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Why Children Break off all Contact with their Parents – Video Blog

In this video Christina shares how not being in touch with her “self” as a person made her vulnerable to spiritual abuse and allowing others to tell her who she was allowed to have contact with… not her friends and family.

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Two 1980s United Pentecostal Sexual Abuse Cases In Texas

My first blog on Colorado sexual abuse cases prompted an email from another survivor of sexual abuse, with the assaults having both occurred in Texas. One of the two cases is yet another instance where a man is currently licensed by the United Pentecostal Church. As with Debbie McNulty’s Wisconsin case, these happened in the 1980s. This is Part 19 of an ongoing series. (Statements in this article are what have been alleged by a survivor. There have been no convictions as the cases mentioned here were not reported to the police and to my knowledge, the alleged perpetrators have not admitted guilt.)

Between the two sets of asterisks below is what one woman remembers from two separate cases of sexual abuse during her time in the United Pentecostal Church. She was a minor, with one happening while she was a student at a UPCI church operated school that was founded by a now deceased UPCI minister. At the church school, students from grades 1 through 12 worked separately in small spaces on self-instructive material and would wave a small American flag when they had a question. To use the rest room, students would wave a white flag with a blue cross in the corner. The children wore red, white and blue uniforms, with the girls wearing plaid skirts, white blouses and blue vests and the boys wearing red shirts, blue pants and a tie. There were no real teachers, only monitors called supervisors. Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) material was the standard and it was considered a “model parochial school” by some. The school was mentioned in old articles by Newsweek and Time magazines.

Going by the description below, adults either knew or suspected wrongdoing by the supervisor/monitor mentioned, but it is unknown if the pastor was ever made aware of what happened. No one at the school ever spoke to or questioned the survivor about it. This man married a woman who had attended the Academy and his parents were members of the church that operated the school. He has three adult daughters, with the first being born after the alleged assaults. It would have been less than a year, to no more than two years, after he was married that the alleged assaults took place. The survivor was eight or nine years old when the abuse started, with the perpetrator being in his mid twenties. It appears he remained with the church after this happened.

After reading her account, I followed up with some questions and the answers are incorporated into what she wrote below. Additional research I did on the pastor she alleges that assaulted her will follow her story.

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The article struck home with me as I was a victim of abuse by a teacher of a United Pentecostal private school that was an extension of a UPCI church. The school is no longer in existence and was named Irvington Christian Academy. I was also a victim of sexual, mental and verbal abuse of a UPC minister of a UPCI church named Pentecostal Lighthouse Church.

First, let me say that I was of elementary age in the 80’s when these events took place. The teacher would sneak me out, luring me with gum into his vehicle. He would show me pornography and sexually assault me. The only thing that saved me was a parent who saw him trying to put me in his vehicle and stopped him. I never saw him again after that day. The terrifying part was the female teacher I was left with mistreated me as though I had done something wrong. I was a child and did not understand that what had happened was wrong. Both people were members of the church associated with this school and could very well be there still. His dismissal was his only punishment and my suffering lasted for years. He started sexually abusing me when I was about 8 or 9 years old. The time frame seemed like forever, so I cannot tell how long it was. There was no explanation that I know of as to his dismissal. The only thing that I knew was that the woman who took his place DID NOT like me. She treated me as though I was something awful. These are the impressions of a little girl. I knew she hated me, but at the time could not figure out why.

This happened in the 80’s as well – I was about 13 or 14 yrs old. I was a victim of sexual, mental and verbal abuse of a UPC minister of a now closed UPCI sanctioned church named Pentecostal Lighthouse Church. This minister had been part of the church that hosted the Academy. He ministered over the Spanish speaking church. Afterward he broke away and created the Pentecostal Lighthouse Church.

No one spoke of it or did anything regarding this. My family claimed they knew nothing of the actions of the minister even when more victims were discovered. The UPC minister had a hold over the congregation that was so strong that they, including my family, were blinded by what was happening. I would later describe it as cult like behavior. He abused many of us even though he was married. The details are horrifying as I would later find out. The elders kept it under wraps and the church was closed. He was not punished for any of this. As a matter of fact, he is still with the UPCI in another city in the US as a UPCI minister. I met other victims years later that would like him to answer for what he did to all of us. However, the shame keeps most silent not wanting to raise old demons. I myself suffered depression and much more. So, I understand the hardships of life after these types of abuses. At the time other victims contacted me, I was afraid and not ready to open that door. I know first hand there were two other girls involved and one married woman that got pregnant. This is from a credible source close to me. This woman had an abortion and then a divorce.

That pastor started sexually abusing me in my mid teens. He did rape me – he sodomized me. I did not tell anyone at the church as I was too afraid. I do not know how the elders found out or when the church closed. When I was 16 years old, I went to live with my father and that was the last time I saw the pastor. The odd part was my family made me go and tell him I was leaving. I could not understand why until I realized it was a cult mindset analyzing this later in life. It was claimed that the pastor left for another state with a girl that was a close friend of his wife. I can attest that they were close friends and she spent a lot of time at their home. Whether she went with him or not I cannot vouch for that. I did see this girl years later and she would not speak to me.

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The minister in question does not appear in the 1975-76 edition of the United Pentecostal Church Directory. The next edition I have is from 1981, where he appears holding a local license and does not show him being a pastor. The next is 1986 where he is seen as ordained and the Pentecostal Lighthouse Church is listed. It has been shared this was a medium size church. It was non-affiliated (meaning he didn’t take the extra optional step of legally affiliating with the org). The same is seen in the 1987 and 1988 editions. I do not have 1989. By the 1990 edition, he and the church were no longer listed. That would be more reflective of no longer holding license in 1989. (The directories were issued in January of each year and compiled in the fall of the prior year.) So without having all the directories from this time period, he could have no longer held license anywhere from 1987 to 1989.

Disappearing from the directories for more than a decade, he next appears in 2005 as an ordained minister in a different state in the south. This means that his license was reinstated in 2004. There was no church listed with him being a pastor and this holds true through the 2017 edition. In 2018 he shows as pastor of a church and the address is the same as an already established UPCI church. My thought is that perhaps he helped this other pastor in the years prior. In 2018 it wasn’t shown as affiliated, but the 2019 UPCI Directory lists it as such, which means he took the extra step to become legally affiliated. This church filed for non-profit status in 2017. According to the United Pentecostal Church, he resigned his license back in the 1980s and “he spent many years in renewing his life in ministry” before being re-licensed in this southern state. According to the UPCI rules on licensing, he never should have been reinstated because if these allegations are true, he disqualified himself in the 1980s.

Article VII, Section 9 Immoral Conduct states, “1. For the purpose of ministerial membership in the United Pentecostal Church International or for ministering in a United Pentecostal Church International church, immoral conduct shall be defined as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, and/or any other sexual acts determined by the District Board to be perverted or immoral (Matthew 5:32; Matthew 19:9; I Corinthians 6:9; Romans 1:24-28). 2. Any minister affiliated with our organization proven guilty of adultery or fornication, or committing any other immoral offense, shall forfeit his or her papers immediately. Immoral offense shall include sexual molestation of minors. 3. In the event a minister confesses in writing to immoral conduct and surrenders his or her fellowship card, no trial shall be granted. In either case, such minister shall never be qualified for reinstatement into the ministry of the United Pentecostal Church International.”

He is not listed as holding any District positions in either state where he has held license. He would have been in his mid 30s at the time of the alleged assaults.

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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The value of disbelief

Questions. Doubts. We were taught they were bad. Thomas doubted. Doubt is the opposite of faith. It’s unbelief. We must have faith. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

Questions were feared. Push them down. Silence them. Drown them out. They’re just the devil.

In reality, those questions were what saved me. My doubts, my questions, my disbelief were the things that brought me to a point of walking out, finally, from an unhealthy situation. I was taught doubt was bad. I doubted. I doubted the pastor who called himself the Man of God but who flew into rages and rants from the pulpit against women, teens, visitors, members, parents, the elderly… I doubted the church that would believe liars and slanderers, saying “well, they have the Holy Ghost,” when anyone provided facts that should have obliterated the lies, should have revealed the slanderers and gossips for what they were. And in the end, I doubted the god they preached, a god who allowed hatred and pride but condemned skirts with slits and gold colored glasses, who would laugh as he sent people to hell. I doubted, and I’m glad I did.

There is value in disbelief. There is value in doubt. Not all doubt or unbelief is bad. Not all is wrong. There are things that should be doubted. And there are many things that should be questioned. Even things that others tell us we should have faith in. Even God things.

When I left the church, I was scared of questions. I’d stood in church listening to the pastor yell “this time tomorrow!” and talking about how the person who ran the aisles first or shouted the most or believed the hardest would get “their miracle,” and I thought, “yeah, right.” I’d doubted the church that could believe slander, lies, and gossip, while condemning sleeves that slipped above the elbows or a slip that barely showed under a calf length hem. And in the end, I doubted the god that was preached – a god who was angry, who was quick to condemn but slow to save. I doubted the purpose of and supposed answers to hours of prayer and fasting that were required, and I doubted my intentions in praying as I was.

Since leaving, I’ve feared the questions. Am I backslid? I’d never have thought this ten years ago! If I’d known what I’d be thinking now, I wouldn’t have left. I was taught that I should believe without questioning. I shouldn’t need to see reasons or proof for what I was told. And yet… God never told us not to question. Doubt is never listed as a sin. Doubt is not the same as unbelief, but there are even things that we should disbelieve, because some of the things we were told we needed to believe in faith were absolute lies. It doesn’t take faith to believe those things, it takes gullibility. Faith, real faith, doesn’t ignore questions, it responds to them — and it does so not by having pat answers, but by receiving and considering them fully. That is faith.

Real faith doesn’t reject doubt, it accepts it. Faith isn’t afraid to consider alternate views, because real faith, biblical faith, isn’t IN a perspective or opinion. Instead, it rests in an omnipresent, multi-faceted, all knowing yet incomprehensible God. Not one who will give us all the answers or silence our questions, but will encourage them. It’s when we have questions and doubts that we seek answers, that we grow, that we might become willing to step into the unknown. And THAT is faith.

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IFB Churches: Patriarchy and Keeping at Home (Part Four)

“The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:3-5 KJV)

Is it not a wonderful picture that pastors paint? This beautiful, modest young woman with children running around her immaculately decorated house while she dusts, joyfully singing hymns as her feet glide gingerly down the hall? One of my favorite scenarios is from a lecture where a woman had deep frown lines on her face from the stresses of working a secular occupation, but when she obeyed God’s principles, becoming a stay-at-home mother, the lines suddenly disappeared within a few months, revealing a cheerful smile and glow! If only it were that simple.

According to IFB churches, being a “keeper at home” typically requires living off the husband’s income as the mother homeschools the children, instilling a specifically Biblical foundation, all while managing home-cooked, nutritious meals, dishes, laundry, vacuuming, cleaning, scrubbing, dusting, diapers, potty training, bodily fluids, and still sacrificing to stay home with puking children so her husband can receive the Word of God. These women fulfill their “God-called duty” by isolating solely to church and home, taking themselves out of the workforce for a minimum of eighteen years and accruing the emotional burden of being solely responsible for their children’s development and education, keeping their homes pristine for visitors at any time of day, preparing multiple meals, and being presentable to their husbands, makeup and all, by the time he arrives home with dinner on the table. Their children must walk as ducks-in-a-row outside of the home, and all the wives’ duties completed with a joyful, grateful heart, lest a rebellious spirit finds a stronghold, destroying their marriage and their husbands’ ministries. How preposterous of IFB churches to base entire lifestyles and doctrine on three words in a verse, claiming to “rightly [divide] the word of truth”! Titus 2:5 exhorts the aged women to teach the younger to be “keepers at home,” but not before God rebukes a man for not keeping at home.

“Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people” (Habakkuk 2:5).

How peculiar that without this verse, a “keeper at home” is a home-maker or at stay-at-home mother, but immediately after men are introduced into the picture, the description quickly becomes “one who spends time with his or her spouse” and is not a busybody. Suddenly a “keeper at home” is equivalent to 1 Thessalonians 4:11, “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business,” not to be idle, busybodies, and tattlers (1 Tim 5:13)! IFB churches take a warped view of the Proverbs Thirty-One Woman, “God’s bare-minimum standard for godly ladies and wives,” to establish women as house-wives, sewing late hours into the night, toiling in the kitchen all day, and being a testimony to their husbands in public. What they neglect to emphasize are the maidens she employs (Prov 31:15) and how she considers a field and buys it herself (vs. 16) with the product of her own labor (vs. 13). How strange it would be in IFB churches to recognize that the woman considers the field herself, and buys it with her own money, rather than asking her husband’s permission to use his income.

While greatly under-emphasized, God gives women the ability to use discernment not just within the family, but in the outside world, even in secular occupations, to provide for the well-being of their families. If women were truly less than men, God would never have referred to “wisdom” as female. In Proverbs, Solomon says “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her” (Prov. 4:6-7). If women are truly the weaker vessel intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, why does God use a woman, specifically a mother, to teach King Lemuel how to identify a virtuous woman to marry? Nowhere in the Bible does God command women to work solely from home, but He does desire for husbands AND wives to keep at home. Both men and women can be drawn away excessively through friends, hobbies, work and activities, leading to neglect of the children and home, and leaving the other spouse longing for love and affection in other places. Despite God’s rebuke in Habakkuk, however, allowing women out of the home is often met with frustration and disdain because it does not fit perfectly in the IFB mold of a woman’s place under the man. Just yesterday, we heard yet another pastor say, “The Bible is clear: a woman’s place is in the kitchen.” These ideals, though seemingly honorable and acclaimed to place women on a pedestal, create the perfect storm of long-term, hidden abuse.

*Disclaimer* This series, “Why Am I a Baptist?” is NOT an exhaustive list of IFB doctrine. Because of the autonomous nature of IFB churches, this evaluation is of the movement as a whole, rather than a hard-and-fast rule. It may be possible to find healthy IFB churches, but they are few and far between because of various associations known as “camps,” typically surrounding well-known preachers or preference of worship style.

Why Am I a Baptist?
IFB Doctrine: The Baptist Distinctives
IFB Churches: Patriarchy in Church Polity (Part One)
IFB Churches: Patriarchy and the Leading Lady (Part Two)
IFB Churches: Patriarchy in Marriage (Part Three)
IFB Churches: Patriarchy and Keeping at Home (Part Four)
IFB Churches: Patriarchy and Sexual Obedience (Part Five)
IFB Churches: Patriarchy and Domestic Abuse (Part Six)
IFB Standards: Rigid Music and Dress Standards (Part One)

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