“If you are unhappy, you may leave with our blessing.”\r
Lurking within that statement is all the proof required to know what kind of church this is.\r
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It’s not the unorthodox doctrine that makes this church what it is--many healthy, growing churches have odd beliefs.\r
It’s not the fact that leadership seems to be hereditary--many churches and businesses can thrive on father-to-son handoffs.\r
It’s not even the lifestyle of some of those leaders, which is well beyond that of their rank-and-file members. Anyone who has visited the Vatican can see the same disconnect, but the Church still does great things.\r
It’s still not even the countless small inconsistencies between their stated beliefs and practices, because no one is fully consistent between what they want to be and who they are.\r
It is, rather, the control that makes this church what it is, and that is a cult. It’s the notion that they have to explain that *of course* you can leave with their blessing, as if that were an extraordinary thing.\r
That statement is a slap in the face. It’s a slap to the people who have left, or been ejected, and are now cut off from everyone within. To the dozens of people with ruined lives who would give anything for a phone call--to the people who laid near death in the hospital waiting for blood relatives who never came-- to the people who died, never knowing their grandchildren’s names.\r
It’s a slap to the people who have tried to leave on the very best of terms, only to be publicly accosted and told they were better off dead.\r
It’s that the people who sat there and heard that statement know that there is no such thing as leaving—much less with a blessing--if you ever want to see your family again. Over the years, they’ve heard the fallen slandered. These countless slanders are an assault on, and an insult to the person’s memory, and simultaneously the darkest unstated warning to the congregant: you, in your turn—this can happen to you.\r
“If you are unhappy, you may leave—with our blessing.” – The public statement, 01/2014.\r
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“If we show them love, they have no reason to come back” -- The private spoken truth, 11/2013.\r
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