A couple more good notes I've taken as I've reread Wendy's book; I'll post more as time allows:

Check out page 158, the middle of the page, where it starts, "Ole told Doug..." and there's Ole talking about a person "needing repentace" when they express an opinion of their own or generally tells him thay know better in a particular circumstance than does he. Who, when, where, why and how Doug and Wendy wed was not Ole's business to dictate, nor is it his job to dictate anybody's personal affairs, especially when it comes to a wife and family. See also page 170.
The phenomenon among the true believers of a group of "cloning" the leader is another characteristic of a cult. Doug, how come Ole never had a family of his own; why did he seem to prefer building his own surrogate family, and making himself the patriarch? Why (according to things I've been told from the ex-members other than you and Wendy that I've had substantial communication with) was Ole always so emotionally abusive with girlfriends he's had in the past? It doesn't seem right, the way I heard he broke up with Suzette. He seems like an individual with problems related to [i:da0c5232fa]real emotional closeness, emotional intimacy, empathy[/i:da0c5232fa].

Also, look at pages 176 and 177, and you'll find the [i:da0c5232fa]real[/i:da0c5232fa] fruit of the TFI tree. From page 177:

"What kind of a spiritual leader damages individuals to such a degree that, after they leave, they have no desire to enter another church for years? What kind of church weakens an individuals belief system to the point that he is unable to pray? What kind of religious group so unravels a person's faith that he can no longer profess a belief in God?"

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Yes, you do. I have no ill will toward you Nathan; however, as I have expressed before, at times your arguments are so weak (especially in demonstrating your poor Scriptural interpretation as support for those arguments) and your coming across as SO naive that it frustrates me greatly. But it's nothing personal, so don't take it personally. You are probably pretty young, so I don't blame you for being naive. The only person that anybody here has a personal problem with is named Ole Anthony, an individual whom you have never met in person and have had very, very limited dealings with. So again, you are in territory now where you just so not know what you are talking about, and for you to so bullheadedly defend Ole and TFI's abuses while at the same time telling us disgruntled ex-members what our experiences were and were not, makes you sound pretty stupid, frankly. Quit trolling and recieve some correction. That is not animosity, that is me exhorting you not to speak of things you know nothing of.

Brian...I have no ill word against you but to call someone naive. to put them down because they can't quote scriptures or don't hold open an bible while posting is...well...sad. I can't quote scripture to save my life. I've fallen asleep through the book of Genesis and can barely muddle through who wrote what. That does not make ME naive. That does not make me young (I'm older than you). That does not make you or anyone else better than me or Nathan. Anyone can quote scripture.

I know what you are going through. I went through it when I was asked to leave Trinity 6 years ago. I wanted to lash out at anyone, anything but myself. Just stop...just rest. Stop fighting. You found allies in your hate, your pain. I understand. Don't let that eat you for years like it has done to some. Don't let it become you.

"What kind of a spiritual leader damages individuals to such a degree that, after they leave, they have no desire to enter another church for years? What kind of church weakens an individuals belief system to the point that he is unable to pray? What kind of religious group so unravels a person's faith that he can no longer profess a belief in God?"

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I am not lashing out at anyone and again, it's nothing personal. I am only pointing out to the guy that he is talking about things he knows nothing of and that he is making himself look stupid in the process. That is not animosity, that is not a put-down, but it is an exortation. A call for Nathan to sharpen up his powers of Bible interpretation. For that matter, a call for all of us who name the name of Christ to learn the Scriptures better. It's called discernment.

STOP! Calling people stupid does nothing. It is animosity. I can sense it with every word you post. Your relegious elitist attitude is frankly...irritating. Just be honest. You ARE lashing out. You ARE attacking others on a personal level. I do not have to learn scripture to know God. My daughters know God yet cannot read. Discernment is NOT knowig the scriptures. Please do not tell those of us that do not know scripture that we don't have discernment. Frankly...you lack of discernment is in question.

"What kind of a spiritual leader damages individuals to such a degree that, after they leave, they have no desire to enter another church for years? What kind of church weakens an individuals belief system to the point that he is unable to pray? What kind of religious group so unravels a person's faith that he can no longer profess a belief in God?"

Can anybody please explain the relationship between Ole Anthony and the man the [i:52d79cebd5]New Yorker[/i:52d79cebd5] piece calls Frank Bono, the man whose wife Wendy's book calls Karen (page 173)? He worked at one time for Merryl Lynch as an investment banker or some such, right? Ole does his banking with Merryl Lynch, right? How did Ole know "Frank Bono" in the first place? What was their relationship through Merryl Lynch before "Frank Bono" went away? How'd they know each other to begin with and all? From the [i:52d79cebd5]New Yorker[/i:52d79cebd5] piece:
[b:52d79cebd5]
"The only face in the room that looked fully awake belonged to Frank Bono, a former Wall Street broker who helps manage Trinity's finances. Frank and his wife, Annabelle (I've changed their names at their request), are "Levites": members of Trinity's full-time staff who take a vow of poverty and earn fifty-five dollars a week. He has sharp, raw-skinned features, a stiff bristle of gray hair, and a voice with the pace and muted precision of a stenography machine.

Six years ago, he belonged to a Dallas country club, drove a Mercedes and a Porsche, and owned a condominium in Siesta Key, Florida. Then, in the winter of 2000, he was indicted for securities fraud. Facing eighteen months in a federal prison (he eventually served eleven), with no means of supporting his wife and their two daughters, he placed a call to Anthony, whom he had met only once or twice.

"I'll never forget our conversation," Bono told me. "When I explained my situation, there was silence for about ten seconds. Then Ole said, 'It's easy. Pack everything you own in a van and bring it here.' I said, 'Ole, I don't want to be a burden.' And he said, 'I don't have any burdens.' "[/b:52d79cebd5]


So how'd they know each other in the first place? What's the "Merryl Lynch Connection"?


Next: there is a quote by Pete Evans (the real workhorse behind TFI's investigations for the last several years) in this book, [i:52d79cebd5] American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty[/i:52d79cebd5], by a man named Michael Cuneo:

[www.csicop.org]

Pete Evans is quoted in this book, and his quote goes something like, "What kind of church is [i:52d79cebd5]that?[/i:52d79cebd5]" He is speaking about his experiences inside the Whaley's church in Spindale. Right now I live in quite a rural locale and don't have access to the book; can somebody please find the book and look for Pete's quote (it's indexed in the back) and quote it here? Considering what his own "home base" spiritually speaking at the time was, considering the nature of his own spiritual leader, does his quote about the Whaleys seem ironic and sad to anybody else? Can somebody please find and post that quote?


Next question: on page 162, Wendy describes she and Doug's disagreements about whether TFI met nine of the ten listed criteria, or all ten. Which one of the ten were you in disagreement over?

"They had trouble pinning him down about his past. Though Anthony made a big deal about living on $80 a week--he got a raise in the '90s--he'd go months without cashing his checks from Trinity. In a 1992 deposition, Anthony admitted he had a $26,000 account at Merrill Lynch. He was getting money from an annuity set up in 1986 after his electrical shock: $600 a month for life plus lump sum payments every five years. Over the last 20 years, he has received more than $200,000. Though Anthony told people the money was in a trust for his mother, that wasn't true at the time of the deposition.

But the biggest issue was the far-fetched stories. Anthony always had a new tale: In addition to being a spy, he'd been a helicopter pilot and crashed when he had a backpacking and survival company in Montana, and he was also in Vietnam setting up nuclear test stations and in Colombia trading coca leaves for intelligence and on and on.

Holloway believed Trinity's doctrine and community was the closest thing he would ever find to biblical truth. But doubts were growing.

The last straw was personal. One afternoon in 1995, Anthony called Holloway to his office. Holloway's 7-year-old daughter, Jill, was supposed to be in a ballet recital that night.

"It's all about her high place, and I don't want her to do that," Anthony told him. "You've got to take her out."

Holloway argued; they'd spent money on a tutu and tights and a leotard. His daughter was so excited.

Anthony called down the head of the home school--one of Holloway's Bible study leaders--who agreed with him. Holloway caved. "I knew that I would be squashed like a bug if I didn't. We would have been anathema." Shunned.

He had to walk down to Jill's class and explain that "for spiritual reasons" she couldn't dance that night. "We cried and we cried and we cried," says Holloway, his voice breaking. "She put away the dancing shoes and hasn't taken them out since."

His wife, who wanted to leave Trinity, was furious. "She lost all respect for me," Holloway says. "I'm sure she knew who had the testicles." The couple would later divorce.

In hindsight, Holloway believes the incident was about Anthony showing who's boss. "I'll never get that piece of joy back into her again," Holloway says of his daughter, voice rising in anger. "It was a body part that I cut off. The son of a bitch knew it. That's the part that I hate. He knows those vulnerabilities, and he reads them with absolute exactitude. It's as skillful as a surgeon with a scalpel." "


[b:395a8ff2aa]1Pe 5:1 ¶ The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:

1Pe 5:2 Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight [thereof], not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;

1Pe 5:3 Neither as being lords over [God's] heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.

1Pe 5:4 And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.


"What kind of a spiritual leader damages individuals to such a degree that, after they leave, they have no desire to enter another church for years? What kind of church weakens an individuals belief system to the point that he is unable to pray? What kind of religious group so unravels a person's faith that he can no longer profess a belief in God?"[/b:395a8ff2aa]

Zeus, I am reading Wendy's book. The part about the anger she experienced after leaving Trinity sounds like what others have gone through. I will include this excerpt:

"The truth is that the expression of anger was a part of my recovery—the process of taking back control of my life. It was a healthy expression of self-caring. It was hard to see God as willing to love me and protect me from harm if I was not willing to be angry that I had been hurt. Until I could come to terms with the fact that I was in fact a victim, it was difficult to become a survivor.

Madeline Tobias, a psychotherapist who has worked with ex-cult members and who co-authored Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, contributed a chapter in Recovery from Cults (Langone, editor, 1993). On the subject of anger, she wrote:

Emerging anger is one of the first signs of recovery from the cult experience. Anger is a normal and healthy reaction to the numerous harms and assaults perpetrated upon us. Anger is the most appropriate response to the abuse and manipulations of the cult and is also the hardest for some ex-members to get in touch with and deal with. Anger means you are now ready to acknowledge that you were victimized. That is incredibly painful. What was done was heinous, evil. Ex-members are entitled to their rage. "

I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult, pages 193-194 ( I hope I haven't violated any copyright laws here, but I thought it was an important passage.)

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Emerging anger is one of the first signs of recovery from the cult experience. Anger is a normal and healthy reaction to the numerous harms and assaults perpetrated upon us. Anger is the most appropriate response to the abuse and manipulations of the cult and is also the hardest for some ex-members to get in touch with and deal with. Anger means you are now ready to acknowledge that you were victimized. That is incredibly painful. What was done was heinous, evil. Ex-members are entitled to their rage. "

I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult, pages 193-194 ( I hope I haven't violated any copyright laws here, but I thought it was an important passage.)

Yes, part of what I am dealing with right now emotionally includes anger. You must understand that I grew up in Dallas and had heard of Trinity Foundation through various local media since I was a teenager. I remember watching the Prime Time Live piece back when it originally aired and that brief exchange between Ole and Diane Sawyer at the end of the segment. I rembember being impressed with his demeanor and feeling inspired by this person's words about the God of the Universe being resident in all of us, "even though the wizard was a charlatan" (I can still hear the way Ole said [i:130e1df82e]"Why?"[/i:130e1df82e]). That quote made a deep impression on me and my thinking. I'd read about him in Steve Blow's columns for years and had a professor in college who was friends with Ole and would tell us stories. I knew exactly where TFIs offices were (practically in my old neighborhood) and always had wanted to meet this advocate for the poor and the menace of the televangelists. NEVER in all those years had I heard anything but praise for TFI. So after I obtained the opportunity to work with TFI shortly after having been discharged from military service, I felt blessed and grateful, full of preconcieved ideas about TFI and this larger-than-life man Ole Anthony that I had heard about for all these years. I had all of the Door's DVDs and everything. Never listened to his online studies though. So this book and the can of worms it's opened up has been so totally confusing to my mind that I am only now sorting through it all, and am generally angry with Ole for being such a phony and a liar...I however am not perfect myself, and see God behind all of this, at work behind all things. I was planning on being in that community for a while and it cost me someting too, leaving TFI when and how I did. I wound up essentially homeless and was taken in by a friend of mine's parents. My whole family wound up thinking that I am an idiot, very irresponsible, for quitting my job with TFI before I'd found another one with which to support myself. So there's been a lot of strain there. It cost me some of my idealism, being around TFI even for the brief time I was. There toward the end of the time that I was living on the Block, in the weeks before I moved, the cognitive dissonance was so strong in that I was beginning to realize about what I was involved in, yet still living among and working with these people. Having to work among them was very disturbing there for a while and the cognitive dissonance was resulting in my experienceing a great deal of anxiety and even mild paranoia. It was freakin' me out. So the experience cost me some of my internal stability there for awhile; I was very confused about the whole picture. And still am. Do I feel as if I've been [i:130e1df82e]victimized[/i:130e1df82e] by Ole Anthony? Yes and no. I'll get into that some other time once I have that sorted out better in my mind. Do I feel like other people I know have been? Most certainly. And I am doing this more for them than for me, really, all this posting...it's long past time somebody got the word out. Hell, when I first met him I was so full of preconcieved ideas about him that at first when I'd sit and listen to him during the morning meetings I remember thinking that he was perhaps a prophet. Like there was something [i:130e1df82e]supernatural[/i:130e1df82e] about him. He basically gets people to believe the he knows something that they [i:130e1df82e]don't[/i:130e1df82e], (that's how he draws you in) and in fact [i:130e1df82e]can't[/i:130e1df82e] know, gets them to believe that their own minds can't be trusted ("You are the Antichrist") and that's how he draws them in and begins manipulating them. I now find it revolting, what he's done, NOT admirable.

From page 197:

"His (Ole's) definition was, "Forgiveness means you defend the other person's right to have done what he or she did." Ole did not believe there was a permissive will of God. Everything that happened to you was by direct design of God, so any action or behavior toward you was exactly what God planned, and therefore, was perfect."

There's no way to plausibly defend Ole's right to have done what he has done in intruding into these people's minds and lives just because he felt entitled to, so according to his definition of the word [i:fdc9efded0]forgiveness[/i:fdc9efded0], we'll never forgive him, am I right? So likely we shouldn't expect any response from Ole or anybody else in TFI. In their minds, everything is perfect, exactly the way it should be, and all they need to do is enter the rest. Nobody's done anything wrong, if you're hurt quit playing the victim (p. 193; also, it blew my mind when I realized that I have a right to feel like a victim! Also, maybe that's probably why HG is such an angry a**hole, because he can abuse anybody he wants...if you drop the concept of victimization from your worldview, then you can treat anybody any way you want! I don't have to feel guilty about being such an a**hole, in fact I'm not being an a**hole at all, I'm being [i:fdc9efded0]authentic[/i:fdc9efded0]) pick up your cross (p. 126), get on the mercy seat, just be, whatever. What a bunch of BS. [i:fdc9efded0]It is finished[/i:fdc9efded0]. That phrase is a tad creepy in its connotations to me now. Ill never hear it the same way again. (P. 128, "The only enemy of faith was one's mind.") One's capacity to think is undermined and brings on the "extreme passivity" Wendy describes. Don't they see the magnitude of the psychic carnage that's been strewn about this man's path?

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I do not mean to take the thread off topic Doug. I don't know the ins and outs of how TFI disiplines. I know that you would say it is not disipline, but abuse.

I understand what it is like to talk to frustrating and ignorant people, ie. I have talked with members of the church of scientology who refuse to entertain new possibilites.(in my view) Know that is part of my way of searching, by challenging you, and testing you. I have had more doubts about TFI than you may be aware, overall I wondered if my doubts would cause me to withdraw my support.

I admitt my ignorance in never visiting the place, and not having read your wife's book. All I have done is discussed it with you and I have talked to a few individuals at TFI. I know that you don't see eye to eye.

The attitude of a few individuals at TFI appears that they would like to be reconciled with you Doug. No one appears bitter towards you from what I can tell.(from my 'distant perch' as you say)

As it is, I have little left to test unless I read the book or visit TFI myself, thankyou for bearing with me and I hope the truth is heard.

I think I understand where you are coming from, Nathan, and I hope I have not been too testy with you. You have every right to question me and anyone else who is making claims about something. Perhaps I have been overly sensitive, but you must remember, this is my life. It cost me a great deal spiritually to be involved with Trinity for so long, and it cost me much emotionally to leave. This is not some intellectual game to me.

I am glad to hear that nobody there is bitter toward me. It would be absurd if they were, because I have not done anything to them. They were the ones who said and did the damaging and hurtful things toward Wendy and me—not the other way around. Now, they present themselves to you and others as though they are willing to be reconciled, and yet they do not expend any effort toward bringing that about. Ergo, they are liars and hypocrites. Not necessarily every individual at Trinity, because I think there are some good people there who are seeking to follow Christ, but I do particularly fault the leadership.

I suppose they could say that we have harmed them in some way by writing the book, but that all took place years after we left. If they had any real interest in reconciliation there was plenty of time to say or do something before Wendy even had the idea to write the book. And, as I keep pointing out, we are not the only former members left licking our wounds in the wake of our involvement at Trinity. There are dozens of people out there that Trinity needs to ask for forgiveness if they are interested in cleaning their slate.

I believe that there is a spirit of control at Trinity that is antithetical to nurturing its members in their spiritual growth. The pattern for a church is laid out in the Scriptures in Ephesians 4:11-15 (RSV):

11: And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
12: to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13: until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;
14: so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles.
15: Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…

Unfortunately, this is not what is happening at Trinity Foundation. People are not encouraged to truly “grow up in Christ.” Instead, Ole consistently infantilizes everyone in such a way as to actually impede their spiritual growth. It is just an unhealthy spirit that pervades the place, and I am grateful to God that I am out of there.

Hear, hear, Doug. You said it best. It's as if their (TFI leadership's) attitude is, "We'll be perfectly happy and willing to let you reconcile with [i:8dc57b32b3]us[/i:8dc57b32b3], but as far as we're concerned we have nothing to be reconciled to [i:8dc57b32b3]you[/i:8dc57b32b3] over." In leadership's minds no wrong has been done since [i:8dc57b32b3]it is finished.[/i:8dc57b32b3] Psychic lah-lah land stuff. A group of people living under a shared delusion. They believe they run a dynamic ministry with a specially anointed leader who has been given hidden knowledge from the Scriptures lost to the church for 2000 years and restored authenic Christianity to East Dallas...a in short, a cult. Yes, this revelation makes me angry.