As many of us know, the biggest reason Trump is still standing despite approval ratings that would be in Code Blue territory for anyone else is because the religious right is still solidly behind him. However, many of those religious right-oriented churches engage in tactics that can only be described as brainwashing.
I know from experience. As many longtime Kossacks know, during my freshman year at Carolina I was suckered into joining an abusive and borderline cultish hypercharismatic campus ministry. That outfit was an outreach of what is now King’s Park International Church in Durham, which has since morphed into a megachurch. KPIC, as it turns out, was once the Carolina chapter of Maranatha Campus Ministries, one of the more notorious campus cults of the 1970s and 1980s.
Waymaker has changed its name several times since my college days, and is now known as Every Nation Campus Ministries UNC. However, the same spirit that was there during my college days is still very much present today. A number of my former “brothers” and “sisters” in Waymaker have gone far and fast at KPIC and other churches in the network of churches of which KPIC is a part, Every Nation. For instance, one of my former friends there is KPIC’s nominal senior pastor. I say nominal because the founding pastor, Ron Lewis, has the title of “bishop” and has the real power.
Back in 1997, several members of the Ex-Tian email list for ex-fundies discussed Robert Lifton’s groundbreaking study on brainwashing—or thought reform, as he called it. A lot of us looked back at what we went through while either fundified or having significant contact in the fundie world, and had an eerie sense of dèjà vu. I was one of them.
For those who don’t remember Lifton’s criteria, here they are, per the folks at REVEAL:
- Milieu control: the control of the environment and information within that environment
- Mystical manipulation: Experiences and emotions are made to appear spontaneous when they have actually been orchestrated
- The demand for purity: The world is divided between the “pure” and “impure,” with everything outside the group seen as “impure.” Members must change to conform to the norm and remain pure.
- Confession: Sins and faults are confessed publicly, and used to exploit members.
- The sacred science: The group’s doctrine is considered the ultimate truth, and no truth can be found outside of it.
- Loading the language: Using words or phrases in a way that outsiders don’t understand, in order to conform thoughts to the group’s way of thinking.
- Doctrine over person: All personal experiences are reinterpreted in light of the group’s ideology, with all contrary experiences interpreted so they can be fixed around the ideology.
- Dispensing of existence: All outsiders are seen as unenlightened and must be converted or rejected by the members.
I recently did a series of posts at my blog about my experiences in this outfit, Child of the Truth. I had to break it into four parts because it became apparent one post wouldn’t be enough or readable. Check them out here:
- Part 1: Milleu control/mystical manipulation
- Part 2: The demand for purity/confession
- Part 3: The scared science
- Part 4: Loading the language/doctrine over person/dispensing of existence
I wouldn’t have believed a lot of the things I saw in there had I not saw them myself. For instance, I would have never believed that these guys and gals would still be willing to do Pastor Ron’s bidding even after I told them that he had hidden his Maranatha past for no possible good-faith reason. It reminds me of how today’s fundies are still bowing down to Trump even in the face of ample evidence that he’s an ogre.