Bill Gothard responds to allegations
“More than a month after stepping down as president of the ministry he founded, Bill Gothard released a statement that attempts to respond” WORLD
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Worth noting:
- Earl Radmacher (Western Conservative Baptist Seminary - 1983
- Ronald B. Allen, Western Baptist Seminary, 1984
- A Matter of Basic Principles: Bill Gothard and the Christian Life (note the very creepy cover)
- Midwest Christian Outreach
Anecdotally: In NJ in the early 80’s … GARBC pastors who attended Gothard pastors’ conferences began to compare notes and see through the mist to the core of the problem of Gothard’s teachings.
he used to fill the Oakland Coliseum then the San Jose Civic Auditorium, the last one I attended was at the Cathedral of Faith in San Jose. Each of the venues though progressively smaller were still good sized and well attended. My point being there simply weren’t and aren’t enough Fundamentalists in this region to make up the size of crowd in attendance.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
I’ve been going to IFB churches & colleges all my life in numerous states. I didn’t hear of Gothard at all until I was in high school when a friend went to one of his seminars. Even then I barely heard anything about it. No church I went to had any kind of Gothard influence that I recall. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20’s that I met a family that I believe was really into Gothard. Good family, but a little “out there” of you know what I mean. Even now in my 40’s I can’t ever recall being exposed in any substantial way to Gothard or his followers. All I know of him and his world is what I’ve read on the internet.
Very thankful I wasn’t in that world.
I agree with dcbii’s comment above that correlation does not equal causation.
Influences:
- Courtship
- Anti-modern medicine
- Anti-post secondary education - especially at secular colleges
Additionally his ecumenical approach drew from Billy Graham AND influenced Promise Keepers
See: http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/gothard/general.htm
I was exposed to him through my New Evangelical church in high school. However, i had a roommate at BJ that had his devotions out of character sketches…wierd but true. I also know that the last church that Gothard recommended was an IFB church. That church has send men to pastor other churches in the region. You can see Gothard’s influence, even though none of them would even realize that’s where it came from. As far as I can tell, the only part of the country that Gothard had any real impact in Fundamentalism was the MidWest.
Roger Carlson, Pastor Berean Baptist Church
[Larry Nelson]Has Anybody Read This Book?
http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Basic-Principles-Gothard-Christian/dp/09742…
I read through it about 10 years ago when I had several ATI families begin attending my church. It was a helpful book, but a bit oddly written IMO, alternating between chapters of analysis of his teaching with anecdotes of people burned by those teachings or the IBLP/ATI machine. The tone is a bit sarcastic at times, but overall helpful. It’s the most extensive book length critique of Gothard I’ve come across.
M. Scott Bashoor Happy Slave of Christ
[SBashoor]Larry Nelson wrote:
Has Anybody Read This Book?
http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Basic-Principles-Gothard-Christian/dp/09742…
I read through it about 10 years ago when I had several ATI families begin attending my church. It was a helpful book, but a bit oddly written IMO, alternating between chapters of analysis of his teaching with anecdotes of people burned by those teachings or the IBLP/ATI machine. The tone is a bit sarcastic at times, but overall helpful. It’s the most extensive book length critique of Gothard I’ve come across.
That was helpful information.
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