Founded by the fiery preacher bob jones, with several hundred thousand members, IFB congregants are told they must not associate with members of other Baptist denominations and evangelicals, a subservience for women, insular marriages within the church, with an emphasis on secrecy, and unusual child raising practices.

A compelling memoir and account of the Independent Fundamental Baptist church and its shocking history of religious abuse. Jocelyn zichterman was born, with her family, married into, and finally, raised, fled the Independent Fundamental Baptist church. With written documentation and sources so thorough that law enforcement has used her work as a foundation for criminal prosecutions, which issues degrees of questionable value while making vast sums of money for its founders- The way the IFB influences politics on the local, and national level, Zichterman exposes the IFB with revelations including: - The disturbing world of abuse within the IFB and doctors and teachers who cater exclusively to church members and fail to report physical and sexual abuse- The IFB-controlled Bob Jones University, state, and protects its abusive culture under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion .

In i fired god, jocelyn zichterman systematically details the IFB's disturbing history, exposing a cult-like atmosphere of corruption, greed, and abuse. Having been initiated into its innermost circles, Zichterman knows that the gentle demeanor America sees in the form of the Duggar clan on 19 Kids and Counting disguises the truth about the darker side of the church.

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Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future

I was raised in a homegrown, fundamentalist christian group—which is just a shorthand way of saying I’m classically trained in apocalyptic stockpiling, street preaching, and the King James Version of the Bible. I know hundreds of obscure nineteenth-century hymns by heart and have such razor sharp “modesty vision” that I can spot a miniskirt a mile away.

Verily, none of these highly specialized skills ever got me a job, verily I say unto thee, but at least I’m all set for the end of the world. Not until she was grown and married did she find the courage to attempt the unthinkable. To leave. In her memoir, readers will recognize questions every believer faces: when is spiritual zeal a gift, and when is it a trap? What happens when a pastor holds unchecked sway over his followers? And how can we leave behind the harm inflicted in the name of God without losing God in the process?By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Girl at the End of the World is a story of the lingering effects of spiritual abuse and the growing hope that God can still be good when His people fail.

Includes reading group discussion guide and interview with the author. Selah. Trained in her family-run church to confess sins real and imagined, she knew her parents loved her and God probably hated her. A story of mind control, the Apocalypse, and modest attire. Elizabeth esther grew up in love with Jesus but in fear of daily spankings to “break her will”.

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

The wbc is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. Lauren drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. Banished is the story of lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.

Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult.

But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer.

And they aren't going anywhere: in March, the U. S. Now a new york times bestseller you've likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida.

Girl on a Wire: Walking the Line Between Faith and Freedom in the Westboro Baptist Church

They picket concerts, other churches, most notoriously, and, football games, the funerals of servicemen and victims of hate crimes. This unusual memoir presents a rare, inside look into a notorious cult, bravery, and is an astonishing story of strength, and determination. Its members are known for their boisterous picketing—their zealous members with anti-military, ” “God Hates Jews, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay signs—“Thank God for Dead Soldiers, ” or “Thank God for 9/11”—and their notorious catchphrase “God hates fags.

Search for them online and you’re directed to their website, www. Godhatesfags. Com. The church makes headlines in news across the country. It happened in just a few minutes; she ran into her house, grabbed a bag, and fled. It wasn’t until libby phelps was an adult, a twenty-five year old, that she escaped the Westboro Baptist Church.

Despite it all, she cares for her family. It has seventy members and ninety percent of them are part of Libby’s family. Based in topeka, kansas, the Westboro Baptist Church community is one the country’s most notorious evangelical groups. Her grandfather’s sermons were fear mongering, but she loves him.

On anderson cooper live, she was confronted by the mother of a soldier whose funeral had been picketed, and had to respond.

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

Kathryn joyce's fascinating introduction to the world of the patriarchy movement and Quiverfull families examines the twenty-first-century women and men who proclaim self-sacrifice and submission as model virtues of womanhood—and as modes of warfare on behalf of Christ. Here, women live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship, and live by the Quiverfull philosophy of letting God give them as many children as possible so as to win the religion and culture wars through demographic means.

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Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

Soon, however, dialogue on twitter caused her to begin doubting the church’s leaders and message: If humans were sinful and fallible, how could the church itself be so confident about its beliefs? As she digitally jousted with critics, she started to wonder if sometimes they had a point—and then she began exchanging messages with a man who would help change her life.

A gripping memoir of escaping extremism and falling in love, her departure from the church, Unfollow relates Phelps-Roper’s moral awakening, and how she exchanged the absolutes she grew up with for new forms of warmth and community. The activist and ted speaker megan phelps-roper reveals her life growing up in the most hated family in AmericaAt the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

As phelps-roper grew up, as the church’s twitter spokeswoman, applying the logic of predestination and the language of the King James Bible to everyday life with aplomb—which, she saw that church members were close companions and accomplished debaters, she learned to do with great skill. Rich with suspense and thoughtful reflection, Phelps-Roper’s life story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarization.

Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy.

Born into the Children of God: My life in a religious sex cult and my struggle for survival on the outside

Alone, and grappling to come to terms with an unbelievable sense of betrayal, she was stuck in a kind of limbo – confused and unable to feel part of either way of life. Natacha is one of the lucky ones; not all of her family survived the battle to shed the shame and pain of their past. Natacha never expected to live to adulthood.

At the age of 18 natacha escaped, but quickly found herself hurtling through a world she had no understanding of. Abused, and brainwashed by ‘The Family’, exploited, Natacha’s childhood was stolen. Born to french hippy parents attracted to the religious movement by the unusual mix of evangelical Christianity, free love and rejection of the mainstream, from an early age Natacha was brainwashed to believe she had a special destiny – that she was part of an elite children’s army bestowed with superpowers that would one day save the world from the Anti-Christ.

Torn away from their parents, Natacha and her siblings were beaten on a daily basis and forced to sing and dance for entertainment in prisons and malls. Natacha tormey was born into the infamous religious cult known as The Children of God. Shocking, moving, this is natacha’s full story; it is both a personal tale of trauma and recovery, but ultimately inspiring, and an exposé of the secret world of abuse hidden behind commune walls.

To date over 40 ex-children of God members of Natacha’s generation have committed suicide. All natacha ever wanted was to feel normal, but escaping the cult was only the beginning.

Once You Go In: A Memoir of Radical Faith

Carly gelsinger is an awkward and lonely thirteen-year-old when she stumbles into Pine Canyon Assemblies of God, the cracked stucco church on the outskirts of her remote small town. Raw and illuminating, once you go in is a coming-of-age tale about the beauty and danger of absolute faith, and the stories people tell themselves to avoid their deepest fears.

. She assimilates, despite her apprehensions, because she is desperate to belong. Soon, she is on fire for God. She speaks in tongues, slays demons, and follows her abusive pastor’s every word―and it’s not until her life is burnt to the ground that she finds the courage to leave.

Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult

In the outside world, Lilia struggled. She describes her fear when her family questioned Gloriavale's beliefs and practices. In this personal account, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking secrets of the cult, with its rigid rules and oppressive control of women. When her parents fled with their children, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: to stay or to leave.

No matter what she chose, she would lose people she loved. Would she be damned to hell for leaving? how would she learn to navigate this strange place called 'the world'? And would she ever find out the truth about the criminal convictions against her grandfather? .

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

This is the sex education Linda Kay Klein grew up with. Pure is “a revelation. When the youth pastor of her church was convicted of sexual enticement of a twelve-year-old girl, Klein began to question purity-based sexual ethics. Part memoir and part journalism, pure is a horrendous, granular, relentless, emotionally true account" The Cut of society’s larger subjugation of women and the role the purity industry played in maintaining it.

Fearing being marked a jezebel, klein broke up with her high school boyfriend because she thought God told her to and took pregnancy tests despite being a virgin, terrified that any sexual activity would be punished with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. This message traumatized many girls—resulting in anxiety, fear, and experiences that mimicked the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—and trapped them in a cycle of shame.

. These intimate conversations developed into a twelve-year quest that took her across the country and into the lives of women raised in similar religious communities—a journey that facilitated her own healing and led her to churches that are seeking a new way to reconcile sexuality and spirituality. In pure, linda kay klein uses a potent combination of journalism, cultural commentary, and memoir to take us “inside religious purity culture as only one who grew up in it can” Gloria Steinem and reveals the devastating effects evangelical Christianity’s views on female sexuality has had on a generation of young women.

In the 1990s, a “purity industry” emerged out of the white evangelical Christian culture. She contacted young women she knew, asking if they were coping with the same shame-induced issues she was. Purity rings, purity pledges, and purity balls came with a dangerous message: girls are potential sexual “stumbling blocks” for boys and men, and any expression of a girl’s sexuality could reflect the corruption of her character.

Call Me Evil, Let Me Go: A mother's struggle to save her children from a brutal religious cult

Or that she would begin to treat her own children in the same way – believing there was no other option, and that everyone in the outside world was evil. But she did. Sarah had lived in fear for over a decade. But sarah’s parents had seen first hand what could happen when a teenager went off the rails. Humiliated, ostracised and brainwashed, her spirit had been crushed.

Until one day when sarah found the courage to fight back, the strength to protect her children and bravely venture into the world she believed was full of evil. This is sarah’s story – the shocking but ultimately inspiring true story of her struggle to save her children from the suffering she was forced to endure.

They had no idea she would end up marrying a boy from the cult, and cutting the rest of her family out of her life. She smoked and drank a bit when she was underage, and shoplifted once, but she was generally well-behaved and didn’t mean to upset her mum and dad. And the day they sent sarah away to the little church school miles from home was the last time they saw their real daughter for over a decade.

But as the realisation of what she was subjecting her children to began to sink in, she found new strength and determination – the strength to try to escape the world that had consumed her for so long. Sarah was never a troublesome child. Scared the same would happen to sarah, they sent her away, many miles from home, to a church school that would put a stop to her bad behaviour.