I’ve never been to Ivanwald, but I feel like I have, because all the evangelical churches I went to were modeled in the exact same way.
So, before you keep reading, I feel obligated to inform you that if you haven’t watched/finished “The Family” on Netflix, there are potentially SPOILERS ahead. But if you have no plans to do either and wouldn’t mind a succinct summary of various points that I found interesting and creepily nostalgic re: my own experience in evangelical churches, this could be the article for you.
A little background: “The Family” is a five part docuseries that profiles the experiences and subsequent journalism of Jeff Sharlett, a guy who was invited to live with a band of men outside of Washington D.C. and upkeep a house called Ivanwald, a meeting ground that a bunch of politicians frequented. Turns out that all these politicians were of the evangelical persuasion, and Jeff’s entire experience there included Bible studies, soul-breaking indoctrination, social gatherings with a neighboring house of females to encourage marriages, and general talk of how they, as the men, would inherit the world.
Do you think this sounds absolutely batshit? If you do, I hate to break it to you, but this is the ideology of evangelical Christianity in the United States—a movement that, according to General Society Survey data, boasts 22.5% of the American population. It’s everywhere, and it won’t stop gaining traction until we can consistently recognize it for what it is: a cult.
As a former evangelical, watching “The Family” was a pretty surreal experience, because I recognized the principles of my past at every turn and found myself, simultaneously, horrified and meh. I believed these things for 7 years, as did all my fellow evangelicals, and none of it felt dangerously radical or out of the normal. It was, to us, the truth. It was just the way we thought.
Here are three quotes that gave me this feeling of terror and unsurprised recognition the most.
“You’re encouraged to share really intimate thoughts and feelings, and then this intimacy binds you to The Family and their way of thinking.”
This is not just Ivanwald. This is how all evangelical churches operate in the United States to emotionally manipulate members into submitting to fundamentalist doctrine. This sharing of “really intimate thoughts and feelings” is most often encouraged in smaller groups—offshoots of regular church services on Sunday mornings. These groups are called “Small Groups,” or, “Life Groups,” or plain ol’ “Bible Studies,” and they are all designed to create a space where vulnerability can be coaxed out of church members, and where deeply personal information can be met with dogmatic analysis.
It’s a way that evangelical churches weaponize the social aspects of human nature. When we share personal information with those around us, we feel close to them. Our spiritual mouths are open in those moments, and evangelicals are trained to be at the ready with the food of fundamentalism.
It’s also, in my experience, a common evangelical missionary tactic. Build a relationship with a person, get them to be vulnerable with you, and you’ll have an avenue to “speak the truth of Jesus” into their heart. Unfortunately, this is exactly how I was converted in college—by getting close with an evangelical classmate, and having my vulnerability turned against me.
“What they offered their followers is a sense of belonging, a kind of unquestioning ‘We’re with you through thick and thin.’ And there’s something very alluring about that. I wouldn’t mind being accepted by a group, unquestioningly.”
Once again, this is a classic aspect of life in evangelical churches, and another way in which the social aspects of human nature are capitalized upon in these settings. When I entered the movement in college, I immediately made (what felt like) 100 best friends. After a childhood in which I felt like a lonely, social reject, I no longer had to try to fit anymore.
I just did. I was accepted—no holds barred. No questions asked.
And this sense of “We’re with you through thick and thin,” is also weaponized in different ways—the church makes itself feel unshakeable. Have you, according to them, sinned? Have you had an affair (like so many of the men in this docuseries), or are you anything but heterosexual, heteronormative? Are you a woman who wants to be *gasp* a pastor? Do you have some funny ideas about living your life outside “God’s order?”
Even if you leave, they will always keep the door open—in case you hit rock bottom, in hopes that they can lure you back in. They will always be there to accept you again, and bring you back into the fold of indoctrination. And they will never have your best interests in mind, because their interests are always their own: more bodies, more votes, for fundamentalist dominion. It doesn’t matter what “bad” you do in their eyes, because you can still play into their agenda just as you are.
And that, agenda or not, is alluring to human nature. The evangelical church wants you to know that you always have a home—no matter how toxic you may understand it to be.
“And they say it’s about faith, but there’s a shared understanding that what we’re really about here is power.”
I posted this one on twitter immediately upon hearing it because ^this right here^ is the definition of evangelicalism. The reason why the evangelical movement does everything it does, why its ministries exist, why it plants churches in cities and rural areas and impoverished communities, is to gain allegiances and support in a wider political landscape. Everything is political, even when they try to tell you it’s not. Everything is about numbers—how many members it has, how many people it shares its “gospel” with.
During a mission trip I attended with Campus Crusade for Christ, we tallied up the amount of people who converted on the beach and sent the numbers back to headquarters at the end of each week. We were doing so because they needed to quantify their influence, as all of evangelicalism does. It has larger political realms to answer to.
When a faith system is, at its heart, about dominion, when it states that no one can go to heaven without believing that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, it naturally falls into this line of thinking. For all its evils, this belief system is taking itself to its natural conclusion, and its influence upon politics starts in radicalized church communities that are going strong all around this country.
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There are others that I won’t go into too much, because this is already quite long—but there is so much in this docuseries that is so incredibly compelling. (Clearly, I can’t stop using itals.) Below are a few other quotes that fucked. Me. Up.
“I think they use Jesus. I hate to say this, almost kind of a mascot.”
Ouch. And, also, truth. I’ve never thought of it this way, but the idea of Jesus that evangelicals have been parading around the world really is just a costumed housing portal for their theocratic political agenda.
“They say democracy in itself is a form of rebelliousness. It’s second to this bland, empty Christ.”
Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Again, I already knew that they think this and am completely not surprised, but ahhhhhhhhhhhh.
Alright. That’s all I have for now. I’m going to head back into the world outside of this blog and hope that everyone, however slowly, starts to recognize the dangers of evangelicalism and stops feeding into its convert pool. (And how that’s happening is a topic for a whole other blog post.) BYE.