I called all fifty departments of education in each state in 2009 and learned that approximately thirty-five states deny BJU teaching degrees because the school is not regionally accredited. Nor does any U.S. state acknowledge the school’s counseling degrees. Since teaching and counseling are two of the largest majors at BJU, this sets countless graduates up for failure.
One of the saddest and most disturbing developments in IFB miseducation is that the cult’s colleges are now aggressively targeting foreign students. This was the primary impetus for Northland Baptist Bible College’s recent name change to Northland International University. Students born abroad have no idea what detriments to their future employability a nonregionally accredited degree will have.
To add insult to injury, the manual of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) states that all professors at schools it accredits must have a master’s degree to teach at the university/college level. Yet professors with no more than unaccredited undergraduate degrees teach numerous core classes at both BJU and Northland, often out of their fields of study.
As of fall 2010 (when our public exposure of BJU began), and after receiving their TRACS accreditation, there were 294 faculty members listed on Bob Jones University’s Web site. Only 149 had a regionally accredited master’s or doctoral degree. The remaining 145 had questionable credentials. The department heads for religion, nursing, and psychology—three of the most popular course areas offered at BJU—lack regionally accredited doctorates. The head of the psychology faculty, Greg Mazak, has the highest credential in his department—a regionally accredited master’s degree in counseling and guidance; all other faculty members have unaccredited bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorates. The school of business has a graduate program, but two of the three faculty members hold unaccredited master’s degrees.
Using Honorary Doctorates as Academic Credentials
Not only do the teachers lack credentialing, both BJU and Northland (both TRACS-accredited) have men on faculty who have nothing more than unaccredited undergraduate degrees—who use their honorary doctorates as their academic credentialing. Even as late as 2006, while TRACS-accredited, Les Ollila and Marty Von were teaching core classes at the Northland International University and insisting students call them “Dr.” in the classroom. Bob Jones University has done the same with their faculty although in traditional academic settings, to call yourself a “Doctor” with no real doctorate would be considered highly unethical, if not worse. Astounding to us, Jim Berg, now the head of the counseling department of BJU’s seminary (as of 2012), has taught undergraduate and master’s psychology courses for over a decade. He has been using his honorary doctorate as an academic credential and is referred in the classroom as “Dr.” He is currently teaching a master’s-level psychology course, Crisis Counseling.
TRACS Investigated
TRACS has been the subject of several investigations by the U.S. Department of Education for its questionable practices, but to date nothing has convinced the group to improve its regulatory methods. Perhaps this has something to do with its close ties to IFB colleges that would suffer if TRACS got more stringent. Would people like BJU executive vice president for academic affairs Gary Weier—who doubles as commission treasurer and executive board member of TRACS—want to see the rules about master’s degrees enforced?
Your Tax Dollars at Work
If you’re not a member of the IFB and you have no plans to send your own children to one of the cult’s schools or to attend one yourself, why should you care? These schools receive hundreds of thousands of dollars of your tax money in federal grants every year, just as the voucher system diverts your tax dollars for private religious schools. According to 2010–2011 data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), and the Federal Student Aid office (FSA), 66 percent of the full-time students beginning at Bob Jones University get federal student aid. What’s more, 49 percent of BJU’s incoming freshmen get federal student loans; 49 percent get U.S. Department of Education–sponsored Pell grants, 43 percent get other federal grants, and 18 percent get state or local government grants and scholarships. That adds up to more than $7.5 million of public funds given to college students attending BJU. And that’s just for incoming students—those newbies walking around with their “First BJ” buttons while the upperclassmen snicker. Undergrads at Northland International University get almost $2.5 million annually in federal student loans and Pell grants.
Your tax dollars are at work supporting an education in which psychology professors lecture to nursing students that mental illness is a “sin problem,” science professors tell students that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and education professors advocate beating children with a rod. You’re also helping to underwrite an education where chapel services are mandatory and commonly include racist, homophobic, misogynist, isolationist, antigovernment rhetoric. These last two are particularly ironic because the government being condemned is underwriting the education many of the students are getting.
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WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?
They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.
—Rick Santorum, February 9, 2012
The Religious Loophole: Understanding Separation of Church and State
After decades of toxic rhetoric, the extremists have a skewed perspective on what separation of church and state really means. IFB proponents tirelessly trot out the religious persecution argument to defend the cult, but schools are not churches. I’m all for religious freedom when it comes to church. If you want to worship trees, worship trees. If you want to worship the Smurfs and paint yourself blue, go ahead.
But our country needs to distinguish between churches and businesses operating under a religious banner. Right now isolationist sects run scores of moneymaking operations and mislabel them “churches.” If anyone objects, the religious right claims its freedoms are being eroded. But in its zeal to uphold “Christian privilege,” America has lost its sense of equilibrium. Current U.S. laws are so broad that any extremist, even a Charles Manson–style fanatic, can slap a religious label on his organization and enjoy free rein to abuse children and defraud followers. Corrupt and abusive leaders have exploited the gaping “religious loophole” as an excuse to operate for-profit enterprises cloaked as schools, hospitals, group homes, colleges, and universities—all while demanding the government keep its hands off.
An abuser’s most effective strategy is to isolate his victim—and as long as the government enables isolation of children through religious extremism, they will be beaten, brain damaged, and even murdered as a result.
Walking Away from a Cult: A Child’s Basic Rights
The religious loophole affects millions of kids in our country, and not just those in the IFB: the Hutterites, Amish, Gypsies, FLDS (polygamous Mormons), Scientologists, or ultra-Orthodox Jewish, among many others. News has come to light in recent years about hidden crimes in many of these communities that rival IFB abuses.
FLDS: It is not right that an FLDS boy can be kicked off the compound at the age of seventeen and leave with nothing more than a fourth-grade education. It is not right that a young girl can be isolated to such a degree that she is convinced she must become the fifth wife of a sixty-five-year-old man when she turns eighteen.
The Amish: It is not right that an Amish child can decide to leave his religious roots, losing all his family and friendships, and walk away with an eighth-grade education. I consider it disgraceful that the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 in favor of Amish leaders who want the “freedom” not to educate their chi
ldren past the eighth grade.
The IFB: It is not fair that kids from IFB high schools are being denied entrance to college because their IFB curricula lack the quality to pass state scrutiny. It is not fair that IFB students had to go back to college to get new degrees. It is not fair that homeschooled Lydia Schatz was so isolated she ended up murdered at the hands of her own parents. And it is not fair that the IFB Westboro Baptist Church can haul their kids from protest to protest, all while claiming they are “schooling” them. It is not fair to international students, who get sucked into fraud, unaware of job requirements in each state.
In Virginia: It is not fair that seven thousand school-aged children will not receive an education due to a new “religious exemption,” in which their religious parents are allowed to opt out of putting their kids in school.
What kind of freedom do any of these children have if they want to leave their communities for a new life?
Children who make a different religious choice than their parents should be able to walk away from their faith traditions with minimal consequences. It’s hard enough for people to leave a cult—the financial, emotional, relational, and spiritual damage is dramatic. The least the government can do is protect their basic human rights.
Freedom of Religion for Some? Or for All?
At the core of our Constitution is the right to worship as we choose and we should never lose that right. Children born into extremist homes have that same right. We will never maintain religious freedom in our country until we determine that the Baptist and the atheist should have equal say and sway. To ensure everyone maintains their personal rights, religion must stay out of the public square. Jesus did not mandate people follow him. He wooed them. The church has lost its mission and it needs to get back to wooing—not mandating.
Christian Dominionists are demanding the Ten Commandments remain in the capitol buildings, but what would they say if Warren Jeffs demanded a portion of the Pearl of Great Price (Mormon book of ethics/values) be hung in each building? They want prayer and the Bible put back in public schools, but what if it was prayer to Allah? Bottom line: Christian Dominionists want freedom for themselves, not all.
Time for the Laws to Change!
Every child in the United States has a right to a decent education and to live in a safe and healthy environment. That said, it’s time to set a legal precedent that says every child in America should maintain those rights.
Increased government accountability in the school system is a way to ensure that this happens. We need oversight in private religious schools as well as homeschooling environments. Professionals have asked for decades how they could “break down the walls” of these isolated groups—and there’s a solution: Regulate all the schools.
How do we make this happen? By requiring that every private religious school have social workers and school counselors on staff and qualified and objective educators to regulate the curriculum being taught. Homeschoolers should be required to take standardized testing every year—at the very least—to ensure the children are really being educated. Group homes (i.e., reform schools) should be licensed in every state. If an organization wants to start a college or university and claim they are giving out academic bachelor’s degrees, the government needs to ensure that every credit has marketable value, and in order for that to happen they need to set one standard across the board in our country—regional accreditation.
I believe people should have the right to homeschool. However, I’ve talked to many homeschooling families who share my concerns. Like me, they argue that if you’re doing right by your children, you should have no fear of oversight. The only people with reason to fear regulation are the ones who want to get away with wrongdoing. Responsible homeschoolers realize how easily abusers can sneak into the system and they would like to see laws passed to ensure that all kids are protected.
Extremists are not going to govern themselves. We need federal laws to require it of them.
Unfortunately, when the government lets religious lobbyists and ultraconservative politicians intimidate them like schoolyard bullies, extremists victimize children with total impunity.
It’s time now for the government to stand up and say, “No! You can’t do that anymore!” and take the religious bullies off the playground.
Toxic Rhetoric and a Christian Militia
If that’s not cause enough for concern, the IFB’s antigovernment isolationist sermonizing is triggering a significant rise in the militia movement across the U.S. Could all that rhetoric about joining God’s army and fighting the evil secular humanists set the stage for a homegrown terrorist attack? It did in Norway. In 2011, a right-wing extremist named Anders Behring Breivik attacked a summer camp and murdered seventy-seven people. Before the massacre he wrote a long manifesto filled with Christian Dominionist rhetoric. He went to the Internet to find much of his well-crafted message about his “personal duty.” Certain concepts within his manifesto could have been taken right out of an IFB sermon. He outlines action steps for Christian Dominionists, saying, “They [families] must refuse to turn their children over to public schools. Above all, those who would defy Political Correctness must behave according to the old rules of our culture, not the new rules the cultural Marxists lay down. Ladies should be wives and homemakers, not cops or soldiers, and men should still hold doors open for ladies. Children should not be born out of wedlock. Glorification of homosexuality should be shunned.”
It’s no exaggeration to envision brainwashed IFB youths taking up arms against the government or average citizens led by one charismatic leader, believing their religious freedoms are at stake. Tens of thousands of Americans share the same extremism. An Internet search for Alex Jones, the Constitutionalists, the Patriot Party, the Christian Militia, or Christian Dominionists, all of whom appeal to members who buy into the conspiracy theories of the IFB, will lead you to a trove of information on dangerous ideologies many Americans would never dream existed within our borders.
Even the government recognizes the dangers lurking in the shadows. The Department of Homeland Security now deems extremist Christian fundamentalists a legitimate terror threat to our country.
The IFB ideology has become commonplace in the political arena as well. As a result, the Republican Party has been hijacked by revolutionary rhetoric. The IFB is being revved up on a steady diet of extremism by men and women like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum.
With systematic brainwashing that “all others are evil” and the continual message thrust upon children that they may need to “take up arms” and “get America back”—Dominionism is rising to the surface. Decades have passed in which abusers have had free rein to damage many young minds—corrupting them. It appears the stage has been set. What type of rhetoric will it take to incite violence?
In the summer of 2012, County Judge Tom Head of Lubbock, Texas, made an appearance on a local television station to generate support for a tax increase and told the public he was expecting civil unrest if President Obama was reelected. Head, the county’s highest-ranking elected official, seemed close to advocating a rebellion when he warned that the president would send United Nations forces into the extremely conservative city of Lubbock to stop any uprising.
“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?” Head asked. “I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy. Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. Okay. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here.’ And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you.’ Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back
there. I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.”
I don’t know what church Judge Head belongs to, but this radical rhetoric is right out of the IFB playbook.
Time for a Healthy Fear
For the last few years I have been calling the IFB the “Christian Mafia” in an attempt to raise awareness of the cult’s interconnectedness and menacing message. For real change on a grand scale, citizens of the U.S. need to recognize the sect for what it is: a dangerous mind-control cult. In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton identifies eight factors that define a destructive cult. The IFB meets them all, from Milieu Control (members are isolated and prevented from receiving outside sources of information) to Mystical Manipulation (members are told that God will punish them if they leave the group).
Journalists have been sounding the alarm for a very long time. How long will it take before we pay attention?
As Jeff Sharlet put it in his bestselling book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power: “American fundamentalism’s original sentiments were as radically democratic in theory as they have become repressive in practice, its dream not that of Christian theocracy but of a return to the first century of Christ worship, before there was a thing called Christianity.”
Sharlet joined “the Family” to gain access to information about Christian Dominionism; I grew up in the middle of it. I was the brainwashed mind ready for my “call to arms”—a “militant fundamentalist”—eager to do what God wanted me to do. I know from firsthand experience what he writes so magnificently about: Christian Dominionism puts children in danger, women in danger, and you in danger.
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