Rocky

The update story in the Daily Star has a lot more background, including insight on recognizing problem groups and helping people who have been impacted by them.

Then yesterday, the Arizona Daily Star updated the March 2015 story, The holidays weren’t always happy for Doug Pacheco, but this year he feels blessed by a season of forgiveness. For years, Pacheco says his family suffered because of his unquestioning devotion to the leaders of Faith Christian Church, which encouraged corporal punishment of infants, unquestioning obedience to church leaders and mandatory tithing even by families in financial distress. He shared his story last spring as part of an Arizona Daily Star investigation into the Tucson-based ministry that’s been recruiting members on the University of Arizona campus for more than 20 years. Twenty-one former followers described the church as a cult that targets UA students and inflicts financial, spriritual and emotional abuse. New parents were trained to start spanking babies soon after birth to rid them of “rebellious” spirits, the former members and staffers said. They often used cardboard dowels from wire clothes hangers to hit infants who wouldn’t sleep, then switched to other implements as children grew, they said. Pacheco, who joined Faith Christian’s predecessor church and left in 1990, said he and his then-wife accepted the church’s teachings. When the Star’s initial story ran in March, Pacheco — now remarried and living in Indiana — emailed links to the story to each of his children, now 33, 31 and 29. “They knew just by me sending that article that dad is facing up to something here,” Pacheco, 58, said in a recent phone interview. “I got to call each of my children and tell them I loved them and apologize to them. “Each of them said, ‘We love you, we forgive you, we’re with you.’ Ever since that time, my relationships with all three of them has just improved.”

Actually, as a blogger and former journalist, the motivation for many people is simply to tell the story. Get the word out. Their own stories, good and bad. As to whether twi is the only cult that gets exposed, definitely not. Just today, I saw a tweet with a link to a story about a cult in Tucson, AZ that has been "affiliated with" the University of Arizona. I suspect the affiliation is simply that the group has permission to meet on campus. "Back in March, I posted about how Faith Christian Church, which has operated on the campus of the University of Arizona for decades now, was essentially a criminal-led cult. "That was according to 30 former members and employees (and their parents) who said it took a long time to get over what happened to them. Carol Ann Alaimo and Emily Bregel of the Arizona Daily Star wrote this at the time: Their stories include reports of hitting infants with cardboard tubes to encourage submission, financial coercion, alienation from parents, public shaming of members and shunning of those who leave the church or question its leaders. Some say that since leaving, they’ve spent years in therapy for panic attacks, depression, flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. From the Arizona Daily Star: The University of Arizona is investigating a religious group that more than 20 former members and staffers describe as a cult. Faith Christian Church, which is led by a self-proclaimed former criminal, has operated on the UA campus for 25 years. It is initially welcoming, then slowly imposes control over most facets of members’ lives, an Arizona Daily Star investigation found. The Star interviewed 21 former employees and church members — most of them UA alumni — and nine of their parents. Their stories include reports of hitting infants with cardboard tubes to encourage submission, financial coercion, alienation from parents, public shaming of members and shunning of those who leave the church or question its leaders. Some say that since leaving, they’ve spent years in therapy for panic attacks, depression, flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Methods the church has used, as described by former members and staffers, meet all five warning signs for “religious practices gone awry” listed on the website of the UA’s University Religious Council. “The best word I can think of is ‘insidious.’ It starts off subtle,” says ex-member Scott Moore, 32, who graduated from the UA in 2005 with a degree in agriculture. Moore says his self-esteem hit rock bottom after he joined Faith Christian in 2000 at age 17. Church leaders’ criticism and authoritarianism caused him near-constant anxiety during his five years as a member, he says. Some ex-members and their parents say the UA should have acted long ago to investigate the church and the campus ministries it lists as affiliates: Wildcats for Christ, Native Nations in Christ and the Providence Club. But the university must abide by an Arizona law requiring all state agencies to “neither inhibit nor promote religion,” says Melissa Vito, the UA’s senior vice president in charge of student affairs.

Wow... you presented some interesting philosophical questions. They bring back and remind me of some of your earlier comments on other threads and help clarify your reasons for the obscure wording. It's reasonably easy to recognize how, from your perspective, those things should have remained a mystery. OTOH, life isn't always what we'd like it to be. As author M Scott Peck wrote, in the first line of his book The Road Less Traveled, "Life is difficult." He goes on to explain that when we recognize and realize that, we learn to cope with the difficult times. I've mentioned the role Peck's writing played in my recovery from twi in comments on gsc before. I doubt we'd be able to resolve your philosophical questions in a discussion on gsc, but I commend you for bringing the subject up. It may or may not help to also consider that progress, especially technological innovation, cannot be stopped.

Who do you think was blaming you? I don't think I saw anyone here doing so. Rosie may have been 34, but that was a long time ago.

Good grief. There were LOTS of wayfers who used tobacco when I was still involved. A big deal was also made about a two drink limit regarding alcohol. That's not necessarily a bad thing. However, when we examine the outreach areas where VPee's influence started growing -- Rye, NY and San Francisco in the last 1960s/70s, I'm confident you'll find a much more relaxed attitude. Marijuana, btw, has been shown since then to be much safer than alcohol.

Yeah, and the radical Islamic jihadi suicide bomber gets 70 virgins after doing the deed. It's all psychological manipulation. TWIts read about "the hope" and knew they had a mechanism to manipulate.

Most definitely.

I agree with the thesis of the OP in this thread. Sleep deprivation is an obvious tool for psychological manipulation. However, I'm not so sure us "old folks" can rightfully blame current inability to sleep more than 5 hours at a stretch on twi. I have similar sleep issues and understand them primarily to be related to aging.

Dude, it WAS and is all an illusion. :)

Perhaps not, but on other threads, I did. And I stand by that claim. WordWolf explains some of why that is actually the case.

That damn salt covenant! ----- edit, looked up salt covenant. Wikipedia includes a book published by American Christian Press (twi) as a source. How right you are, Steve.

Yeah, I get your point. Certainly to be a helping professional would have taken an advanced degree. But the a BS in psych, he would know enough to design cultic group directions and norms and mores. And we know how those all turned out.

Clever. Don't forget that The Forehead's undergraduate degree was in psychology.

Put another way, hindsight is 20/20. If only there could be a way to have that hindsight on the front end, eh? Indeed, I don't see how they could even conceptualize any kind of informed consent. There's no way the cult would agree with what we understand about them after years of involvement and then leaving. Too subjective.

I agree completely. In the 1990s, I was involved with a church fellowship. For a while, it was helpful. I had a close relationship with one of the pastors and shared with him my twi background. He had known other former wayfers in Wyoming. Eventually, I grew out of that situation also. I don't feel the need these days for being involved in a Christian fellowship. I recognize Juedes' bias in that regard and put it in the same perspective that you described. <3

I agree, the traffic noise was incredibly obnoxious. But I am very thankful he recorded the video. I love that he directly addresses waybrain.

Go for it. See what happens.

An . <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mUPubonKLFM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> I tried to embed the video... couldn't figure it out. But the link in the first line should work.

Wouldn't matter if there was. First amendment, ya know. It would be an extremely difficult thing to put any kind of parameters or legal limitations other than already existing laws that address issues not necessarily inherent to religious worship, like polygamy or human sacrifice. If some practice comes up that requires society deal with it, that practice would be targeted rather than the religion.

Different usages of the word.

Well, I don't think I ever had to deal with the two by two scenario, but... Yeah, those reproof verses were a big deal from way back. Thirty to forty years of hindsight makes me realize just how faulty even some seemingly practical NT scriptures can be. On its own, and using no other sources of insight for practical wisdom, that practice was inherently emotionally abusive. What was missing included (but was not necessarily limited to) recognition of the inherent worth of the individual being confronted. That makes the waybrain application inherently narcissistic. The whole concept that I have a right to challenge anything that offends me (anything I don't like) is complete crap. Because the founder of the cult was a narcissistic megalomaniac, he demonstrated, and how many thousands of people imitated, that pattern of conduct? Take it back to Matthew 22: 36-39. What about the biblical principle of forebearance? My recollections of V Pee and of The Forehead do not include many specific incidents of forebearance.

Great quote. I -- LOVE -- being a contrarian. And I'm passionate about it. :)

The 9th and 7th corpses were in residence at the time. I don't remember VPee's words about it, but I distinctly remember Loy ranting on about it and recognizing right away that we would be labeled a cult because of Jim Jones. Of course, Loy vehemently denied we had any cultic characteristics...

My hunch is that among his concerns is the growing trend toward Dominionism in US churches. I took a brief look at his website. I don't see him emphasizing anything that would link to a fundamentalist perspective.