Religious Rebels

In this episode, Christy talks about sharing her more recent experience with spiritual abuse on her Substack last week. She explains that telling our story is important if we are going to create a culture where victims are protected rather than abusers. Christy then explains why she still believes in Jesus Christ, foundational truths about him that have been believed for thousands of years, and why she is still in church.

After learning about trauma informed care as a teacher this year, Christy has been thinking a lot about trauma and the way we should approach people who have been shaped by it. She relates this to the way she has experienced the Person of Jesus Christ for the last twenty-five years. Despite everything she has been through, it's as though the Holy Spirit has been pursuing Christy with trauma informed care.

It’s the same way He has been pursuing broken people for years.

Related Substack post: Seven Years Ago Our Bubble World Shattered

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Christy finishes her episode about Bill Gothard and his teachings by looking into the impact his Basic Seminar has had on the mainstream Christian people who attended. Many people went to a seminar once or twice, but never got into the cultic whirl pool far enough to realize how wrong and twisted his teachings were. They went to the seminar and then went home.

Mainstream churches hosted Gothard's seminars and then went on with their lives. The leaders never got in deep enough to recognize how destructive the seminars were.

Christy attended a local church for five years and never realized it was the same church where she taught at a Basic Seminar twenty years earlier. It wasn't until she left that she discovered that church hosted Gothard for over a decade.

We must recognize and reject the IBLP teachings in order to be free. They are so sneaky and so subtle that they feel true, and yet they will damage every relationship in our lives if we don't root them out.

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For the first time in her podcast history, Christy dives into the life and teachings of her old cult leader, Bill Gothard. She introduces his organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, talks about the Basic Seminar and the seven Basic Principles, and explains why these things matter to her listeners even if they were never personally influenced by Gothard or his teachings.

The Institute claims that over 2.5 million people have attended the Basic seminar since it's creation in the 1970s. If this is true, than many pastors, professors, and ministry leaders have been influenced by Gothard's false teachings. In turn, churches, organizations, and colleges have also been affected mostly unbeknownst to their members.

Christy explains how everything within Gothard’s IBLP seemed Christian and legitimate, but under the surface it was twisted just enough to be a lie. She gets so excited about this topic and has so much to say that she runs out of time and decides to make a part two that will be coming soon.

Related Links:

Recovering Grace: This is the rabbit hole I was warning you about!

How My Parents Joined a Cult: Story from my blog.

Christy’s Links:

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As we rethink our Christian faith or religious experiences, it is inevitable that we will run into the Bible. What do we do with this book that is supposedly from God, but has often been used to control and abuse us? How do we read it? What about the parts that seem wrong or confusing? Is the Bible literal and inerrant like some claim?

Christy shares how she used to view and use the Bible in her cult days—as a mystical, magical, religious Ouija board. She pushes back on the idea that we can pick and choose what to believe in the Bible. And she reminds her listeners that the Bible is an ancient book written to and by people in a completely different culture.

What if our 21st century Western perspective is causing us to ask the wrong questions? What if we are looking for things the authors never intended to communicate? What if we are missing beautiful truths because we just don't understand?

Blog Post: The Only Condemnation was in the Commentary

Net Bible

Authors Mentioned:

Kristi McLelland and Kenneth E. Bailey

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Christy encourages her listeners to rethink the way they see God. Often when we have experienced spiritual abuse in a church or an organization, the god they represent is angry, has specific expectations for us, condemns and rejects, and likes us better when we behave. Christy wonders if this god is more of a representation of the leaders than the Real One.

She reminds her listeners that if God is real (and she believes He is) we don't get to decide who He is, we just get to discover Him. Often we make god into our image instead of recognizing that He is nothing like us. We were just made to be a little like Him.

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Christy begins her new podcast, Religious Rebels, by sharing pieces of her story growing up in Bill Gothard's IBLP cult, meeting Jesus anyway, growing out of the cult, experiencing spiritual abuse in a regular church, and choosing to hold onto her relationship with Jesus despite everything that happened.

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Christy works to define faith deconstruction for her audience. Often people have specific expectations about deconstruction. Some think that deconstructing your faith automatically means you deconvert from Christianity. Other people think that if you deconstruct, you will automatically arrive at a progressive, unitarian theology.

Christy reminds her listeners that in any other context, deconstruction simply means to take something apart to its individual pieces. It never says what you do with the pieces once you take them apart. Christy believes it is possible to put our faith back together centered around the real Jesus if we want to. She believes we can rebuild a historically orthodox faith without the extra tradition and religion we've collected along the way.

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Enjoy this trailer! The first three episodes of the Religious Rebels podcast will drop tomorrow at 5pm. New episodes will continue to drop every other Sunday night after that.

You can listen to Religious Rebels here on Substack, watch my new YouTube channel, or listen anywhere you like to listen to podcasts. Thanks for being part of this new adventure!

Links:

Order Christy’s Book HERE

Subscribe to Christy’s SUBSTACK

Find Christy on Threads, Facebook, or Instagram

Or visit her WEBSITE