Did your family dabble in Gothardism?

[dramaturge]

Oh goodness. I've know personally two young men who went through the ALERT program. It changed them in not good ways. My brother's best friend growing went through ALERT, and it was like this...Christian zombification. The best comparison I can make is to the mages in Dragon Age II being made Tranquil. He turned into this constantly saccharine, yes-man with no opinions of his own anymore. My brother was completely unable to maintain a relationship with him after that. Just having his sleeves rolled up got a patronizing look-over from his friend, much less if my brother even casually disagreed with something a parent said. It was saddening.

[Papa Bear]

(05-02-2012 11:17 AM)dramaturge Wrote:  Oh goodness. I've know personally two young men who went through the ALERT program. It changed them in not good ways. My brother's best friend growing went through ALERT, and it was like this...Christian zombification. The best comparison I can make is to the mages in Dragon Age II being made Tranquil. He turned into this constantly saccharine, yes-man with no opinions of his own anymore. My brother was completely unable to maintain a relationship with him after that. Just having his sleeves rolled up got a patronizing look-over from his friend, much less if my brother even casually disagreed with something a parent said. It was saddening.

On their web site, ALERT looks remarkably similar to Civil Air Patrol. (hmm, wonder why?) I'm a member of CAP, and my son is a cadet. I've seen the good it can do. Cadets are taught to take leadership and responsibility. I just did a quick Google search on ALERT, and any reports of ALERT cadets' actual experience seem to show ALERT teaches the opposite. Even one instance of the type of control and abuse (including, but not limited to hazing) ALERT admits to would result in the guilty party's termination of membership in CAP, and according to every report I have seen of people who have been in the program, there's a more serious level of abuse ALERT and ATI keep hidden from government authorities. For an organization built on submission to authority, its leaders do not seem to set a good example.

[JordanMaria]

(05-02-2012 07:52 AM)Arch Radish Wrote:  ]

What years? If you were there in 1996, were you that one Excel girl who yelled "EYEBALLS!" when passing by us ALERT cadets? Totally worth the pushups we got.

Also, that one blubbering kid who didn't want to be there at all? Yeah, that was totally...erm...not me. *ahem*

I don't think we went to Knoxville that year because that was the year my brother was born. I was a kid then, so I was in Pre-Excel. One of the many minions that sewed that HUGE heart quilt for God-only-knows-what-reason.

[Arch Radish]

(05-02-2012 09:57 AM)Papa Bear Wrote:  

(05-02-2012 07:52 AM)Arch Radish Wrote:  What years? If you were there in 1996, were you that one Excel girl who yelled "EYEBALLS!" when passing by us ALERT cadets? Totally worth the pushups we got.

Can you tell us more about the ALERT program?

Can't say much about ALERT itself, but the ALERT Cadet program was my personal three-day hell in June of '97 (Sorry, JordanMaria, got the year wrong) at a Knoxville conference. While all the adults did their thing in the Thompson-Bowling arena on the UT campus, I was marched with all the other teen and pre-teen boys to a series of fields a couple of miles away. Not being the athletic type, I proceeded to:

1. Fall behind five teams every time they called a "double time march."

2. Fall down a downhill sidewalk during one double time march, injuring my wrist.

3. Chicken out of rappelling off the World's Fair Tower by a sudden attack of vertigo.

4. Fall 10 feet from a zipline tower, landing on my back.

5. Get stuck on a climbing wall.

6. Break down crying on the first day when my teammates mutinied against getting in formation in time, thus earning us extra P.T.

7. Do all this and gain other fun indelible scars on my psyche during my 12th birthday on the second day of "training."

8. Have a heated argument with my dad every morning, refusing to go while being told that rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft and that I needed to learn how to be a man.

I will say one positive thing, though. The food was excellent. Subway the first day, KFC the second, and Pizza Hut the last. That was some comfort to this fat nerd.

[SomethingFundy]

what the hell? military for church kids?

[lucrezaborgia]

Gothard is an MLM SCAM!!!

[pastor's wife]

My dad was always wary of men who gather a following around them who hero-worship them. The IFB churches we were in did NOT have powerful Mogs who ruled the congregation with an iron fist. (We were also GARBC.) Because of his strong bent toward independence, he disliked Gothard; also he'd heard that Pentecostals or someone he disagreed with liked Gothard, so he chose to stay separate because of associations.

I think I happened upon a Wisdom booklet or two a couple times. They always confused me and I felt bad because they looked simple and used lots of Bible verses so I didn't understand why they made me uncomfortable. It wasn't until much later that I realized what Papa Bear said: that Gothard was "using verses to support his opinions when sometimes the verse said nothing of the kind."

When we were married, someone in my husband's church gave us the Character Sketches as a wedding present. (I thought it was three volumes.) I thought they were beautiful; I didn't know much about them, and we were eager to read them together as a couple.

At times, I didn't quite get the connections being made between the character trait, the animal, and the Scripture. It wasn't quite jiving, but I did like learning about animals and my rule-keeping, legalistic, oldest-child personality was enjoying the detailed descriptions of right behavior until I read his descriptions of Abigail and Jonathan. I don't remember which came first. I do know that I vehemently disagreed. When I came across the second, I gave up the Character Sketches complete in utter disgust. Both characters, whom I believed and had always been taught were GOOD, were depicted by Gothard as being bad, in both cases because they weren't properly submissive to their authority. I guess Abigial was supposed to make an appeal to her husband and then when he denied her request, stand meekly by wringing her hands as David and his men murdered every man on her property. I'd always admired Abigail and respected the way she bravely and wisely found a way to save the lives of her servants and family; Gothard took away her only option and left her a slave to the whims of a drunken fool. The Bible says Abigail was wise! David praised her, but Gothard depicted her as disobedient and wrong. And Jonathan was seen as evil he said his father was wrong to force the soldiers to pursue the enemy without eating. But Saul HAD been foolish and prideful and wrong.

I still have the Character Sketches tucked away somewhere. I never wanted to pass them on because I disagreed with him so much. I agree with Papa Bear's description of the books above.

I REALLY like http://www.recoveringgrace.org

[supernova8610]

My parents dabbled in Gothardism about 30 or so years ago, in the late 70s or early 80s, but it didn't stick. They still have a few booklets and such from the IBLP conferences (creepy stuff, let me tell you... *shudder*); they would've had my sister and I go to the conferences as well had there been one near us... which, thankfully, there was not.

[dramaturge]

So, today my mom touched base with some good family friends who are all about ATI--all three sons did ALERT kind of into ATI. I don't think the daughter has done the girl equivalent, but I don't think she's old enough. The daughter has been having these short, standing blackouts. Which, as soon as my mom said this, I said, "She's having micro-seizures." There is epilepsy in the family, and her dad has had very severe seizures. They are going to a neurologist on Friday, and either the GP or the ER physician put her on anti-seizure meds until then.

But here's the thing--the Gothard taint--the ATI mom's first response, first reaction: it's a spiritual thing. She was afraid the daughter's spiritual walk wasn't right, and that she was trying to do things (what things, I don't know) her own way instead of submitting to God's way. Fortunately, there is some common sense in the family, so the third day in a row of multiple episodes, they went to the ER. But I just stood there and looked at my mom like, "what?" My immediate reaction to hearing about what seem to be seizures is, "Have they gone to a neurologist; that's a neurological issue." This mom's first reaction is, "How is your walk with God; is there a submission issue?"

Gross.