Posted on 03/21/2022 4:50:16 PM PDT by Morgana
I was a scared and confused twelve-year-old when the idea of sending me off to a school for girls was whispered about. A family member tried to convince my parent that this would be the best place for me after an agonizing season in my life. My decade-long abuser had just been put in prison. Sending me away would help silence all the gossip surrounding our family in our small faith community and remove the small spotlight shining negatively on our church. I can’t help but wonder now if sending me away would also have been a way to punish me for telling the truth and “tearing the family apart.” Because I had testified about what was done to me, I was seen as rebellious.
As an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB), born and raised in this strict religious movement, I knew that so-called “rebellious” children were seen as a threat to the community that must be subdued and contained. A multibillion dollar industry that critics now refer to as the Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) arose as a way to cash in on this perceived threat. The fringe group of Christianity I grew up in still profits off the severe abuse and mistreatment of minors. All across our country, there are “homes” for wayward and rebellious children and teens. I was one of the fortunate who didn’t get sent away, but countless others can’t say the.
(Excerpt) Read more at killingthebuddha.com ...
I know most of you are very religious and take Christianity very seriously even though most of us attend a different church or denomination, so I hope what I'm about to say next does not fall on deaf ears.
I am sure the people who founded these schools did so with the best of intentions but some where a long the way it has gone very bad. So much so that a lot of these kids who are not adults are now atheists because of their horrible experience in these schools. These kids have decades old scars that have not healed and often get triggered by any type of Christianity they are exposed to.
I don't want this to be a thread about fighting over religious abuse, I want you all to believe their stories of abuse and pray for them.
It is a broad brush.
Very sorry that happened to you. I actually broke Freeper tradition and read the whole article. What they describe is abusing the name of God as well as the trust of the parents and children. I hope you find peace and healing.
Fundamentalism of any type whether it’s religious, political, etc requires some form of abuse to keep the members in line. This doesn’t excuse it, but at the end of the day, when collectivizing humans, especially into a super narrow mindset, it requires a great dear of fear, manipulation and sometimes violence to keep them “in line”. History has shown this dynamic over and over.
Pro Tip: All teens are troubled.
L
Lydia Joy Launderville is a freelance writer in Ivor, Virginia, who covers an array of topics, including health and lifestyle, with a special focus on religious abuse and trauma recovery. She also volunteers for a nonprofit helping victims of religious abuse.
Meaning the answer must be secular schools since such abuse does not take place.
I do think there is an “industry” to this. And I don’t like it at all. JMO.
Wrong, not "of any type." The type of fundamentalism at issue mainly errors when its commendable emphasis on doctrinal purity extends beyond basic salvific Truths and makes such beliefs as the pre-Trib rapture and cessation of pentecostal gifts to be fundamental Truths, and treats well-meaning conscientious dissents on such as enemies, and fosters assurance based upon the premise that leadership cannot err, and leadership and its staff are allowed exceptions from its generally high moral standards, while doctrine becomes too much an exoskeleton.
However, properly understood as holding to Scripture as the sure, supreme, substantive standard on faith and morals as the wholly God-inspired reliable word of God;
and thus warning men of eternal damnation as sinners and the necessity of penitent, heart-purifying, regenerating effectual faith in the mercy of God in Christ,
and emphasizing personal holiness as its fruit,
then along with other aspects Jesus Christ was a fundamentalist as was the NT church, while the alternative is liberalism.
Use them as a gateway to calibrate yourself to the point of being functional/economically sovereign but don't get sucked in/believe everything "they" say/promote.
Use faith and scripture, then agape to smooth out the edges once calibrated. If they don't respond in kind/reciprocate to your logic then run like the dickens away from "them" with the Gospel leading you.
I was a young minister in a town where there was an old line fundamentalist school for girls. Over the years it lost its Christian guidance and became more and more worldly.
A small group of girls began counseling with me about a female teacher who was sexually abusing them. The administration was not willing to address the problem and I was driven out of town by my church members who were scandalized that I would be privy to the accusations of young people.
It was a lesson in the dynamics of New England witchcraft.
Kids are very vulnerable. There need to be safeguards in place. Many of these places started with the best intentions and obviously troubled teens can lie like rugs as we all can. Still they are subject to exploitation and bullying and there needs to be transparency, ombudsmen, accountability.
I am so sorry for your bad experiences.
The goal of Democrat scum is to criminalize Christianity.
I basically can agree with your position.
I attended a “non-denominational” (read: pseudo-quasi-Arminian/Anabaptist, really a de facto denomination unto itself) school system for six years, and had extremely authoritarian - at times abusive - parents.
I served in lay ministry in two denominations, and later became ordained. I remain a Biblical Christian, but that is emphatically separate from what I call “Churchianity”.
Long ago, I was highly suspicious of the Bill Gothard “Basic Youth Conflicts” seminars (1970s). I was one of the very few students at my school who refused to take part. I was highly conservative, and believed in honoring one’s parents (in spite of my considerable bad experiences in my own home), but I sensed something misguided - if not perverted - in Gothard’s emphasis on lifelong parental authority.
Many years later, sexual abuse by some of his subordinates came to light (1980s). I was not surprised.
P.S.
I was not Arminian/Anabaptist. I was only one of three Lutherans at my school. I was frequently harassed by students, and even sometimes by teachers, for being a “heretic”. Adding that to the turmoil in the home made my formative schooling years less than enjoyable.
Fair enough… a better word would’ve perhaps been “extremism”.
It’s difficult for someone who has been abused to understand what a “normal life” is supposed to be like. From my experience, very few people ever grow up with this so-called “normal life.” I know many people who have horrible emotional and spiritual scars from their childhood and teen years even when they were not abused by an adult, per se. I find that the exception to this is actually rare these days. Today’s world is set up to harm children. There seems to be almost no escaping it.
I’ve read some articles you’ve posted on this issue, but have yet to read this one. I will do so after posting this comment, and perhaps it will change some of what I say here. I don’t know. While I share your concern and try myself when I can to advocate online for children, and so understand your purposes for posting this story in that you want to protect children, on the other hand, I’m also aware of how the world in every way attacks the Christian faith, and it is now setting itself up as a false “protector of children.” The children hurt by that are a concern, too.
Second, troubled teens are in a bad place in life, and I have to wonder if when they go to secular institutions, the treatment is even worse, but we are just less liable to ever hear about it because the same sort of motivation isn’t there to bring it to light. I know of a couple of cases where things happened to teens in secular psychiatric facilities, for instance.
Third, when some children who grow up in the church reject it, too, everything about it becomes abuse. There’s no shortage of stories like that in liberal venues. It’s a constant stream of them putting out the lie that Bible-believing Christianity is an abusive, controlling cult — and that’s especially the case when a church tries to resist today’s culture. (Even many professing Christians now see godly efforts to merely exercise self-control and not give in to worldly self-indulgence as bad.) Meanwhile, there’s hardly a word today on, for example, the abuses of Hollywood towards children — both by what they put out, and how it treats child actors. Children whose parents don’t seriously filter what they see and hear are being abused by what they’re exposed to. Overall, children in our society today are being robbed of their childhood and of their innocence, to devastating effec.
Then there’s even the idea of the hypocritical pastor, including the hypocritical megachurch pastor. They’re considered to abuse and misuse their power. Meanwhile, the world’s new authorities, elites who are the new “preachers,” also preach a type of worldly virtue while violating it themselves in every way possible and causing so much damage in the world, yet they aren’t seen that way.
For instance, when the teenage star of Two and a Half Men, Angus T. Jones, called his show filth that people shouldn’t watch, liberal elites viciously hit out at him, mocking him and calling him a hypocrite. So many acted like the show was just good, clean entertainment, and Jones was either an evil grifter or had gone crazy to criticize it — that’s how morally upside-down our society has become. Since he’d made a lot of money, that apparently cancelled out the fact for many people that he was still a young person, and a child, who had grown up on a show like that which he hadn’t really understood what he was saying and became disturbed by it as he gained perspective on it. Same thing now with elites attacking the man whose naked image as a baby was used on a Nirvana album cover. Despite the supposed theme of the band to criticize commercial exploitation, that man is being pilloried by the band, the media, and even many of the band’s fans. His personal plight of having his individual person and life affected by that cover, and of having his nakedness as a child exploited, means nothing, since he’s only one person and so “outvoted,” next to the commercial enjoyment of his exploitation by the many.
So all I’m saying is, without taking a position one way or another on any claims I’ve read on Christian churches and organizations, is that the church is the supreme target of a world that supremely covers up for all its sins, including child abuse and exploitation. There’s a million things we could bring up where there are often cover-ups, including children being trafficked around the world. Yet, I see a growing trend to paint Republicans and Christians as the only abusers. I just saw a Twitter thread on that the other day — “Republican child abusers”. That goes along with the demonization of ordinary Republicans, and Bible-believing Christians in particular, which is going on.
So, overall, it concerns me that very important context is increasingly being lost, and also that potentially situations might be misrepresented, and in some case even false testimony might be given, none of which helps children, either.
So I read the article, and it does seem to have a heavy bias against Christianity. It sounds to me like the author would gladly abolish Christianity if she could.
Especially ones who wear their religion on their sleeve.
If what goes on behind the scenes in a 2 week camp is that bad, years of it would be beyond horrid.
Horrific. Thank you for posting
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