This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 009 – Hard Stuff: Shiny Happy People, Grimy Heavy People, Keith Green & Last Days Ministries, Bill Gothard and IBLP (could we make this title any longer?)

June 14, 2023

S: Hi everybody. She’s Tracey and I’m Sharon and we are Feet of Clay, Confessions of the Cult Sisters, and I’m talking on Tracey’s behalf right now, without even asking her first because I’m simulating this line of mind fuckery that happens when someone else tries to take over your life, speak for you, make decisions for you, deny you your own voice. My inspiration for this little demonstration is the current mega-trending documentary on Amazon Prime about Bill Gothard, IBLP (or the Institute of Basic Life Principles) and the Duggar family. Tracey and I just watched this documentary all the way through for the second time in less than a week.

T: Mmm, mmm, and you noticed I was a silent, submissive cult sister to let you do that.

S: Yes. Yes you were.

T: And I think we can both say we are feeling like grimy heavy people instead of shiny happy people right now.

S: That is for sure. The documentary had really hard stuff to hear. I mean, these are stories of devastated lives – thankfully the ones on screen, they’re getting it back together, they’re reclaiming their lives. But for me it seems impossible to not feel deeply for them and all that they’ve suffered.

T: Yes, and the hardness of hearing, the hardness of heart – I honestly share, and I’m struggling with some of the responses of some of the “Christians” on why there’s just so much resistance to listening to these people share their testimonies.

S: Yeah. And we’re talking about hard stuff. I can’t resist this one – hard ons.

T: I’m like, what’s coming, what’s coming – ohhh.

S: Way too many of these “godly” men, they are sporting too many inappropriate hard ons – yes they are.

T: I was gonna say, yeah. Not the kind we want. I don’t even drink hard liquor but I’m telling you, after watching them I need a hard something. I need a hard drink. I think what made it even more difficult is while we were doing this, we had shared on some social media platforms and some of our former cult people, and a good number of other Christians seemed to be having some very strong and angry reactions, not only to our podcast but also the new Prime documentary Shiny Happy People. Both of which are calling out religious systems of abuse and control. Hmmm.

S: Yep. So the cult that we were part of was led by Christian musician Keith Green and his wife Melody Green. The organization was called Last Days Ministries – we sometimes refer to it as LDM. There’s something about cults that just love initials and acronyms, right?

T: I know!

S: You see it everywhere. There was also for us kind of this lurking in the shadows other organization, Youth With A Mission or YWAM that eventually did kind of take over stuff at Last Days.

T: And in the Prime documentary it’s the TV celebrities, the Duggar family – which of course I could never watch. I could never watch that show – which is based on the organization Institute of Basic Life Principles and the founder (and I even hate to say the word) guru of IBLP was Bill Gothard. Honestly, since I started my Instagram page which is Feet of Clay.cult sisters I found out that there was this stuff against Bill Gothard months ago. So when this documentary came out, I thought this would be a slam dunk that nobody in that world would be coming to his defence. But here we are. I honestly have been quite dumbfounded by some of our own former Last Days Ministries brothers and sisters, when we posted hey are you watching this, I’ve been not even really speechless – that’s where the griminess comes from. I have felt so heavy hearted to see some of their responses. You’ve been great, you’ve kind of gotten in and said hey, did you watch the documentary before you come out and say all these things in defence? Did you hear the stories? Because that’s what this documentary and our podcast is doing. We are just telling stories. We’re telling our stories and we’re telling stories of young, impressionable, vulnerable people who have been exploited and taken advantage of, and then overlooked by these fundamental belief systems – by these heroes of the Christians world.

S: Yep, you know, many of them are saying well why would I watch that? The bible tells me to dwell only on good things! It’s like the classic monkey see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and even in the face of actual evil – the abuse of children and women, they just want to look away. Pretend it’s not there. Don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to see it. I had seen this video clip a little while ago – Brene Brown who’s just got some wonderful, wonderful stuff. She was talking about this idea of why we don’t listen to people when they are sharing their experiences, and why we don’t believe them when they tell us. I love this line, it’s so profound. She said, why wouldn’t I listen and believe? “Too much of what I’m invested in is threatened if you are telling the truth.”

T: Mmmm. Wow. And you know that of course hits home, because we get it. I get it. Sharon, you get it. We both had so much invested – and if listeners haven’t heard some of our back stories, but both of us, you were 25, me a near 20 year marriage, invested into this belief system, and of course we didn’t come out overnight at all, but this quick defence to these kind of heroes of the Christian faith reminds me of why we started this. All Idols Have Feet Of Clay.

S: Yes they do.

T: And both Keith Green and Bill Gothard – while very different – held very high place of esteem as prophets, almost messianic in the eyes of their followers.

S: Yeah, they deny that. Oh no, oh no it’s only Jesus.

T: Oh yes.

S: Oh no, but if you look at the behavior, yeah there’s a little bit of hero messianic worship going on.

T: Yes, because I think both of them chose such a kind of radical path, which really ties into the fundamentalist – oh look, Bill Gothard, he never married, he’s like a Paul figure from the bible. Keith was just so radically sold out, bananas for Jesus, so they’re so set apart that we want to be like these amazing men of God, how dare anyone say anything against them. Of course – we’ll post the links all in our show notes – but Keith Green died in a plane crash, only at the age of 28 by the way, in 1982. And then you have the other story where Bill Gothard is still alive, 88, maybe almost 89 years old, and still now it’s upsetting for people to hear the stories that don’t – this really irks me. That don’t fit the narrative that they’ve built up in their own mind, and the mythos that has been built up around these men, as though they know all the intimate details of every part of their life, and they don’t.

S: Right. They project. Man, do they ever project. Arrrggh. Alright. Let’s read a little of our fan mail, shall we?

(laughter)

S: Wait, before we do that, I was thinking that for you and me, our new fashion color for the summer, what we should be wearing is bullseye red.

T: Bullseye red! Why, Sharon? Why should we be wearing bullseye red?

S: Why?? Since we’re also being labelled as tools of Satan, I want to add some little headpiece with those devil horns.

T: Oh definitely. I do have to say that was one of my first Halloween costumes coming out of all this – absolutely I was dressed as a sexy devil. Of course I was.

S: And you were sexy sweetie, you were sex-yyy.

(laughter)

T: Hoo. The devil. I love when they pull out the devil card.

S: Oh my god. So speaking of that…

T: Here’s one response to our podcast in general, which I have to say congratulations Sharon that you were brave enough to even put this out into that world – “Satan is alive and well and will do his best to destroy the gospel message any way he can. In spite of their seeming mistakes” (which would be the ministry and Keith and Melody Green), “God used this ministry in amazing ways in my life and millions of others. As I listen to your story” (that would be us, Sharon), “the thought that kept coming to mind is root of bitterness. When hurt, disillusionment or unforgiveness is nursed, it allows for a root of bitterness and therefore deception to take hold. It’s a very clear biblical principle that a root of bitterness stirs up trouble and defiles many.”

S: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So according to this person, we must be nursing our hurt and disillusionment and/or unforgiveness, just trying to keep it churned up, which means we have a root of bitterness. And now we are deceived. And of course, that totally fits because we’re women, and women are prone to deception, ever since Eve and the garden of Eden. And Tracey, because we are bitter and deceived, we are stirring up trouble and defiling many. I’m just gonna say, if I’m going to do something that’s “defiling”, there are much funner ways to go about doing it.

(laughter)

T: Funner. Always my favorite word. You know, I know we’re going to point it out in a few more things – but of course we’re the ones defiling, not the people who are being accused of all of these terrible crimes.

S: Right? Not the guy who’s got his hand up some teenager’s skirt.

T: No. We’re the defilers. That’s a strong term. Which of course – should I have expected any differently? I actually did expect differently, but this reminds me (of course) of the research by psychologist Dr Jennifer Freyd, who coined the term DARVO – another acronym.

S: DARVO!

T: It stands for Deflect (of course, obvious), Attack, (and then this one gets me) Reverse Victim and Offender. We’re gonna reverse that.

S: Yeah. That’s what they do.

T: We’ve been at the receiving end of that so much, and then this of course in print is a classic example of that. Nobody wants to be honest or take responsibility for their behavior and it’s this weird protect the Christian behavior in ways that would literally make Jesus cry. If you really believe in the gospel message of Jesus, these are things done to the vulnerable and the least of us that are just – there’s no words.

S: Yep. So here’s an excerpt from another comment that was sent to me by someone, a former LDMer. This time it’s about Bill Gothard and the IBLP scandal. “We also know the Duggars personally.” (I love it when people pull out that card.) “Have been to many Basic and Advanced seminars, and Family Conferences, and Camps. We have many of the wisdom booklets for referencing – love them. We don’t agree with everything – I don’t think we agree on everything with any ministry. This ministry has come under attack since the 70s. I was also at LDM and have learned that some who helped me were hurt and have fallen away from God.”

T: Hmmmm.

S: Tracey, might that be you or me? Or someone else?

T: Ahh, I think it’s definitely a point to us.

S: A point to us. Okay, continuing – hey, you know what, in that spiritual point game we’re playing, keeping track, we each get one on that one, okay?

T: We each get a point for that.

S: Going back to this quote. “But LDM impacted my walk with the Lord. So has Mr Gothard. We have met him and know a good bit from the inside from many friends there. He is approachable, humble, and very focused on the Lord and others. It grieves us to see him slandered so. It’s just not accurate. Scripture tells us we will be infiltrated by the enemy to discredit the word of God.”

T: Hmmmm, oohhh – so, Sharon, I did see in one of your replies, which I have to again give you some more kudos for trying to just be measured and patient. You did point out “hey, it’s not slander if it’s true.”

S: Right?

T: “And unless you – the person who wrote this comment – were personally with him, meaning Bill Gothard, 24/7 365, how can you stand by, how can you know he never did any of these things to the young women that said he did do these to them?”. That’s what really struck me when I first read this quote above is we’re the ones that are discrediting the word of God, not the person who is violating the young girls in back rooms and that they miss the performative aspect of these men. Of course he’s humble and approachable at a conference where he’s coming to be the key speaker – how you judge someone’s whole life? Did we not learn anything from the Catholic church scandals? It’s just beyond my belief on some of this.

S: Yeahh.

T: There are a lot of other replies as well, for the most part trying to deny or deflect, back to our DARVO. You know, there are many times through this journey Sharon where I’ve thought of Keith Green lyrics but kind of in the opposite way he intended. One of these – open your eyes. (singing) Open your eyes to the world all around you…

S: (singing) Open your eyes, open your eyes…

T: Yeah. Obviously we were not in those rooms with those women either, but you can see from their posture, you can see from their hand wringing, you can see from the memories that are flashing in their head that these are deeply rooted trauma stories that they’re connecting with to share with us.

S: I am really digging the irony of this. Keith’s first album was called For Him Who Has Ears To Hear. These people just do not want to hear. Not only are they hard of hearing, it’s like they’re hard in their hearts to the obvious and visible pain and suffering of others. They’d rather focus on the imagined pain of an invisible deity, and protect the perpetrators at all cost than to offer mercy and compassion to people clearly who have been really grievously abused.

T: Again the irony, it makes me want to cry out (singing) don’t you see, don’t you see all these victims sinking down. Don’t you care, don’t you care … and for those listeners who aren’t familiar with Keith Green, that’s another one of his songs. It’s like the heart of that was to care…

S: Well, he did say all these people sinking down, because they’re sinking down, their souls are so sinful, so we inserted victims. But you know, it fits.

T: It does fit. What drew me to the gospel message from the beginning was the heart towards the suffering. That’s what seems to have been lost in all this.

S: But they’ve twisted that suffering message, haven’t they.

T: Yes, they have. So what was once in the Jesus People of the poor and the downtrodden and the ones who have been traumatized through the Vietnam War, the fallout of all that, now it’s conditioning them to accept suffering as an opportunity to draw closer to God.

S: Including if that suffering is inflicted by their spiritual leaders.

T: Almost especially if that suffering is inflicted by their spiritual elders. There is precedent even in the Old Testament, there’s this king and if you patiently bear whatever tribulation that you have, God lays up treasures in you. This conditioning actually begins, I believe, to sear your conscience for natural empathy, your natural instincts towards compassion, and you start to see it in this bigger plot of this is what God uses to refine the heart and bring you in the fellowship of the sufferings of Jesus. It’s so twisted, it’s so upside down, and almost it’s as though they deserve this.

S: Yeah. And they’re privileged. They’re privileged to have the opportunity to learn to suffer, because then you’ll learn deeper things of God and you’ll have a richer spiritual life. Some of the women actually said that, that’s how twisted this gets. Thinking about how this dulls empathy and compassion and even just basic human decency, and that whole casual acceptance in the bible – we just read it easily, these scriptures. Oh yeah, wiping out whole nations, they deserved it because they were in sin. Oh god I can’t even get started on that. That’s going to be a whole episode in the future, the atrocities and war crimes in the bible that were commanded by God!

T: Commanded by God, and we conditioned ourselves to – I love that word casual, just to casually dismiss the entire nations, women, babies, children just being wiped out because of that concept it they deserved it.

S: So fucked up. Normalizing that is just awful, and Tracey, we were there. We bought into it too.

T: We were there. Hmph.

S: Okay. Back to talking about these icons of the Christian faith. Keith Green – to the best of my knowledge there have never been any accusations of inappropriate sexual stuff with Keith. I never saw anything, I never suspected anything of that nature, nor have I heard even a hint or rumor of anything like that with him. I’m pretty sure he did wrestle with sexual temptation – you know his past, and also how he seemed kind of obsessed thinking everybody else was wrestling with sexual temptation. I do have some speculations about some of that, but there weren’t any overt sexual sins on his part that I’m aware of, but he absolutely exerted manipulative and abusive spiritual control over way too many people. This included personally and literally arranging marriages for people, included presuming to speak for God about his followers’ careers and educational choices, and sometimes proclaiming he knew exactly what sins were in the heart of another person.

T: Mmm. Wow.

S: My speculation is that – I don’t even know if I should say this – but my speculation is that some of those arranged or facilitated marriages might have been in part to take a few of the more eligible sisters off the market, so to speak, this reducing any temptations he might have been struggling with. Just speculation.

T: Hoooo. You’re going to get some hate mail for that.

S: I’m going to get some hate mail on that one!

T: I have to say here, that’s kind of – now the bar has been so set with so much sexual sin in spiritual leadership that it’s like well, if you didn’t have it that kind of makes you exempt from anything else – that’s not the only way to abuse people. Of course it’s a terrible, terrible way, but there are some other controlling and spiritual abusive ways that really impact the individual. Bringing us to – Bill Gothard, right? On the other hand, he’s had numerous women come forward with claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and I’m just going to add in here, weird and cringy when you hear these stories.

S: Yeah.

T: Including when some of them were underage. Very underage. This the thing that’s so stunning to me – when these allegations are coming out to either the people that have followed Bill Gothard or are still in the IBLP, they’re not only not believed, but they defend him! In spite of the amount of stories that keep coming forward – we have lived in recent times when this is not an outlier story, right? The Catholic church, the Baptist convention, throughout a lot of Christendom there are unfortunately story after story coming out of this abuse of power which we have seen often crosses over into that sexual realm when that’s happening, and they just refuse. Not their heroes. Can’t be true of their heroes!

S: Not my man. Can’t be my man.

T: Can’t be my heroes. So they won’t listen to the stories because, I’m telling you, they’re pretty convincing and they’re very heart wrenching, very uncomfortable to watch. Very uncomfortable.

S: Yep.

T: So when we pose this for people in our former community – have you watched this, have you seen this, this is another quote that got posted. “Well, therein lies the lie” (and that would be for us saying hey, these are the stories that are coming out of these allegations.) “Bill Gothard was not a spiritually, emotionally or physically abusive man. Now the people who took on what he taught, and twisted it to fit their own distorted beliefs, or because their toes were stepped on” (and in the quote, they put in quotes “stepped on”, as though they’re very…)

S: Minor! Minor little oops.

T: Yes. “Because their toes were “stepped on”, (put in quotes as though it is just a minor little oops), “therefore they were offended and lashed out. They” (being the ones that are bringing their allegations) “are the ones who are abusive and have given such leaders bad names. I am not” (and this is what I love, I love this double speak) “I am not saying Bill Gothard is perfect by any means, but he’s not at all what these people lead the populace to believe.”

S: End quote.

T: End quote.

S: Yep. DARVO all the way. All the way, plus a nice helping of omniscience, since this person claims to know with certainty that certain things never happened, ever. Watching the documentary and hearing the painful reports of these traumatized young women, and seeing the video of Gothard himself teaching – Tracey, it’s just so creepy! It’s creepy. He’s got this fascination and obsession with being so close to these young, virginal women, asking them to come up to his headquarters, being sure he’s surrounded by them, asking them privately about their purity, and then lightly touching them and intensely staring at them. One of them tells the story of him having this obvious erection straining his trousers while he’s doing this. I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t watching porn, but maybe this was his fodder so he could have his little live, jerkoff inspirations. Again, I’m gonna catch a lot of hell for saying that, but I don’t know. That’s what these repressed guys do. Tracey, I was typing some notes, organizing my thoughts for this, and as I’m typing his name, I just couldn’t help myself. From now on I kind of want to call him Bill Got Hard.

T: Oh my god.

(laughter)

S: Type it out folks, you’ll see it for yourselves too.

T: I haven’t seen that mentioned before.

S: You heard it here first, folks.

T: Ohhh. And you bring out the creepiness – maybe if you’re completely outside of evangelical and fundamentalism you may not be able to appreciate the weight of that environment, but as these ladies share their stories and we can see his whole demeanor, he has a fetish of young, pure girls. The fact that he would collect a group of young, innocent women around him is creepy enough, creepy enough for me right there, without the other stories. People can look on that and say no, no, no – you betcha. You betcha Bill got hard. You betcha. So Keith Green and LDM, which stands for Last Days Ministries and Bill Gothard and IBLP (we love our acronyms) pointed to the bible as the infallible word of God, the ultimate authority – and I say both ministries were very enamored with authority and obedience. They taught extremes of ultimate authority, unquestioning submission. Christians are to submit to their church, or their ministry leaders – at Last Days Ministries that’s the beginning of the foundational teaching when you come into ICT. Submit, obey your authorities. Then of course it leads into your family life – wives submitting to their husbands, children submitting to the parents and on the surface it kind of can seem reasonable, right? You have corporations where there’s roles and people, but this authority structure is taught as virtually absolute.

S: Yep. You know Tracey, we heard recently from a guy who was one of the brothers there and he reports how early on, he was challenged in a conversation by one of the “elders” at Last Days who in fact was my then and now ex-husband, who asked him – you see that car over there? What if I were to tell you that that car has drugs in it and I want you to go drive it to a certain location? This man, the young guy who had come said well, I think the first thing I would do is ask you why there are drugs in the car. And the Last Days elder said, wrong answer. You submit.

T: Which he was getting at, you need to do what I ask you to do without questioning, because we are to default to they know best, and even if my spidey sense are going off, I trust and overlook those spidey senses to trust that my elder knows best. So damaging!

S: That’s right. Question our own hearts – actually no, don’t even question your own heart; assume your own heart is wrong. That’s the default.

T: Correct. And what we jokingly call our spidey senses, our intuition, we were conditioned year over year over year that that was our own sinful heart trying to either usurp authority, or be proud and arrogant that our way is better. Took us years, we had to come out of that. Years. Years of unwinding that.  

S: Yeah it did. Alright, so here’s one more reply that I think was actually much more thoughtful and open. Here’s the quote – and this is about asking whether or not they had seen the documentary Shiny Happy People. “I’m still kind of processing it. Although there were some parts that grieved my heart, some teachings I aligned with, like the spiritual head of the family” (we just talked about that Tracey) “and principles of relationship and gratitude, spiritual gifts and service. It was interesting to watch with my 18 year old daughter and hear her take on things. It led to some deep conversations. Do I think it’s ok that the Duggar parents weren’t transparent with the children on what they were signing?” (that refers to a contract.) “No. Do I think monetary trusts should have been started with the television proceeds from Discovery for the children? Absolutely. But that was their call” (meaning the parents) “that was their call to make, as the heads of the family.” By the way, listeners, some of the kids that were tricked into signing these contracts, they were legally adults when this happened. They weren’t minors. Back to her comment. “Do I feel they protected their son at the cost of their daughters?” (listeners, this is the son who sexually molested and abused young girls, including his own sisters.) “Do I feel they protected their son at the cost of their daughters? I don’t know enough details or their heart as they process such a grievous situation.”

T: Oh, there it is Sharon. There it is.

S: We don’t know their heart! We can’t judge their heart! No, but I can sure as hell judge when some guy is sticking his fingers or his dick where it shouldn’t be. Okay, sorry. Back to the quote. “Do I think the son is extremely troubled and a sick individual for having a child porn addition?” (yeah, because that was something else too) “and molesting his sisters? You betcha. But I also know that all sin separates us from God.”

T: There it is again.

S: All sin, kinda all equal, doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter what it is. “All sin separates us from God, and rather than judge them as a family or individuals, I will pray for them. Only God knows their hearts. Do I feel Bill Gothard committed actions that were inappropriate and criminal? After hearing the young ladies share their stories, sadly, yes.” And I’m just wanting to insert for myself – bravo to her for that. Bravo. “Sadly yes, and I’m certain the Lord will deal with his heart if he is guilty of inappropriate actions” – so there we do have the qualifier.

T: There it is. It’s qualified all throughout this.

S: If. If. Which – okay, you know what, that is fair, because it’s alleged if it’s not proven in court so I’m going to give a little grace there. “Do I fear that this series is going to cause other people to question amazing organizations like LDM and YWAM. Sadly, yes. I remember people and reporters questioning the integrity of both right after Waco. We can simply just be light and love in our communities and spread the gospel to all we encounter.”

T: I can’t say how heavy my heart was for hours after I read this, because – even you stated it as you read it – it’s a little bit better, and it is better than some of the other comments, but it’s so tinged with the weight of what we were to learn from this documentary – her conclusion is it’s going to put a bad cast on the rest of Christianity, instead of first being broken-hearted for how this has been done in the name of that Christianity. I am glad that at least she believed these young women’s reports about Bill Gothard, but even then it’s so under-stated.

S: It’s couched, and it’s qualified. It’s all like, we don’t want to really say yeah, the dude is a creepy dick who did some shit. We don’t want to say that.

T: We don’t want to say that, and that’s what happens in these halls and institutions of Christianity – that’s the average Christian response. I’m going to turn away, it’s not my business, I don’t know the details, I don’t know the heart, and then that means they can’t take a stand to protect the vulnerable. If any message I could have to those that still go into churches and those still in clergy – that’s it. You can’t turn your eyes away when abuse is happening.

S: Open your eyes. Open your yes.

T: And of course we remove ourselves to a degree because these are not her daughters, and if one of these people who had been groomed and taken advantage had been her daughter, would she want accountability then? Would she want something to go on record? As I thought about that it actually made me a little frightened and cringed as well, because this did happen to some daughters. It happened to the Duggers own daughters, and they went into protect mode – protect our family business, protect our Christianity, protect our reputation. So when you are conditioned to just turn away and trust God in everything and not question the integrity of men in organizations, when victims are coming out and pointing to that?

S: Yeah, holy shit. Holy shit.

T: And it’s like, when she ends with this sadness – yes there’s a lot of sadness, but not for the things that you’re saying you’re sad about. Why is it sad to hold people accountable? And I’m not talking about getting your toes stepped on. We lived under that at Last Days Ministries where you left your book out on your bed and it’s against the rules and now you have to work a Saturday because no thing is to be left on the bed. Too much, too much.  This is physical sexual abuse.

S: Oh my god. Why is it sad to require and demand accountability? In the documentary there’s a quote from Gothard’s teaching. I think it was something like loyalty can only be proved in adversity.

T: Ugggh. Such a grooming message.

S: So yeah, what’s a good, submissive, obedient child or wife supposed to do if her adversity (going back to this) her adversity and suffering is caused by the person who is in authority over her? What’s she supposed to do? Trust God, don’t complain, be loyal, keep quiet, suck it up, bear your cross – that is the culture.

T: Oh Sharon, that is the culture, and I have to say after being away from this culture for so long and then coming back into a world of comments where that’s just reiterated, that’s – I said, I’m a grimy heavy person because of this.

S: Grimy, heavy people. Yeah.

T: The weird thing too is that they all seem too quick and too happy to move on. It’s as though they’ve adopted this weird scale where the godliness of the man, or the home, or the system, or the religious message, is so much more important than the things that are done in harm through that system. They’re very quickly willing to say hey, the balance. Let’s look at the balance here. All the good things in my life that have been done kind of cancel out this bad, so let’s just not concentrate on the bad. Let’s not look at the bad.

S: Yeap. You know the saying forgive and forget? What they really want to do is forget. Or even better, they just want to pretend it never happened. They’re protecting predators as long as they think the good outweighs the bad, and I’m sincerely asking my Christian friends would you be this tolerant if it was a leader in the Mormon church? Oh no, no, no. Mormons – that’s a cult. When they do that kind of stuff we expect it, because they’re inspired by Satan. Or – God forbid – what if it’s a sect of Islam? Oh no, that is an abomination and we expect it, but they’re so forgiving when it’s a Christian, especially if it’s a Christian fundamentalist. Aargh. Alright, here’s another response we received. “And we’ve met the Duggars as well. My older daughter sat under their older daughter’s tutelage. I’m familiar with the attacks in the 70s. When God is doing something powerful, Satan just wants to destroy it.”

T: Ugh. There it is.

S: There it is again. “After that particular incident the ministry grew stronger by leaps and bounds. I don’t believe this current slanderous” (again, slanderous) “attack will silence the truth either. Truth will never die. The more it’s chopped at the deeper its roots go, and the more it multiplies.” The Truth. (singing) And what is truth? Is mine the same as yours?

T: What are you singing Sharon? What ARE you singing?

S: That’s a pilot to Jesus in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, which is the best, best movie, best musical ever made. Go watch it. Yeah. Okay. But it does beg the question, what do you believe to be truth? And whatever it is that you believe, we as Christians, we’re going to live for what we believe and that’s how we behave and conduct ourselves. Will you look the other way for what you believe? Ignore what is right in front of your eyes, because of what you believe? We talk in Christendom about martyrs and venerate them – will you die for what you believe? Isn’t that the ultimate test for a Christian, to die for what you believe, lay down your life, figuratively or literally, then let’s take it up a level. Will you kill for what you believe, literally or figuratively? And hey, Christian history, the Crusades – all full of lots and lots of murder for the belief in God. We see it in Islamic extremism – everyone’s like oh my god that’s horrible, it’s just awful, and it is, but you know what? They’re devoted to their truth. What I really see Christians, especially fundamentalists doing, is they will crush the hearts and souls of other people for the sake of what they believe and I’m going back to what Brene said. Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you believe what people tell you they are going through? Because too much of what you are invested in is threatened if they and we are telling the truth.

T: Mmm. Yeah, invested in. So threatened. What are some of those things they’re invested in?

S: The way I see it there’s a political agenda. There’s a culture war. There’s this movement for Christian nationalism where they want and need everyone to believe exactly the way they believe with those exact mindsets of what is or isn’t true about God and the devil and hell and heaven and all that other shit – and, more importantly, they want everyone to behave exactly as they do. That’s one thing that’s threatened. Of course there’s the whole belief in a literal hell, and saving people for this invisible eternity, rather than – it exempts them from being really concerned with the here and now. With people’s health and happiness. Whether you’re thought police or just a dickhead that doesn’t care about others, as long as you can keep your focus on again, this invisible eternity, you don’t have to be concerned about peoples’ welfare here, on earth, today. And the other thing that’s really threatened is their own sense of identity. Tracy, you and I – we get that. Your whole life you’ve built – how many years, how many decades have you staked everything on this belief? Your community? Your friends, your family, your finances? A lot of stuff is threatened if in fact, other people are telling a truth that you do not want to accept.

T: Hooo. It is so heavy. And you’re right, we were invested. I took a step back and put myself back in that mindset as I’ve been reading these comments. One of the lines from the documentary when Jill Duggar is sitting on the sofa really stood out to me, because they were talking about when she had to do that Megan Kelly interview which was clear from the documentary she definitely felt responsible to do because, you know, the weight of their whole family livelihood is on being a part of this show. So she has to go on and give her part of the story, and to feel…

S: Minimize. She has to minimize the sexual molestation and abuse that she received as a young, pre-pubescent girl at the hands of her older brother. She has to minimize that.

T: Yes. And so you can see the slump of her shoulders as she says the line, it wasn’t enough. That really struck me because that’s what I had to face. I had imposed all these rules upon myself. I was not born into this mindset; I chose this. I enacted this excruciatingly difficult life upon me, and my children, and as everyone started getting older I had to face – it’s not enough. It’s not working. It’s a chilling realization. It’s very easy at that moment to make up reasons – well, it may not work because of this. I have seen that frankly in my ex- he’s had to make up reasons why it didn’t work, and it was usually back to sin in his heart or sin in my heart – I’m an easy scapegoat in this scenario. So the default is to go down to protect the system instead of facing the hard truths of what is happening. If you do face the hard truths it does start the domino effect, and that is a very difficult thing to do. I see it clearly in the responses of people responding to us, either about our podcast or about this documentary – there’s the scramble. You can see it; the scramble to protect the agenda. Of course, a lot of this agenda has a lot more in common with fundamental Islam than it does with foundational Jesus Christianity that I originally came into Christianity to follow.

S: Oooh Tracey, someone’s gonna blow you up for saying that, girl.

(laughter)

T: It’s so clear, and part of my deconstructing was reading a biography (we’ll put it in the show notes) of somebody coming out of that extreme Islam belief. I was like it’s the same story – we have the same story.

S: Yes! Same shit, different flavor, that’s all.

T: Different flavor. We are going to devote an entire deep dive into this as far as how the Christian nationalist movement is having those same flavors of what we’re seeing in the extreme Islamic area.

S: So it’s society conforming to a sacred text, the subjugation of women, the takeover of all government institutions, the enactment of holy laws – I mean it’s right. The parallel is there for anyone who wants to open their eyes and see it.

T: It’s heart breaking. It’s really heart breaking.

S: Yep. It’s hard stuff. This is hard stuff to hear. It’s ironic that for some fundamental and evangelical Christians, the message of softening your heart and loving your neighbor seems not to apply if it threatens the agenda. Hard stuff.

T: Hmmm. And drumroll please – we….

S: I’m tapping the table, can you hear the drumroll?

T: I can hear it, I don’t know how it’s going to sound in the files, but since you’re going to have to deal with it, go for it.

(laughter)

T: Drumroll please – we will be talking personally with two amazing young people.

S: Yeahhh. Well, Tracey, okay. Put it in context. Anyone in their 30s or 40s is young to us because we’re old now.

T: Actually they’re a little bit older than my oldest child but not far. And of course, I didn’t get started until I was 23, which is ancient in this belief system, so if I had started at 18 they could very well be my children.

S: Yep.

T: Abigail is a professional colleague of Sharon’s which was very exciting for me to just see your reach on your professional page, led us to Abigail. She is a kick-ass survivor of the IBLP, and then her friend Chad, the brave man in the black shirt with the red tie who most of you may have seen on the documentary Shiny Happy People, are going to join us!

S: I know! We are so excited, so look for those episodes to drop really soon and be sure to follow us so you don’t miss out.

T: So thank you everyone for joining us again – this stuff is hard stuff, but it has to be talked about. It has to be talked about, and the good news is that the people that we’re having on, and both Sharon and I – the hope is you can come out of it. you can come out.

S: You can come out and have a kick-ass life. Alright everybody, see you next time.

T: Bye-bye.