It has taken me several days to be able to work myself up to a post on this, because in all too many ways it hits very much at home for me.
Most of you by now have heard of the tragic church shootings by Matthew Murray at two dominionist churches over the weekend. Many of you have even heard about how he supposedly "hated Christians".
What most of you have not heard yet--Matthew Murray is possibly one of the most tragic results of coercive tactics in dominionist churches. In essence, it appears that he may have essentially had a mental breakdown with semiautomatic weapons--despite the best efforts of at least two walkaway forums he was a member of to try to talk him down from the bloodshed.
The breeding of a killer begins at home
As a walkaway and survivor of much of the stuff Matthew Murray experienced, every day I am thankful for the chance I had to see "the outside world"--I grew up just before dominionist "home education" really caught on, for instance. Had correspondence schools been in vogue in the 70's and 80s, there is a very real chance I may not have ever escaped.
Compared to my own experiences, it's probably not an exaggeration to state Matthew Murray never had a chance. :(
From what we know from various sources, Matthew Murray was apparently not a member of New Life Church, but per media sources was a member of Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada; reportedly the church has an extremely heavy emphasis on Christian Zionism and especially in targeting Jewish people for conversion, and also seems to have been heavily involved in dominionist politics as well. Faith Bible Chapel appears to be a neopentecostal church whose affiliation is not broadcast on its website, and it uses quite a lot of "Joel's Army" buzzwords in its website; based on the church's history page, it seems to be a daughter of Bethel Biblical, a neopente church in the area that is likewise heavily into conversion of Jewish people. Both are likely "stealth Assemblies" congregations; "Faith Bible Chapel" seems to be a very popular and common name for Assemblies churches in general, and there are indications that the Dream Center of Denver, CO is run by Faith Bible Chapel ("Dream Center" is a chain of "faith based rehabs" run by the Western Conference of the Assemblies of God, and any linkages between churches and "Dream Centers" are in fact dead giveaways these are in fact Assemblies-affiliated).
Not only this, but apparently the shooter was largely homeschooled and the state of Colorado has no educational records of him past the third grade. And according to a recent Associated Press article, his parents couldn't have picked a more coercive curriculum:
Most information about Murray has become known in recent days through ranting Internet posts that appear to be the shooter's words. On one, a poster called Chrstnghtmr complained of not being able to "socialize normally" after being home schooled and described being an outcast who was always left out of everything.
One posting obtained by the AP was to a site called Independent Spirits, a gathering place for those affected by a strict Christian home schooling curriculum.
The author, again going by the handle Chrstnghtmr, describes going with his mother to a conference at New Life. The poster said he "got into a debate" with two prayer team staff members, who monitored him, then tracked down his mother and "told her a story that went something along the lines of I 'wasn't walking with the lord and could be planning violence.'"
. . .
Other posts also complain of an overbearing mother. At one point, the author said his mother patted him down for CDs, video games and DVDs whenever he returned from an electronics store. In another post, the author lambasts Bill Gothard, a Christian evangelist who developed a strict Bible-based home school curriculum.
Kevin Swanson, executive director of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado, of which the Murrays were members, said just 1 percent or 2 percent of the group's 16,000 families use the curriculum described in the posts.
As it is, Independent Spirits is a survivor forum for those who grew up in the "Gothard Cult" (and it is accurate to describe it as a bona fide cult); it is one of at least two walkaway forums Murray is known to have been a member of.
And yes, I've written about Gothard before. Extensively. Not only has he been a major force in the dominionist "Bible boot camp" industry, he also has promoted some fairly extreme types of religiously motivated child abuse in the context of a general coercive system. How coercive? This article gives an overview of what Matthew Murray likely experienced:
Gothard has been accused by fellow Christians of everything from misinterpreting the Bible to ignoring spousal abuse to being a borderline cult leader. According to materials Gothard has published, his more radical ideas come from his belief in a "chain of command," which holds that authority figures -- from preachers to politicians to middle managers -- are put in their elevated positions by God. Mess with your boss, you're messing with Christ. Women are taught to be submissive and obedient to their husbands. He teaches his followers that political leaders are ordained by God and therefore to be obeyed. Gothard doesn't focus on the Ten Commandments -- he teaches his seven "universal, nonoptional Principles of Life," and he extends those principles to what food to eat and what clothes to wear. Breaking any of Gothard's principles leads to the highway to Hell, quite literally. Another path to Satan is the drums. The "backbeat" common in rock music is evil, according to his teachings, as are chords played in the minor key, which is a subversion of God's harmony.
Follow the rules, go to Heaven. Break them, and Satan will get a foothold on your soul.
Gothard disdains "knowledge," which he says only "puffs up a man," in favor of the more abstract "wisdom." "The reasoning of man will bring destruction," he tells people during seminars. To guard his followers from the evils of public schools, Gothard sells his own brand of Bible-based home-schooling. He also has his own unaccredited law school and college where his unique brand of Christianity is taught.
. . .
Gothard teaches in his seminars that obedience brings godliness. Authority figures -- the father, the politician, the minister, and the boss -- are to be obeyed as if Christ were giving the orders. Gothard's ideas of family life are rigid, as wives are taught to be submissive and men are encouraged to be the absolute head of the household. Quotes from the Bible are used as backup to his assertions. The biblical justification for always being subservient to the boss comes from 1 Peter 2:18: "Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear."
Authority figures, according to Gothard, are on a higher spiritual plain than ordinary folk, and obeying them will help one get closer to God. He tells his followers that they are to obey everything, except orders to do "evil." If your boss is dead wrong, Gothard says it's OK to make a "Godly appeal" to him, but if the appeal is refused, the worker must live with it.
"Suppose Jesus Christ Himself was the manager of that store," Gothard asks a teen in one of the stories he tells. "Would that make a difference in the quality of your work?"
"It sure would!" answers the teenager.
"Do you realize that God expects you to consider that you are actually working for Jesus Christ on your job?"
As far as "wrathful" parents, Gothard teaches that they serve to develop character in children: "God even works through the wrath of parents to reveal character deficiencies in the son or daughter to develop additional character strengths or to reflect healing."
. . .
Baptist pastor G. Richard Fisher wrote in a published article called "The Cultic Leanings of Bill Gothard's Teachings" that Gothard has a habit of "legislating, directing, and regulating just about every phase of life." Some of Gothard's rules that Fisher, a former enthusiastic follower of Gothard, and others have noted:
*Married couples are never to divorce for any reason, including adultery.
*Adult children are told not to leave home or get married without parental consent.
*Married couples must abstain from sex during the following times: during the wife's menstrual cycle; seven days after the cycle; 40 days after the birth of a son; 80 days after the birth of a daughter; and the evening prior to worship. Gothard claims that periodic abstinence will help produce healthier children, can cure infections, and decrease "the danger of genetic abnormalities."
*Listening to rock music, even Christian rock, is forbidden.
*Borrowing money or buying on credit is forbidden.
*Married women aren't to work outside the home.
Gothard even has rules on selecting makeup, preparing shopping lists, planning meals, picking dental plans, and choosing hairstyles, clothes, and vacation spots. Followers have said in published reports that he bans televisions in homes that buy his home-schooling program and that his ministry denounces almost every book but the Bible.
Adopted children, Gothard teaches, carry the sins of their biological parents with them. According to Fisher, Gothard wrote a letter to his followers in 1986 warning them of the evils of Cabbage Patch Dolls, which were very popular then. The dolls, which are "adopted" by their buyers in a written contract, caused strange, destructive behavior, according to the letter.
"It gets very, very weird," Fisher says. "And these people who follow him are frightened to death that they might break one of his rules."
In other words, Gothard's basic model of interaction with other people is a particularly extreme version of the highly coercive "cell church" and "discipling and shepherding" model in Assemblies of God and "Assemblies daughter" churches--a tactic that is known to cause documentable changes in personality type, a sign of potentially grave harm.
In fact, Gothard rather explicitly based his models of "shepherding" off an originator of the "cell church" model, Watchmen Nee (whose protege Witness Lee created one of the most abusive "cell church" groups known):
One of the authors Gothard listed in the bibliography of his thesis was the popular Keswick teacher, Watchman Nee. Nee was the main leader of China’s Little Flock movement which, depending on whose statistics you believe, may have been the largest Christian denomination in China. It continued to grow even after the Communist takeover.
Like all Keswick teaching, Nee’s theology was highly mystical, and he departed from traditional Protestantism in one key area: spiritual authority.
During the Protestant Reformation a great deal of blood was spilled over the question of whether God had delegated His sovereign authority to human beings. The Reformers said, "No," and many of them paid for it with their lives. Oblivious to this lesson from church history, Nee imported Confucianist ideas about human authority into Christianity. After Nee’s death his follower, Witness Lee, used this doctrine to create a highly authoritarian denominational hierarchy, with himself at the top.
(Of note, Witness Lee was himself influential on the neopentecostal "cell church" movement as a whole.)
Gothard is, quite possibly, the earliest documented promoter of the more extreme forms of religiously motivated child abuse (in a cultic context). An article dating back from 1983 notes:
The quasi-religious teaching which reinforces Christian child abuse is the hierarchy of power relationships in families. One of its most famous contemporary proponents is Bill Gothard, developer of the Basic Youth Conflict Seminars. Gothard teaches that women and children should submit to the authority of the father. Ironically, he offers as an image of appropriate parental roles the father as hammer and the mother as chisel. The child is to be shaped by parental tools. That this imbalance of power and perpetuation of male supremacy in the family is part of the problem is undeniable. An imbalance of power creates the conditions for abuse of power and authority which can lead to the abuse and exploitation of children.
Gothard is also one of the major promoters of the highly abusive "deliverance ministry" tactics which use methods of coercion that are almost identical to those used in Scientology. And the Associated Press article notes that Matthew Murray may have in fact been subjected to "deliverance" services:
Chrstnghtmr writes that at age 17, after an attempt at going "all out for Jesus," he plunged into a "dark suicidal depression" because he somehow couldn't live up to the rules. He wrote he felt he was "failing God." Chrstnghtmr describes his parents putting him on two antidepressants after he shared his feelings.
None of it helped, he wrote. "Everyone prayed, they laid hands on me, spoke in tongues over me, I sought out every kind of spiritual help I knew of in charismatic christianity," the post said.
This is the same Bill Gothard, of note, who runs a paramilitary training camp for the "Joshua Generation" which recently got props from the commander of the Air Force division responsible for SIGINT.
At least one Christian homeschooling site rather explicitly warns against Gothard:
As a homeschool leader, you may have heard of Bill Gothard, who is one of the most popular teachers in the homeschooling movement. He has had a vast influence on how homeschooling families order their lives, through his ministry, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, and his homeschooling arm, ATIA (Advanced Training Institute of America). He encourages parents to keep their families safe, and his teaching through his seminars, books, and homeschooling curriculum is very appealing, because parents very much want their children to be safe. These parents are wonderfully devoted Christians and many are homeschooling parents. They have the best interests of their children at heart.
Gothard is a Christian teacher who believes God has promised physical safety as well as spiritual safety to those who follow his rulebook for life. The most important basis for attaining this safety, according to Gothard, is for a homeschool family to come under the "umbrella of protection." This concept of a protective umbrella arises from Gothard’s belief about authority in a Christian’s life, combined with his belief in God’s promise of safety for those who follow certain procedures.
"...according to Gothard, all human relationships are governed by a chain of command similar to that in the military. It is only when we find our place in God’s chain of command and get under our proper authority that God will be able to protect us. Once we get under proper authority and implement the proper amount and types of mechanical steps and principles that Gothard prescribes, we ensure God’s blessing in our life and family."1
In Gothard’s teaching, as long as everyone follows all the rules Gothard teaches, tragedies like what happened to Job just won’t happen. It’s like a contract with God. "I do this, God, and you’ll do that in return."
That sounds wonderful doesn’t it? I would like to have an umbrella of protection against pain and suffering in this world, wouldn’t you? How do we get that umbrella? How much does it cost? Is that umbrella really from God?
Remember what I said earlier about people who long to take away the freedom of homeschooling in order to protect the safety of children from child abuse? Such people weigh safety on the scale more heavily than freedom.
There really are unfortunate cases of people who are abusing children using the cover of "homeschooling" – people who are not true homeschoolers. Some believe we could stop all harm to all children at the hands of their families if we established a big enough hedge – a big enough fence. That fence is called a police state. Many millions of people have lived in such police states under totalitarian regimes. The problem with that idea is that the solution is far more severe in its consequences than the problem ever was.
(Footnotes: 1) Don Veinot, Joy Veinot and Ron Henzel, A Matter of Basic Principles: Bill Gothard and the Christian Life, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc., Lombard, Ill. 2003 p. 251-252.)
Another group critical of Gothard's teachings has noted that extreme religious coercion is part of the plan with the Gothard homeschool curriculum, and practically makes BJU and A-Beka sound like the works of Stephen Hawking in comparison:
To enroll in Gothard's ATI home schooling program, parents and enrolling children are required to complete the Basic and Advanced IBLP Seminars (and pay the yearly $675 per family tuition fee). Families must agree to many guidelines in order to be accepted into the school and continue in it. At the yearly ATI conference, the dress code is nearly a uniform consisting of a white shirt and navy blue pants or skirt. They must follow a dress code while they are homeschooling, and the curriculum itself describes in detail what is required for proper and modest dress and grooming. Beards are not allowed, but an exception is granted to those who have one because of religious conviction. Once in ATI, a family is sent the curriculum on a regular basis. The curriculum consists of 52 Wisdom Booklets, which provide nearly all that is required to complete the education. These booklets make a stack just over a foot high. When a family has completed all the booklets, they start again from the beginning. The curriculum is intended to be used for all ages simultaneously -- K-12.
Gothard claims that "As students explore information, it passes (consciously or unconsciously) through a grid of presuppositions in their minds. After the information is evaluated by this 'grid,' it is acted upon." (Emphasis added.) One of the goals of the training is "To identify each son and daughter's purpose in life and establish direction for their training." One of the "Tools" to accomplish this is a "Life Purpose Appraisal," which sounds much like personality testing! (Source: IBLP Internet web site, 8/97.)
(Yes, you're reading this right. The Gothard "curriculum" is essentially a dominionist version of the "Little Red Book" infamous in Maoist China or the books promoted in the personality cults of the Kim family in North Korea or Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan.)
We only know this, of note, because of homeschooling moms (who were recruited into Gothard's cult and later walked away) and evangelical Christian groups critical of dominionism--and the walkaways who were raised using Gothard curriculum--speaking out: Gothard actively tries to suppress any outside publication of his materials in methods reminiscent of Scientology's efforts to squelch the Fishman Affidavit which contains OT VII.
A Denver Post article also notes the abusiveness of the curriculum in ATI--so extreme that even the state's primary HSLDA affiliate--a dominionist home education group itself--tells people to avoid it like the plague:
The ultra-religious home-school curriculum that Matthew Murray ranted about in Web postings before he opened fire at two Christian centers forbids dating, rock music and "wrong clothes." It advises young men and women to live at home until their parents release them and counsels parents to choose marriage partners for their offspring.
That kind of strict, rule-driven home-schooling is not the norm and, if used without considering students' individual needs, is not recommended by many educators, according to Kevin Swanson, executive director of the 15,000-family-strong Christian Home Educators of Colorado.
"I know just a few folks who use this curriculum," Swanson said. "It is more rule heavy."
. . .
The curriculum Murray decried in his postings was developed by evangelist Bill Gothard as part of The Institute in Basic Life Principles. The Bible-based curriculum is contained in "Wisdom Booklets" — 3,000 pages of instruction that "views academic subjects through the grid of Scripture," according to the institute's website.
. . .
Gothard's teachings have been criticized by other conservative Christians who allege he has deviated from true Bible teaching and that his stand against rock music — even Christian rock — suspicion of modern medicine, belief in spiritual roots of disease, and opposition to women working outside the home and "evil" toys are wrong. Gothard warned followers in a 1986 letter that Cabbage Patch dolls can cause "strange, destructive behavior."
It can, in fact, be quite legitimately argued that Gothard's curriculum has but one primary purpose in mind--getting people into his own post-secondary education and "Joel's Army" groups and turning out multiple generations of people in his cult.
Of note, Gothard's teachings also happen to be very popular in Assemblies circles--especially in the "Stealth Assemblies" churches of the type that Matthew Murray was apparently raised in.
Sadly, it seems that Murray was in fact subjected to the very sorts of religiously motivated child abuse promoted by Gothard--abuse that could well have been the kindling to start the flame of Murray's fatal rage:
Murray mentions Gothard by name in a later post. "Me, I remember the beatings and the fighting and yelling and insane rules and all the Bill Gothard (expletive) and then trancing out . (expletive) . I'm still tranced out."
In a bit of irony, the extreme isolation of the Gothard program--in which even "Christian contemporary" music is banned, children are regimented almost military-style in their own homes, TV and radio and practically all media outside of Gothard's own teachings are prohibited--was subverted in part by the very method used to deliver the "schooling". Gothard runs an Internet correspondence school, and it is likely through this Internet connection that Murray first discovered walkaway forums--forums which were, likely, his sole connection to the outside world:
A search-warrant affidavit for the Murrays' home said he had been using a computer "to attend a home-based computer school" for three to five hours daily for the past two years.
And no, I'm not exaggerating when I note that this was his sole way of reaching out to the outside world.
In an increasing trend in dominionist homes--as if the substandard education in the Gothard curriculum (which is unaccredited) wasn't enough to limit his educational choices, it seems Murray's parents laid down the law that the only acceptable post-grammar-school path was the missionary path:
On another Web posting, a person believed to be Murray said that his post-graduation options were limited to missionary work or attending Oral Roberts University, the flagship university of charismatic Christianity. A fast-growing subset of evangelical Christians, charismatics and Pentecostals believe the Holy Spirit continues to show signs and wonders in the world, including speaking in tongues, prophesy and miraculous healings.
Murray ended up enrolled in "disciple training school," a sort of Missionary 101 program run by Youth With a Mission, one of the world's largest evangelical Christian mission groups.
(And yes, it is very common anymore that college is not an escape for these kids--increasingly, the goal is to keep them isolated until they are married.)
An interview with Gothard indicates that the Murray family stopped using the Gothard curricula in 2003--roughly about the same time that Murray would take the next step on a path which would ultimately become fatal.
2003--as we'll note tomorrow--is the year in which Matthew Murray joined Youth With A Mission: a ministry with a long history of abuse and quite possibly the point in where Murray began to have the psychotic breakdown that would end in the tragic deaths of no less than six people on a Colorado afternoon.