Bill Gothard is intent on defending himself. He’s speaking with me by telephone from the Northwoods Conference Center in Watersmeet, Michigan, where he spends every January “for study and writing and reflecting and fasting.” The controversial 76-year-old evangelist wants to explain away the “distortions” of his critics, and why, he insists, that widely-discussed “Taliban Dan” ad had it all wrong.
In the ad (run last fall by congressional candidate Daniel Webster’s Democratic opponent), the Florida Republican is shown speaking at an Advanced Training Institute conference — part of Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, the $95 million nonprofit the evangelist founded in 1965 that boasts it has educated millions, including public officials, around the world at its conferences, in homeschool curricula, and in prisons. Webster is shown saying, “wives submit yourselves to your own husband” and “she should submit to me, that’s in the Bible.”
After the ad ran, Webster countered — and watchdogs and the media largely accepted — that Grayson had taken his words out of context and distorted their meaning. Still, though, Webster never denied that he believed wives should submit to the spiritual authority of their husbands. That there is a “chain of command” that families must obey has been at the core of Gothard’s teachings for decades.
Gothard insisted to me (in direct contradiction to materials on his own website) that he does not teach submission. When I asked Gothard whether he teaches that wives should submit to their husbands’ authority, he laughed, answering, “no, no,” adding, that Jesus taught “he who is the greatest among you be the servant of all. That makes the woman the greatest of all because she has served every single person in the world by being in her womb.”….
….Gothard’s effort to soft-pedal his teachings — by portraying women as venerated objects, and by saying that “authority” is simply “love” and “love” is “freedom” — flies in the face of his critics’ descriptions of the impact of his authoritarian teachings on their lives. In interviews, former adherents to Gothard’s teachings, disillusioned former members of “ATI families,” and an evangelical critic told me that his unyielding theology, including “non-optional” compliance with seven “biblical” principles (the “basic” life principles), compliance with 49 “character traits,” and other periodic Gothard revelations, are contrary to the Bible and have wreaked havoc on their emotional and spiritual lives and those of their families….
…Gothard doesn’t deny he teaches adherence to what he calls “the commands of Christ.” And even though he has developed his own highly unusual interpretation of the Bible, he insists he’s not demanding that his followers obey him, but that they obey God (or how he singularly has interpreted God’s word). Following this path, he tells me cheerfully, will bring one “success and health and happiness and joy.”…
….Gothard’s recent efforts have even extended into faith healing. He told me that a delegation of Peruvian elected officials and other leaders were impressed with his ability to heal “stress” and cancer. “God has directed us to a new approach to health,” Gothard told me, “which is taking care of stress first.” Now the Peruvians, he said, want to be a “model world nation.” That, he added, “to me is like the example of what we’ve been working for all these years.”….
….Gothard told me that America’s problems are caused by “rejecting God’s ways” and that “we should make laws that are in harmony with the laws of nature and the laws of God.”….
…Gothard’s followers can take that directive quite literally. “Jack,” now in his 20s, who had lived and worked at IBLP headquarters and was exposed to ATI his entire life, told me that after high school he “immediately jumped into the legal studies program that ATI provided, determined to create a legal system based on biblical law then become president and implement it all over the world — crazy, I know.” He has since broken with ATI….
…..Don Venoit, a conservative evangelical who founded Midwest Christian Outreach, a ministry devoted to countering the influence of “new religious movements,” has long been a critic of Gothard and documented his efforts to confront him in a 2003 book, A Matter of Basic Principles. MCO, like other apologetics ministries, considers Mormonism and other religions “cultic” and has contested the teachings of other evangelicals like Rick Warren and Brian McLaren. Still, the Venoits’ objections to Gothard are a barometer of how Gothard, well-loved by many conservative evangelicals, has drawn the ire of others….
….Venoit told me he doesn’t consider Gothard’s organization a cult, but that Gothard’s “view of authority is the core of where things go wrong.” Gothard teaches, in the first hour of the first night of his “basic” seminar that “authority is like an umbrella of protection.” If you get out of that protection, “you are in rebellion, which is like witchcraft,” and “all evil will befall you,” said Venoit.
“It’s a culture of fear, is what it is,” he added….
…..Venoit said he was provoked to challenge Gothard’s “legalistic” views on issues like marriage and circumcision, which Gothard maintains must conform to Old Testament law, and other ideas like demons are transmitted from place to place through inanimate objects. In the 1990s, MCO began receiving increasing calls about Gothard’s authoritarianism….
….Rather than engage in hermeneutics, said Venoit, Gothard “prays over large portions of scripture and God tells him what it means. Fundamentally, you have a mystic telling you how to understand the Bible.”
Gothard’s “fundamental flaw,” Venoit told me, is his idea of the “umbrella of authority or chain of command.”….
….Ronald B. Allen, now a Senior Professor of Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, criticized Gothard’s “chain-of-command” tenets of patriarchy….
Allen called Gothard’s teaching “the basest form of male chauvinism I have ever heard in a Christian context… His view is basically anti-woman.”….
….In our interview, Gothard disputed the “terrible picture” Allen had drawn, maintaining that “God is the one who has a hammer” and that “God will use different authorities in their life to perfect the diamonds in our life. It’s not breaking the diamond, it’s perfecting the diamond. We are his jewels.”
“It’s not a harsh thing,” he insisted, “it’s a matter of perfecting the goal God has for every one of us.”…
…..Vyckie Garrison, who runs the website No Longer Quivering, “a gathering place for women escaping and recovering from spiritual abuse,” told me that she and her now ex-husband, although they lacked the money to attend Gothard’s seminars, followed his teachings through his homeschool curricula. She said her husband had believed, based on Gothard’s teachings, that he was responsible for his family’s salvation through the authority he exercised over his family, a role which turned him into a “tyrant.”….
….While many evangelical couples follow complementarian theology, Gothard’s twist on that teaching, said Garrison, is that “the man has ultimate responsibility with eternal consequences,” meaning that it “gives him the authority over every aspect of family’s life and thoughts.” In Garrison’s family this meant her husband exercised control of her and the children’s every move to ensure compliance with Gothard’s 49 character traits.
The husband provides an “umbrella of protection” or “spiritual protection from Satan.” The wife needs to be in submission, because the husband is “going to answer not just for your own life and your own walk before God but for your wife and children,” said Garrison.
While she was attempting to live up to the unattainable expectations imposed by her husband’s adherence to Gothard’s theology, Garrison was “mesmerized” by the Duggars of 19 Kids and Counting fame, who are possibly Gothard’s most recognizable followers. The matriarch and star of the TLC reality hit, Michelle Duggar, “was like my hero,” said Garrison, who found raising her own seven children overwhelming. “She makes it all look so doable.” In spite of Gothard’s controversial status, religious right activists fawned over the Duggars at last year’s Values Voters Summit, where they were honored with a “Pro-Family Entertainment” award….
….ATI provides both homeschool materials and training courses all over the world on wide-ranging topics, including law, landscaping, music, food service, interior design, and “eternity arts.” But it’s in the gender-separated seminars that Gothard’s vision for women becomes clear: they are taught how to “radiate the brightness of the Lord Jesus Christ through their thoughts, words, and actions,” become “virtuous women,” and recognize the importance of “falling in love with the Lord, accepting your design and realizing your unique gifts.” Gothard, who teaches that dating is wrong, and that couples should engage instead in “courtship,” maintains “the purpose of courtship is to determine a couple’s readiness for marriage and to discern the will of God for a covenant marriage that will benefit the world.”….
….Gothard, who has never been married, teaches that dating is prohibited (a rule echoed by the Duggars on their television show) “because you’ll give away too much of your heart.” As the blogger Hopewell wrote on Garrison’s blog, the Duggars “view dating as unhealthy, leading to a diminished capacity to love your eventual spouse… They view adulthood as something that begins with a parent-approved marriage and at no other time.”
Indeed sex is so taboo it’s not even discussed — even to condemn homosexuality. “To even mention the name of [homosexuality] was a sin,” said Jack. “To talk about sexuality in general was wrong. The ‘S’ word as we called it was in my family absolutely never mentioned. Things like masturbation — I didn’t even know what it was until I was 19 or 20. Sex was considered bad and wrong and almost like the boogeyman that you don’t talk about.”
Gothard’s own brother, who worked for IBLP, was dismissed from his organization after it was discovered that he was having sex with students, and the former head of the homeschooling curriculum, Jim Voeller, was dismissed for leaving his wife and seven children for his secretary….
First, I want to thank Sarah Posner for writing this. I have read Sarah’s articles for several years and I appreciate her skillful, passionate writing.
Second, several people with experience being involved with Bill Gothard regularly read Fallen From Grace. I hope they add their perspective. (if they feel comfortable doing so)
My grandfather and step-grandmother were avid Gothardites. They tried several times to get my wife and I to attend a Basic Life Principles conference in Detroit, Michigan. If I remember right, they did talk my mother into attending. Polly and I never attended, not for any reason other than we were too busy.
I was exposed to Bill Gothard and his “principles” in the last church I pastored. I was able to carefully watch how Gothard’s teachings and home school program affected one of the families in the church.
During the time I was at the last church I pastored I had the opportunity to visit an advanced “training” facility for Gothardites. It was run by a pastor whom I have known since my days as a student as Midwestern Baptist College.
I watch the HBO show Big Love. Big Love is a drama that follows a Mormon polygamist family in Utah. As I watch Big Love, the similarities between the show and my time as a Fundamentalist Baptist and Bill Gothard and his Basic Life Principles is striking. Uncomfortably so.
It is hard for me not to say, “Bruce you were a cultist.” Devout. Committed. Sincere.
But a cultist, nonetheless.
Not a full-blown cult, but cultic tendencies to be sure.
Gothardism may not be a cult but it most certainly has cultic tendencies. I will leave it to you to decide if you think they are cultic. (Google search for Bill Gothard)
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