Knowing what was happening–but no way to ethically prove it

(names in italics are pseudonyms)

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. This is mainly because a relationship with a wonderful woman blossomed even faster than even I expected. We got engaged last September, and married last November. Between marital bliss, this pandemic, and the presidential campaign, I’ve been squeezed.

When last we left, my faith in the system had been shaken to the very core. It was clear that the Waymakers had tried to retaliate against me for speaking out against them. However, I was at a loss to find a way to prove it, and it was apparent that they were not willing to apologize to me for, at best, making a fuss over nothing.

On paper, that gave me the greenlight to do something I’d been kicking around since the start of the year–begin the groundwork for suing Waymaker and KPIC for the manner in which they deceived me into joining. But I realized that even with the facts on my side, it wasn’t enough. There was just too much risk of putting innocent third parties in harm’s way. More seriously, now that I knew the Waymakers were capable of doing, I couldn’t chance them filing more  complaints. It would make it at least appear that I had a habit of crossing the line with women.

So it remained to find a way to prove what I knew–that this complaint had been filed in bad faith at best and as a frame-up at worst. It appeared that chance unexpectedly dropped into my lap just before Thanksgiving. The Pit Preacher paid a visit to Chapel Hill, and as usual, I got into it with him. As had become my habit by then, I also used the opportunity to warn people about the Waymakers. As I saw it, the Waymakers weren’t any different from the Pit Preacher at bottom. The only substantive difference was that the Waymakers spoke in tongues.

One of the people with whom I spoke that day was Andrea Bryson, a freshman from deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She seemed to be an odd mix; she was a member of Carolina’s chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and attended KPIC. It turned out that she’d initially attended a less-hypey church near campus, Chapel Hill Bible Church, but left after something the pastor said gave her pause. One of the leaders of her IV Bible study attended KPIC, and suggested she try it out; it was there that she ended up speaking in tongues.

Now here was something interesting. KPIC was extending its tentacles outside Waymaker. Moreover, if Andrea and other IVers or Crusaders were close to the Waymakers, maybe, maybe I could find out if they had simply neglected to make an effort to get my side of the story, or whether this was a straightforward frame-up. 

With this in mind, I initially thought it was time for another “Trojan Fundie” operation, so I pretended to pray the “sinner’s prayer” with Andrea. The more I thought about it in the days before Thanksgiving break, though, the less comfortable I felt with going this route. I had to remind myself that I had only burrowed into Waymaker as a last resort, when there was no other option to fend off any whining on their part about being persecuted.

In contrast, a number of my friends in Crusade and IV had expressed misgivings about the Waymakers’ tactics. I was going through a rather rough time spiritually at that stage, to the point that at the time I wasn’t even sure I was a Christian. However, even then, I had too much respect for my friends there to do what I probably would have had to do had I burrowed into IV in the same manner. In my interactions with them, they had a sense of decency and honor–concepts that the Waymakers wouldn’t have understood if it had brained them across the head.

Ultimately, I concluded that as disturbing as it might have been to find out that KPIC was extending its reach to other Christian groups, I still had other options apart from playing “Trojan Fundie” again. So a few days after Thanksgiving, I decided to call Andrea myself, in hopes of finding out more of what she knew. Unfortunately, I discovered just how deep the rot ran with KPIC–and that it tainted everyone around it. More to come later.