The Nightmare of Christianity (Holy Moly!)

[UpInArms]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090921/blumenthal

A few miles down the road from Colorado Springs , in the quiet bedroom community of Eldredge, a deeply disturbed young man named Matthew Murray followed the unfolding debacle at New Life Church with an interest that bordered on obsession. Murray, a sallow-faced, bespectacled 24-year-old, had been indelibly scarred by a lifetime of psychological abuse at the hands of his charismatic Pentecostal parents. Murray's mind became crowded with thoughts of death, destruction, and the killings he would soon carry out in the name of avenging what he called his "nightmare of Christianity."

<snipping out some horror>

At the Charter School for Excellence, a school in South Florida inspired by Gothard's draconian principles that receives $800,000 in state funds each year, children are indoctrinated into a culture of absolute submission to authority almost as soon as they learn to speak. A song that the school's first-graders are required to recite goes as follows:

Obedience is listening attentively,
Obedience will take instructions joyfully,
Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,
Obedience will follow orders instantly.
For when I am busy at my work or play,
And someone calls my name, I'll answer right away!
I'll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile
As soon as I can say "Yes, sir!" "Yes ma am!"
Hup, two, three!


Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is among the 2.5 million Americans who have attended Gothard's Basic Seminar. According to Huckabee, who once earmarked state funds to distribute Gothard's literature in Arkansas prisons, Gothard was responsible for "some of the best programs for instilling character into people." But to the deeply alienated Murray, Gothard was the original source of his pathology. "I believe that the truth needs to be exposed," Murray wrote in a September 2006 discussion forum of recovering Gothard followers. "People need to see through errornious and destructive doctrines and teachings including Bill Gothard's."

After graduating from Gothard's home-schooling seminars, which constituted the bulk of his education (Colorado has no educational records for Murray after third grade), he was presented by his parents with two options for higher education. The first choice was Haggard's alma mater, Oral Roberts University. ORU at the time was beginning to unravel under the weight of scandalous revelations that its new president, Richard Roberts--the scion of its beloved founder--had allegedly looted university coffers to pay for his daughter's junkets to the Bahamas and bankroll his wife's shopping sprees. (Oral Roberts's other son, Ronnie, was a cocaine-addicted closet homosexual who committed suicide in 1982). Murray's second option was the "Discipleship Training School" of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a Christian Reconstructionist-inspired missionary group that trained bright-eyed youngsters to spread the gospel of Colorado Springs to under-evangelized Third World nations. Desperate to escape his parents' rigid order, Murray joined YWAM.

...so very much more...

:scared:

[Chulanowa]

1. Ach! They nae be true Scotsmen!

[yurbud]

2. the killer probably would have been a nut in any case, but the pentacostal stuff actually

encourages a psychotic break with reality.

[bertman]

6. I don't think that's necessarily the case. Consider what it must be like to be RAISED

by your parents in an environment that stifles everything creative or inquisitive in you. That, day in and day out, teaches you that you are a sinner and that you must suffer because you are unworthy. That you must always be a slave to the religion that entombs you every single day of your miserable life. That punishes you physically and mentally for every tiny infraction of god's rules--and they are endless and unfathomable. That teaches you to hate yourself and your parents and your life.

If that kind of life couldn't turn a child into a monster, I don't know what could.

[AllentownJake]

3. Sounds like a Psychopath

His religious upbringing aside.

[bertman]

7. please see post #6, Jake.

[appamado amata padam]

4. Yikes! This reminds me a little bit

of a few kids from Mississippi that I vaguely knew. They seemed to rebel against their parents and churches, although in a much tamer fashion. Thankfully, they got through their punk rock/drugs/booze phase, and became more-or-less "normal" people.

[msongs]

5. sounds like what we used to see in chinese school kids worshipping Mao OR North korea nt

[Zoeisright]

12. +1

That's why fundies are more susceptible to (other) cults than an educated person. They're taught to obey mindlessly, like good little robots.

[girl gone mad]

8. k&r

[Hugin]

9. KnR

[ladywnch]

10. have I mentioned how much Dobson, Haggard and their ilk scare

the shit out of me!

[Mnemosyne]

11. My daughter went to pick up my grandson from a vacation bible school at

my one sister's church and said all of the kids were chanting, "Obey God, obey God." over and over. It really creeped her out; me too when I heard about it. Completely creepy. :scared:

She never let my grandson return, though my sister still pressured her to let him attend.