FL Sen. Daniel Webster + Bill Gothard, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 3-9-97
emano...@gmail.com
14-YEAR MEMBER OF A CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN GROUP LED BY BILL GOTHARD,
WHO INSTRUCTS HIS PEOPLE TO OBEY AUTHORITY.
by Alan Judd, Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL), March 9, 1997
Lexington, KY - On a cold February evening in this basketball-crazy
town, 400 people abstained from a televised University of Kentucky
game and assembled in a suburban church so that Bill Gothard could
give them the seven keys to life.
``Our goal here this week is to learn wisdom and to learn
understanding,'' Gothard, president of the Institute in Basic Life
Principles, told the crowd, seated in a sanctuary with an orchestra
pit and padded pews.
Follow his ``universal, nonoptional principles,'' Gothard instructed,
or else ``our lives will be one continuous failure.''
The audience listened intently for three hours that evening, and for
32 hours over six days, as Gothard - speaking from a 20-foot-high
screen displaying a videotape he produced in 1984 - laid out what has
become the institute's lucrative brand of theology.
Authority must be obeyed.
``Moral impurity'' - in the form of ``evil'' rock music, television
programming, alcohol or even newspaper horoscopes - must be avoided,
lest future generations suffer ``psychic disturbances.''
Public education, which teaches children ``how to commit suicide,'' is
the enemy of spirituality, so children should be educated at home,
isolated from their peers.
And fathers must lead their families, while women must be
``submissive'' and ``obedient'' to their husbands.
``Christianity is not just another belief,'' Gothard said. It is ``the
only way of life.''
This is the philosophy to which Daniel Webster adheres as a 14-year
follower of the institute, which is based in a Chicago suburb.
Now that Webster is the speaker of Florida's House of Representatives
- the first Republican to hold the post this century - many who
advocate the separation of church and state are wondering whether he
will try to translate Gothard's word into state law.
``What they do to their own children are their problems - and,
unfortunately, their children's problems,'' said Darren Sherkat, who
teaches sociology and religion at Vanderbilt University and has
studied opposition to public education by conservative religious
groups. ``When they start coming into political power and start using
that power, it will influence the rest of our lives. And that's where
they are dangerous.''
How Webster, a conservative Southern Baptist from Orlando, fuses his
religion with his politics has drawn intense scrutiny in the four
months since he took office.
Some Jewish lawmakers complained last week, as they had in November,
when Webster allowed Protestant ministers to give sectarian Christian
prayers to begin legislative meetings.
House committees under Webster's control began the 1997 legislative
session last week by taking up several bills favored by the religious
right, including a ban on same-sex marriages and a prohibition on
public nudity.
News articles and editorials have questioned why Webster gave high-
level legislative staff jobs to four people who have worked with the
institute.
Webster - who has taught seminars for the institute, appeared in a
fund-raising video, and traveled with Gothard on a missionary trip to
South Korea - declined to be interviewed for this article, citing a
busy legislative schedule.
Webster's spokeswoman, Kathy Mears, one of the four former institute
associates working for the Legislature, said: ``We're getting a little
weary of questions on it. He's the speaker of the House and he's had
an involvement in a Christian organization. His family home-schools
and this Christian ministry had influence on rearing his family. When
does it cross the line getting into a speaker's personal life versus
the things that deal with his policies?''
Authority figure
The brochures for the institute's ``basic life seminar'' in the
sprawling, modern Southside Church of Christ on Lexington's outskirts
lists Gothard as ``instructor.'' But when the multidenominational
crowd, punctuated by only three black faces, settled into the pews, an
institute employee announced that Gothard had ``some other things he
needs to be off doing in Dallas this week.''
Despite having paid $60 to $80 each to attend, no one voiced a
complaint.
With his dark blue suit, slicked-down black hair and frequent use of
folksy anecdotes, Gothard's video style of 13 years ago evoked that of
the era's president, Ronald Reagan.
Gothard has been proselytizing most of his life.
In high school and college, Gothard said, he never attended more than
a quarter of a basketball or football game. Instead, he spent his time
conducting ``polls'' on his fellow students' spirituality and sending
birthday cards to what he called ``non-Christian'' classmates with
instructions on how to be ``born again.''
Gothard, who is in his early 60s, was ordained as a minister in 1961,
but never led a traditional church. He counseled juvenile delinquents
for several years before founding the institute in 1964.
Income-tax records show that by 1994, the institute had an annual
income of $14.9 million and assets totaling $30.8 million. Much of the
money comes from seminars like the recent one in Lexington; the
institute will conduct 73 this year in 28 states, the District of
Columbia and five other countries.
What draws people to the sessions are the seven principles that
Gothard says God showed him will guarantee spiritual fulfillment:
design, authority, responsibility, suffering, ownership, freedom and
success.
``You would not be here tonight, and I would not be here, if God had
not demonstrated this to me many years ago,'' Gothard said.
Following some but not all of the seven principles, he declared, was
not an option.
``The way to be free,'' Gothard in the videotape said to the audience
in Lexington, ``is to learn the wishes of your authority figure.''
Freedom, he said, ``is not the right to do what we want; it's the
freedom to do what we ought.''
The first night of the seminar, he told his audience, ``Dress as
neatly as you can'' when returning the next evening.
The next night, many who had worn jeans and sweatshirts the day before
went back in skirts or sports coats.
``I appreciate such a nice-appearing group,'' Gothard said on the
videotape to open the second night and smiled.
'Obedient spirit'
God, said Gothard, has a ``chain of command.'' God is at the top,
followed by family or church or work, with the individual at the
bottom.
Venturing outside ``God-ordained authority'' exposes an individual to
Satan's influences. This is particularly true, he said, for wives who
try to emerge ``out from under their husbands' protection.''
While children must live under their fathers' ``spiritual authority,''
Gothard said, wives must display a ``submissive spirit'' and an
``obedient spirit'' toward their husbands.
``A sad wife is a public rebuke to her husband,'' Gothard said. He
added: ``Wives, you must learn to be both happy and grateful. That is
your greatest attractiveness.''
Problems ensue when wives expect too much of their husbands, said
Gothard, who has never been married.
``That makes your husband a prisoner of your expectations,'' he said.
``Men need admiration. They need gratefulness. They need happiness in
you.''
But because ``un-Godly, un-Biblical laws'' are ``inappropriately''
placing men and women together in the work place, he said, ``no wife
is safe.''
A lack of gratefulness at home, Gothard said, leads men to seek solace
from women with whom they work.
To help prevent that, Gothard continued, wives should exhibit a
``quiet spirit.'' He said only a ``foolish woman'' would try to
perform her husband's duties, such as protecting the family home or
meeting the family's financial needs.
``Wives who are getting out from under God-given authority are being
exploited by the world,'' Gothard said.
Men and women alike must elude the numerous ``evil'' influences that
are pervasive in society, he said.
Among them:
* Alcohol. If a man is a drunk, Gothard said, ``research'' shows that
as many as five generations of his descendants are also prone to
alcoholism.
* Rock music. Gothard described it as ``evil'' and ``wrong,'' and an
essay included in the seminar workbook reports that a ``rock addict''
is ``instantly activated by the rock beat and can repeat the lyrics
and music of the songs that are engrafted into his soul.''
* Psychiatry and medical science. Gothard said on the videotape that a
``Jewish psychiatrist'' had told him mental illness is really just
``varying degrees of irresponsibility.'' After psychiatrists have
obtained their degrees, he said, ``it (has) so polluted their minds,
they had to wash them out with Scripture.''
At seminars, the institute sells ``basic care bulletins'' - $180 for
30 pamphlets - to what an order form calls ``families who have
accepted responsibility for their own health-care decisions.'' Another
$10 buys a journal called Protect, which ``presents vital truths that
reveal the deceptions of many of the medical treatments of our day.''
Isolation
Public education may be Gothard's favorite target. In one of the many
unverified, if not unverifiable, statistical references during his
lecture, Gothard said that ``85 percent'' of college students are
``spiritually neutral, agnostic or atheist.'' And public schools at
all levels, he said, are ``teaching children how to commit suicide.''
The answer, he asserted, is to educate children in their homes. The
institute sells its adherents the materials to do just that.
Home-schooling is part of Gothard's Advanced Training Institute,
founded in 1983, which immerses families in his ideas.
The advanced institute assigns roles to family members: The father is
the ``superintendent'' of the home school, while the mother ``works
out the lesson plans to fulfill the calendar and schedule that she and
her husband have established.''
Both, however, report to a ``CEO'' from the institute - a
``consultant, engineer and organizer'' who advises the family on
finances and other matters.
The basis of the advanced institute's educational philosophy is that
``family-based learning is the most effective method of
socialization.''
As Gothard said in a recent report to ministers, children learn best
when they are ``isolated from other children, especially outside their
own family.''
``Positive peer interaction can be healthy,'' the institute's
literature says. ``However, it is more important for a young person to
learn to interact with adults, because peer dependence is one of the
most destructive forces in a young person's life.''
If children desire friends outside their families, the institute says,
they are available - through the institute.
The institute's teaching materials use the Sermon on the Mount to
teach linguistics, math, history, science, law and medicine - at a
cost of $675 a year. First, though, a family must be accepted into the
advanced institute.
Applicants must submit a family photo (``portrait-quality, please,''
the application form states), give the marital history of the parents
(including a ``testimony'' if either has been married before), certify
that each parent has ``a daily quiet time with the Lord,'' and report
any ``damaging influences'' in the home, such as alcohol, tobacco,
video or computer games, ``sensual reading/viewing material,'' and
rock music (``heavy or mild'' beat).
In a letter to applicants' pastors, who must certify that the father
is ``the spiritual leader of the family,'' Gothard explains that heavy
screening is necessary because the advanced institute's members are
``like the `Green Berets' of the church's army.''
`Hard lessons'
As the audience left the church in Lexington after the second night's
session, many were outwardly excited about Gothard's message. But
several said neither the seminar nor the philosophy expressed in it
was for everyone. As one man said, many in his nearby Baptist church
simply didn't want to face the implications of
Gothard's ``hard lessons.''
The institute typifies conservative religious organizations that exert
``control-oriented leadership,'' said Ronald Enroth, a sociologist of
religion at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., who wrote a
book about ``abusive'' churches.
``You never question Bill Gothard, apparently,'' Enroth said. ``You
don't make waves. You're either on his team or don't even bother
talking.
``It almost defies reason that thinking people can swallow this stuff.
It indicates to me there are a lot of folks out there who want this
kind of authoritarian leadership.''
Larry Guthrie, an institute employee and spokesman for Gothard, said
in an interview that the group thinks respect for authority is
necessary for an orderly society.
``Our society has grown today to where each person does what's right
in their own eyes, and there is such a lack of respect for authority
that we are reaping some of the consequences for that,'' Guthrie said.
``I'm not sure our society can tolerate that sort of failure to
respect authority.''
Copyright (c) 1997 Sarasota Herald-Tribune