The Boston Movement

The Boston Movement: Critical Perspectives on The International Churches of Christ Edited by Carol Giambalvo And Herbert L. Rosedale 1 Introduction This book arose from my experiences over the past few years in speaking with former members of various branches of the International Church of Christ (sometimes known as the Boston movement). These individuals came to me, as many ex-cult members have, with claims of having been defrauded, deluded and debased. They were going through the process of trying to rebuild their own sense of trust and self-confidence. Many were clearly idealistic, upwardly mobile individuals who had spent a significant part of their early adulthood trying to establish themselves in society and staking out goals they wanted to achieve and the ideals they wanted to live by. Now, after their experiences with the International Churches of Christ (ICC), they felt depressed, discouraged and disillusioned. All of this reminded me of earlier years when I had seen ex-cult members whose desires to create a better world of more loving communities and battle the world's ills and assuage the pain of others had been sidetracked, abused and exploited by various destructive organizations. But I also noted a difference with these former members of the Boston movement: In general, the people that I was now talking to were not middle or upper middle class college students. Rather, they represented a multicultural spectrum as well as persons moving from sheltered and rural environments to a new urban environment and people who had invested much of themselves in struggling to overcome the atmosphere of limited potential into which they were born. All, it seemed, had a firm belief and commitment in self- achievement. These new victims of cult exploitation projected a different identity within the population of former cult members, and reaching out to them was an important effort that had not previously been undertaken by those who provide postcult resources. So, I suggested to a group of these former members that they try to put together narratives that could reach their peers rather than rely on already-existing material designed for different targets of cultic recruitment. They were enthusiastic about participation in this project because they recognized the need for such communication. It was an exciting and inspiring experience for them to help create this book. While reading the final product, I can see the faces of the narrators shine out and perceive in their expressions their desire to help and warn others. I hear the pain between their words as they relate their experiences and re-live their exploitation and abuse. I hope that readers of this book will find the common elements in the narrations that will lead them to understand how intelligent and sensitive people have been led to do things that they did not intend or want to do. I also hope readers will come to see how it is that circumstance and deception, rather than flawed elements of the persona, can lead people to join abusive and destructive movements. The reader should keep two important points in mind while reading this book. First, members of the Boston movement, like members of other cultic groups, are simultaneously victims and victimizers. The distressed ex-members I have met were often psychologically abused by leaders who themselves may now be or may someday be distressed ex-members. Almost without exception the members and line leaders have good intentions. But they are caught up in a deceptive system which 2 uses the enthusiasm of people desiring noble ends to justify unethical means of achieving ends that aren’t so noble. The second point to keep in mind is that even in powerful environments every person responds differently. Personality factors, family issues, social supports, practical circumstances, the character of a member’s discipler – all of these, plus other variables, will affect how a person responds to a cultic environment. Some people are devastated. Some are deeply distressed; others mildly so. Some deny the distressing aspects of their cult experience and put it, so to speak, in a thermos bottle, which may spring a leak years after the person leaves the group. Thus, you will see considerable variation in the cases discussed in this book. On the other hand, do not let the variety of individual responses blind you to the fact that cultic environments are indeed manipulative and exploitative. However much the group may profess love, when push comes to shove the group’s goals and needs always come first. Members, as well as outsiders, are objects to be used, not subjects to be respected. That is why ex-members so often say they were psychologically or spiritually abused. When many ex-members from a particular group independently report similar abuse, as do those who tell their stories in this book, outside observers begin to question the group’s claims of benevolence. Books such as this one sometimes result from such questioning. This second, revised edition includes chapters on two research studies that tried to shed light on some of the questions raised by people who doubt the Boston movement’s benevolence. The first study was conducted in the late 1980s by Dr. Flavil Yeakley. He found that current members of the Boston movement perceive their personalities to be converging over time toward the personality profile of the group’s leader. His work indicates that the same pattern emerges with other controversial groups, except that the leader’s personality profile differs. The second study, conducted more recently by AFF’s executive director Dr. Michael Langone, compared former Boston movement subjects with former Catholics and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship graduates on measures of psychological distress and a rating scale that assessed the perceived abusiveness of subjects’ groups. A brief report on this study, previously published in AFF’s Cult Observer , is reprinted in this revised edition. Structure of the Book This book is divided into four sections. Part I provides background on the founding and growth of the International Churches of Christ (ICC). It includes a chapter by the Reverend Robert Thornberg who describes how Boston University, where he was dean of Marsh Chapel, managed to deal with complaints about the intrusiveness of ICC recruiters on campus. Thornburg’s chapter includes the text of a booklet that was distributed on Boston University’s campus in order to educate students and faculty about the ICC’s methods. Parts II and III are composed of a collection of personal accounts describing experiences with various branches of ICC. These firsthand accounts allow the reader to gain a better understanding of how people get involved with such groups and of 3 the pressures brought to bear on recruits and members. We hope that readers will be able to identify with the questions, struggles, and issues raised by these young people. Part II includes summarizations of four young adults’ stories as told to Lorna and Bill Goldberg, two psychotherapists who specialize in working with former cult members. To protect the privacy of these individuals, we have used pseudonyms and changed some of the facts in these accounts. The Goldbergs’ chapter, which leads off Part II, provides an overview of the common themes that emerge in working with former members of the Boston movement. Part III contains three autobiographical accounts written by former ICC members, giving a somewhat fuller picture of their recruitment, involvement, and departure from the particular local group with which they were involved. This section concludes with an account by Kimberly Logan (a pseudonym), the mother of a young woman who joined and is still involved with the movement. We thought it important to include input from a parent, as it not only gives another perspective but also may provide solace and insight to thousands of parents around the country, and around the world, who no doubt struggle with many of the same issues as does this mother. Since the ICC focuses its recruitment primarily on college campuses, many of its recruits have just recently left home. Most often, it is these new members’ relationship with their parents that is the first to feel the negative impact of the person’s involvement with the Boston movement. Part IV begins with two chapters by Carol Giambalvo, a leading exit counselor with considerable knowledge about the International Churches of Christ. She provides us with an insider’s view of the exit counseling process as well as describing some of the analytical tools used in such meetings. In Chapter 12, which is based on an actual case, Ms. Giambalvo describes the interchange that took place between an exit counseling team and a current member of an ICC church. The unfolding of the exit counseling sessions clarifies the issues involved as well as the process itself. ICC’s questionable techniques are clearly revealed as Ms. Giambalvo takes us through the process of informing someone about the kind of deception and manipulation found in the group’s recruitment activities and its ongoing efforts to gain and secure an increased commitment from members and recruits. Both Chapters 12 and 13 show us the value of using the accepted criteria to define cultic environments as a means to evaluate a group’s indoctrination practices and training techniques. In her exposition Ms. Giambalvo relies on Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer’s six conditions for a thought-reform environment along with the eight psychological themes that Dr. Robert Lifton associates with such environments. (Both sets of criteria are presented with commentary in the Appendices.) Clinical psychologist Margaret Singer is a leading authority on cults and psychological influence, and has made enormous contributions to this field during the past several decades.

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