The Prosperity Gospel Family Style: The Gothard Movement and Biblical Fundamentalism

I watched the show. Yes it does have an agenda. While Gothard was not a fundamentalist group, it infused itself into fundamentalism. There was hardly a fundamentalist church in the 1970's that didn't have die hard Gothard fans in it. It wasn't until almost a decade later that fundamentalism sound some light alarms and it wasn't until almost a decade after that, that fundamentalism started shifting away from it.

One of the Van Gelderen's daughters worked at the Institute. I can't remember if it was Sr. from Marquette Manor, or Jr's from Menomonee Falls. This is getting to be a long time ago for me, but I also know that there were other FBFI leaders who were also connected to the Gothard's institute through various family connections or direct support, but I will begin to mis speak if I start naming names at this point. That is not to say that Gothard was fundamentalism, because he wasn't, just that there was a lot of "sharing" going on between the two. I also don't agree with the show's premise that Gothard and his practices was indicative of fundamentalism, because it wasn't.

It’s long seemed to me that the biblical fundamentalist movement in the U.S. started as a rejection of theological liberalism/modernism/higher criticism, then evolved into a movement about two other things: ecclesiastical separation and cultural conservatism (both “as they understood them at the time”). So Gothardism was fundamentalism—just the cultural half (well, a version of it) without the ecclesiastical half.

From my perspective, I see signs of Gothardism all the time, even from people who never even considered using IBLP materials. My take is that a lot of it is communicated through other channels, which makes sense, because it appears that Gothard himself borrowed a lot of his ideas from earlier sources, including "None of these diseases", if I remember correctly. So the tendency to try to use simple solutions to complex problems--"if only we get rid of factor x, we'll be good"--seems to be endemic in "fundagelicalism."

It reminds me, really, of the quote (attributed to Twain, Mencken, and others) that "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong."

I can understand some defensiveness for P&D given Gothard's well known "evangelical ecumenism", but I do salute them in their confession that they did not do enough to refute the theological errors of Gothardism.

When I think of cultural conservatism I think of opposition to abortion. I think of the promotion of traditional marriage. I think of opposition to crime and of enforcement of laws. I think of the promotion of families and of the sanctity of marriage. I think of encouraging people to get married before they have children. I think of avoiding addiction. Yet when I visit this site, I get the impression from some that cultural conservatism is a bad thing.

There's a difference between cultural conservatism and cultural fundamentalism. Cultural conservatism (as you've defined above) is what Christians across conservative evangelicalism promote and defend. Cultural fundamentalism has become a list of shibboleths one must adhere to in order to remain a bona fide fundamentalist.

Good comments all around. I've seen the show and it is enlightening but also clearly has an agenda. That said, I don't know that those outside of conservative Christianity understand the difference between Fundamentalism and Big EVA. When the producers of the documentary use the term "fundamentalism" I highly doubt they envision fundamentalism as we know it. It has become a pejorative term for anyone who holds to the verbal, plenary inspiration, a literal interpretation of scripture, and believes the Bible has authority. The "fundamentalists" described are not defined by separation but by fidelity to scripture.

Now it is true that Gothardism infiltrated fundamentalism as we know it, but I highly doubt our conception of fundamentalism is what the documentary has in view. They are seeking to cast all Bible-believing Christians with the broad brush of extremity, patriarchy, and abuse. It's more fodder for those seeking to attack Christianity as a whole, not just fundamentalism.

JD, when I look at your list, what I see is a bunch of things where I can easily make the case with Scripture. Abortion is the one that's a bit tougher, because abortion was pretty much unthinkable in Bible times because surgery of any kind was likely to be lethal. But even there, you can come up with a decent Biblical argument.

When I think of cultural fundamentalism, on the other hand, I think of proscriptions of drinking wine, dancing, cards, theater, rock & roll, and other things that more or less the Victorians did as a culture, but which are really hard to proscribe from Scripture directly. It's a huge part of what our biggest arguments are on here, and it was (is?) a specialty of IBLP and Bill Gothard.

Is mostly the imaginations of bigotry. Everyone, it seems, has shibboleths, and woe betide the individual who dares cross them.

I agree with the distinctions that Bert and T Howard are making between cultural conservatism and fundamental conservatism. The Gothard movement has a culture that is quite destructive to families and to Biblical values. My concern is that cultural conservatism not be lumped in with Gothard or other dangers that need to be warned about.

Philip wrote:

They are seeking to cast all Bible-believing Christians with the broad brush of extremity, patriarchy, and abuse. It’s more fodder for those seeking to attack Christianity as a whole, not just fundamentalism.

I don’t believe that’s necessarily the case. We can forget that many Americans have no earthly idea about the nuances in the religious landscape that we take for granted. They simply see “very conservative = extremist.” They aren’t necessarily trying to be sinister in that evaluation; they simply don’t understand the issues. There is a dearth of religion reporters and an even greater paucity of newspapers to employ them. Religion has faded far from lingua franca of everyday American life. People know very little.

It becomes even more complicated when one acknowledges (1) Gothardism had (or has) ties into many different flavors of the broader evangelical world, (2) there is crossover (a) between more Theonomist-ish groups which emphasize strong patriarchy, (b) more mainstream and generically conservative evangelicals of the Promise Keepers lineage, and (c) the broader complementarian crowd influenced by CBMW and the like. These are not siloed communities; there is movement between them. Add to it the decades-long bad romance between some flavors of the evangelical world and politics, and you have quite a mess indeed—many of these groups with ties to Gothardism have conflicting conceptions of the church vis-a-vis the State which impact their theology and life! How to establish anything like proper context before you even get to the subject of the Amazon special? In short, it’s complicated.

Add to it our human unwillingness to be introspective, and what results is perhaps a kneejerk distrust of work from folks who “aren’t like us.” I say that to say that there isn’t necessarily an “agenda”—perhaps they simply wanted to tell an important story? The fact that this story reflects negatively on evangelicals is neither here nor there. Criticism does not have to equal “attack.” Perhaps it does here, but it isn’t a given.

I will say that the producer’s decision to have as a commentator a woman who runs a YouTube channel who casually labeled Wheaton College “kind of a Harvard for fundamentalists” doesn’t speak well of their competence to craft a quality product.

Is mostly the imaginations of bigotry. Everyone, it seems, has shibboleths, and woe betide the individual who dares cross them.

Except that I can and do consider myself a brother to cultural fundamentalists, whereas they probably doubt my salvation because I don't adhere to their shibboleths.

My wife and I watched the special. I didn't grow up in that environment, so much of the stuff they discussed seemed really wacko. I kept thinking to myself, "Who in their right mind believes this stuff?" My wife, on the other hand, grew up in this stuff. She said her family used to attend these seminars. Watching the special made her emotional as she recalled the crazy stuff she had to endure.

1981 Resolution #16 REGARDING BASIC YOUTH CONFLICTS

The FBF expresses concern over the ministry of Bill Gothard and Basic Youth Conflicts and calls upon Fundamentalists to exercise caution in condoning or cooperating with a ministry that has never identified with the cause of Biblical separatism.

It's only focus was / is on ecumenism... Just like Kevin mentions:

Sadly, the FBFI response in those early days only focused upon the ecumenism of IBYC—which truly was a problem—but did not go deep enough into the problem teachings of Bill Gothard.

In other words, as long as you agree to the shibboleths, you can pretty much get a pass on craziness (e.g., Jack Hyles, et. al.).

One area that Gothard infused fundamentalism was in spanking. Yes spanking has always taken place, but he had an impact on the Pearls and Tripp, both books that were heavily circulated around fundamentalism as a model. Tripp was a bit more separate from Gothard, but he used many of the same terms taken from Gothard's publications. This also infused spanking into Christian schools. I was not aware of any fundamentalist christian school (including BJU) that in the 70's and 80's did not let school administrators spank kids without parental notification. The spanking was modeled after Gothard's detailed modeling, even though it may have not been labeled as Gothard. I am not sure there is any school that would spank kids in the same way as they were done in the 70's and 80's. The teaching was clearly wrong and was not just a "cultural" element. It was poor theology. Gothard influenced fundamentalism a lot more than we like to give it credit for.

Which one, David?

My recollection of Gothardism and Fundamentalism from the early 70's was not that Gothardism "infiltrated" fundamentalism but that many fundamentalists eagerly embraced it because they had so much in common. I saw Christian ministries repackage Gothard's "principles" into the "Do this to be blessed and don't do this or you'll be chastened" style. Man-made standards treated as Scripture were (are?) prominent. I well remember a fundamentalist publishing a booklet evaluating Gothardism in 1974 and being criticized by his friends. I would venture the assertion that more fundamentalists either embraced all or major portions of Gothardism or were silent that spoke out publicly.

Ecumenicity was the least of the problems with Gothardism.