Guest Post: Breaking Free from Fundamentalism

Today's post is a guest post from Lana of the blog Wide Open Ground. She successfully broke free from her fundamentalist family, who were followers of IFB cult leader Bill Gothard.

She is now a liberal Christian, (a self-described Christian universalist), and a missionary in Southeast Asia.

She writes about her childhood and experiences now in her blog, Wide Open Ground, and she is also now a contributing writer to the wildly successful blog project, Homeschoolers Anonymous, which is a collaborative project where former fundamentalists like us are given a chance to talk about our homeschooling past.

I had asked her recently if she would like to talk about what her advice would be for young adults who are trying to break free from a fundamentalist background, which is something that has been on my mind lately, since I will be coming out to the people around me sometime in the near future. This is her story, and her advice. She said that she wrote this young adults in mind, people who are just starting out their adult lives. If someone is a teen, well of course, this wouldn't work. Short of there being physical/sexual abuse in the home, where local authorities can get involved, there's not much a teen could do if stuck in a fundamentalist home. (Sometimes, it does occur in fundamentalist households).

I came from a fundamental Christian background. I was homeschooled for 12 years, and my family was members of ATI, a fundamentalist group led by Bill Gothard. I grew up in a vacuum, believing that public schools were synagogues of Satan and the teachers were its priests. After elementary school I had only a couple of friends, none of which were from public schools. I wore mostly dresses, never watched TV and never listened to any kind of contemporary Christian music.

Today I’m out of it all and overall thriving. If you are leaving fundamentalism, let me encourage you that it does get better. Here are a few little tips on leaving, and then you can comment and add to the list.
First, admit that fundamentalism damaged you. Oddly, this has been hard for me. See my family was also dysfunctional, so at first I thought my struggles were only a result of childhood hurts. It’s true that my family was dysfunctional, and it’s true my parents hurt me, but let’s not underestimate the kind of damage that social isolation and a gendered childhood did to me as well. If you are leaving fundamentalism, be prepared for everyone to tell you your problem is either in your head, or it’s just your family. Ignore them. 

My Thanks to the Readers of The Wartburg Watch for their Words of Support

I recently had a guest post published on the Christian website The Wartburg Watch, they titled it Easter Church Attendance and a Story of the Loss of Faith. The writers of TWW have always extended open arms to anyone who has been struggling with their faith, or even given it up altogether. 

 It's become a kind of refuge for people who have been harmed by extremist and even downright abusive churches, and when I went back to read some of the comments left on my guest post, I was floored by the outpouring of support from people who are their regular readers, here's a few of their comments:

From reader "Anon 1":

I just want to reach out and hug Sheldon. There is nothing in this world more devastating than realizing you have very little in common with your family or entire childhood support system.

From "Hoppy the toad"

Sheldon,

I’m sorry about your experiences. I sadly have to agree that most Christians either gloss over, or don’t really read much of the Old Testament laws. I too, struggle with trying to understand apparent commands for women to marry their rapists, especially since rape was also a death penalty offense. I am inclined to think that there is something we are missing in context (or translation) and that the women ordered to marry their “rapists” were perhaps women really being ordered to marry their seducers. Whether there is good evidence for this, I don’t know, but it’s something to consider.
Anyway, too many believers gloss over issues like these and it’s a turn-off to both unbelievers and those struggling with their faith. There is a real problem with intellectual dishonesty, cognitive dissonance, and just shallowness of Biblical knowledge in the church.

Now It's My Turn to be Interviewed......

Recently, I interviewed Lana of the blog Wide Open Ground about her beliefs now as a Christian universalist (she is currently a missionary in Southeast Asia) and about her past as a cult survivor, growing up in the Bill Gothard branch of the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization.



It was a great experience, and it went over very well with you, my blog readers (it was one of the most read posts in the history of the blog).

Now the tables have turned. Lana decided to interview me about my past, the ACE curriculum and fundamentalist childhood, my de-conversion, and my beliefs now, both on religion as well as politics. Read the interview at her blog, Wide Open Ground. It is titled: Life During and After Fundamentalism: Sheldon's Story.

If you want to write a guest post for my blog (read my submission guidelines first), or you are a blogger who would like to do a Q&A interview, let me know at ramblingsofsheldon (at) gmail (dot) com, and I will get in contact with you.

Serious inquires only please, and no spam requests (don't ask me to promote your web design business for example), those will be ignored, period.

Q&A with Lana of My Musing Corner

I had the opportunity this week to interview Lana of the blog My Musing Corner. Lana is a blogger, a cult survivor who left the Bill Gothard branch of the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization, and a missionary in Southeast Asia.

I asked her about her childhood, and about her experiences and life now as a missionary.

1. First of all, can you explain to my readers who Bill Gothard is and his beliefs? Some readers may not be familiar with him.

Bill Gothard is an evangelical leader in the  fundamental Christian homeschool community. He teaches that couples should not use birth control and have many children. He also teaches what he calls the “umbrella of authority” where women and children must submit to their father/husband, and girls must wear only dresses and not cut their hair. He teaches that rock music is evil because it came from pagan Africa. For this reason, the only type of music allowed in the home was classical music.

Everything is about outward appearance. A big emphasis in his teaching is character, such as first time obedience and cheerfulness. Gothard also teaches that we should carry out Old Testament laws, including no pork, and the Old Testament’s rules about when a couple cannot have sex (during a woman’s period, 40 days after giving birth to a son and 80 days after giving birth to a daughter). 

2.  You have talked about on your blog about when your family first joined ATI when you were 6 years old. What attracted your family to Bill Gothard’s teachings? Were your parents Christians before they joined? If so, what denominations/groups were they a part of before? 

My parents both grew up Southern Baptist. Bill Gothard has a seminar called the Institute of Basic Life Principles. This seminar is for any conservative families, not just people apart of ATI. My parents never intended to get involved in the legalism; they attended the seminar because it promised to give them tools on how to raise a godly family and taught anger management. We showed up to our first seminar in pants, and my parents had to go buy us dresses the next day.  Anyway, we slowly got into the legalism from there. It was not overnight. 

3. In a past post on sheltering and the way fundamentalists homeschool their children, you said that you didn't know homosexuals existed until you were 16 years old. 

What did you mean by that? Had you never even heard of homosexuality until that time, or had you simply never met a gay person until you were 16? 

Finally, Someone Who Understands What I Am Talking About....

Some days, something happens to me as a blogger, that makes me think that all this time and energy I put into the blog each week is really worth it.

Recently, I posted a guest post from Jonny Scaramanga, creator of the blog Leaving Fundamentalism, about the A.C.E curriculum we both grew up with.

This past week, a comment was made on that post from someone else who personally experienced this atrocious curriculum as a child/teen. Here's what she had to say. Lana is a blogger (author of My Musing Corner), and a cult survivor, her parents were followers of the Bill Gothard/ATI branch of the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization.

Read the full comment here, she talks about where ACE fails in 28 different ways, it's a great read, you can read the comment in it's entirety on the post, or I've made it into a document on Google Drive, for ease of reading,  you can read it in that format here.

The Google document is accessible to anyone, no Google log in required. I'm only including some of the objections from her 28 point list here in this post, because the list, plus my comments would make for what could be the longest post I've ever published on the blog:


1. "You leave out one word of a Bible verse, and its five points off a test. "

She's right about points docked off of tests for failing to remember a Bible verse. In each book (the books are known as "PACE's"), there's a verse that they tell you to learn, and try to help you remember it with various exercises throughout the book, such as segments where the verse is given to you with words missing, and you must fill in the blanks. 

I don't know how it went in her home schooling family, but in the A.C.E school I was in until the 5th grade, the teacher would dock points for misspellings, no matter how minor, my mom was more flexible about that.

10. "The dinosaur and evolution comments are laughable." 

Jonny's aforementioned guest post talks about one of the ridiculous claims regarding creationism vs. evolution. ACE claims that a creature pulled from the ocean in 1977 of the coast of New Zealand could be a species of dinosaur. The creature was actually an animal called a basking shark. The confusion was cleared up in 1978, yet an ACE book published in 1989 was still claiming this. 

ACE also claims that the Lock Ness monster exists and is a type of dinosaur called a plesiosaur. (I wish I was joking about this)

12. "There are racist comments in there."