Recovering Grace Founders Speak to Christian Radio Show About Bill Gothard

I regrettably hadn't kept up with the recent news about cult leader Bill Gothard, who was coming under fire because of revelations by the Christian watchdog group Recovering Grace that he had been sexually abusing teen girls for nearly 40 years.

I hadn't updated the blog about some of the recent developments, since my last post about him, Oak Brook College of Law, an institution that he founded, officially cut ties with him and his organizations, and most importantly, Gothard has resigned from the boards of IBLP and ATI, the cornerstones of his empire.

Recently, Recovering Grace founders Dr. John Cornish and Kari Underwood, both survivors of his cult spoke to "Issues Etc." a Christian radio show in the Midwest about their time in the cult, what they saw during their time there, recent developments regarding Gothard, and their work to expose the toxic teachings of his organizations Institute of Basic Life Principles, and Advanced Training Institute.

Cult Leader Bill Gothard: New Abuse Allegations, and His Disturbing Connections to HSLDA

Back in November 2012, I wrote a blog post on cult leader Bill Gothard, and his beliefs, which range from the bizarre, like expecting followers to follow old testament food rules to the disturbing, such as his view that most mental illness are the result of "guilt and irresponsibility". It became the most popular post of all time on this blog.

Now, I'm back to talk more about him because of two troubling revelations that have come to light about him recently: new allegations of sexual abuse against him, and new information about his deep connections to the immensely powerful homeschooling group HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association.

New sexual abuse allegations:

The Christian watchdog group Recovering Grace has been publishing accounts by former followers of his recently of sexual harassment and molestation. The worst account yet has been the story of a woman identified only as "Charlotte". She came to the headquarters of the Institute of Basic Life Principles, Gothard flagship organization when she was 16 to work for his organization.

During that time, Gothard while "counseling" her, blamed her for being molested by her father, saying that she had "tempted him", and then in turn, went on to have inappropriate physical contact with her himself.

She was called into a meeting with Gothard and several of his staff members later, where he denied all of this, and the staff members had told her that they didn't believe her. Several former cult members who were involved in this meeting are no longer a part of the group, have confirmed this detail to Recovering Grace

She was promptly sent away from headquarters, and back to her family, who thought that she had done something wrong to be expelled like this, and rejected her.

Read Charlotte's full account at Recovering Grace

There have also been other people coming forward lately, an avalanche of people contacting Recovering Grace with their accounts of wrongdoing by Gothard, including a woman, "Meg", who was 20 years old when she was a secretary for Bill Gothard, when she was sexually harassed by him, and was told later that he had wanted to marry her. Read her series, Sacred Grooming, starting here, it's a 6 part series in total.

Deep, disturbing connections to HSLDA:

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association is a frightening organization in and of itself (and one that my parents unfortunately belonged to). In May 2013, I talked about the worst of their beliefs and practices, including calling a man who forced his children to live in cages a "hero", wanting state mandatory reporter laws for child abuse (laws that require teachers, ministers, etc to report child abuse that they encounter or face prosecution), to end, and their belief that anonymous tips to child services agencies shouldn't exist.

Experiencing All the Different Varieties of Christianity: Jeri's Story

Sheldon's note:  This post is a guest post from blogger Jeri of Heresy in the Heartland. Jeri is an ex-fundamentalist who left the organization of Independent Fundamental Baptist cult leader Bill Gothard when she was 23 years old. I highly recommend that you read her 6 part series on that transition, start reading about it here. 

By age 23 I had made a full circuit of the American Christianity buffet table and if I hadn’t tasted everything, I had at least gotten near enough to smell it.

I was dedicated to the Protestant God by my parents and a Pastor Dibble at a Christian & Missionary Alliance church in a college town in Pennsylvania. My parents, raised Lutheran from infancy, had been rebaptized there (by immersion). They were enthusiastic about Bible study and campus evangelism.

When we moved to another state, we attended a charismatic non-denominational church where people prayed out loud, prophesied in tongues, and danced or raised their hands in worship. I associate that church with guitars, a board of elders instead of a pastor, and lyrics displayed with overhead projectors. Tithes and offerings were collected in inconspicuous boxes with mail slots against the back wall of the auditorium. 

My dad baptized me in the Great Lakes in a small ceremony with one other family. We sang “Our God Reigns”, my friend’s mom wrapped me in my bath towel with the elephant on it, and I was excited because now Mom and Dad would let me share communion. Elders would stand in the aisles at church holding bottles of grape juice, ready to refill the the common cup as it passed down the rows. The cubes of homemade unleavened bread were fragrant with coriander and star thistle honey. I always tried to nonchalantly pick the biggest piece when the plate made its way to me.

My parents came to object to sensuality in the church. The church “orchestra” became more of a band, and this made my parents uncomfortable. They were more concerned about several of their friends’ marriages falling apart and about two divorcees from the church marrying each other. This upset my mom so much that we left that church and started attending a Friends meeting. 

This particular group of Friends was unique in that they did occasionally celebrate Communion, with grape juice and fluffy white bread. Everyone tore off a piece as the loaf was passed down the row. The congregation was small and the old wooden meetinghouse drafty, so they set up chairs in the basement for services through the winter. 

The pastor was young, with a wife and baby boy.  Through every sermon he would remove his glasses, set them on the lectern, put them back on, take them off, and so on. There was no band, no overhead projector. In the middle of the service, everyone sat down, even the pastor, for fifteen minutes of “quiet time”. 

Dad took us all to midweek hymn sings and prayer meetings at the parsonage, where I learned to follow along from a hymnal. I recall a boring video series called “Ordering Your Private World” by Gordon MacDonald, former chairman of the board of World Vision. About the time we were watching MacDonald on a TV screen, he was resigning as president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship after admitting to an adulterous affair. But the Internet had not yet been born, so we knew nothing of MacDonald’s private world.

Another video presentation was more memorable. It warned of the AIDS crisis: the American population was forecast to be decimated in ten years’ time, or was it twenty? I didn’t really know what they were talking about, only that public restrooms could expose me to a deadly virus. The video had a lot to say about “homosexuality”. Dad leaned over from his folding metal chair next to me in the dim room and whispered into my ear, “That’s when a man sticks his penis into another man’s bottom”. My eyes must have widened, but there was nothing to say.

I was twelve or thirteen the Easter that some of the church ladies decided it would be cute to have a children’s choir. They taught us a Michael Card song (that included the line: “You can choose what not to believe in…”). There were perhaps eight of us on the stage. Standing there in the new skirt and blouse Mom and I had sewn for the occasion, I was painfully aware of being the oldest. 

When the congregation withdrew from the Quaker denomination, I joined the adults in voting for a new church name and was pleased when my favorite won out. “Cornerstone” soon voted to align themselves with the Evangelical Free denomination. We parted ways with them at that point, because the “E. Free” allowed divorced men to be pastors and my mother’s interpretation of the New Testament did not permit such low standards.

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."

Exposing the IFB: Pastor Bill Gothard and Advanced Training Institute

(Author's note: This is a post in the continuing series, Exposing the IFB, about the Independent Fundamental Baptist denomination, a group which many of it's former members refer to as a cult. For more information about this group, including my past posts on them, and links to blogs written by survivors of this organization,  check out the Exposing the IFB page on this blog).

The reach of extremist minister Bill Gothard's influence goes quite far in the US, and around the world. Most people have never heard his name before, but he has famous followers and his organization has influence in places that you would never expect.

Some of his famous admirers include the Duggar family of "19 Kids and Counting" fame on TLC, and former Arkansas governor, 2008 Presidential candidate, and commentator Mike Huckabee.

His organizations are also reaching into surprising places in US society. Though his home school support/curriculum organization Advanced Training Institute  is only popular with like minded fundamentalists  a follower of his, Tom Hill, started a training course called Character First, that is used in public schools, workplaces and other organizations, in 28 countries. Their website claims that over 300,000 people a year go through their training every month, and the organization, when asked, tries to distance themselves from Gothard, even thought they admit that their founder and Gothard are close friends, and that most of their character principles are taken word for word from the Institute from Basic Life Principles, a Gothard organization  and that Tom Hill served on the board of IBLP.

Here's why an organization like Character First, which has gotten into some US public schools, might try to distance themselves from a minister like Bill Gothard:

Their practice and promotion of the abusive "Christian Patriarchy" culture:

They don't make any attempt to hide it, Bill Gothard's Vision Forum website, his group for promoting his ideas on marriage and family plainly spells it out. Here's actual quotes from the website:

Their views on children:

". Both sons and daughters are under the command of their fathers as long as they are under his roof or otherwise the recipients of his provision and protection. Fathers release sons from their jurisdiction to undertake a vocation, prepare a home, and take a wife. Until she is given in marriage, a daughter continues under her father’s authority and protection. Even after leaving their father’s house, children should honor their parents by seeking their counsel and blessing throughout their lives."

(As I have said before about the IFB culture, especially part of my post on First Baptist Hammond,churches in the IFB don't truly consider someone to be an adult until marriage, especially the women).

Their views on women:

 "While unmarried women may have more flexibility in applying the principle that women were created for a domestic calling, it is not the ordinary and fitting role of women to work alongside men as their functional equals in public spheres of dominion (industry, commerce, civil government, the military, etc.). The exceptional circumstance (singleness) ought not redefine the ordinary, God-ordained social roles of men and women as created."

 "Male leadership in the home carries over into the church: only men are permitted to hold the ruling office in the church. A God-honoring society will likewise prefer male leadership in civil and other spheres as an application of and support for God’s order in the formative institutions of family and church."

If you want to know how people raised under this kind of system turn out, check out this woman's story. Though she wasn't raised in a family that followed Gothard, her family was in the Christian patriarchy system.

Bigoted/ignorant views on mental illness:

He actually believes that mental illnesses, including schizophrenia are caused by personal irresponsibility, and also guilt. This kind of ignorance unfortunately is rather common in fundamentalism. As I talk about in my guest post series on My Secret Atheist Blog, I was told by my family that my depression and OCD was merely "guilt". I had a pastor who thought that anxiety was a "sin", because it was a sign that someone didn't trust god enough.

Many times, I would hear people with depression say that they needed to let go, and trust god, or claims that their symptoms got better when they started focusing on helping others, as if depression is nothing more than rampant narcissism. This wasn't even during my time in the IFB as a child, this was in a Southern Baptist church. To hear such ignorance now makes me angry, how many people are out there suffering because they actually believe this? How many have even ended their lives, because an ignorant minister convinced them that their mental illness, caused by chemical imbalance, is their fault?

Bizarre beliefs on circumcision: 

Bill Gothard is pro-circumcision and believes that opposition to it is an attack on morality:

"However, the Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP) printed materials still draw a moral line in the sand for believers, stating that “The attack against circumcision in the United States coincided with the revolt against authority and morality in the 1960’s” and that “the term uncircumcised is synonymous with immoral men.”

"These materials also conclude that “uncircumcised men have been more promiscuous than circumcised men,” and that even today there is a strong link between circumcision and moral purity.A suggested ceremony, and a certificate suitable for framing, are included in the materials." 

Affiliation with the "Quiverfull" movement:

From the Vision Forum page defending Christian patriarchy:

"God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” still applies to married couples, and He “seeks godly offspring.” He is sovereign over the opening and closing of the womb. Children are a gift of God and it is a blessing to have many of them, if He so ordains."

This is why the Duggar family, followers of Bill Gothard, have so many children (20 as of right now), especially since him and other pastors in what has become known  as the Quiverfull movement reject all forms of birth control:

"The failure of believers to reject the anti-life mindset of the age has resulted in the murder of possibly millions of unborn babies through the use of abortifacient birth control."

Like many fundamentalists, Bill Gothard believes that birth control is merely a form of abortion, since they think that it leads to the female body rejecting a fertilized egg. Actually, a woman's body is less likely to reject a fertilized egg when she is on birth control, as compared to without.

Accusations of sexual harassment by Bill Gothard and a "blame the victim" culture by his followers toward abuse victims:

The creator of the Bill Gothard survivor's site Recovering Grace tells her story of being sexually harassed as a teen by none other than Bill Gothard himself. From her essay Exploited Innocence:

"Gothard touched the other girl and me regularly and with increasing frequency. At first he merely offered a hand to help us in or out of the van, and laid his other hand on our backs as we entered or exited. If there was bench seating, his thigh was closely pressed against mine or the other girl’s. He would take and hold my or her hand as we walked to and from buildings. Without asking or announcing, he stroked my hair. "

"He took his shoes off and suggested that the group in the back of the van do the same. I thought he was just being casual until he started playing “footsy” with me in front of the others. . I could not figure out how to avoid it without making a scene."

Worse yet, in her post, Choosing Both Forgiveness and Prosecution, she talks about her family's reaction to finding out that her 18 year old brother had been molesting her:

"My mother did not become aware of the abuse until I was ten years old. She immediately put an end to it, but blamed me for it in the process, demanding with overtones of disgust that I spend the rest of the day in my room, and that while I was there, I was to “BEG God to forgive [me] for what [I had] done!”"

No one ever told me that the hopeless feelings of hurt and betrayal, shame and worthlessness that plagued me relentlessly were anything other than a deserved reward for my actions, in having allowed these things to happen to me by not telling someone of them immediately, the very first time anything had happened. This was a “principle” my parents had learned in their many attendances of Bill Gothard’s seminars… that the guilt of an attack falls to the young lady who does not “cry out” when assailed. I had failed to cry out.  

Her family blamed her for the sexual abuse, because of years of listening to Bill Gothard's teachings.
His views sound much like the views of Ron Williams, IFB pastor and operator of the torture camp for teen girls called Hephzibah House, read part 1 and part 2 of that two part series, but if you have a history of childhood abuse, proceed with caution.

I have wondered why it is that a group as large as the IFB hasn't been exposed more than it has, how could all this publicly available information be out there, and yet most people have never even heard about them?

I'm doing what I can to inform people, but I want you to help. Click on the share buttons below for social media, the more people know about this group, the better, it's time they be confronted by the masses about their behavior.