Mr. Hotstuff

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"Cult"ure of the IFB, bigotry, racism, and sexism...

I'll talk more about my abuse in another post, I have to take those posts with a bit of space between them, as it's difficult for me to write them. So this post is more about what the IFB church was like growing up, so that you can perhaps better understand the controlling, cult like tendencies of that church and how the church groomed me to be a perfect victim for abuse.

School started in the fall and I was in fifth grade. I had a few friends, of which, Julie, Holly, and Mary were the ones I hung out with the most. Julie lived on a dairy farm just down the road a bit from our school where I loved riding her pony and playing on her Atari (I wasn't allowed to have video games, they would rot my brain). Holly was a bit snobby and we were constantly butting heads but she threw great birthday parties so I didn't want to be left out of those (thanks to her slumber party I got to watch the Neverending Story and be puzzled by the ceiling mirror in her parent's bedroom above the waterbed). Mary was Pastor Fatty's youngest daughter whose house was the most posh of anyone's in the church outside of the Gibbs' (Yes, those Gibbs, of CLA fame, known to protect IFB abusers at all costs, though now DG III is representing the accuser, not the accused in the Doug Phillips case.) and she had an entire room devoted to her extensive collection of Barbies. Now when I say hung out I mean that quite literally as the monkey bars were my favourite piece of playground equipment and we all scrambled all over them every chance we got. 

I went to an A.C.E. school, which was what I had been in when we lived in Maine. My school had strict rules, a totally fundamental baptist curriculum, was KJV only, was run by men, and had a rigid dress code. Also, no minorities were enrolled in our school. Remember, this is the 1986-1987 school year, not 1950, and we didn't live that far from Cleveland so you can't tell me that there were NO African Americans that lived in the area. The ACE curriculum espoused segregation. There were comic strips in our curriculum that taught little lessons or verses at the bottom of certain chapters. In the comics, there was a white ACE school, an asian ACE school, and a black ACE school. They didn't mix. Apartheid was taught as a good thing, and beneficial to the people of South Africa. We didn't celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day, we were taught that he was a communist, and was not a Christian and certainly not a Baptist since he was a liberal theologian, and that he caused rioting, violence, and assaults to happen wherever he went.

This year at my school they didn't have uniforms, they would implement them the following year. I had been used to being in a uniform in Maine, so being able to wear different clothes every day to school was a novelty.

 

That's me in the standard ACE polyester jumpsuit uniform.

The culture within the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church is often difficult for others outside to fully comprehend. Many IFB people who are still within the church will cry foul at what I am writing here, but I assert that the IFB as a whole is a cult. So from here on out I will refer to it as the IFB "cult"ure. 

The beauty of the IFB church is that they are independent, have no national governing body, they set their own rules and beliefs, don't believe that they are under civil authority, and they answer to only themselves. That's actually not so beautiful when you read it put that way. There are some state and regional IFB organizations, like the GARBC (general association of regular baptist churches) and the Independent Baptist Fellowship of North America (my church during my high school years was part of the latter). However, neither organization actually has any power over individual churches under their umbrella. They basically exist to have annual conferences for guest speakers to come and talk about current issues and how they think is the best way to pastor. Churches rarely get kicked out of these organizations and when they do, it's because the church became too liberal.

IFB churches are run by men, usually white men. The structure within the church goes like this:

1. Pastor
2. Deacons
3. Sunday School Teachers/Teachers in IFB schools
4. Ushers
5. Adult Members
6. Children

Now number three and four are not officially recognized as part of the hierarchy, and "officially" the Pastor and Deacons are not supposed to be any higher than the members, but make no mistake, that's how it works. Pastors are the "Lord's anointed", the "shepherd" and we were the flock.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I was told that we couldn't talk badly about the "Lord's anointed" or speak harm against him or try to remove him. Pastors were gods. They could be kind and devout though legalistic, as my first Pastor in Maine was, or they could be lispy tyrants, as my Pastor in Ohio was, or they could be deceptive power houses who protected abusers like my Pastor in Pennsylvania. In the IFB, all born again Christians are supposed to be shared priesthood holders within the church, and all matters of importance are to be brought before the church and put to a vote. We used to vote on some pretty stupid stuff, like skirt lengths and carpet colours. Sometimes it was an important vote, like a new deacon (which was a popularity contest, let's not kid ourselves), or a new Pastor (which we were supposed to spend a lot of time in fervent prayer about so God could show us if He had sent us, "the one", it was always disappointing when God sent us an asshole or pervert. Oh God, what a sense of humor you have!).

Music was old fashioned hymns. No drums. No electric guitars or electric anything. Soundtracks for special music had to be pre approved by the music minister and only musical tracks by approved baptist institutions made the cut (Hyles Anderson College, Word of Life, Moody, Bob Jones University, Pensacola, those were approved). No contemporary christian Music ( I once was called into my youth pastor's office over a Michael W. Smith tape of mine that my friend had stolen from me and I was preached at for about an hour about the evils of CCM.). Rock and Roll was forbidden, country music was vacant of morals and not be listened to. Backward masking was a very popular tool used in chapel services to scare us into thinking rock musicians wanted us to worship Satan and kill babies. That backward masking thing fell out of popularity in the IFB as it rose in popularity within the assemblies of God churches. If the AoG liked it, then we had to separate from that trend, because Pentecostals were likely going to hell and we were holier then they were.

Attire was proper, modest, neat, and dated. No pants for women, no shorts, no tops where your collarbone would show, skirts that were knee length or greater, no slits in skirts that went above the knee, no midriffs, nothing form fitting, no tight or fitted sweaters, no bare shoulders. Jean skirts and culottes were almost a uniform of the IFB woman. I like to call culottes the Baptist burka. I did own a couple pairs of pants as a small child, but they were only to be worn at home, when it was cold. I was not allowed to wear them in public. Girls needed to have feminine hairstyles, longer was holier. Short was unnatural unless you were over thirty and had a perm. Our dress was supposed to protect us from men and boys lusts. If they lusted after us, it was our fault.

These culottes would not have been approved, they are above the knee, also the cowboy boots wouldn't have been acceptable, those are men's shoes.

Boys had short haircuts, hair not touching the ears, no facial hair or very tightly groomed facial hair on men. Suits on Sundays, khaki's on Wednesday nights, polo shirts or button down shirts, dress shoes, sneakers with jeans only if you were working on a project at the church or at a job that required it. No t-shirts with writing or graphics on them again, unless you were working or if the graphic T said something about Jesus. But in church, dress attire only.

Homosexuals weren't talked about in the church in my formative years. Or if they were, I was too young and probably in children's church. The first time I remember anything being mentioned about homosexuality was when we were living in Maine and I read a chick tract about the dangers of homosexuality.

This tract would haunt me in later years. When we moved to Ohio, and I met my first gay man, I remembered this tract. I loved him. Not romantic love, just that I loved him as a person. He was a bit arrogant, but I honestly think that arrogance was his way of putting distance between himself and the IFB. He wasn't arrogant so much as he was hurt. He was one of Doc's sons.

Men were the Pastors, the Deacons, and the teachers, women could be Sunday school teachers for other women and girls, or play the piano/organ. Women could hold no other positions within the church. Women were supposed to ask their husbands any questions that they had about the sermon and be silent in the church. Men were the head of the household, women were submissive to their husband's God-given authority.

As children, we memorized scripture weekly. Bible verses for Sunday school, then for school entire chapters, more verses in AWANA on Wednesday. We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, were at our christian school Monday through Friday, and had prayer meeting/AWANA on Wednesdays. Soul winning was Thursday nights and some Saturday mornings. (I didn't do a lot of soul winning, thankfully.) Our entire life and identity was wrapped up in the IFB way of life.

As children, the positive thing was that we were seen as blessings. The negative thing is that we were seen as arrows in the hand of God and our earthly father for God's army. Spiritual warfare was seen as a very palpable thing and hearing about demons and Satan and how evil the world was really wears on you as a child and scares you. You are taught that someday you will have to engage in spiritual warfare and you have to be willing to die for your faith.

As children, we were spanked, and often we were physically abused. I was not spanked in an abusive manner. My father never struck me in anger and he very rarely raised his voice. I was spanked though, and I can see how even that could contribute more to the feelings that I had that my body was not my own to control. My father didn't mean to convey that to me of course. It was widely taught that spankings could be carried out until bruises formed and that if you didn't spank you were disobeying the Bible and God's law. I think that most IFB churches have changed this teaching in recent years, though I could be wrong.

For girls purity was the ideal. No sex until marriage and if you had dared to have sex you could face church discipline and expulsion from the church. Boys often didn't face the same consequences, though sometimes they did. Girls who had sex outside of marriage were promiscuous. Boys who had sex outside of marriage had fallen. Neither one a great descriptor, but it's easier to stand up then to erase promiscuity.

Guest preachers that I heard during my lifetime: Bob Jones II, Bob Jones III, Jack Hyles, Bill Gothard, David Gibbs Jr., and many others of the same cloth. I remember our Pastor in Maine getting up and telling us about Lester Rolloff dying in a plane crash when I was around six or seven. You'd have thought the president had been assassinated.

Sometimes we'd have families or staff members who would leave under somewhat suspect or abrupt circumstances. We were not allowed to ask questions about why they had left. To do so was to gossip, though gossip was pretty rampant in the IFB church. The Pastor might get up and address that such and such a person or family had moved but that was about it. He might offer up some explanation, but usually we knew that that family had been questioning the "lord's anointed" inappropriately, stirring up strife, had become liberal, or had done something "immoral". There were times when people were thrown out of the church, but I discussed that in my last post so I won't repeat that here.

We didn't associate much with the outside world and we didn't associate with churches outside of our denomination. Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and eventually Jerry Falwell were all seen as too liberal. Oral Roberts was surely going to hell and leading others there in droves. Billy Graham was the anti-christ, or was training the anti-christ, or something along those lines, he was bad, that's all I knew. Jerry Falwell became too liberal because he allowed CCM music at Liberty and other translations of the Bible. Pat Robertson was a nutter (the IFB didn't get EVERYTHING wrong after all) because he believed in spiritual gifts still being real.

That was my "cult"ure. It took me many, many years to completely leave it behind. For those who don't think the IFB is a cult, please look at this list and if you are in a cult, leave it behind: http://www.esama.ca/warning-signs-that-you-are-in-a-cult

If you suspect the group you are in is harmful, but are not sure, ask yourself these questions:

• do they claim to have a special corner on the truth, something no other groups has?
• are you told to not question what is being taught, as the leadership are godly, honest, have divine authority and you must trust them?
• are you discouraged from asking questions as to why members have left, and expected to accept the reasons the group leadership gives you?
• do they put down other churches, groups, etc, while pointing out their faults and errors to build themselves up? do they use peoples faults and sins as examples of what to do and what not to do?
• are you made to feel your failures, as though your performance is not up to par to their righteous standards?
• do they recommend for you to be around their people, expecting you to attend all group activities? if you do not, are you are questioned about your spirituality or dedication?
• do they stop you from reading anything negative about themselves?
• do they call those who fall away enemies, dogs, or cancer, even using examples from the Bible or other such materials?
• do they place and emphasis on evil and the devil, declaring that the world outside is a threat to the group?
• do they defend themselves in every area?
• do they give importance to a spiritual goal, such as enlightenment, godliness, salvation, that has no real tangible way of being measured?
• do they operate in humility, or seem arrogant, and make demands on you to obey, using such statements such as “real believers obey without question or if you really were a devoted follower you would do such and such"?

It was my birthday...

I had a birthday a couple weeks ago. I turned 38. It was a nice day, my son Joseph got to attend his first semi-formal, and my younger two went to their dads for the weekend. A good day, and my husband took me shopping the next day to buy me some new sundresses and summer shoes. He spoils me and treats me like his queen. He's a keeper.

I'm going to open up on here a bit on my past abuse history to hopefully explain why I hold the views I do on the patriarchy movement within the church, my inherent dislike and distrust of the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist Church), my disdain for the purity movement, and why I hold the church accountable for not only allowing, but fostering abuse within its confines. 

I also want to make it clear that although I am highly suspicious and often triggered by the corporate church (just attending church is often difficult and I do not do it often anymore) I am still a believer. Sinful, errant, evil people hurt me, and have hurt others. The message of fear, control, and shame is not Jesus' message, it is man's. I want to tell some of my story so that others can recognize the pattern of abuse, how the grooming starts, and some red light moments that should make a parent take pause and investigate if something untoward is happening.

My birthday is a trigger. I have had many great birthdays, many memorable birthdays. My surprise sweet 16 is a great memory (I have the best girlfriends in the universe, we are still friends, some 20 plus years later). Going into labor late at night when I turned 30 and giving birth to my youngest early the next morning is a great memory. My tenth birthday though, is memorable for another reason. It was the day the abuse started. It coloured all of the birthdays I had after that with a dark cloud of shame. I have never had a birthday since that birthday where I didn't remember the events of that day.

Doc was a member of our Baptist church in Ohio. He was an upstanding member of our community. He was a former deacon. He was in his early 60's. He gave generously to the church and was involved in missions trips there. He always donated five lbs of carrots to any church fellowship (Why? I don't know. Carrots were his thing and when his hand would shoot up during the church service asking for food donations often other church members would yell out that he was donating 5lbs of carrots as we all knew that was coming before he had a chance to reply.) He was at every service. His wife was the school nurse. He and his wife were best friends with my parents. He was a great guy. He had a large family, six kids, all of whom had left the nest, with his youngest attending a well known bible college in Ohio, and one of his sons was a missionary. He was exemplary.

He was also a pedophile.

He was sick.

He was evil.

We had moved to Northeastern Ohio in the middle of a January blizzard from our home in Maine. My Dad felt called by God to go to Ohio. He felt that God wanted him to give up being a pastor and to dedicate himself to christian education. In Ohio was a small Bible College that our church ran. Our Dad worked on his masters in Christian Education and was the academic dean of the college while we lived there. My mom was his secretary. We lived in a small two bedroom trailer when we first arrived, and lived there for about a year while my parents tried to find a house to purchase that we could afford. It is important to note that for most of my life, we lived at or below the poverty level. My parents worked hard, and sacrificed much to give us the illusion that we were not poor, but we were poor. The hand me downs, no health insurance, and crap cars didn't lie. I give mad props to my parents for raising my sister and I in as much comfort as we enjoyed, I don't know how they did it. We never received government assistance. That was sinful, people in our church were taught not to accept medicaid, welfare, or food stamps. It didn't matter how poor you were. Also, you tithed ten percent of your paycheck to the church,and that ten percent was to be calculated from your gross before taxes.

We met doc in March. I was nine. I was sick. Really sick. I had the flu and we had no health insurance and hadn't yet established ourselves with a family doctor. I got such a high fever that I became delusional. I had watched Moby Dick earlier that day and I had visions of Moby Dick coming through my wall at me, attacking me with Captain Ahab waving at me from his back where he was tied to him by the harpoon that he had impaled that white whale with. It was terrifying. Tylenol and ice water, cool cloths, etc. had not brought my fever down. My mother was frantic with worry. My Dad came and stood in the door of my room with my mother sitting on my bed and told her to take me to the ER. They'd figure out how to pay the bill later. God would provide.

She took me to the local community hospital and Doc was there. He was a cardiologist, but occasionally he was in the ER when the staff was low. He recognized my mom from church. She was relieved to see a familiar face. An IV was started with antibiotics in case it was bacterial pneumonia and they put me on a cooling blanket to bring down my fever and gave me some Motrin. 

By the time we left, I was smiling, the fever had broken, and I had coloured Doc a picture and given him a hug. Weeks later I saw that he had that picture on his fridge and it made me feel so special. I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, and he told me that I should think of being a doctor instead. He believed in me, he encouraged me to think beyond nursing and to dream bigger. I loved him instantly. Men in our churches never encouraged women to do things outside of the home. Nursing was "ok" but being a doctor was unheard of. He sent us home with some antibiotic samples and told my mom to bring me to his office, no charge, for a follow up and he'd do what he could to help with the ER bill. My mother thought he was a Godsend. We all did. My mother had a heart condition, so did my sister. I had one but I had mostly grown out of it. But, I was sick a lot. I have rheumatoid arthritis which brings with it a compromised immune system. Doc helped us with free or deeply discounted care and lots of samples over the next three years. Within a few months, he and his wife and my parents were fast friends.

Doc would play chess with me and introduced me to a show called Star Trek. I loved this show. Star Trek would become a huge part of my life, and was key to my survival over the next few years. I hadn't been exposed to sci fi much before this. I do remember watching some Buck Rogers at one point when we lived in Maine but that's about it. Most fantasy or sci fi things were questionable in the IFB church, too much humanism, too much evolutionary talk, too much magic. But because Doc watched it, and we would go to his house after church frequently, and then every Friday night, I started watching it. Also, since it was a "classic" show it was passable.  Doc treated me like a little adult, not like a child. He would compliment my golden hair, my deep blue eyes, and how tall I was getting. He would compliment my love of learning, my good grades, my addiction to reading everything I was permitted to. He would take me for rides in his Mercedes Benz. He would hug me when he saw me and hug me before he left. He was like another grandfather to me.

And then it was my birthday.

I turned ten. Doc and his wife came over, along with his daughter, home from college. She and my sister were only a couple years apart in age, we had spaghetti and meatballs (a family favourite, my mom's crock pot meatballs are the best!). Doc and his family always did the sacrilegious thing of putting sugar on their spaghetti sauce. Blech. I blew out my candles, opened my presents (More barbies, my little ponies, and a dictionary, yay!) and we all sat around and chit chatted for a bit. My sister and the daughter went to watch TV. For some reason, I needed to go get something out of storage, probably some toy that would go with my new barbie. We had a large storage porch off of the front of our trailer, it was freezing in the winter, and hot in the summer, but we had seriously downsized in our move and our stuff needed a place to stay. I went out to storage and in the back of the room, found what I was looking for. It was in a box near the floor, so I had been bending over to get it. When I stood up, Doc was there. He took my face in his hands and he kissed me. He held me tightly to him and put his tongue in my mouth.

I was frozen.

I was disgusted.

I was ashamed.

I was confused.

If I could go back in time I would tell that little girl to scream, to bite the offending tongue, to push at him, to yell No! I would tell her to run to her Daddy and tell on that disgusting man!

But I can't go back in time, and that little girl was me, it wasn't someone else. I very often relate to what happened to me in the third person. It's easier to handle that way. It's also how much of my experiences felt. Out of body experiences while he abused me was commonplace. It was easier to watch than to feel it happening.

When he stopped kissing me, he wrapped his arms around my trembling frame and told me not to be afraid, but not to tell anyone what had happened. He said no one would believe me anyhow. He said that he loved me and that others would not understand our "forbidden love". "I did love him after all, didn't I?" he asked. No, I hadn't lied about that I affirmed to him. But I didn't mean it like this. I didn't want this. I didn't even understand what the hell had just happened. He smiled and looked at me up and down appreciatively and told me that he was so glad that God had brought me into his life.

He left then, and I was standing there, motionless, dazed, watching him walk back into my house, he was getting his family together and leaving. I felt nauseated. I had just done something awful. I wasn't supposed to date until I was 16, no kissing until I was engaged. I had kissed a couple of boys before this, and a couple of girls, but they were childish, innocent kisses, pretending to get married or date or just see what the fuss was about. But I knew the rules. I was ten. I had just broken the rule. "Obedience is the very best way, to show that you believe. O- B -E- D- I- E- N- C- E" (sing along with me there, I bet many of you know that little ditty.) I had just disobeyed, with a grown man old enough to be my grandfather. I didn't mean to disobey, but I had just done it. But I had disobeyed with an adult man, who was in authority over me. So had I disobeyed?

Obedience was very important. It was imperative. Men were in authority, and parents were the absolute authority. Think I'm overstating or oversimplifying this? Take a look at some of the comics that were in my christian school curriculum at this age.

I thought briefly about telling my parents. But it was a fleeting thought. I highly doubted they would believe me over him. I was a kid. And worse, I was a girl. He was a man, he had position and power in the church, and in our community. I was nothing. I was no one. I knew what happened to girls who were promiscuous in our church. They were sent away to "homes" or "camps", or worse, they were completely shunned and kicked out of their homes. I didn't want to be sent away. Fear kept me silent for years. Shame kept me compliant for years. Lack of knowledge about sex and what was appropriate touching kept me confused and suffering.

Kissing before engagement meant promiscuous. That I knew. Kissing meant you needed to get engaged. Doc was married. I didn't want to marry him anyway. Eww. Was I an adulterer? That was even worse. I'd heard enough about adultery to know that was the ultimate sin, and adultery was almost universally painted as being brought about by the woman's wiles over the man. I remember looking at my oversized t-shirt and beyond the knee length culottes and wondering if I had somehow tempted him by my appearance?

I got myself together and came back inside said goodbye to Doc as he left, then buried myself in my new dictionary. Websters, dark blue, hardbound copy. Word to look up: "forbidden". Adjective; not permitted or allowed. I already knew what forbidden meant, but now that word was stuck in my brain. See also, "illicit". Yuck.

My mind was whirling. Had God brought me to him? Why? Why would God do that? It must be true though, since my Dad had said that God called him here, He had called us to move to Ohio. Nothing happens to Christians that is not of God's will. That much was true right? Right?! Was God trying to teach me something? Was I being tested? I didn't know. I didn't know how to process this, how to respond. I just felt sick. I could still smell him, could still feel his hands on my face, then my body against his. Shudder.

I pondered the possibility of asking my sister what she thought about what I had experienced. She was 7 and a half years older than I was though, and at this time we were not all that close. I was still the annoying little kid sister that she put up with. So that was not an option. I needed to remedy that, I needed to figure out how to get closer to her, to find a way to convey to her what was happening in a manner that she would not judge me. I had a new mission.

Happy Birthday Jeney.