Why I Believe Any and All IFB Churches are Abusive and Cults: Part 1

[leaving]

Part 2 is up now!

Why I Believe Any and All IFB Churches are Cults: Part 2

[paul]

Read both of them. You are awesome, you keep it up.

I find it funny that the only way you can justify saying it is "not a network" is if you redefine "network" to something other than the definition used by the rest of the English speaking world. Hmmm, guess what, redefining terms to fit your own purpose is another sign of a cult.

As for whether every IFB church is a cult, that is a valid question. I, like you, have friends who, while not quite as :ahem: polite as Randy, question my family on our changed "standards" and "church hopping". In fact, my MIL went so far as to tell my wife we didn't go to the same church, read the same bible or worship the same God. (I suggested to my wife that MIL was right, our God doesn't live in a box like hers.) Anyway, these friends are in a church that is NOT very much a part of the network, the pastor (while wholely disqualified on a couple counts) is a nice man and is definitely NOT the authoritarian "obey-or-else" type of pastor. But they still teach KJVO, no pants, no CCM, etc.

Are they a cult or not? Hmm, difficult to say given any definition of cult that wouldn't equally apply to whole denominations or even broader Christianity. I can understand the concern of those in the IFB at being called a cult. After all, the government has to step in and rescue people in a cult and de-program them before they can face and interact with reality. When I was in the IFB, that would have been difficult for me to accept about myself. However, I don't know that it is wholely inaccurate, even if it may not be true of every IFB church. Also, I don't know if that is a valid definition of a cult. So, again we end up with how we define a word. In this case, "cult". And depending on how it is defined, it may or may not apply to IFB or even to broader Christianity as a whole.

I'm just not sure yet.

[Annie Moose]

Heh, the group I'm associated with would consider separate churches to be independent, but we certainly wouldn't say we're not a network. Of course we're a network! We believe more or less the same things, we visit one another often, and we largely even marry within the same circles. You can still have independent groups within a network, after all! "Independent" only means that there isn't any central group in charge; you can certainly still be part of a decentralized network even if you're "independent".

That's why I've never been able to get that aversion to using the word "network"...