Conservative leader Bill Gothard placed on administrative leave following abuse allegations
Sarah Pulliam Bailey
ReligionNews.com
Feb 28, 2014
There are several aspects to this, and I'll try to touch on as many as my half-sleep-fogged-half-caffeinated brain can recall intelligibly. This isn't a court of law, nor, AFAIK, are any of the individual cases that make up this situation going to go to court. Still, I think requiring accusers to at least show evidence for their accusations a prudent and right standard. But for simplicity's sake and to reduce verbal prolixity and pretzallation, I will "speak" as if it is known that most or all of the accusations are true. Just keep in mind - as I do as I write this - that the entirety of what follows is predicated on a big, gigantic, IF.(RNS) Bill Gothard, an Illinois-based advocate for home-schooling and conservative dress and who also warned against rock music and debt, has been placed on administrative leave after allegations of sexually harassing women who worked at his ministry and failing to report child abuse cases.
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In a statement posted Thursday, board chairman Billy Boring told World magazine: “After completion of the review, the board will respond at an appropriate time, and in a biblical manner.” Until then, the statement said, Gothard “will not be involved in the operations of the ministry. The board of directors will be prayerfully appointing interim leadership.”
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One woman behind the Recovering Grace website, who declined to be named because she did not want to hurt the reputation of her husband who is a pastor, said 34 women have claimed to be sexually harassed and four women have alleged molestation. She said she refers anyone whose story is within the statute of limitations to the police.
IBLP is not the only institution in more conservative evangelical circles currently under scrutiny.
The first, most obvious, aspect is what happened to these young ladies. I've not heard any claims of rape, but sexual touching against their will, sexual and demeaning comments, not being believed, and the touching and remarks being made by some one who is in authority and who is much respected for personal morality (whom the young ladies respected for uprightness!) is nightmarishly horrible.
Ordinarily, I would have said this first, but given the nature of what is claimed to have happened ... Anyway, the nature and beliefs of the Institute for Basic Life Principles lend credence to these claims, that at least some are seen by IBLP as potentially real. The standard IBLP would apply for considering such accusations would be 1 Timothy 5:19, "Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses." I believe IBLP's board took the action they did because there are multiple witnesses whose claims are credible enough to warrant serious investigation.
I don't know how well known Bill Gothard's name is, generally. I first heard of him in 1973, from a room mate who had attended one of his seminars while in high school. Since then, Gothard's name and teachings have intersected my life a number of times, the latest being about 10 years ago when I actually went to one of his week-long (video) seminars. But I realize that Gothard is pretty well-known in the Evangelical and homeschooling circles in which I've traveled the past 4+ decades. So I'll attempt an analogy to illustrate how I perceive the impact of this. If a credible accusation of this sort being made against Pope Francis or Billy Graham were a magnitude 10 earthquake, against Bill Gothard they are about magnitude 9.
"By their fruit ..." - Heretofore I've regarded the fruit of Gothard's ministry as substantially mixed, but much more good that bad. At this point, I don't see reason yet to change that assessment. That Gothard seems not to have followed all the truth he taught does not render untrue the truth he taught. Over some 5 decades 100s of thousands of young people, parents and other adults have been substantially benefited from Gothard's teachings. Ultimately the credit belongs to the message, Scripture, but Gothard was the messenger, not an insignificant role. At the same time (speaking personally) there are things Gothard taught that were/are well beyond what Scripture teaches. Without diving, at this point, into details (that might be boring), there were several cultural things he condemned entirely because they had been used for evil and because they were not things in which he saw value. I was and am on the other side of some of these things, and recognized that the things were not, of themselves, evil. Further, Gothard - and many who might be described as following him - always impressed me as legalistic. For Christians, obedience to what God says are right and wrong is right, but that is not the basis for Christians' relationship with God. Gothard and his "followers" devoted such energy and time to things external that God's love and grace seemed obscured.
Much has been made, publicly, of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. The problem was/is real, and should not be ignored. Nor should all Catholics or Catholic priests be tarred with the horrible acts (and concealments) of a few. Guess what? The US main-stream media (MSM) cover it reluctantly, but such sexual abuses happen in public schools. As Bill Gothard illustrates (apparently), such sexual abuses happen among Protestants (far from exclusively among theologically conservative Protestants, BTW); why the MSM only cover the few more notorious cases (e.g. Jimmy Swaggart) eludes me, unless its the less centralized and less hierarchical nature of Protestant churches. Much as, apparently, the US MSM and pop culture want US folk to think that sexual abuse is endemic to the Catholic Church (and maybe now Evangelicals will make this bogeyman short-list), the problem is not with any institution, but with human beings. All of us! We express (and control) our natures differently - only a few through sexual abuse of children, but there are other sins in which we may and do indulge. Lord Acton's say about authority is justly famous, but it is misleading in one significant sense. People with authority are not passive in being corrupted. Misuse and abuse of authority comes from within them, not from outside. People with authority - be it governmental or spiritual - need to keep themselves on short leashes, and have several other persons holding some of those leashes. Gothard illustrates this. Evidently, he broke or dropped some of the leashes he held; but at least one leash - that held by IBLP's board - has been used to jerk him back. But it may prove that the leash held by the board was too long, as it seems that Bill Gothard's abuse and harassment may have gone on over two decades or so.
Personally, I'm saddened by all this. My respect for Bill Gothard was very qualified, but I did respect much of what he had done. The good things he had done are real, but, given his age, chances are it has come to an end. And given the nature of IBLP - very tied to the person of Bill Gothard, who developed and founded IBLP - the organization is not likely to survive. By way of contrast, consider Billy Graham. His son Franklin has been given the leadership of BGEA, and he seems to be taking it on very ably; more broadly (and outside of the BGEA organization) Franklin is not alone in large events as an evangelistic ministry. Greg Laurie and Harvest Crusades comes to mind. So literally and in spirit, Billy Graham's ministry will survive his death, and become larger than what Billy Graham could do. Bill Gothard's ministry seems likely to die before he does, at Bill Gothard's own hand. The truth of Scripture Gothard did teach will not die, but Gothard has, IMO, tarnished how people perceive it.