End Notes

[1] "Communities.... have a history-in an important sense they are constituted by their past-and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a 'community of memory,' one that does not forget its past. In order not to forget that past, a community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community. These stories of collective history and exemplary individuals are an important part of the tradition that is so central to a community of memory....

"But the stories are not all exemplary, not all about successes and achievements. A genunine community of memory will also tell painful stories of shared suffering that sometimes creates deeper identities than success.... And if the community is completely honest, it will remember stories not only of suffering recieved but of suffering inflicted-dangerous memories, for they call the community to alter ancient evils.” Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Bellah et al., Harper & Row, 1986, p. 153.[return]

[2] The Children of God, for instance, hold that sex between consenting adults who are not married to one another, and who may in fact be married to someone else, is permissible providing the spouse agrees to the liason. I suggest that the most objective sociologist could, with little fear of contradiction, note that such an idea is outside the framework of orthodox Christian belief and practice.[return]

[3] "So many things are absorbed in our large family, when one person hurts, everybody comes to the rescue with comfort and prayer.... We handle our own emotional, spiritual, and even marital problems. Yes, Christians, despite popular fantasies, are not immune to problems"; "United We Stand," Cornerstone, vol. 3, issue 14 (1974), p. 6,7.[return]

[4] Acts of the Apostles, 6:1-6; This passage not only expounds on the genesis of deacons and deaconnesses, but by inference (see also 1:21-26) shows the apostles working as a sort of board, with Peter often acting as spokesperson but not as sole or primary authority.[return]

[5] For instance, Cornerstone, in Vol. 12, Issue 69, 1984, published "Denominations: Variety and Variance Within the Christian Church." The article defended both denominations and the concept of denomiationalism: "Denominations have historically been the vessels used by Jesus Christ to preserve and maintain the Christian faith, each serving a different function. Luther and his Lutherans lifted up the then-neglected banners of justification by faith and the priesthood of the believer. Calvin held high the sovereignty of God. Another generation, led by John Wesley's Methodists, emphasized holiness.... In the end it is apparent that we need each other." Another example was how closely JPUSA worked with other churches and denominations, both Protestant and Catholic; JPUSA joined various umbrella groups of churches, including the Lakeview Evangelical Fellowship, a large group of churches representing Chicago's North Side.[return]

[6] For a lengthy treatment of JPUSA's history, see the JPUSA website. [return]

[7] "As the secular press has tried to help the public comprehend the recent horror in Guyana, there has been the frequent inference that the problem was too much commitment. They suggest that any time people give themselves totally to a cause, the product is likely to be as heinous. Is that true? And if it is, how should that affect our commitment to Jesus Christ and His Church? Is our safety a retrenchment into individualistic Christianity? ....Commitment is not the problem, but the object of our commitment is critical"; "Guyana: Was the Problem Too Much Commitment?", Dave Jackson, Cornerstone, Vol. 7, Issue 45, p. 2.[return]

[8]  “Kidnapped: Let Our Children Go,” Cornerstone, Vol. 5, Issue 33, p. 8. The review points out that Patrick ignores the often real problem of some groups being monetary rip-offs, focusing instead on the commitment level of individual members. “It seems his major objection to the cults is their level of dedication.” Patrick, we noted, encouraged kidnapped NRM members in the midst of a deprogramming to “open sin, taking that as the sign that the victim is successfully deprogrammed… Although we strongly oppose the cults and speak out against them, we feel that the Holy Spirit has more ethical loving ways of dealing with people than kidnapping and forced repentance. Even though there were many false religious teachings in His day, we cannot imagine Jesus kidnapping people and harassing them for days to change their mind. The Lord is a truthful persuader, not a gangster.”[return]

[9] "The urge to scream 'fire!' has replaced that earlier silence that had greeted the eastern pseudo-religions of the sixties. Jim Jones made one contribution to American society: people have become aware of the cults as they never have been before.... The secular press was at first incredulous, then furious.... The attack has not basically been theological, but societal. Herein lies a great danger. While we too have a great concern for the subversive power of the cults (enough that we have carried a 'Cult of the Month' column for five years) we have as a primary goal love. We cannot ignore the cults; neither can we allow fear and anger to dictate our actions.... Let us expose false teachings and warn the cults, but in love"; "Cults: What to Say When the Tacks Are Brass," Eric Pement, Cornerstone, Vol. 8, Issue 47, p. 36.[return]

[10] Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults, Ronald Enroth, Zondervan, 193, 197?, quoted in Understanding the Cults, Alan W. Gomes, Zondervan Publishing House, 53, 1995.[return]

[11] letter, dated June 16, 1993, from Ronald Enroth to ECC Central Conference head Herb Freedholm.[return]

[12] Ibid.[return]

[13] "They were challenged by [African-American evangelical] John Perkins to live among the poor as poor. And so they moved to communal life in the slums of Uptown many years before they joined the Covenant. I am no disciple of Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida or of Liberation Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez. But any critical reader of culture will have to agree that America's underclass is often abused and victimized by its cultural establishment. You and I are both prospering beneficiaries of that establishment....

"In many ways Jesus People do not and should not meet the 'stereotype' of the middle-class Protestant establishment. But they are in dialogue with us and are trying to be responsive. We are, like many, a predominantly 'WASP' denomination seeking to overcome our own 'addictions' of insensitivity to the poor and the alienated. The Jesus people, clearly seeing our lack of wholeness as well as their own, humbly asked for help. We took the risk and will now accept the pain you apparently intend to inflict upon us both." [Letter dated July 13, 1993][return]

[14] letter from Ronald Enroth to Paul Larsen, dated July 19, 1993.[return]

[15] Ronald M. Enroth, Churches that Abuse, Zondervan (Grand Rapids), 1992, p. 30.[return]

[16] “NEH Develops Code of Ethics for Native American Research,” American Anthropological Association [rest of title obliterated], Vol. 22, No. 8., p. 1, 13.[return]

[17] “Ethics and Anthropology,” from [this written on xerox copy] “Cultural Anthropology – Kottak”; p. 295.[return]

[18] “Policy Research and Ethical Issues,” Caroline Purcell, Understanding Sociology, 3rd Edition, Harper & Row (1990), p. 42. We did not disagree with Purcell, of course, merely with Enroth’s attempted use of her writings to justify his methodology. “Should researchers always reveal their identities, especially when doing participant observation?” she had written. Why Enroth had underscored this sentence was baffling. He’d never visited JPUSA’s headquarters incognito or otherwise. The next sentence seemed to explain his thought processes. “There are certain groups that may not want researchers in their midst, such as reclusive religious cults, corporate boards, and certain criminal groups” (Italics added). His selection of this section seem to revealed his hostility toward us, in that we are neither reclusive nor a “cult” by any standard definition. We’d allowed all sorts of researchers, including sociologists and journalists, into our midst.[return]

[19] "Ron, do we really have to write books attacking other Christians on such highly volatile and debatable topics such as 'abuse'? Frankly, I am tired of the word. It has become one of the most abused terms in our vocabulary. So far as I can see, the most abusive thing in this whole situation is your desire to publish this and Zondervan's willingness to do it. Is making money at the expense of the character of other Christians really ethical? I would urge you again as a brother in Christ to cease publication. You are not only going to hurt another group of sincere, dedicated Christians, but you are going to hurt yourself. I do not know of anyone in the counter- cult ministry who agrees with you. You have already alienated the major groups and leaders that I know." Letter from Geisler to Enroth, March 14, 1994.[return]

[20]  Singer, in a 13 October 1993 letter to Philip B. Heymann, U.S. Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice, and Ronald K. Noble, Assistant Secretary (Enforcement), of the Department of the Treasury, recommends eleven individuals as experts on thought reform and cults. She includes Ronald Enroth’s name. The letter concerned training regarding groups such as the Branch Davidians.[return]

[21] "It is not easy to leave fringe churches. This fact is difficult for nonmembers to comprehend. Just as is often the case with an abused spouse, the victim of spiritual abuse has mixed feelings about cutting ties. The group, for all its weaknesses, represents security. For some, it becomes a surrogate family. Not all experiences are viewed as negative or harmful. Furthermore, the participant (especially the long-term member) has been programmed against ever leaving. The repeated invoking of fear, guilt, and intimidation can be extremely effective with regard to any consideration of bailing out."; "Churches on the Fringe," Ronald Enroth, Contend for the Faith: Collected Papers of the Rockford Conference on Discernment and Evangelism, Edited by Eric Pement, Evangelical Ministries to New Religions, Chicago, p. 196, 1992.[return]

[22] See, for instance, “Shepherd Without Compassion: Stewart Traill and the Church of Bible Understanding,” Eric Pement, Cornerstone, Vol. 11, Issue 60, p. 32. We went as far as to note that we had somewhat re-evaluated our position on ‘mind control’ due to the findings of our research on the COBU group, who’s members were publically verbally abused for personal sin, but summarized this way: “[The ex-members’ alleged] ‘failures’ were (and are) not either the result of carnal backsliding or hypnotic states induced by a bizarre cult. After hours of dialogue… and research, the members of the Church of Bible Understanding appear as young Christians, zealous to do God’s will, who were twisted and savaged by one man’s ego… It’s easy to point to [COBU leader] Stewart Traill’s extreme, yet how many Christian leaders both large and small manipulate others to achieve pseudo-spiritual ends? The list unfortunately is not small.”[return]

[23] In the JPUSA/ECC meeting with Enroth, we had discussed two or three of the more outlandish former members’ stories, in order to show both Enroth and Zondervan’s Gundry how easily disprovable those stories were. Enroth later wrote that we had, by bringing up those stories, failed to acknowledge the pain of these former members.[return]

[24] "Life's Lessons: A History of Jesus People USA Covenant Church," Jon Trott, Cornerstone magazine, 16, 17, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994;[return]

[25] "Balances which are often referred to include balancing structure and spontaneity, submission and love, criticism and praise, teaching and worship, and recreation and work. In an additional usage, balance refers to qualification, as when someone provides a balance to what another has said.... One young man in [JPUSA] told me, 'Balance is like, when the children of God take the verse in the New Testament that says to forsake your parents, and then they go off and reject their parents. There's no balance to that. They don't look at all the other verses in the Bible that say that you should obey your parents. So they're right that you should put Jesus first but the balance to that is that you have to respect and obey your parents, too.... Cults are unbalanced. They just take one little statement or line and build a whole cult on that."; "Two Jesus People Groups," David Gordon, 40-41, 1975; quoted in "Life's Lessons: A History of Jesus People USA Covenant Church," Jon Trott, Cornerstone magazine, 16, 17, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994, 11.[return]

[26] " A covenant with JPUSA does not equal salvation, nor does it bring a person into a special 'elect within the elect,' a higher order of Christians. It is the agreement of an informed individual, the member, and one small expression of the Christian Church, JPUSA, that we see God leading us in service to him."; "JPUSA Covenant," Cornerstone magazine, 19, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994, 19.[return]

[27] "The new definition of abuse has shifted. It does not include an objective description of abusive behavior. Rather, it tends to describe, as the major element in the definition, the subjective reaction of the [alleged] victim. In current parlance, abuse is any behavior which another person experiences as painful, regardless of the objective characteristics of that behavior."; "Who's Abusing Who?", Dr. William Backus, Cornerstone magazine, 19, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994, 35.[return]

[28] Ironically, the group Tucker defended against Enroth, University Bible Fellowship, turned out to be located within a mile of our Chicago address. We discovered that a member of UBF had been kidnapped and subjected to an attempted "deprogramming," and contacted her. The results of our research, which included visiting UBF's facility as well as attending their worship services, focused on Annie Kang's testimony as a victim of abuse at the hands of "anti-cult" forces. We also included interviews with the professional deprogrammers involved: "Enemies of the Heart: The Story of a Christian Woman's Deprogramming," Annie Kang with Jon Trott, Cornerstone, Vol. 25, Issue 110.[return]

[29] "Whatever the setting or subject, the [invalid] research method is to treat the victim stories as truth without investigating counterclaims. The alleged victimizer is presumed guilty of the victim's charges without being given an opportunity to prove innocence or even challenge the assumption of guilt... My serious concerns about Ron [Enroth's] work arose in 1991, when I was asked by his editor at Zondervan to write an endorsement for his book, Churches that Abuse. After I read over the manuscript I wrote back to the editor (and sent a copy of the letter to Ron) stating that I could not endorse the book. Of the churches featured in the book, I had personal knowledge of only one, and in that instance I felt that Ron had made some very unfair allegations. The one-sided testimonies on which he based his conclusions were old (primarily 1980 to 1984) and he seemed entirely oblivious to the cultural factors that gave the group its distinct non-western flavor." Regarding JPUSA, Tucker wrote: "What is so ironic about this latest attack is that Cornerstone magazine is widely recognized for its solid investigative reporting and for its persistent efforts to interview people on both sides of the story. Never has it offered up articles based solely on victim stories, claiming they were valid research. Yet the organization is being attacked by the very methods it strictly avoids." Cornerstone magazine, 19, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994. 41.[return]

[30] "If Enroth has committed a scholarly sin, it's that he has treated narrative accounts as literal... as history. But it seems to me he fails to take into account the individual perspective of each observer of any event. Reality is complex. The average reader wants to be presented with something that either happened or it didn't. I mean, how would a book do if it were titled Churches that Might or Might Not Be Abusing?";  Cornerstone magazine, 19, Vol. 22, Issue 102/103, 1994, 44.[return]

[31] Recovering from Churches that Abuse, Ronald Enroth, Zondervan Publishing House, 121-122, 1994.[return]

[32] Ibid., p. 152.[return]

 "Book Reviews: Recovering from Churches That Abuse," James T. Richardson, Cornerstone, vol. 23, Issue 105, p. 20.[return]

[34] Ibid.[return]

[35] Unmasking the Cults, Alan W. Gomes, 72, Zondervan, 1995.[return]

[36]  "Although the term cult is vague and controversial, it has firmly implanted itself in popular discourse. The term is often associated with 'thought reform' (popularly called 'mind control'), which, according to Lifton (1961), describes certain processes of behavior change used on civilians in mainland China and on Korean POWs":  "Introduction," Michael Langone, Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse, Michael D. Langone, ed., W. W. Norton (New York), p. 2,3. Various other writers in this volume also cite Lifton, some at great length, in support of their brainwashing paradigm.[return]

[37] The mailing Enroth sent was copied from self-described “exit counselor” Steven Hassan’s book, Combatting Cult Mind Control, (Park Street Press, 1988, p. 201); Hassan includes a startling excerpt from Lifton on “cults,” taken from the latter's 1987 book, The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age. That excerpt abundantly underscores Lifton’s confusion regarding “fundamentalism,” “totalism,” and evils such as the People’s Temple suicides and even Nazi Germany: “…if one has an absolute or totalistic vision of truth, then those who have not seen the light – have not embraced that truth, are in some way in the shadows – are bound up with evil, tainted, and do not have the right to exist.” Once again, note the difficulty for Lifton and his followers here, namely, that they too end up being totalists by deciding who else is a totalist, and (to use his term) does not have the right to exist. The whole concept of “deprogramming” (exit counseling) is rooted in an attempt to destroy the personality which believes, replacing it with a personality which disbelieves. Lifton himself claims that there is a “second self” created within some “cults”; it is this second self that must, according to the anti-cultists, die. Self-responsibility for joining or leaving a religious group is thus removed from the individual and assigned elsewhere, namely, to the totalistic anti-cultists bent on undermining that individual’s commitment.[return]

[38] See Lifton's The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, Robert Jay Lifton, Basic Books (New York); 1993. I am only somewhat familiar with the "post-modernist" approach to truth and story, namely, that story is basically man's subjective attempt to make sense of an unknowable objective truth. But at the heart of the post-modern worldview is the same horror Lifton feels toward the monolithic, whether philosophical, religious, political, or historical. Thus the Po-Mo rejection of "meta-narratives," any story which claims to be the sole and only truth. (A wag might suggest that their own story appears to be a meta-narrative.) Lifton sees an invariable connection between monolithic, or totalist worldviews, and societal evil. While fearing fundamentalism, Lifton welcomes pluralism, both societal and in the individual's inner life, as the antidote to totalism. Lifton’s understanding of both Chinese Communism and Germany's Nazism as evil is especially problematic when applied to small, relatively powerless religious groups and individuals, despite how Langone and others attempt to rationalize away this glaring problem.

On a deeper level, Lifton could be accused of making a philosophical error, generalizing from evil examples of monolithic worldviews to conclude that all  monolithic worldviews are evil. Are not pluralistic worldviews, at least those taken to their logical extreme, also problematic from a moral standpoint? The word "abuse," for instance, implies that there is a commonly-held and thus monolithic consensus on the moral and/or ethical norms being violated by the abuser. If there is no moral norm, then by definition, there can be no abuse, which at the least relies upon a societally-defined moral norm for its own definition. The child abuser, for instance, is only an abuser if a moral norm (societal, religious, or both) is being violated. In a completely pluralistic society, how does one define such a norm?[return]

[39] Consider, for instance, this attempt by Lifton to distance himself from the obvious weakness of his position: “I must separate myself, however, from those observers, postmodern or otherwise, who equate multiplicity and fluidity with disappearance of the self, with a complete absence of coherence among its various elements. I would claim the opposite: proteanism involves a quest for authenticity and meaning, a form-seeking assertion of self." The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, Robert Jay Lifton, Basic Books (New York); 1993, p. 8,9. That last sentence is in danger of amounting to poetic-sounding nonsense.[return]

[40] Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Bellah et al., Harper & Row, 1986, p. 79.[return]

[41] "The secular sociologist is almost always comitted to a random/chance-evolutionary view of humanity. From this view it follows that a person becomes human as a result of socialization (Horton and Hunt, 1976:88). Also, through socialization a person becomes either a man or a woman; a person becomes oriented either toward the opposite sex or to his own sex. The Christian, however, is compelled to begin with a biblical view of human nature. God created humans in His own image, and the reflection of God's image continues in all people regardless of age, sex, skin color, or moral condition. The child does not become human when he or she begins to assimilate the cultural patterns of environment. Rather, the child is human by virture of God's creative act (Gen. 1:26-27): Christian Perspectives on Sociology, Stephen A. Grunlan and Milton Reimer (eds.), Zondervan, p. 21.[return]

[42] In this business of "values" as applied to studying religion, I obviously disagree with the relativist; a community's shared beliefs, as well as the beliefs of individuals within those communities, could be a socially constructed (to use Peter Berger's term) conspiracy of meaning involving not only men but also involving an all-powerful, loving God Who actually exists! We understand the difference between our finite understanding and God's infinite one, and keep that in mind when interpreting our history and our vision. We won't get it exactly right. But we also have a sturdy sense of self-identity, an understanding of who we are and why we have chosen to live together.  We realize that our story is (to again borrow from Peter Berger) a story we have built together.  Because that story is humanly constructed does not mean it is untrue in an ultimate, even eternal sense; we believe it to have been co-authored by the Holy Spirit. Any  sociologist could, without invalidating her or his objectivity, acceed to that possibility.[return]

[43] Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, Free Press, 1973, offers a thoughtful exposition on this human tendency.[return]

[44] Recovering from Churches that Abuse, Ronald Enroth, Zondervan Publishing House (1994), p. 11.[return]

[45] See, for instance, Christian Perspectives on Sociology, Stephen A Grunlan and Milton Reimer, Editors, Zondervan, 1982.[return]