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Xenophone
Both my wife and I are ex-JCs. We have been out of the group for about 6 months now. I am now a member of a "main-stream" Christian church, but I was a member for five years and can say confidently that I've never seen any sexual misconduct. Reports about that guy having his pants taken off him in the night just sound so off the mark. If the JCs are one thing, then they're definetly not a sex-cult.

Also, please people, can you stop trying to make them out to me like the Family? It's funny, but some of the Family's strong beliefs (eg. eternal salvation/security) are much more inline with main-stream fundementalist Protestantism. [/quote)[/color:c4f519d3db]

Xenophone are you happy to be out of the JC's and how did you leave; as a walkout or were you asked to leave?
I agree with you and dont think anyone here thinks the JC's are part of the Family or share their views on sex. The JC's do share some of their teaching however and their views on the 'evil' system is but one example. you yourself have supplied others in a more recent post.
what do you think of their latest teaching on corporal punishment and the upcoming trial?

Sorry, I didn't make it clear. The young man in question was not living with guardians. He was living on his own. We found him roaming the streets with pooey pants. A couple of our members (who are now registered nurses) took him home, cleaned him up and tried to help him out. The only interest the authorities had in him came when someone heard that he had come into contact with us. It was a very long time ago, and I don't intend to start a serious hunt for details to satisfy the likes of the people on this forum. I've already told you more than anyone else knows about this incident, and obviously that has not eased anyone's fears.

I am pleased to see that all of the people whom Rick Ross has urged to share their disagreements with me publicly have not been silly enough to give in to that most basic of all trouble-making, muck-raking divisive techniques. Maybe people here would like to tell us two or three things each that they disagree with Rick Ross about, in order to convince me that you are not his puppets.

One other observation. I notice that Rick's logo is a giant R hugging a pedastol. Considering he is so worried about personality cults, it is surprising that everything about this site revolves around him personally! I don't begrudge Rick the freedom to promote himself, but it does seem inconsistent with his tendency to damn so many other leaders who do not seem to have anywhere near the same ego that he has.

Dave:

Sorry you were somehow banned previously.

Please understand that attempting to attack me personally is not a meaningful response to the continued controversy that surrounds your group.

Also, I didn't start this thread or "urge" anyone to come forward.

The board is an open forum for people to come and express their thoughts and share information.

They come and post through their own initiative.

Posted: 09-07-2006 02:12 PM    Post subject:
Rick:
Sorry you were somehow banned previously.

Dave:
Thank you for that apology,and for over-riding the ban. Is there any chance that I could get some explanation as to WHY I was banned?

Rick:
Please understand that attempting to attack me personally is not a meaningful response to the continued controversy that surrounds your group.

Dave:
What I'm trying to do, Rick, is get you to use the Golden Rule. Hypocrisy is the tendency to use criteria for judging others that you do not apply to yourself. You have repeatedly argued that you want objective evidence, and yet your personal attacks on me are repeatedly based on nothing more than statements from your own mouth along the lines of, "apparently" Dave does such and such, or "apparently" people in the Jesus Christians do things only because Dave suggested them. I also feel that such personal attacks on me (especially when they fly in the face of all the evidence from people who have worked with or known me for many years) are not meaningful responses. Wouldn't you think that, after the Jesus Christians existing for almost 30 years, you would have a wealth of documentation from ex-members to support your claims against us/me? Yet you don't, do you?

Rick:
Also, I didn't start this thread or "urge" anyone to come forward.

Dave:
True, and I did not phrase that well. But you do seem to have pretty well taken over the attack on myself and Fran and an anonymous ex-member and an anonymous friend/supporter. Do you always do that, or are the Jesus Christians the flavour of the month?

Dave McKay, for Jesus Christians

Dave:

I don't know how or why you were banned.

Quote

Wouldn't you think that, after the Jesus Christians existing for almost 30 years, you would have a wealth of documentation from ex-members to support your claims against us/me? Yet you don't, do you?

See [www.culteducation.com]

For such a small group "Jesus Christians" has had quite a bit of bad press and complaints.

Quote

Do you always do that, or are the Jesus Christians the flavour of the month?

At times I comment when an apologist comes to the board like "Fran."

Rick said:

I don't know how or why you were banned.

Dave responds:

Strange, isn't it, that you are the person in charge here, and you cannot just go and ask whoever it was who banned me from your site why he chose to do that? It would be fair to guess from what we have observed over the past few days that you are notified immediately if there is an 'apologist' (meaning someone who says anything in defence of an organisation that you have labelled as a cult), and moderators are programmed to sit pretty heavily on anyone who may actually be a leader of one of the groups that you are attacking. The problem with that approach is that it contradicts any supposed effort to arrive at the truth, since censorship appears to be aimed at blocking information that cannot be used to further your own agenda. After all, what would happen to your credibility if it was discovered that someone you had labelled as a dangerous cult was suddenly shown to not be dangerous and not be a cult?

Rick:

For such a small group "Jesus Christians" has had quite a bit of bad press and complaints.

Dave:

The question I was asking was why you don't have a single ex-member (and there have been a lot of them over the years) to support all of your accusations against us. Instead, you say that we have had bad press. But how many of the press reports have actually COME FROM 'exit-counsellors' like Graham Baldwin? He is the one who sold the story to the Guardian in England, and it features largely on your website. On the other hand, good reports about the Jesus Christian do not appear on your website. Would it be fair to say that you only deal in muck, and you are not interested in ANY sort of 'evidence' that cannot be turned into something negative against us... or any other group you want to slander?

As for complaints, they abound everywhere. Haven't there been a lot of complaints about you over the years? The point I was making is that the complaints are not coming from ex-members. If I'm really the terrible leader that you say I am, wouldn't you think that ex-members would just love to spill their guts to you or someone like you afterwards? God knows, you have certainly TRIED to get them to do that, as you have done with xenophone.

Rick said:

At times I comment when an apologist comes to the board like "Fran."

For starters, you don't have to put Fran's name in quotes. That's his real name. And my name is my reak name. It is significant to that so many of the people who come to this site are paranoid about anyone knowing their real name.

So why do you comment when an apologist comes to the board "at times"? In fact, you have been pretty much non-stop since Fran and others turned up. Certainly there is an abundance of information on this site to prepare people to refute whatever heresies we 'apologists' might try to put forward. The feeling I get is that, with the exception of a few muppets... sorry, puppets, most of the people on this site don't really have the confidence to communicate intelligently with an 'apologist', i.e. with someone who really knows what goes on inside the Jesus Christians... and so they let you do their thinking for them.

I am also disappointed that when it comes time to actually answering the points we raise (e.g. the one about you not having any ex-members to back you up in all of the 'apparentlies' that you keep making about my leadership), you just sidestep the hard questions and parrot off stuff from your own site elsewhere, which is that "They get bad press, so they must deserve it."

Dave:

Again, attempting to attack me personally or Graham Baldwin won't change the bad reputation your group has acquired.

You did have quite a bit of bad press and blaming Baldwin is not a meaningful response to those reports.

Hi Rick,

I do not like being attacked personally on the basis of subjective evidence, and so I do not wish to attack you (or Graham Baldwin) in such a way. As you yourself so often emphasise, there is a need for objective evidence to back up claims.

There is objective evidence to back up my claims that the initial three-page spread in the Guardian on the Bobby Kelly 'kidnapping' came from Graham Baldwin, and that it has become the basis for just about everything else said against us in the media ever since.

You yourself produce an amazing array of articles, written by you personally about various groups, and released to the media. (I don't know how you find the time to keep up with it all, and am amazed at your energy.) But then to quote your own articles (or in our case, something written by a fellow 'exit-counsellor') as 'proof' for your own claims is the kind of cyclical reasoning that an intelligent person would not put much stock in.

I have asked you specifically several times now, why you do not have an ex-member you can quote in support of your oft-repeated claims on this website, that my leadership style is nasty in any number of different ways. You have sidestepped those questions each time and just said, "You have a bad reputation, so you must be bad."

Can we at least go to the specifics of those newspaper articles and deal with any one claim, and then examine the hard evidence to support it?

I do not think it amounts to a personal attack on you to say that it is unfair to say, "Nobody likes you, so you must be wrong," which seems to be the underlying reasoning behind, "You have been dissed by the media, so you must be wrong." This is especially so when you do not include on your website the GOOD media coverage that we have received.

But forget that... let's go for the absolute worst charge you can find against us in the media. Come right out and say it loud and clear, so that we can all hear what is the absolute worst thing about me and/or the Jesus Christians that you can come up with. Go on, hit me with it!

Dave McKay, for Jesus Christians

Dave:

You are rambling.

Please try to come to some point.

Was there a retraction, correcton and/or apology run by the Guardian regarding anything reported within the articles you cite?

Simply becuase the Guardian quoted Graham Baldwin as a source doesn't mean much.

You and your group, not Baldwin, were the focus of these reports.