Richard Kindleberger, Globe writer, quotes Steve Hassan in his article on Boston Church of Christ

Allegations of Cult Tactics Don’t Halt Church’s
Rise

Date: Sunday, March 20, 1988
Section: METRO
Page: 29

By Richard Kindleberger, Globe Staff

Six months after she was "deprogrammed,"
Wellesley College senior Karen Gray says she feels lucky she escaped
the Boston Church of Christ with her emotions intact.

John Gath, a Billerica firefighter, tells of a radically
different experience. His marriage was in trouble when he and his
wife joined the church three years ago, Gath said. Since then the
church has "changed our lives. We really love it."

The Boston Church of Christ evokes a wide range of
feelings in the people who know it. The converted say it is the
first church they have found that has made Jesus Christ central
to their lives, but some former members and other critics denounce
it as a cult that uses mind-control to win and keep converts.

The church is said to be the fastest-growing religious
group in this area. In 10 years, it has grown from a few dozen members
meeting in Lexington to 3,600 worshippers gathering at Boston Garden
for Sunday services.

Steven Hassan, who spent 2 1/2 years with Rev. Sun
Myung Moon’s Unification Church before becoming a student of cults
and an "exit counselor," said the church is "probably
the group I’ve worked the most with in the past couple of years."

The church has endured intense criticism in recent
years, but it continues to double in size every two or three years,
its leaders say. It has spun off new churches or "plantings"
as far away as Buenos Aires and Johannesburg and hopes some day
to spread its version of Christianity around the world. Yet, criticism
continues from religious and educational leaders who say the movement
manipulates the emotions and undermines the mental health of its
members.

Boston University barred the Boston Church of Christ
from recruiting in university residences last summer, and Northeastern
took similar action in December.

At Harvard University, Rev. Larry Hill is concerned
about reports of harassment by the church. For example, he said,
"a student comes into your office and complains that she doesn’t
feel comfortable about going back to her dorm room because she’s
being continually bothered by members of the Boston Church of Christ
to come to a Bible study and she doesn’t want to."

The critics accuse the church of winning converts
— particularly the lonely and vulnerable — by wooing them with
flattery and attention, or ”love-bombing." After the prospect
is won over and baptised by immersion, the critics say, higher-ranking
members enforce conformity and submission and undermine the new
members’ self-image by making them feel guilty.

Members are pushed to live with other members and
to limit contacts with family and friends outside the church. The
demands of almost daily church meetings and other obligations leave
little time for outside pursuits, critics say. Members are pressed
to give generously to the church and to seek out new members.

Although the church denies it, some critics say quotas
are sometimes set for the number of converts members are expected
to produce. Critics say the church enforces doctrinal and behavioral
conformity by having each member paired with a longer-tenured "discipleship
partner" who monitors the member’s thoughts and actions.

"They are told that if they have a negative
thought it’s Satan controlling their mind," Hassan said. He
said the beliefs of the church and other groups he has studied are
different but that the basic mind control techniques are the same.

Al Baird, a church elder and spokesman, denies that
the church tries to brainwash people. "There is no attempt
to manipulate or control people’s minds," he said. "The
whole object is to get people just to follow Jesus."

Interviewed at his modest home in Burlington, Baird
acknowledged that the commitment required of church members is intense.
"We do call for a radical lifestyle, the same lifestyle that
Jesus called on people to live." Baird, who has a doctorate
in physics, said he gave up a higher-paying research job five years
ago to work full time for the church.

In addition to Sunday services, members attend weekly
Bible-study and prayer sessions. They are expected to set aside
"quiet time" for reflection and to meet regularly with
their discipleship partner.

As a fundamentalist group, the church takes its beliefs
and rules of living from a literal reading of the Bible. "If
you had to say what we’re about concisely," said Baird, "it’s
trying to live out the lifestyle that Jesus modeled."

Members are taught Jesus is their savior and they
should pattern their lives and morality after him. As part of their
faith, members are expected to bring new disciples to the church.

The church is not to be confused with the mainline
Church of Christ, which Baird said has become "secularized,"
nor with the United Church of Christ, also known as the Congregational
Church. The roots of the Boston Church of Christ trace back to Gainesville,
Fla., where an offshoot of the mainline Church of Christ began using
the "discipling method" in the early 1970s. Kip McKean,
one of several evangelists in the Boston Church of Christ hierarchy,
was converted there as a student. After stints as a religious leader
in Pennsylvania and Texas, McKean in 1979 joined the Lexington Church
of Christ, which later became the Boston Church of Christ. He is
now considered the church leader.

F.H. (Buddy) Martin, like Baird a transplanted Texan,
has been observing the evolution of the church for several years
from his post as preacher of the Cape Cod Church of Christ. Although
he has only 70 members compared to the 2,600 claimed by the Boston
church, Martin says it is not jealousy that prompts his concern.

"If they were not damaging people spiritually,
psychologically and emotionally, I would be 100 percent behind what
they are doing," he said recently in his church office.

But Martin said he gets 30 to 35 calls some weeks
from "people who are really hurting" from their involvement
in the church. Regarded outside the Boston church as an authority
on the subject, Martin said he spends 75 percent of his time on
matters related to the Boston Church of Christ. He is part of a
network that counsels people leaving the church and travels abroad
where ”plantings" are taking root to speak against the Boston
church.

Baird objects to the attention paid to the church’s
recruitment of college students, who he says make up fewer than
20 percent of the church’s members. It is on college campuses that
most of the allegations of recruiting abuses have cropped up, with
church members accused of deception in their approaches to students
and of pursuing reluctant prospects to the point of harassment.

Paul Chan, a Harvard student who briefly considered
joining the church two years ago, said church members at Harvard
have offered to help freshmen move into their dormitories without
fully explaining their intentions. He called it ”a very manipulative
way to try to form relationships with freshmen" who are new
to college and feeling lonely.

Baird denied that the church targets the vulnerable.
But, he acknowledged, ”occasionally an ambitious young person will
get rambunctious" and run afoul of prohibitions against door-to-door
solicitation or other college rules. Some former members who are
bitter about their experience may have been handled immaturely,
he said.

Critics and former members acknowledge the strong
attraction of proselytizing church members, with their friendliness
and apparent sincerity. Even those who insist the church is practicing
mind control and hurting people do not contend the members believe
that or doubt the value of what they are doing. The critics also
acknowledge there is no evidence church leaders are getting rich
or living extravagantly off their positions.

Gath, the Billerica firefighter, said his wife was
approached at work by a church member who saw her reading the Bible.
An invitation to a Thursday-night Bible group followed, and the
Gaths began reading the Bible more and were ”encouraged instead
of just reading it to put it into practice."

In the church, he said, he and his wife and their
three children made closer friends than they ever had before. One
value of such friends, he said, is that "I know if I do something
displeasing to God, they will let me know about it. It takes a real
friend to do that."

Gray, the Wellesley student, recounts a very different
experience. As a transfer student from a small women’s college in
Georgia, she said, she was a prime target for recruitment last year.
A fellow student asked her to a meeting. After joining the church,
she cherished the attention and sense of community it gave her,
she said, and would not have left had her mother not lured her to
a deprogrammer. Only then, she said, did she come to learn just
how much of herself she had given up.

Gray said her discipleship partner told her how much
time she should spend on school work, Bible study and evangelizing
and how much money she should give. With so much to do, Gray said,
she only slept four hours a night, and there was constant pressure
to do more for the church. Members had so little privacy, she said,
that church leaders had to approve if a member dated the same person
more than once a month.

"You have no privacy of thought or deed,"
she said recently. ”Everything’s public and can be manipulated.
People have been really hurt and mistreated because so much authority
is going to people who probably shouldn’t have it."

By the time she left she had lost the ability to
make decisions for herself, she said, and "I didn’t know what
I believed anymore. I had to reevaluate everything."

KINDLE;03/01 NKELLY;03/21,19:26 CHRIST20

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