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Their Day in Court: Part Three
February 22, 2019 // 143 Comments -
Their Day in Court: Part Two
February 22, 2019 // 0 Comments -
Their Day in Court: Part One
February 22, 2019 // 0 Comments -
Statement from Recovering Grace regarding the lawsuit a ...
March 28, 2018 // 186 Comments -
Rethinking the Nativity
December 25, 2016 // 144 Comments
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Plaintiffs Amend Lawsuit Against IBLP, Also Sue Bill Go ...
January 10, 2016 // 1311 Comments -
Charlotte's Story
February 5, 2014 // 601 Comments -
Bill’s Cabin: Uncovering Sin
May 21, 2014 // 475 Comments -
How the Teachings of Emotional Purity and Courtship Dam ...
July 22, 2011 // 431 Comments -
Sacred Grooming, Part Six: A Secretary's Account of Lif ...
January 31, 2014 // 405 Comments
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Then there are those of us who never take the stuf ...
May 17, 2022 -
I think you're missing entirely what I have said a ...
May 17, 2022 -
Bill Gothard seemed to like bold innovation, so wi ...
May 17, 2022 -
Ok JM, I never heard of David Cloud so I made the ...
May 16, 2022 -
That sounds very fair, and I appreciate it. It mig ...
May 16, 2022 -
Brother JM, Bill Gothard designed ATI as “unsch ...
May 16, 2022 -
The sad thing is. . .I don't really know what the ...
May 16, 2022 -
I certainly can't speak for a lot of conservative ...
May 16, 2022 -
This really proves that the 37 year ATI run was no ...
May 13, 2022 -
You already know the answer to this. No credible m ...
May 13, 2022 -
Nearly four years later, and I am still wondering. ...
May 13, 2022 -
You know, I love these posts. I've been reading th ...
May 13, 2022 -
I believe that is correct. They decided to get out ...
May 13, 2022 -
Is the ATI program over? https://atii.org/ lo ...
May 12, 2022 -
I never called the Duggars wicked people nor have ...
September 13, 2021 -
Late response I know. But I kinda take the opp ...
September 6, 2021 -
I hope TLC will finally pull the plug on these peo ...
May 3, 2021 -
Another Bill Gothard protégé continues to make new ...
April 30, 2021
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An ATI Education, Chapter 3: Thou Shalt Not Trap the Eye
“Ye are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” According to Bill Gothard, this verse clearly directs women to avoid clothing with “eye traps” that might attract a man’s lustful attention. As a quick recap, my previous articles explained: 1. Bill Gothard set himself up as the final authority […]
The Brilliance of Bill Gothard
Bill Gothard created a cult, and he did a fine job of it. He didn’t create a commune that physically isolated his followers from the rest of the world. He didn’t lead weird sessions with chanting and candles. He didn’t even come up with strange names for his teachings. He conducted his cult in the […]
The Shame of Beauty
Before I was born my parents started following the teaching of Bill Gothard and IBLP, and when I was 5, they joined ATI (Advanced Training Institute), the homeschool program that Gothard developed for the families of his Basic and Advanced Seminars. Gothard emphasized “principles” which simply meant there were many different rules that dictated specific activities in my […]
Ignorance Is Not Bliss
Ever since our pastor announced that Bill Gothard stepped down, I feel like I have been in a state of shock. I have always been famous for saying, “Ignorance is not bliss.” Now I know just how right I was. I have to reconcile myself to the fact that I was living in ignorance, and […]
Sorry, Mom and Dad. We DO Have Regrets
Growing up in ATI, our parents often told us, “Because of the way we’re raising you, you won’t have any regrets.” Their regrets included broken relationships, sexual sins, temptations, “wasted” years and the like. All of which we would to avoid because of our sheltered, carefully controlled upbringing. We don’t know if our parents honestly […]
The Difference Between Horizontal and Vertical: Fifty Years of Yielding Rights and Not Taking Up Offenses
Rebecca Davis of Here’s the Joy has written about the IBLP Basic Seminar’s teachings on “taking up an offense” and “yielding rights,” the way these concepts have permeated both her own experience and broader American Evangelical culture, and the teachings’ practical effects in culture. Links to and excerpts from Davis’s posts follow below. Taking Up […]
Confident Statements Do Not a Solid Argument Make
A former Advanced Training Institute (ATI) student and Life Focus veteran has tackled both the form and the substance of the IBLP booklet What the Bible Has to Say About “Contemporary Christian” Music: Ten Scriptural Reasons Why the “Rock Beat” is Evil in Any Form at his blog, Throwing Out The Bath Water. “Is there a […]
Living by Principles
If you died with the Messiah to the elemental forces of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? All these regulations refer to what is destroyed by being used up; they are commands and doctrines of […]
Me and My Red Notebook
Years ago, right out of college and newly married, I took a position as an associate/youth pastor at a small, very fine church in Houston, Texas. At the time I had not heard of Bill Gothard, but at our senior pastor’s suggestion, that first week in May found my wife and me sitting for half a […]
Four Tools of Spiritual Manipulators
I grew up in the homeschool subculture of Bill Gothard and his Advanced Training Institute (ATI). I participated in Children’s Institutes, worked at Training Centers stateside and in Russia, and attended Oak Brook College of Law, Young Men’s Conferences, and too many seminars to count. Though I learned much from these experiences and am grateful […]
