The Duggar family scandals occupied the press for some time, because they were omnipresent in all the media and had a popular TV show. The more I looked into their cult, the more they resembled worst in WELS, the LCMS, the ELS, and the CLC (sic).
Here are some parallels with the Duggar-IFB cult and WELS:
- Lying is their truth.
- Money is their god.
- Code words for the insiders.
- Mutual spying.
- Strict rules that do not apply to the leaders.
- Shunning and hating people away.
- Bullying, threats, and slander for anyone telling the truth.
Lying Is Their Truth
Lying is the WELS communication method of saying - "That is the way things are, don't rock the boat." They deflect, deny, and accuse. "He is my classmate" is the all-inclusive protection insurance, which is quickly invoked. "I don't know that" or "I don't remember" or "That's news to me." Any persistence will be met with personal attacks or - "Who told you?" Any source is trashed, so the topic quickly becomes "Why are you paying attention to that evil ____________?"
Money Is Their God
WELS teaches against faith, quite successfully. The cult is run by unbelievers and supported by unbelieving clergy in the ELS. Rejecting God, the Scriptures, and the Savior, their god is money.
Tis funny how the cults will emphasize sacrifice for the little people while living it up on the little people's money. Gothard has a racket where people have to attend conferences (big money) to buy garbage from him, a pervert bachelor who chases young girls, just like the Founder of the Missouri Synod, Bishop Martin Stephan.
WELS' Church and Change is an interlocking series of money-making schemes to lock up foundation and synod grants for themselves while charging congregations for their divisive and obnoxious "services."
WELS and other denominations will gladly wreck a congregation with a bad pastor so they can sell off the property and pocket the equity, to balance the budget.
Code Words for the Insiders
Cults are secretive and use their own special language. They often smirk about knowing these secrets while baffling others with their code words. WELS clergy have their abusive GA hazing ritual, which they deny to this day. "There is no GA. It was abolished."
The Duggars explained a few of their words."Nike" was blurted by the girls to keep all the males in their family from looking at a pretty girl approaching. "Nike!" did not mean victory, but "Look down at your shoes!" Meanwhile the eldest Duggar son was going to strip clubs and paying for prostitution, as a married man and key figure in the TV series, plus involved in a conservative family values political network.
WELS has their terms like "Score reports" - "CP"- "COS." The last was a series of all-out drunk parties at Northwestern College, where WELS seemed determined to turn their graduates into alcoholics before they entered Mequon another four years of drinking.
Mutual Spying
The spying and lying go together. The Gothard network of abuse is held together by spying, deceit, and threats. One entire committee of advisors told Gothard to come clean on he abuse allegations. They were 100% replaced overnight.
WELS-ELS spying never stops, so people report back to the main base, the DP, CP, or SP. There are two basic efforts going on at all times - protecting the favorites while shunning and expelling anyone who catches on to what is happening. The favorites include all Church and Changers, children of WELS leaders, and wealthy families who bail out the synod from time to time.
For example, Jay Webber told the ELS that I gave Herman Otten the Forbes story on Marvin Schwan divorcing his wife and marrying his manager's wife. Forbes posted a photo of Schwan laughing and told how he only paid $1 million and a Cadillac for the divorce. When this appeared in CN, according to Herman Otten, the first Mrs. Schwan ended her own life. Webber was anxious to tell me that the ELS was angry with me for giving the story to Christian News. He did not tell me the rest. Jay went to the Ukraine on Schwan Foundation money (Thoughts of Faith). Now the sons want to know where all the loot went. Hint - don't give the ELS or WELS the combination to the safe, or the key to the lockbox, because the money will disappear faster than a July frost.
I was evil for passing along a nationally distributed magazine. The New York Times called the company and owner secretive. No kidding. Finding articles and photos is a real job.
Strict Rules Do Not Apply to the Leaders
Gothard taught his fervent disciples all kinds of special rules, but they never applied to him or his brother. See some of the research below. He isolated beautiful young girls at his headquarters and groomed them for his use and abuse. Like a pimp, if they did not go along with him, he punished them. But he was subtle, telling them how much they meant to him and how special they were.
In WELS-ELS, the rule is "Never tell the truth about anything." When something is so blatant that no one can deny it, it is best to be blind to the implications. If a rich donor is always seen with other women, forget about it.
One pastor asked how a another pastor could leave his wife and children for a mistress, get married, and show up for a call in the ELS. He was told, "That is none of your business."
Schwan's womanizing, second marriage, and guilt were mined for millions of dollars by the LCMS, WELS, and ELS. At least he did not give it away to those liberals in the ELCA!
When a WELS pastor had an affair with a married woman in his parish, breaking up the marriage, he was promoted to the role of Mission Counselor in the same region. How very convenient. When the word reached the press (not through me), a journal confronted Gurgle. Next, Gurgle picked up the phone and asked a pastor, "Did you tell the press?" Next, that pastor phoned me and asked, "Did you tell the press?" DP Jon Buchholz wanted to know all about my source for the story, true to the spying network. He had no problem with the promotion.
Sig Becker was shocked by the alcoholism and adultery he saw in the WELS clergy when he left the LCMS for WELS. The Missouri Synod has both, but not at the same levels, leading people to believe that booze, broads, and boys are the glue that holds WELS together.
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| The wordless stink-eye is effective. |
Shunning and Hating People Away
Shunning began in the Anabaptist movement. If someone was disciplined, no one would talk to him or have any business dealings with him. This carried over to Pietism and through Pietims to the LCMS, WELS, and ELS, all three far more Pietistic than Lutheran.
Shunning works well when the victims feel they are alone and stranded under the ban. A layman who has all WELS customers can be ruined by the ban. An independent WELS printer was threatened with a Bivens-Valleskey boycott if he published my books. This printer asked to meet me and to publish my books. He had Angel Joy and all the photos, told me the problem, and yet kept my best photos from me when I published the book myself. Finally he sent them - too late. He said, "I have to feed my family."
The tighter the bonds of the cult, the more people fear being excluded. Many clergy return after being expelled for no reason, other than objecting to synodical apostasy. I never met one pastor, but his sin was helping with an independent publication. He had a horrible job until broken, he was let back into WELS. No one has heard a peep from him since.
Readers can find exact parallels with the Gothard cult below.
Bullying, Threats, and Slander for Anyone Telling the Truth
Sometimes a DP will flatter to get what he wants. But he is at his best when screaming and pounding his fists.
Many leaders adopt a look of "where is that awful smell coming from?" No, really. Go to a WELS convention and enjoy the performance. It really comes from a deep-rooted fear than people will find out the truth about how evil, degenerate, and corrupt they are.
I have seen the WELS-LCMS-ELS-CLC-ELCA Slander Machine at work for years. They never stop getting even if someone has described them as they are. And yet what they tolerate is beyond imagination.
The only way to make sense of this is to assume they have no faith. Only apostates could behave the way they do, treat clergy and teachers like dirt, and wear the persona of super-sanctification.
See below for examples from books and the Net.
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Josh Duggar's sexual abuse of his sisters can be traced to his family's involvement with Bill and Steve Gothard, both serial abusers of young women. They were also very close to Doug Phillips and his wife Beale, whose story is below the Gothard scandal. Both scandals broke at about the same time, but represent years of abuse.
Bill Gothard earned a bachelor's and master's degree at Wheaton College. His also has a fake PhD. His brother Steve.
Here is an account of Bill and Steve's abuse - Biblical Search Reports.
The method of selected young women for work at the headquarters - and grooming them - is described here.
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| Josh and Anna Duggar met at a Gothard conference, the Duggar family was extremely loyal to Gothard's training. Josh was sent for "treatment" to a Gothard location in Little Rock. |
I was vaguely aware of the Duggar connection to Gothard, and Gothard's scandals, but I am not bewitched by the Evangelicals and their Pietim.
The alarm bell went off when I read how Josh and Anna Duggar met, although they were careful to omit the Gothard name or even the full name of the group.
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| Bill Gothard never married, but used youth women as unpaid, poorly paid or paying staff, isolating and grooming them. |
Josh and Anna Duggar Website
Josh: In early 2006, my Dad was campaigning for State Senate. We were a couple weeks from the Primary Election when my family took our annual trip to the ATI Conference. I was busy working with the A/V team, and had very little free time… but during one of the breaks I ended up talking through my lunch break with some new friends!…
Anna: …My siblings & I enjoyed meeting Joshua,
[a year later]
Anna: Our family made the trip from Florida to Texas again to attend our annual ATI Conference.
[a year later]
Anna: Our family made the trip from Florida to Texas again to attend our annual ATI Conference.
Advanced Training Institute is the final name for Gothard's non-profit behemoth for training Fundamentalist home-schoolers. Another name is Institute in Biblical Life Principles.
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Bill's brother Steve resigned from the IBLP when Steve's many affairs with institute secretaries were revealed. Bill resigned too - for three weeks - and came back.
ATI-IBLP
ATI-IBLP
Founding
The Advanced Training Institute International was founded in 1984 by the Institute in Basic Life Principles
through the vision of Bill Gothard. It began as the answer to the request of Basic Seminar alumni who desired to train their children in the Biblical principles that had transformed their lives.
through the vision of Bill Gothard. It began as the answer to the request of Basic Seminar alumni who desired to train their children in the Biblical principles that had transformed their lives.
One hundred and two families were selected from over 2,000 who applied to pilot the program. They met together with Bill in the north woods of Michigan for a week of planning and made commitments to turn life into a classroom and use Scripture as the main textbook for studying every academic subject.
[GJ - Brother Steve had his affairs with secretaries at the North Woods campus, and Bill sent them to him "to help with the curriculum."]
***
GJ - The Duggar family shows made me uneasy about their strange language and behavior. Josh explained, lamely, the concept of "defrauding," which rang hollow to me. The Gothard material shows how Bill Gothard used his special cult language and shaming to cultivate and manipulate the young women who appealed to him. Defrauding came up as one of his favorite terms, easily used in various ways.
If you find Jim Bob annoying, who covered up his son's abuse, you will see that his dogma comes directly from the Gothard cult.
The Duggar clan was just getting noticed and have specials when Josh's abuse of his sisters came up, due to Oprah's program refusing to run their tape, after warned of the scandal.Oprah's referral to authorities led to an investigation, and the police report details are on the Net.
Book - A Matter of Basic Principles
Sometime around 1964, Gothard was invited to teach a course on youth ministry at Wheaton. Forty-five students attended, including pastors, youth workers, and educators. The materials he presented at the time became the foundation for his seminars. In 1966, Gothard presented a seminar to 1,000 people in the Chicago area. He repeated the performance in 1967 and held his first out-of-town seminar in Seattle for 42 in 1968. Gothard’s new organization, the IBYC, was born. The Ministry Takes Off From such small beginnings, it was difficult to see the great popularity he would enjoy down the road. His combined attendance for all his seminars in 1968 was actually around 2,000. But then things really took off! As Wilfred Bockelman later would report in his book, Gothard — The Man and His Ministry: An Evaluation, “In 1969 there were around 4,000; 1971, 12,000; 1972 over 128,000 including 13,000 in the Seattle Coliseum; in 1973 more than 200,000.”12 Before you could say, “post-Watergate social malaise,” Gothard’s public career had outlasted that of most major rock-and-roll stars, including the Beatles (as a group), and his live audiences were at least as huge as those at rock concerts. Churches in every city, town, and hamlet in America were taking their young people to his seminars by the busload. Little bands of three-ring-binder-toting Gothard disciples sprang up on college and university campuses across the country. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Veinot, Don (2003-08-25). A Matter of Basic Principles (Kindle Locations 618-631). Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. Kindle Edition.
What was the nature of the “gross immorality” which shocked Samuel Schultz, former professor at Wheaton College and Institute board member since 1965, as well as the other board members? Bill’s brother, Steve Gothard, Institute employee and a vice-president, had been involved in sexual affairs with seven of the Institute secretaries. In fact, a total of 15 people were involved in sexual immorality — a very bad (and sad) situation in any Christian organization and particularly so for one whose primary emphasis is high moral character. The scandal that rocked the ministry in the early 1980s is not new news. It is a matter of record, having been reported in such Christian periodicals as Christianity Today and such secular media as the Los Angeles Times (some of which will be referenced in this chapter).
Veinot, Don (2003-08-25). A Matter of Basic Principles (Kindle Locations 719-725). Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. Kindle Edition.
By all accounts, however, Bill Gothard who is a bachelor, had known for over four years that Steve, who was a bachelor at the time, was having affairs with his secretaries, but he misused his power “at the top” to silence witnesses within the ministry. Instead of dealing with this crisis openly, with the hope of a resultant repentance and restoration, Gothard moved Steve and his “problem” to a remote location — and only when the secretaries publicly brought charges did Gothard remove them from their positions at the Institute. We realize the seriousness of this claim, but the documentation which follows will bear this out. This is the story as it unfolded:
Veinot, Don (2003-08-25). A Matter of Basic Principles (Kindle Locations 775-780). Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. Kindle Edition.
Dr. Ronald B. Allen, former professor of Hebrew Scripture at Western Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon (where he taught for 25 years), was very concerned about Bill’s erroneous teachings. He attended a seminar with his wife in 1973. He wrote: In this seminar I was regularly assaulted by the misuse of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament, on a level that I have never experienced in a public ministry before that time (or since).2 His misgivings about Gothard’s teachings were so great that he spoke with the then president of Western Baptist Seminary, Dr. Earl Radmacher. Dr. Radmacher voiced similar concerns and proposed to set up a meeting with Bill Gothard in an attempt to address these concerns. Bill Gothard declined to meet with Dr. Allen. About this futile attempt at resolution, Allen recalls: Gothard said his instruction is from God and that he will not be instructed by one of Radmacher’s seminary faculty.3
Veinot, Don (2003-08-25). A Matter of Basic Principles (Kindle Locations 953-963). Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. Kindle Edition.
Duggar Courtship Law Duplicates Gothard's Law
Nothing is quite so nauseating as Jim Bob's courtship rules, which come directly from Bill Gothard, serial sex offender, dedicated cover-up artist, bully. con-man, false-teaching murderer of souls.
Gothard, like all cult leaders, would declare something to be wrong, evil, and from Satan. Cotton Patch dolls were on that list.
Dating was the font of all evil, so he had people wrecking their families with absurd rules - our family favorite being the side-hug. What was Dear Leader Gothard doing in the rooms, alone, with young girls who were just going to bed and in their jammies or nightgowns?
The Duggars made a sacrament out of No Kissing Before Marriage, with several babies following soon after the ceremony (another sacrament, but not the chief one.). One must recognize in the Duggar-Gothard Church Luther's rule - "They turn Moses into the Savior, and Jesus into Moses."
The Law saves. The more laws, the better. And yet their legalism is accompanied by Antinomianism, just like WELS. Gothard even used the Galatians passage, twisted, "The Law was a tutor, leading us to Christ." No more Law (for Gothard and Duggar) but lots of laws.
As we all know, Josh's parents sent their errant boy to a Gothard facility to get straightened out, but that was a face-saving device. It hardly amounted to anything. Jim Bob also used a state policeman, a very close friend, to talk to Josh and start the clock ticking on the statute of limitations. The state trooper, now in the hoosegow for child porn (he re-offended, like Josh), never filed a report.
One suspects the parents dealt with lawyers very early. Jim Bob would not let the police interview Josh, which was his right as a father. Jim Bob did not have a duty to report, but their church did, since the molestations happened on church property, a rented house. The state trooper did, but he failed to do so.
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Another Duggar Pal - Abusing His Children's Nanny
CHELSEA SCHILLING About | Email | Archive
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Another Duggar Pal - Abusing His Children's Nanny
WND EXCLUSIVE
CHRISTIAN GIANT SUED FOR 'USING NANNY AS SEX OBJECT'
Lawsuit claims religious leader promised to marry young woman after wife dies
CHELSEA SCHILLING About | Email | Archive |
| The nanny-abuser Doug Phillips gave Michelle Duggar the Mother of the Year Award. |
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| Nanny-abuser Doug Phillips posed with Bill Gothard, another expert at blaming very young girls for being abused. |
Subscribe to feedI was preparing to write a second post linking Lutherdom crimes when a regular reader wrote to me about a book -
I Fired God: My Life Inside---and Escape from---the Secret World of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult
Kindle Edition
Jocelyn Zichterman was born, raised, married into, and finally, with her family, fled the Independent Fundamental Baptist church. Founded by the fiery preacher Bob Jones, with several hundred thousand members, IFB congregants are told they must not associate with members of other Baptist denominations and evangelicals, with an emphasis on secrecy, insular marriages within the church, a subservience for women, and unusual child raising practices.
In I Fired God, Jocelyn Zichterman systematically details the IFB's disturbing history, exposing a cult-like atmosphere of corruption, greed, and abuse. Having been initiated into its innermost circles, Zichterman knows that the gentle demeanor America sees in the form of the Duggar clan on 19 Kids and Counting disguises the truth about the darker side of the church.
With written documentation and sources so thorough that law enforcement has used her work as a foundation for criminal prosecutions, Zichterman exposes the IFB with revelations including:
- The disturbing world of abuse within the IFB and doctors and teachers who cater exclusively to church members and fail to report physical and sexual abuse
- The IFB-controlled Bob Jones University, which issues degrees of questionable value while making vast sums of money for its founders
- The way the IFB influences politics on the local, state, and national level, and protects its abusive culture under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.
***
GJ - This book put two things together for me - the extensive, overlapping financial network of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, and the parallels to Lutherdom.
- Bob Jones University (which gave Billy Graham an honorary doctorate),
- Quiverful Movement (babies galore),
- The Hyles connection with hundreds of abuse cases.
- The Duggar clan's secret language.
- Spying and reporting on each other.
- Phony doctorates (like Dr. Bob Jones and Dr. Paul Kelm).
- Parallels to WELS, the LCMS, the ELS, and the CLC (sic).
Caution - the author does not come out of this Purgatory a political conservative, after experiencing "conservative family values" masking incest, child abuse, and a network of deceptions.
The interlocking business aspect of this abusive cult is impressive. As Luther said, deception and greed rule the world. The IFB pretends to be independent, but the cult controls people, congregations, and escape attempts by having a file on everyone. They can build up a person and give him plenty of income, or they can make him a leper and deny him income, friendship, and family.
The author suffered horrible physical and sexual abuse from her father, sexual abuse from her brothers, and cult abuse from the IFB, her high school, her college, and the college where her husband worked until they walked out of the cult.
IFB and WELS are quite similar, in many departments. What makes an IFB or WELS person a professor? Answer - education in their inbred system, where similar poorly educated people have been allowed to rule the roost. This yields a dictatorial class of people who use their secret language to control everyone while they live lawless lives.
How did WELS happen to ignore decades of a District President abusing young girls in his own congregation? His entire district knew about it and used the information to have their own fun.
My wife and I enjoyed the Duggar programs at first but I became suspicious of the special language and the weird rules explained by Josh Duggar. I said to Mrs. I, "He does not have his heart in this. Look at his face while talking about defrauding the eyes."
