Back to campus

When I returned to Chapel Hill to start my junior year, I was looking ahead to a lot. I was getting into the nitty-gritty of working in my major. I was also seriously considering a run for student body president. But foremost on my mind, I believed I was going to have a chance to stick a dagger in the back of Waymaker and KPIC.

At some point in the fall semester once I figured out how my classes were going to run, I planned to approach Student Legal Services about possibly hauling KPIC into court. To my non-lawyer’s mind, it looked like an open-and-shut case. After all, at best, I could prove that Perry, Danielle, Morgan and Aaron were willing to do Pastor Ron’s bidding even after being told that he was lying about his past in Maranatha and had no possible good-faith reason for doing so.

In so doing, they put their church, and themselves, in great legal danger. And in so doing, they sounded a lot like Hitler’s generals did on the stand at Nuremberg, who knew Hitler’s orders were illegal and obeyed them anyway. Likewise, it was inconceivable that Perry, Danielle, Morgan and Aaron didn’t at least ask themselves whether what they were doing was wrong. Unless they could explain why they continued to do Pastor Ron’s bidding despite knowing about his deceit, to my mind they didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Then consider the matter of Loretta’s parents. What would they think if they found out that Morgan had gotten their daughter into a situation like this? Any parent with any kind of love for their daughter would have been on the road from Charleston to Chapel Hill in roughly the time it took me to write this sentence. And that’s before we even discuss the possibility of the parents of my former “brothers” and “sisters” hitting the ceiling once this became public.

As usual, Myers Park was sending a small army to Carolina. Since it was now apparent that Waymaker would be around for longer than I expected, I felt the need to warn them. Looking in the student directory, I was able to find out where the Waymakers lived on campus so I could warn my friends. I also sounded the alarm with my suitemates in Granville, all of whom were freshmen. One of them mentioned seeing an advertisement for Waymaker on the kiosk near the Student Union. While on the way to buy my books for the semester, I took a peek for myself–and there it was.

Admittedly, I still was nervous about pulling the trigger on a lawsuit. But any doubt in my mind evaporated when I learned that Perry and Danielle were no longer leading Waymaker. Instead, they were devoting their full attention to KPIC’s youth ministry. I was appalled. Those two had, at the very least, fostered an environment in which the deceitful and hurtful tactics I’d seen in Waymaker could have even occurred. It was outrageous enough when Perry and Danielle were doubling as both KPIC’s youth pastors and leaders of Waymaker. But to go full time as youth pastors? The thought that they could have any influence on the Triangle’s kids was just obscene. Even with what I knew about fundie culture, it seemed hard to believe that too many of KPIC’s parents would be at all okay with their kids being within an area code of Perry and Danielle once the truth about what happened in Waymaker came out.

So I decided that sometime in late September, I’d have a chat with Student Legal Services and get the ball rolling on suing them. From where I was sitting, I thought this would be over quickly. Little did I know that I wouldn’t even get the chance to make that move.

How had the Waymakers gone wrong?

As I girded myself to prepare to haul the Waymakers to court at some point in my junior year, I found myself asking a question that I’d found myself asking a lot over the last two years–how had these guys gone so wrong?

After all, there was every reason for them to be a force for good in Chapel Hill. They were the only even remotely integrated Christian group at Carolina, for starters. On the face of it, the answer seemed simple–they had been planted in the contaminated ground of Maranatha Campus Ministries. Obviously, Pastor Ron didn’t have the guts to open his eyes and fully renounce those abusive practices. The result was, for all intents and purposes, a watered-down version of what Pastor Ron had learned while studying at the knee of Maranatha’s founder and “apostle,” Bob Weiner.

You would have thought that the younger set, people like Perry Burkholder and Morgan Bates, would have seen that such tactics simply didn’t work. Especially Perry, since on paper he knew how it felt to be relentlessly hectored about being saved. When I replayed the phone conversation in which he tried to get me to pipe down, I had to convince myself I wasn’t hallucinating. Not only was this not the way a youth pastor with any iota of scruples would react, but I thought that anyone who had gotten into Carolina would remember the lesson of the Nuremberg Trials–there is no such thing as obedience to an order that you know is illegal. That should have made Perry realize that there was a point where whatever obligation he had to obey his “shepherd,” Pastor Ron, should have been null and void.

But while trying to make sense of how I could have gotten pulled into such an outfit, as well as what made these guys tick, I got the sense that the rot in Waymaker was rooted in something more than just an inability to get past their Maranatha roots.

Much of that came from watching TBN and INSP. It may seem surprising to anyone who considers Charlotte to be “the buckle of the Bible Belt,” but TBN had long been relegated to a low-power translator in the Charlotte area. One episode of TBN’s flagship program, “Praise the Lord,” showed a funeral at which Rod Parsley and Eddie Long were the speakers. They actually had an altar call there. I was absolutely dumbfounded. It would have been unthinkable to try and preach at someone at a funeral or a wedding. But then I remembered that for the bulk of TBN’s audience, this was standard operating procedure. After all, they considered telling someone about Jesus to be the ultimate act of friendship.

That reminded me of something I read in “Don’t Call Me Brother” by Austin Miles, a former ringmaster who became an ordained Assemblies of God minister, only to walk out in disgust when he saw the steaming pile of corruption that was SOP on Christian television in the 1980s. When he first got saved, his friend Bobby Wilkes told him that he was to carry his Bible openly and proudly. Otherwise, he’d be considered “lukewarm.” It came from Revelation 3:16, in which God tells believers he considers lukewarm rather than hot or cold, “I will vomit you from my mouth.” It’s long been used to justify the notion that anything less than in-your-face Christianity will get you left behind.

I also found myself watching Parsley’s program, “Breakthrough,” fairly often. His version of the sinner’s prayer included the phrase, “Satan, you are not my God.” It brought to mind something I’d heard a lot of fundies say–if you don’t serve God, you serve the devil.

Putting this together with what I’d seen from the Waymakers, I had a better idea why they engaged in their bully-boy tactics. For instance, the manner in which Christina Roland was essentially hectored into becoming a 200 percent rabid fundicostal. They didn’t see it as harassment. They saw it as the ultimate act of friendship.

I also remembered how many of the Waymakers likened me to the Apostle Paul when I burrowed back in and made them think I had really become one of them. Even now, I’m still dumbstruck by the lack of proportion. On what planet was speaking out against the Waymakers the same as actually having Christians killed? The same planet on which anyone who doesn’t believe in God is a closet devil worshiper.

Putting all of this together, it was apparent that the level of fanaticism in this bunch was off the scale. It was also apparent that they knew they wouldn’t survive had they told the truth about who they really were. I believed that if I could simply get the argument out there, the Waymakers and KPIC would realize it would be foolishness to let this get to court. But how was I to know that I wouldn’t even get the chance to make that argument at all?

A fight that I could win–if I got the chance

The more I thought about it in the summer of 1998, I was convinced that if I did sue KPIC for its deceitful and abusive tactics, I not only would win, but the case might not even make it to court.

Consider that I had obtained what seemed to be hard proof that KPIC had grown out of Carolina’s chapter of Maranatha. And also consider that once I told the Waymakers about this, the campus ministers and the rank-and-filers not only blew it off, but had no qualms whatsoever about helping Pastor Ron keep up this massive snow job.

What is more, I knew that, at the very least, the campus ministers were willing to turn a blind eye to harassing people into getting saved. Even now, two decades later, it still turns my stomach that while I was pretending to have turned from my “rebellion” and was now a 200 percent rabid Waymaker, I was supposed to have been happy for Christina Roland essentially being hectored into becoming a Christian.

What parent with any kind of love for their kids would stand for any of this, even if they were fundified themselves? I thought that if this got out, more than a few of the Waymakers’ parents would have told their sons and daughters, “We’re not sending one more penny to Chapel Hill if you stay in this.”

That would have especially been true of the out-of-state families. And one out-of-state family in particular–that of Loretta (Tyson) Bates, wife of Morgan Bates. If you’ll remember, I suspected that Loretta’s parents were pretty fundified. After all, this was a black woman from Charleston who supported Strom Thurmond, for God’s sake!

But I figured that Morgan would have had to expend almost all of his moral capital (such as it was) to convince Loretta’s parents to let him marry her.

I figured their counterparts at State, Duke and Central would follow suit–leaving KPIC’s campus ministry as an empty shell. Remember, KPIC’s model depended on funneling college kids in through their campus ministries. Taking that away would have been like sawing a leg off a three-legged barstool.

Moreover, if this got out, I figured KPIC would have been squeezed from another direction. While burrowing into Waymaker, I learned that KPIC had plans to build a new complex near Research Triangle Park, complete with a huge new sanctuary. So they were building a coliseum of a thing on the backs of people like me. Lovely.

But I figured it would be all for naught if the extent of their deceit got out. The all-but-certain outcry would have been enough to make any responsible banker run away.

Even with all of this to consider, I still had to remember that this was the best-case scenario. At worst, the campus ministers may have known before I told them that KPIC had once been part of Maranatha. I thought this was highly unlikely, given that it would mean that Morgan and his boss, Perry Burkholder, would have had to have hidden it from their fiancées. While they were deluded and fanatical, they were definitely not stupid. But I couldn’t rule it out altogether. After all, this was an outfit that not only condoned Pastor Ron’s deceit, but had no qualms about lying about who it was in order to get people to join up.

But even if the campus ministers had known about Maranatha before I told them, there was enough that they and KPIC would have been out of their minds to let this go to trial. In my mind, I expected that they would be forced to admit their deceit–and that Pastor Ron and his friends would be pushed out.

I planned to at least put out some feelers after I returned to campus in the fall. More and more, I was convinced that if I could simply get the case out there, everything else would roll automatically. Little did I know that I wouldn’t even get a chance to make the case.

A debate that really wasn’t even a debate

So here was a little bit of irony. I’d been put through the wringer by an abusive and cultish charismatic group. Now I’d gone charismatic myself.

So I know what you’re thinking. If I was now a tongue-talking charismatic Christian, why would I want to take down the Waymakers. However, when I considered the facts, there wasn’t really much of a decision to make.

When all the hyperbole was exhausted, you still had a group that was based out of a church that had once been part of a notorious campus cult, Maranatha Campus Ministries–and whose basic character hadn’t changed a bit since that outfit had fallen apart. You still had a group who had no qualms about deceiving people about who they were and laying the guilt on thick, while preaching a brand of Christianity that sounded like an odd mix of the Borg, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and Camazotz.

You had a group that, at best, was still willing to keep this up after being told that their church’s pastor was willfully deceiving them about his past in Maranatha when there was no good-faith reason for him to do so. And at worst, their leadership may have known all along about their pastor’s deceit and didn’t feel the need to share that detail with the rest of us. But such things as basic decency, and the prospect of losing their futures, didn’t matter. No, no–it was all in the name of being “part of what God was doing.”

You had a group whose leaders also doubled as their church’s youth pastors–raising the horrifying prospect that they were imparting this twisted version of Christianity to kids around the Triangle. You had a group that, at the very least, was willing to condone hectoring people about getting saved, even when they didn’t want to hear about it. You had a group that felt critical thinking was tantamount to a deadly sin. You had a group that believed anyone who saw this emperor had no clothes was only doing so because of their sinful nature.

And most importantly, you had a group that had almost certainly burned dozens of other people in their decade on campus under various guises, including for the last five-plus years as Waymaker. It was hard not to believe that a group this extreme had burned others–and had scared them into keeping quiet about it.

Either scenario demanded that this group be taken down hard. All together? Even though I was supposedly “one of them,” it wasn’t even up for discussion. For the sake of everyone this group had burned over the years, for the sake of all those who had fallen into the holes that Waymaker and KPIC had dug under them–I had to keep going. I had to expose them for who they really were.

Burrowing out

When I decided to burrow my way back into Waymaker, I had no intention of staying in longer than I thought would be necessary to get enough evidence to either alert one of their parents or file a formal complaint with the student judicial system. After all, this was a last resort, and I had no reason to expose myself for long.

I wondered if that point had been reached when Christina Roland told me that two of our “brothers” had kept after her about being saved for much of last spring. I wondered–should I drop the hammer now, or wait to see if I could rook one or more of them into revealing more about how Christina had been brought around? The fact that the Waymakers considered it even remotely acceptable to hector people in this way was strong enough evidence that they were doing things that could not possibly be protected by the First Amendment. But if I could get more corroboration, it would make it that much more difficult for them to scream “persecution!”

But the decision was made for me when Eric Syffrett blasted out an email message suggesting that some of us ought to run for student congress. It brought back memories of how Christian conservatives had slowly and patiently taken over school boards and local governments. I also remembered reading in The Wall Street Journal that part of Maranatha’s game plan was to rise up the ladders of success in order to be in position to influence decision-makers.

Obviously, playtime was over–and it was time to blow the lid on this thing. To throw them off the scent, I decided to make it look like I didn’t like the “new Darrell” and had “backslidden” back to being the old me. I quietly unsubbed from the Waymaker listserv on Saturday night. The next morning, I ran into Jo Rumsey heading out for breakfast, and told her I was done with Waymaker. I knew full well this would throw them for a loop, and start them praying for me. They wouldn’t know what hit them.

That Monday, I called The (Raleigh) News & Observer’s Chapel Hill/Orange County bureau and told a reporter that I had a story about KPIC that might be of interest. After my last class that day, I dropped off a church pamphlet at the office. I also blasted out emails to a number of Triangle and Charlotte stations, requesting to remain anonymous.

In hindsight, though, this was a blunder. I didn’t know it at the time, but most reporters are very skeptical of anonymous sources, or at least sources whose identities aren’t known to higher-ups in the newsroom. At the time, though, I was concerned about protecting myself from any fallout in the event there was enough to bring them down.

But that was merely a backup to the next step. After a few days passed with no calls or emails, I took the plunge and began the process of reporting them to the student judicial system. More to come on that later.

Operation Trojan Fundie, part 7

Over winter break, I had some time to absorb what I’d seen during my foray back into Waymaker. If I hadn’t known it before, I knew it now–I had dodged a dumdum bullet a year earlier.

It was now clear that had I become the Darrell the Waymakers wanted me to be–excuse me, the Darrell God supposedly wanted me to be–I would have had to accept things that were, to put it mildly, out to lunch. I would have had to believe, for instance, that critical thinking could potentially get you away from God. Any sort of criticism in that world was an act of persecution. But first and foremost, I knew that the Waymakers were perfectly fine with Pastor Ron out-and-out lying about his Maranatha past, and were still willing to do his bidding.

I had hoped from the start to get enough evidence to either turn them in to the student attorney general’s office or alert one of more of the Waymakers’ parents. Theoretically, I had enough already to alert parents. After all, any parent with any kind of love for their son or daughter would have hit the ceiling upon finding out that they were in a group with this sort of mentality.

But then I ran into the very question that ultimately led me to “go nuclear” and burrow back into Waymaker. That is, did I have enough to even get these parents to listen? Remember, I initially found it hard to believe that a Christian group could behave this way. I suspected that a number of parents would be of the same mind, and I would have a hard time even getting my foot in the door.

It would have been another matter had there been any of my friends from Myers Park been sucked in. Most of the parents knew me, and would have at least been willing to listen. Ditto for any of the other schools in south Charlotte, both public and secular private. The kids there moved in many of the same circles as my Myers Park friends, and someone would have been able to vouch for me. Had this been the case, I probably would have gotten in touch with that family over the break.

Granted, I had learned there was another Charlotte guy in there, Reggie Roberson. You may recall that I knew him from INROADS. But since we went to different schools and moved in different circles, I didn’t think I had enough to sound the alarm with his parents just yet.

Even without that to consider, I had to weigh the possibility that what passed for leadership in Waymaker had known about Pastor Ron’s Maranatha ties before I’d stumbled onto them. Granted, it was a remote one, since it would have almost certainly meant that Perry Burkholder and Morgan Bates had hidden it from their then-fiancées, Danielle (Arsenault) and Loretta (Tyson)–an extremely risky move on paper.

But I had seen far too many outrages from the Waymakers that I’d initially ruled out as implausible–only to find out that they had indeed happened. Given the circumstances, even though on paper it was unlikely, I had to at least find out if Perry and Morgan had indeed hidden Pastor Ron’s Maranatha past from us. In essence, I would have been saying that Perry and Morgan’s marriages were fraudulent. If I was going to make an argument like that, the evidence had to be nothing short of ironclad.

At the very least, I knew that the Waymakers had found out about KPIC’s Maranatha past when I told them, and essentially said “so what?” That by itself proved just how depraved this outfit was. It would take me until late 2016 to find conclusive proof that the Waymakers didn’t know about Pastor Ron’s Maranatha past until I told them about it. But the mere possibility that this was merely the best-case scenario said a lot about them.

So all things considered, while I had enough to prove the Waymakers were indeed up to their eyeballs in deceit, I still needed more before I blew the whistle. As I got ready to return to Chapel Hill, I suspected that it wouldn’t be too long before I had enough to do so.

Operation Trojan Fundie, part 6

Only a week into my rather reluctant burrowing into Waymaker Christian Fellowship, I’d had my suspicions confirmed several times over–I’d dodged a dumdum bullet.

Let’s review what I’d learned in that short period. Supposedly, I’d only spoken out so loudly against my “brothers” and “sisters” because of my sinful nature. Moreover, that nature had manifested itself so strongly that I was actually persecuting them. Living a “victorious Christian life” essentially meant throwing your critical thinking faculties out the window–after all, you can only do Christianity with your heart. And for good measure, their idea of being saved sounded like something out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”–going to sleep, and waking up with your individuality essentially wiped out.

Having seen all of this, as well as a church service that looked like something out of TBN, the remaining days before exams were relatively pedestrian–comparatively speaking.

The morning after the Christmas party was the usual Wednesday morning prayer session. It was a skeleton crew this time–Barbara Dean, Graciela Henderson, and myself. What stuck out about this session was when Barbara thanked God that there were Christians “strategically placed” all over campus. I later learned from Chris that this was typical Maranatha-speak. In his days at UNM, they made it a point to rope in people from as many majors and from as many parts of campus as possible.

Later that week, I was walking along Franklin Street after an exam when I ran into Adena Cooper. Feigning ignorance, I asked her about all those people falling down. She said it was like speaking in tongues.

Funny–why weren’t people falling down all over the place until that guy started blowing on them? That’s something I’ve always wondered about displays like this. I’ve wondered that even more since going charismatic for real myself. If the Holy Spirit really is present in a service, people would be going down without anyone laying a hand on them.

That Sunday, the last service before winter break, was not quite as intense as the previous week’s service. The sermon was delivered by the associate pastor, a Korean dude named Simon Suh. He mused that the main reason Hindus and Buddhists were so concerned about death was that they knew deep down they were up to their necks in sin. I knew if I had been a Hindu or Buddhist, I would have felt insulted.

As I went through exams, and as I returned home for Christmas, I was more convinced than ever that I’d dodged a dumdum bullet. Moreover, if I’d seen this much crazy in just over a month, it wouldn’t be long before I would have enough to sink the ship.

Operation Trojan Fundie, part 3

When I burrowed back into Waymaker, I expected to discover that things were every bit as bad as they had been when I was suckered into joining them a year earlier. It took me just two days to discover that it had been even worse than I thought.

In that time, I’d learned that, from where my “brothers” and “sisters” were sitting, I hadn’t walked out because of my growing revulsion at the mental contortions and distortions that kept me in that bunch for six months. Nope–it was because of my sinful nature.

I’d also learned that living a “victorious Christian life” essentially meant throwing my critical thinking faculties out the window. After all, I couldn’t trust my mind at all. Supposedly, my critical thinking faculties had allowed the devil to “intellectualize (me) away from a relationship with God.” Rather, I had to trust my heart–after all, it was the only way to truly understand “the simple truths.” I suspected I’d dodged a dumdum bullet when I walked out on these guys. Now I was sure of it.

I shared some of the crazier things I’d heard with a few of my friends on the Ex-Tian list. One of them, Maranatha walkaway Chris Lewis, felt like he was going through a time warp back to the 1980s. He said that much of what I was hearing was “word for word” how his brothers and sisters at UNM’s Maranatha chapter spoke. Pastor Ron really had learned his lessons well. He had the Waymakers unwittingly using Maranatha buzzwords.

Not long after that, I got another glimpse into this bunch’s mentality. As part of playing the role of the New and Improved Darrell, I frequently mentioned how I couldn’t believe some of the things I had said before, and how viciously I’d attacked them. Usually, my “brothers” and “sisters” told me that I was now a new creature, and that didn’t matter.

But I heard something else from Allison Millstein and a few others. They frequently likened me to the Apostle Paul, who had gone from being one of the enemies of the faith to writing half the New Testament.

It took me awhile to realize the implications of what they were saying. But when I did, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Remember, Paul, or Saul as he was called at the time, had dozens of Christians arrested and even killed. Were the Waymakers saying that by speaking out against them, I was persecuting them in the same way that Saul/Paul persecuted the early church? It sure sounded like it.

Even now when I think about this, I am still dumbfounded. Granted, it is possible for words to be in and of themselves an abusive act. I know from experience, having been married to an emotionally abusive and controlling woman for three years. And it is possible for words to be in and of themselves an act of persecution. Racial slurs, for one.

But how in the world can peacefully speaking out against someone be in any way the same as having people executed? And it was even more staggering considering that these were guys and gals who, at least on paper, should have known better. Conventional wisdom suggested that if you can get into Carolina, you have at least some sense of proportion. Oh, that’s right–having a sense of proportion requires you to think rationally, and a rational mind can’t understand simple truths.

I knew there was a siege mentality in this bunch. If you’ll remember, Monday nights were a constant drumbeat of warnings that people at Carolina hated us because of “what we believe.”

If I’d had any doubt that I was doing the right thing by burrowing back into Waymaker in hopes of sounding the alarm either to one of their parents or to the student judicial system, that doubt had been erased. Any group that thought merely speaking out was the same thing as sentencing someone to death wouldn’t hesitate at going crying to the ACLJ or ADF about those big, bad libruls in Chapel Hill.

That is, unless someone presented evidence of their deceit. Or unless someone alerted their parents about the kind of stuff they were peddling. And if they really believed that speaking out was the same thing as persecution, I suspected that it wouldn’t be long before I’d have enough to blow the whistle on them.

At the same time, I felt for the people in that bunch who didn’t seem to be as fanatical as the rest of them. June McLeod had graduated, but it seemed that there were at least two people in that bunch who didn’t have a screw loose. Graciela Henderson, for one. Despite her praying for famine, I didn’t get the same vibe from her that I’d gotten from most of my fellow sophomores. Her theology may have been ugly, but it seemed that, like June, she still had some humanity in her. Ditto for Elaine Danielson.

Sadly, they were the exceptions rather than the norm in Waymaker. While I knew what passed for normal in that outfit would be out to lunch for most people, I didn’t know just how far out to lunch it was. But I was to find out soon enough. More to come on that later.

Operation Trojan Fundie, part 2

For some time, I’d known that the Darrell the Waymakers wanted me to be–excuse me, the Darrell God wanted me to be–was not a person I would have liked very much. It had taken a mere hour to receive confirmation. Supposedly, my sinful nature was what made me speak out against my “brothers” and “sisters,” and had kept me from doing what I needed to do to lead a “victorious Christian life.” But I suspected that further confirmation would not be long in coming. And it came from an expected source.

After I got out of my last class, I joined the Waymakers’ email listserv. In the obligatory introductory post, I thought it was as good a time to play the role of “New and Improved Darrell” to the hilt, and prove that I had been assimilated. I talked about the dream that had led me to ask Jesus back into my life, and how I couldn’t believe the things I had said and done in the past.

Surprisingly, the first reply didn’t come from one of my fellow sophomores–but from a girl named Elaine Danielson, who said we’d talked before a few times in Granville. She was positively giddy to hear that I had gone to sleep and awakened as a new person.

That didn’t compute at first. She seemed far too nice to fall in with a bunch like this. But I quickly reminded myself–if they’d nearly gotten someone like me, they could get anybody. Somehow, I had a hunch that I had another source of motivation for this push–and I was right. Elaine happened to be in the lab, and I asked if that was her. It was. It turned out that earlier in the year, I’d run into her while she was filling out an application for Heels to Heaven, a contemporary Christian choir. One of the questions concerned an applicant’s testimony, and I was taken aback by it.

Elaine told me that not long after joining Waymaker, she’d started attending the girls’ Bible study on North Campus, where most of my “sisters” now lived. She’d mentioned running into me, and the other girls recalled that I’d once been in Waymaker and they were praying hard for me–so she joined in.

Later that night, I got my first reply from someone who had been in Waymaker with me, Denise Mason. She told me something absolutely staggering–from where she was sitting, my critical thinking faculties had been responsible for pulling me away from Waymaker. I still remember what she said even now, more than two decades later.

Darrell, the Lord has blessed you with a powerful intellect. I know that Satan used it to intellectualize you out of a relationship with God. But as you probably know by now, Christianity is not something you do with your mind, but something you do with your heart.

This sounded very familiar. It seemed like a throwback to one of Maranatha’s loonier teachings–the idea that our minds can’t be trusted at all. As it turned out, the Waymakers had tried to peddle this line with me a year earlier, when they tried to make me think my wariness was a demonic trick.

But they’d been more subtle about it then. Now that I was supposedly fully committed to a “victorious Christian life,” they weren’t even trying to hide it.

As if I needed a further reminder, one came the next day from a freshman, Dervin Dhaliwal. 

I’m so glad you realize Jesus is your Savior. Rational minds cannot comprehend the simple truths. Our minds cannot see God, that is why the world is so blind because it uses not the heart.

Even now, this is absolutely staggering. Remember, folks, we’re talking about kids at a “public Ivy”–a school that has more or less a permanent spot among the nation’s elite universities. And yet, they were being told that thinking critically was a bad thing–and that if you didn’t trust your heart, it could be an open door for the devil. In their world, getting saved essentially meant going to sleep and waking up, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” style.

This notion is out to lunch on several counts. From a secular perspective, the problems are obvious. If you can’t trust your mind, your instincts, what can you trust? It’s an open door to brainwashing. From a Christian perspective, it ignores the fact that God gave us our minds.

Disturbing as this mentality was, it was even so when I considered the likelihood that Perry and Danielle Burkholder were peddling this to KPIC’s youth as well. In effect, they were telling kids to shut down part of their minds. As if I needed another reason why Perry and Danielle would be the last people I would want influencing my kids if I were a parent, here was another.

For years, I couldn’t get my head around how you could be at a school where critical thinking was not optional, and yet be told that using your mind was a bad thing. However, one close friend helped shed some light on this. She had spent nine years at a church in Wadesboro, east of Charlotte, that was at least as abusive and controlling as KPIC. She told me that based on her experience, when deception is standard operating procedure, it can literally go past your brain. The so-called leaders actively work to turn a person’s vulnerabilities against them, and use those vulnerabilities to reel them in. In her case, the pastors at this church used her desire to seek and serve God to lay the guilt on thick when she stepped out of line.

This makes a lot of sense. Early on in my freshman year, the Waymakers figured out that I wanted to be accepted more than anything. It soon became apparent that a condition of being fully accepted by them was to check my critical thinking at the door–something that I simply could not do. And now, I’d been told in capital letters that you couldn’t trust your mind at all. It took me awhile to realize it, but it was because they wanted it that way. Now that I supposedly stopped using my mind as a filter, I was now part of their collective.

It makes even more sense when I compare KPIC to my current church in Charlotte. KPIC is located in the middle of one of the most educated metros in the nation, and then as now draws a significant portion of its base from three of the most prestigious schools in the South and the nation–Carolina, Duke, and State. My church, a low-key charismatic church outside downtown, has a large number of people with college degrees–close to half, by my reckoning.

And yet, despite near-identical demographics to KPIC, my church’s mentality could not be more different. We’re actually encouraged to weigh things up, to make sure it really is from God. But at KPIC, thinking about matters like this could let the devil edge his way in.

After only 48 hours, I had solid confirmation of something I had suspected for some time. There was no way I could have possibly become the kind of person the Waymakers wanted me to be and still be Darrell. But in the next few days, I got more proof of just how far out to lunch my “brothers” and “sisters” were. More to come on that later.

How to fight a cult, part 3

By late September, I was having a few reservations about whether to do what I could to expose KPIC and give those who had been hurt by that church over the past quarter-century justice. Part of it was because, on some level, I wondered if my “brothers” and “sisters” in Waymaker were still victims of Pastor Ron’s deceit, rather than active conspirators. Was it best to simply let this outfit collapse under its own weight?

But any reservations it evaporated when I discovered that my former “brothers” and “sisters” in Waymaker thought that gay rights shouldn’t be condoned, but that Pastor Ron’s blatant lying should be condoned because people were being saved. In what world was this mentality even remotely acceptable?

So now there was no longer any doubt in my mind–Waymaker and KPIC had to go down, and they had to go down hard. But how to bring them down? Ironically, what made it harder was that the evidence of Pastor Ron concealing his Maranatha past would have been more than enough to file a complaint with the student judicial system had this been a secular group.

For instance, if I were dealing with a fraternity that was hazing its rushees when it publicly said that it didn’t haze, it would have been an open-and-shut case. But I was dealing with a religious organization–and more importantly, a religious organization at a state-supported school. Since state schools like Carolina are legally agencies of the state government, any attempt to hold Waymaker to account would have potentially raised First Amendment issues. For that reason, school officials are fairly skittish about going after a religious group. For that same reason, I wasn’t sure if I had enough to go to the press about it, either.

On paper, there was no doubt that the strongest First Amendment protection did not allow a religious group to deceive people. But I knew from my years of watching the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that even the suggestion of a religious group being the target of a disciplinary proceeding at a state school would have triggered howls of outrage from the religious right. The howls would have been particularly loud considering that Carolina has a reputation as one of the most, if not the most, liberal state schools in the South. The ads and fundraising mail pieces would have written themselves.

Additionally, there was a very good chance that KPIC would have called in the likes of the American Center for Law and Justice, Alliance Defense Fund, and/or Liberty Counsel to defend them. They would have portrayed themselves as just an innocent charismatic Christian group being bullied by those pointy-headed librul administrators in Chapel Hill.

There was one way to stop this potential public relations circus before it started–get solid evidence of Waymaker’s deceit. If someone could tell the ACLJ’s Jay Sekulow and Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver that there was solid evidence that Waymaker was deceiving people, they wouldn’t touch Waymaker with a ten-foot pole.

But how to get it? Increasingly, I began mulling a very unorthodox move–pretending that I had seen the light and was one of them again. I’d essentially be a Trojan horse–or rather, a Trojan fundie. I’d actually bandied this idea about for some time, but thought it was an extreme gambit that could only be considered if there was no other way to prove the Waymakers were deceiving people.

But at the same time, I knew I was a long way away from having enough to do anything more than warn people one-on-one. By November, though, it looked like an opportunity had arisen to bring the Waymakers down that wouldn’t have entailed burrowing into that outfit–and the Waymakers were kind enough to provide it. More to come later.