The Fellowship, cell churches, and coercive tactics
A brief history of cell churches and "discipling and shepherding" within neopente dominionist groups The "discipling and shepherding" tactic known as the "cell church" has a fairly long history within neopentecostal dominionism. According to research I've done informally on the history of "cell churches", the earliest reference to their use has been with the "Watchmen Nee" and "Witness Lee" groups in China (and Chinese emigre communities) in the early to mid-40s (of note, both these leaders were heads of particularly coercive splits from the Church of God), and the tactic seems to have been especially popularised by Campus Crusade (and other "parachurch" quasi-denominations and recruitment fronts run by neopente dominionist orgs and denominations) and the Assemblies of God (starting with Paul Yonggi Cho in the 50's). There is some preliminary evidence that cell churches may well have been used in the Assemblies prior to Cho's popularising of them; this includes the use of "cell-church"-like tactics to infiltrate and steeplejack Reformed Baptist churches throughout Eastern Europe in the 1910s and 1920s (and essentially planting the seed for what would become the especially violent "Joel's Army" group "Watchmen At The Walls"). If the use of "cell churches" is confirmed from early on in "The Family" (which has a history dating back to the early 30s--and some rather disturbing and persistent rumours of possible collaboration with American Nazi groups in that period which I hope Sharlet's book can either confirm or deny), that would lend credence to the neopente dominionist movement having invented it early on--possibly initially as a tactic for the steeplejacking of church and state alike. Cell churches and "The Fellowship" As I noted in an expose I've done in past on coercive tactics in cell-churches, the neopente dominionist model of "discipling and shepherding"--the very model which appears to be in use by "The Fellowship" nee "The Family"--may be one of the most singularly coercive and harmful tactics ever devised by spiritually abusive groups. How cell-churches work is actually rather simple--the best model to look at, in fact, is probably the plethora of "affinity schemes" and similar pyramid schemes promoted throughout the dominionist community. At top, you have the pastor. Below him, he is "shepherd" over the assistant pastors; these are in turn "shepherds" over the deacons; the deacons are in turn "shepherds" over the small-group managers, these in turn are "shepherds" over smaller groups, and so on until you get down to "home churches" or "cell churches" of around six people, including a "shepherd". Those of you who are familiar with pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing have seen this before. Namely, everyone reports to or gives money to the "upstream", and they report to the "upstream", and so on and so on till you hit the very head of the organisation. (Yes, there's a reason why pyramid-related affinity fraud is so common--not only is it similar to "discipling and shepherding" models, it's not uncommon for pyramid schemes to be promoted within cell churches.)
Though "The Fellowship" doesn't have a pastor per se, there are indications things work pretty similarly. From a recent Mother Jones article on the upcoming book by Sharlet: Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat. Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) Of note, this is almost identical to how cell-churches operate in the Assemblies of God; often "cells" are segregated by sex, the use of the cell church is explicitly promoted as a "spiritual warfare" tactic, and cell-churches are explicitly promoted as a method of recruitment of people going to seemingly-innocuous affairs. It's quite possible to herd surprisingly large numbers of people via what amounts to a religious pyramid scheme/"Big Brother Network". An example is given with Yoido Full Gospel Church--Paul Yonggi Cho's church, which has a claimed membership of over 3/4ths of a million people and which effectively operates as the Assemblies of God in South Korea. In the case of Yoido Full Gospel, the level of layering is very apparent in the first three layers--Cho at top, and 171 associate pastors and 356 lay pastors (who are themselves supervised by associate pastors). The number of potential "big brothers" only gets more numerous from there. And, as it turns out, the primary problem IS with these "big brothers"--just as it is with other kinds of pyramids. "Big Brother"--not just a TV show anymore Where this gets especially worrying--in particular in regards to Hillary Clinton's known involvement in a cell-church group linked to the Fellowship--is with the abusive tactics common in these groups.
In fact, the tactic is so abusive that even a number of premillenial-dispensationalist churches otherwise sympathetic to dominionism have commented on how the tactic is harmful if used as directed: As we shall see, the cell churches are all pyramid structures where apprentice leaders are carefully trained and monitored but under the headship of another leader and the staff of the church. Although they claim to be "New Testament" forms, they are more rigid and authoritarian than the traditional structures we have today. Well known "church growth" consultant, Carl F. George describes his "Jethro I and II" systems (named after a system Moses established of `lay judges'). It starts with the individual followed by the apprentice leaders, cell group leaders leader of ten, the leader of five groups of ten, of a hundred and five hundred. The flaw here is that the Old Testament form of organization, including the temple and the priesthood were done away with by the New Covenant. Again, there is evidence of an almost identical setup in "The Fellowship". From the Mother Jones article: The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan. The Fellowship isn't out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward. This is in line with the Christian right's long-term strategy. From a recent NBC Nightly News broadcast relating to Sharlet's book: MITCHELL: Jeff Sharlet lived among Coe's followers six years ago and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric. (Yes, you are reading this correctly; one of the present leaders of "The Fellowship" literally is invoking the totalitarian models of both the Cultural Revolution (in China) and Nazi Germany as an appropriate model of devotion. He is literally promoting Jesus Christ--and those in the Fellowship who claim to speak for Him--as a cult of personality.)
Tricia Tillian has written a book called "The Transforming Church" which includes a section on the use of cell-churches--and which warns of their coercive potential: Up to now we have looked at the Church Growth model for change, and the house churches. But now we turn our attention to a different kind of enterprise - the cell church system. Especially in conjunction with the fact that "The Fellowship" already shows praise for leaders who constructed cults of personality and used tactics of thought reform against their own countrymen, this is especially worrisome.
As Tilliman documents, tactics that would be considered coercive and spiritually abusive are part of the game plan with these groups: The method being used to change the entire thinking and value system of Christians today (the "paradigm shift" so sought by the leadership) is the Hegelian Dialectic which removes a person's confidence in what he previously believed so that he is open to accept another way of thinking. Uh-oh. To anyone familiar with research on coercive religious groups and other groups practicing thought-reform tactics, this should be throwing up danger signals a-plenty. Steven Hassan's BITE Model, a generally-accepted map of potentially abusive tactics in religious and business groups, notes some of these tactics rather specifically. In fact, the tactics used in cell-churches practically cover almost the entire BITE Model list of "red flags", including covering almost the entire Behaviour and Emotional Control sections (this is extremely unusual unless one is dealing with an incredibly abusive group; it is very, very rare that a group will hit each and every single category in the BITE model even if the group IS known to be abusive). Of note, the tactics described above would also qualify as abusive in lists of thought-reform tactics devised by Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer and Dr. Michael Langone, two of the original researchers on coercive tactics; I've used the BITE model precisely because it is probably the most in-depth model available of coercive tactics used in spiritually abusive groups. Tilliman goes on to describe the level of coercion in Yoido Full Gospel; she makes a very persuasive case that essentially Cho has an iron fist over his congregation via the use of the extensive cell-church network. And there's a very good reason why it works, sadly enough. Evidence of psychological harm in cell churches Possibly one of the most damning bits of evidence to ever come out re the effectiveness of cell-church groups to essentially breed a hivemind in their members (and that is pretty much the purpose of them) is a psychological study published in the book "The Discipling Dilemma" (which covered abusive "discipling and sheperding" tactics within the Boston Church of Christ, now the International Church of Christ--a group now, along with Maranatha, considered a model of how abusive "Bible-based" coercive groups tend to operate). In this study, seven groups widely considered to be coercive (Scientology, the Hare Krishnas, the Moonies, The Way International (an abusive neopente group which has had some links with Bill Gothard promoters as of late), the ICC, Maranatha (now Every Nation) and the Children of God (an odd "Bible-based" cult which has had aspects of neopentecostalism and which has had notable issues with sex abuse) were compared with a control group of Churches of Christ not employing cell churches as well as members of mainstream Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.
In literally all the cases of known coercive religious groups--including the two groups (Maranatha and ICC) known to use coercive "cell church" models and Scientology (which has used similar models)--there were documented personality type changes based on the MBTI in past, present, and future axes (usually converging on ESFJ, ESTJ, and ENFJ). In the case of the "Bible-based" groups using abusive cell church models, the evidence was particularly disturbing: Among the 835 individuals who took all three forms of the MBTI, less than five percent showed no change at all and less than seven percent had the same past and future type. Among the rest, a comparison of past and future types showed that almost 20 percent changed on one MBTI scale, 35 percent changed on two, over 26 percent changed on three, and over 12 percent changed on all four scales, thus experiencing a total reversal of type. (Emphasis mine.) Generally, someone either has to be very good at faking answers or has to be involved in a group that practices pretty severe thought reform tactics to have a total reversal from INTP to ESFJ. None of the controls showed this longterm personality change--thus indicating that the practice of "discipling and shepherding", as typically applied in cell-churches, is inherently harmful. This is the sort of thing that can trigger literal mental breakdowns (and has been well documented to do so in the case of Scientology and groups into "deliverance ministry"). Needless to say, this is very worrying--especially with Hillary Clinton's involvement in the group. (I would especially like commentary from Mr. Sharlet, if it's not been published in the book, in regards to tactics used within Fellowship "cell churches".) This is especially disturbing, seeing as much of the information coming out re the leader of the Fellowship and his viewpoints are less than savoury. We hope Mrs. Clinton will be forthcoming as to her actual relationship with the group; such secrets, thanks to investigators like Mr. Sharlet, aren't likely to stay "in The Family" for long.
The Fellowship, cell churches, and coercive tactics | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
The Fellowship, cell churches, and coercive tactics | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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