realization that I couldn’t believe in it anymore.

It worried her to some extent, she seems to think that it’s just a time of questioning, despite me repeatedly telling her that it’s been 4 years now since I came to the conclusion that I can no longer believe. She told me to be sure before I eventually have to approach my mom and dad about this, and warned me about how that she is likely going to throw all she has been doing recently for me in my face.

She knows what my mom is like.

My sister had the worst end of the abuse growing up, because she was the only one willing to stand up to my mom.

I just tried to survive as best I could, staying out of her way, avoiding anything I knew would trigger her anger. Though it didn’t often work. She would invent any excuse necessary to take out her anger on us.

My sister doesn’t seem to understand what it going on, that this is not something I came to lightly. But the important thing is, she’s standing behind me. She has made it clear that she will stand behind me, even after this, and won’t let her beliefs get in the way of family.

In some ways, she can see how I reached this point. She said at times that he has questioned everything. She says at times she doesn’t feel as close to God as she used to feel, but she always ended up coming back.

I had told her, looking at it now, when I’m “undercover” in the church  I am in, (the one I am a member of still, and have attended since I was 12), that I hear what people are saying around me, and I can’t understand how I possibly believed it in the first place. She said it was because that was all I ever knew from birth, had I been raised in another nation, the predominant faith there would have been all I knew.

In some ways she gets it, and in some ways she doesn’t. I hope that the more open I become with her, that it will help her gain more of an understanding of why I came to this point, and that it’s who I am now. I told her that I’m growing weary of all this, I can’t keep hiding who I am now, and that I’m not looking forward to dealing with my mom.

It really will show my mom’s character (or more than likely, lack thereof), when I finally come out to her. I could lose the financial help and help with rebuilding my house, and taking care of my dog that she is currently doing, which would be hard to deal with. But I can learn to cope, the rough road ahead will be worth it.

I want to finally be able to live openly — and if that means losing the relationship with my mother, or being forced to cut her out of my life for my own sanity, then that is worth it.

In fact, it sounds horrible, but that’s probably the best outcome in the end, the one that will help me to heal over time.

I wish my mom could be more like my sister, willing to accept me for who I am, even if she doesn’t understand it. In fact, I wish more families, and parents especially, would follow her example.

You don’t have to agree with your family members in order to love them, and if you are putting your faith, your dogma, over love for your family, it’s showing that your religion (or more than likely, your interpretation of it), is more important to you than the people you are supposed to love.

It reveals to me, especially if you are a parent, that you are using your faith as means to control and manipulate people, and that if your children/family members are rejecting that, then they are worthless to you as a human being.

If someone feels this way, then they are not someone I want in my life, and I have no respect for them at all.

Ready for Real Life: Part Eight, Q&A Session

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Ready for Real Life: Part Eight, Q&A Session

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Ahab’s blog, Republic of Gilead. Part Eight of this series was originally published on November 19, 2013.

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Also in this series: Part One, Botkins Launch Webinar | Part Two, Ready for What? | Part Three, Are Your Children Ready? | Part Four, Ready to Lead Culture | Part Five, Science and Medicine | Part Six, History and Law | Part Seven, Vocations | Part Eight, Q&A Session | Part Nine, Concluding Thoughts

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This part of “Ready for Real Life” was devoted to answering listener questions about Christian homeschooling. In the final installment of their webinar series, the Botkins responded to listener questions about family vision, interactions with outsiders, support systems, tensions with relatives, and children’s’ role in the family.

First, in response to a question about what guided his vision for his children, Geoffrey replied that he wanted his children to be “mighty” leaders, not merely surviving or living in “Christian ghettos”. After citing Psalm 127:3-5 (“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth; blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them”), he outlined his vision for the Botkin children at the 4:57 mark.

“I want them to be able confront their enemies, the enemies of Jesus Christ at the highest points of the land, the places in the country where decisions are made. The gates of nations happen to be where leadership happens, where decisions are made on law and jurisprudence, medicine, literature, the arts, science, business, agriculture, many of the things we’ve spoken about here on the webinar, military affairs, family culture, politics, public policy. I wanted my children to be able to grow up and stand in the gates, so that guided the kinds of things that we told them, but foundational to all of it was understanding that they needed first to begin with a fear of the Lord and an attitude of respecting and delighting in the Lord’s commands.”

At the 6:08 mark, Geoffrey explained how he warned his children that they must serve God and transcend “worldly success”. 

“I wanted them to know they were growing up to serve a living God who had a will for them, an ethical system he wanted the entire world to live by. I wanted them especially to realize if they lived in the United States of America, they could not give their lives to serving wealth, not worldly success, not the traditions of men. And so, we steered them by trying to define for them the Kingdom of God, and then thinking about how to strengthen the Kingdom of God, and said, ‘Children, this is your responsibility. This is what you’ll be doing all your lives. This is what you are called to do in the Great Commission, to to make disciples of the nations.'”

One listener submitted a question about what to teach children about people in the outside world. 

Should they be on the lookout for potential threats and ministry opportunities? In response, Geoffrey claimed that he taught his children to recognize other people as “eternal souls” and to help them interpret those they encounter. At the 7:37 mark, he had this to say.

“When we go into the world, let’s say we’re on a trip to Wal-Mart and we’re surrounded by people from many different backgrounds. What are we teaching our children to think about these others that they’re seeing? How do they look at these people who are around them? Well, number one, we teach them theologically that these people are eternal souls. Every single one has an eternal soul. We need to interpret the world for them when we’re talking about people, when they’re looking at people. Many parents say, ‘Well, we homeschooled our kids to keep them away from bad influences and the rabble that are out there, and so we just put little blinders on our children, we march into the store, do our business, and get out.’ Well, we never had that attitude toward people. We wanted to interpret what was going on, and if we saw a guy covered with tattoos, we’d probably talk about it.”

Geoffrey stressed the importance of teaching children to love people, help others, and share truth. At the 8:54 mark, he warned that homeschooled children could grow disdainful of outsiders without good parental guidance.

“If we’re not careful, our children will develop very confused ideas about what they’re seeing in the world, and in fact, if we don’t help them, they will tend to be proud and arrogant and have a naturally contemptuous attitude toward other people because, of course, they’re perfect little homeschool kids who are upright and not like those other people. We don’t want them to have that kind of prideful attitude. We don’t want them to be hostile or disdainful to people.”

Soon thereafter, Geoffrey shared a story about how he responded when his sons met people who were different from them. On a hot day when he and his sons were visiting the University of Monterrey in Mexico, they noticed several young women in “Mexican chic undress”. “They didn’t have many clothes on”, Geoffrey complained. Later, he instructed his sons to pray for the women and their future husbands and children.

“They’re like sheep without shepherds,” Geoffrey told his sons. “They need someone to look after them, to protect them, to lead them.”

The irony was not lost on me. Geoffrey condemned judgmental attitudes toward people who are different, but a few seconds later, he judged women whose clothing choices he disliked. I found it unfortunate that the Botkin sons were taught to see women outside their subculture as lost “sheep” who needed a (presumably male) shepherd to tell them what to do.

Another listener was concerned about those who exhibit outward Christian conduct without inward transformation. In response, Geoffrey lamented the “conformist theology” in many churches that encourage “friendship with the world”, as well as the influence of “America’s materialistic culture”. At the 16:14 mark, he dismissed the idea of going to college, getting a good job, and joining a “comfortable church” in favor of serving God’s law.

“If the entire goal of life is getting a good job and then just affiliating with a comfortable church on Sunday, then life is about pursuing the American Dream and not seeking first the kingdom of God, and so you don’t really need holiness, righteousness, knowledge of the scripture, knowledge of the law of God and the commandments of Jesus Christ … There is a dominant cultural trend in the churches and in the homeschooling movement to get into a worldly college so you can get a bigger salary and then bigger benefits. This will not lead your children into holiness, righteousness, and fruitfulness and fulfillment. This is serving Mammon, and when people pursue security through Mammon, Jesus Christ will be dishonored.”

One listener asked what advice the Botkins would give to homeschooling families without support systems. Geoffrey encourages husbands to encourage and assist their wives. However, he seemed distrustful of support systems outside of the family that could potentially hold different beliefs. He admonished listeners to avoid any homeschooling groups that are (1) overly focused on “trends”, (2) tied to “state organizations”, which he accused of being “humanistically oriented” and obsessed with the “college agenda”, and (3) associated with churches that have strong youth groups with large numbers of public school children.

This insularity, it seemed, was to shield fundamentalist families from outside forces that could introduce undesirable influences.

Victoria offered commentary, explaining that while it is nice to have support from other Christians, homeschooling families shouldn’t lean on other people to support them. With less support, the Botkins were in a better position to monitor the ideas that their children were exposed to, she explained. Also, if the Botkin children wanted friends, they had to be friends with each other and work though sibling quarrels. The family didn’t spent time driving to homeschool activities that weren’t productive, she said, allowing the children to use that time for productive activities.

One listener asked the Botkins for good strategies for encouraging children’s gifts while cultivating a “cohesive family identity”. Geoffrey replied that too many parents feel that they’re obligated to identify children’s gifts and do something special for each child. Over time, this approach causes the “cohesive family identity” to disintegrate because each family member is something different. He reminded listeners that gifts are tools bestowed by God to advance his kingdom, not as sources of personal aggrandizement.

The Botkins had much to say in response to a listener question about how to respond to “hostile” in-laws and relatives. Citing Deuteronomy 13, Geoffrey reminded listeners that no earthly relationship can trump one’s relationship with God, and that believers can’t indulge or “subsidize” a relative’s rebellion against God. Christians can love their relatives, but always on their terms, he explained, adding that Christians must let family members know what the rules are in their home.

At the 41:20 mark, Geoffrey told the audience that they have no moral duty to honor or care for relatives to reject God’s law.

“Don’t surrender your principles. Practically, you don’t have to have any moral responsibility to honor or subsidize relatives, including parents, who reject the law and righteousness of God. Your duty of honoring them would be very different, and you can explore scripture to find out what that would be. You don’t have to care for them and take care of them if they will not submit to the rules of your household.”

Victoria added that believers can still express love and honor to nonbeliever relatives, but from a distance. It’s acceptable to pray for such relatives and send them cards and gifts, even if one cannot spend time with them anymore. By doing so, parents set a good example on how to respond to nonbelievers with love, she said.

Geoffrey turned to family roles, outlining expectations placed on children. For example, fathers must make it clear that their children are never to disobey or dishonor their mothers. If a child disrespects their mother, the father must quickly and firmly defend the mother’s honor. Not only does the Bible command this, but the children need to respect their mother if she is to teach them effectively, he argued. Even a child is a few months old, it will lash out and try to hit its mother, but for an older child “than can become a capital offense”, he said.

What!? I thought. Your talk of children and “capital” offenses is making me very uncomfortable.

To boot, Geoffrey’s insistence on respect for the mother was ironic, given that his teachings and those of the Christian Patriarchy Movement are inherently disrespectful to women. Treating women as men’s subordinates, denying women a voice, and barring women from meaningful life paths are not respectful to women.

Regarding the role of daughters, Geoffrey relegated girls to subordinate roles.

At the 1:05:34 mark, he instructed parents to train their daughters to help their parents and brothers. He warned that if the men around them do not strive for meaningful lives, girls will reject their helpmeet role.

“What you’re training your daughter for has a lot to do with what you think you are for, okay, and what you think your sons are for. Your daughter’s biggest job is to help you in the direction you set for your whole family, dads … This really is her scriptural, biblical job, to help you dad, helping the family. And she will help her mommy, you know, learning to be a mother by helping her mother, and this helps you and it helps your family. She helps her brothers. As she helps her brothers and learns to respect her brothers, she’s learning the skills and attitudes she’ll need to be a wonderful wife. So, her role will be as big or small as you set it to be, and if your role as a man is to have just a very quiet, insignificant existence, and to be a pew warmer at church and not really do anything for the kingdom, then she’s going to see–what good is a woman if men are not doing anything and there’s nothing to really help a man do, then being a helpmeet hardly even makes any sense. And so they will be exasperated by that, and they’ll be thinking of other things to do. If the men aren’t doing anything, how are we going to reform society? ‘I guess I’ve got to go out there and be prime minister or something!'”

At the 1:06:58 mark, Geoffrey instructed parents to raise sons as leaders and daughters as followers and helpers.

“You should be raising daughters to be the female counterparts of what your training your sons to be. That’s what you need to be doing. Training your sons to be leaders, dominion men, and training your daughters to be helpers of men like that.”

Anna Botkin fielded a listener question on what a girl’s role should look like after high school if she does not marry. Anna asserted that marriage isn’t a given for a woman, and that singleness isn’t outside of God’s plan for women. Women lives include more than wife and mother roles, but can also include serving the church, caring for the poor, and assisting with the home economy.

Elizabeth Botkin fielded a question on whether parents should teach their daughters a trade, or only teach them vocational tasks such as cooking and cleaning. In response, Elizabeth argued that all girls should contribute to the family economy, citing Proverbs 31. While men are responsible for providing for their households, wives who strengthen the household economy are important, she said. At the 1:13:14 mark, she explained how daughters are to balance entrepreneurship with submission to men.

“How does one balance being entrepreneurial and being a submissive daughter who has a family vision? Well, a girl will actually be able to be a much more helpful submissive daughter and be more beneficial to the family vision if she does have an entrepreneurial spirit. The conflict comes when a daughter has her own independent entrepreneurial agenda and that comes first, and is more important to her than helping her family. But if she has the heart of a servant and she has the best interests of her family at heart, and she’s making that making that her top priority, she can cultivate just as much initiative and diligence and creativity and resourcefulness and business savvy as she wants, and it will be nothing but an asset to her family. See, right now, a lot of our fathers are trying to figure out how they can leave the workforce and come work at home, and a lot of our brothers are trying to figure out how do they start off on the right foot instead of getting stuck in a system they don’t want to be stuck in. And I believe that right now, all of we unmarried daughters who are still at home are the secret weapons of this movement to rebuild the home economy. A daughter can be her father’s greatest asset while he’s trying to make his transition from working a job to starting a home business … or maybe she can focus on just helping her brothers get started in whatever businesses they’re trying to start.”

One listener asked how women without college degrees could support themselves after divorce, abandonment, or the death of their husbands. Elizabeth admitted that parents should train their daughters on how to be economically productive in good times as well as bad times.  “Doing economically profitable work from home should be part of every woman’s life, obviously more in some seasons than in others,” she said.

Churches often offer support to women facing difficult times, but what if a woman doesn’t have that support system?

Elizabeth dismissed the idea that a woman would need a college degree so that she could get a job in such a situation.

Rather, she claimed that a lone woman without a support system could support herself (and homeschool her children) by working at home. At the 1:16:25 mark, she had this to say.

“In the event that you were stranded as the only breadwinner with a house full of little children, practicing for this kind of situation by spending four years and 40 or $50,000 training exclusively for a job and getting the qualifications for a job that you could only do outside the home would be exactly what you don’t want to do. So instead, if you took that time and used it to learn marketable skills that you could use from home or start a business that you could be running on the side and to invest that $40,000 into some thing else, it would be a much better situation if you were at home and suddenly had a lot of little children that you don’t want to suddenly put in public school so you could go out and get a job.”

The problems with Elizabeth’s approach were numerous. Where would the capital come from? Where would a woman learn the business knowledge and specialized skills she would need for a home enterprise? If her children aren’t in school, day care, or the care of her support network, where would she find time to carry out business tasks, such as production, marketing, and networking with other entrepreneurs? How on earth could a woman make enough money to support a large family and set aside enough time to raise and homeschool her children while running a full-time home business? What if the home business fails?

The Botkins’ ideology makes emergencies harsher than they need to be, and in failing to prepare young women for real life, may precipitate those emergencies in the first place.

Geoffrey Botkin concluded the webinar by quoting Titus 2:11, encouraging listeners to serve God and live godly, sensible lives. At the 1:32:15 mark, he told listeners that if they follow God, they will benefit the surrounding world.

“The grace of God is benefiting even those who are still in darkness. If you are doing what you need to be doing in your family, your community, and in your churches, you are helping bring peace and order and stability to your nation, and other people are benefiting from it because of the grace of God in your lives. This grace of God has appeared, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age.”

*****

This part of the “Ready for Real Life” webinar featured the following themes:

  • Family identity over personal identity: Geoffrey placed great value on “cohesive family identity”, warning that excessive attention to children’s gifts and individual identities could undermine this cohesion.
  • Vacillation between love and contempt for outsiders: One one hand, the Botkins instructed listeners to show love toward”hostile” relatives and other people outside their belief system. On the other hand, Geoffrey spoke of outsiders (such as scantily-clad women) with condescension, and outright stated that believers have no moral duty to honor or care for relatives who “reject the law and righteousness of God.”
  • Insularity: The Botkins’ attitudes toward connections outside of the nuclear family were mixed at best. They did not place great value on support networks, and outright rejected support networks (i.e., homeschool groups, relatives) who espoused beliefs that differed from theirs. Girls were encouraged to funnel their talents into the home, rather than seeking university educations or jobs outside of the home.
  • Unrealistic economic expectations for women and girls: Women and girls were expected to make economic contributions to the family that did not involve employment outside of the home. Elizabeth Botkin encouraged widowed, abandoned, or divorced women to sustain their households with home businesses (all while keeping their kids at home), oblivious to how onerous this task would be without a support system.

Stay tuned for the conclusion, in which I’ll reflect on the webinar series as a whole.

*****

To be continued.