It isn’t just Fundy U Admin, I have a hard time realizing my kids are older than they are, and capable of doing much more than I think they can.
I think that’s just a Mamma Thing. Just ask my older son, now a college freshman. He says I’m the Queen of Nag. (Does this helicopter propeller make my head look fat?)
You beat me to it. I think all parents see their kids like this.
The back-slidden girl in the bottom picture is obviously trying to defraud the boys around her with her short skirt. True, she’s covering them up with her hands for the picture, but everyone knows they are there.
Nice
You nailed it. What makes it worse is that many Fundy Parents send their children to Fundy U because Fundy Parents still see their adult children this way too. If Fundy Parents truly saw their kids as adults who can make their own decisions, they would think twice about the Nanny State that is Fundy U.
On the other hand, some teens are far too immature to attend college, but it is the common practice, so parents feel trapped.
I wasn’t ready to go away to college when I was 18, so I went to community college. Best. Decision. Ever. It allowed me to get used to college without having to learn how to live on my own. Plus, it was cheaper.
“Shiny, happy people!” 😀
I detested collegian meeting for this very reason. I hated it. The maturity of these college kids was infantile….
+1 … said the collegian pres…
I went to Maranatha Baptist Bible College(MBBC) in Watertown, WI after only being saved for a little over a year. Talk about culture shock! I couldn’t believe how immature the students were and the fact that I had to get a pass to go home…….puulllease. My mom trusted me to make my own decisions when I was 18 and going to this place made me feel like I had been regressed back to grade school.
I remember walking through town and hearing, “hey fundy, nice skirt!” LOL. I only lasted two years and then I left. According to the Dean of Women, I was listening to Satan if I left school which was a horrible scarey thing to say to me b/c I was a new Christian.
This is EXACTLY how the fundy u sees the students. Not as young adults who are legal to vote or who can make their own decisions, but as 10 year olds who they have to try rule ever aspect of their life. This is why I only made it 1 semester at bju and a full year at pcc then I went to a “liberal” Christian university that was fully state accredited, treated us like people (curfew was midnight on weekdays and 2 am on weekends. If you did not want to get in trouble, just don’t come back that night and they had open dorms once a month so you could actually see that these “strange” female creatures lived like normal humans as well and did not just “pop” out of these big buildings to go to class.
Doesn’t ring a bell here. My older son really grew up in college, due to his good work ethics he was given an area of responsibility that suited his Asperger’s, and it really made him feel good about himself that he continues to be able to contribute. Also, the rules where a road map for him, us Asperger people get lost in the options at times. Rules make things easier, in dating for example.
I used to have responsibilities at AA meetings, like being there early to open up, make coffee, clean up afterwards, be treasurer, lead the meeting, etc.
I could function very well in these situations where I understood the purpose. Mingling with the crowd after the meeting was impossible for me. I get completely lost in the crowd, I cannot connect. I’m fine one on one and in structured situations. I do realize that for neurotypicals (“normal” people) that whole fundy U thing is a different experience.
I have an adult son with Asperger’s. He is a college junior at a public university and is doing well. He does much better when there are rules, guidelines, and responsibilities, too.
Sometimes you feel like your swimming upstream in an unfamiliar river and then you find someone who is on a very similiar journey as you. Made me smile today.
Actually, as an aspie also, a Fundy U would have been like wearing a collar and leash around my neck. No way would I even have let my parents tell me how to live my life at that age much less send me to a Fundy U.
Some of us aspies are famously too stubborn for those kind of unwarranted restrictions and would raise holy hell if we were treated like children when we’re adults. I get so sick and tired of people always trying to infantilize us. We may need extra help at times but we are not babies, for god’s sake.
just by living you make mistakes. college is where you learn from your mistakes. you dont go to class you dont pass. you drink to much beer you get a hangover. you find out that the date that let you go all the way let everyone go all the way and you go to student health for antibiotics. you learn that the sociology professor is an a**hole but he teaches you how to think for yourself. I spent 3rd through 9th grade in private school. I didnt learn about the real world or how to interact until public school. the sooner you learn life skills the better off you are I have never put my children in private school and.never will in a.college level or.otherwise
BJU is particularly proud that they think of themselves as parents for their students…..but I’ll go ahead and call attention to the elephant in the room. MOST STUDENTS IN FUNDY U ARE EXACTLY HOW THE ADMIN PERCEIVES THEM TO BE!!! They are innocently ignorant children with the maturity of a 3rd. grade student. Sure not all of us fit that mold but for the most part the average Fundy U student is about as capable of handling life as a child in the desert. I’m just saying…..
You are right about the immaturity. The “authority” figures at the school don’t let the students make any decisions other than what tie they can wear with their suit(any color but pink). Without the ability to make any life decisions, they are left in the cradle where they will never grow up. The exceptions to that rule are the backsliders and rebels that figure out early in life that they want something more. Luckily I got out of fundyland just in time. No fundyU for me!
Unfortunately, a lot of the kids in Fundy U come from backgrounds that didn’t give them opportunities to decide for themselves, learn from their mistakes, and grow up. If you’ve always been told what to do, your maturity level is probably closer to what you’d expect from the second picture than the first. They’d be lost in a secular school. To too many fundies, that’s a feature, not a bug.
And this is what bothered me almost more than anything else at Bob’s. The constant paternalism, checking up, condesencion. I blame Bob’s for my continuing radical anti-establishment streak.
This problem just doesn’t exist with fundamentalist schools. I transferred to Houghton College back in the early 70s from a community college. At the community college, we were treated as adults. At Houghton, we were children. I especially saw this attitude among the older women faculty. Things have most likely changed over the years, but when I went back to Houghton for Homecoming, I got the same feeling again.
I think that the prevailing attitude in these institutions is that we need to be watched so that we don’t fall into sin. They are also obsessed with their reputation.
Just recently, I went to a KJV-only fundy church in Erie, PA. The pastor was obsessed with the idea that members–all 14 of them in the congregation–would do something to harm the reputation of the church. He was also obsessed with the idea that if people found out “we” were members of his church, we would be persecuted for our beliefs. Where in the world does he even get the idea that anyone really cares if people attend church or not. I never got that attitude from mainline churches.
I guess that it all comes down to a control mentality. Leadership feels that it needs to control people. I was in a Sunday School class for singles for a while, and we were treated, ever so subtly, that we were somehow inferior because we weren’t married. This became painfully obvious when a couple that “got the hint” announced their engagement, and the leaders were so proud that they would be graduating from the singles group. I decided to depart at that point. This was also the type of place where rumors started to fly the moment a guy was seen in a prolonged conversation with a single woman.
While I was still a member, I remember staring at the leader, who was making some sort of jackass comments, and the leader went unhinged because I was challenging authority by my nonverbal communication. This wasn’t a fundy church as such, but the problems still exist because people have been brainwashed with this mentality.
Fortunately, I’m in a church where this mentality doesn’t exist. However, in the fundy mindset, all Lutherans are going to hell anyway because they don’t know Christ, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
We are?
seriously?
I am also super glad to be in a Lutheran church today….:)
LCMS saved my brother, in more ways than one. Very thankful for my Lutheran brothers in Christ!
The only thing I know about Lutherans is that they are anything BUT single. In fact, Lutherans have got to be the horniest people around who will ***&! literally anything or anybody: man, woman, groups, etc. The only thing I know about Lutherans is that they were in the news only every day a couple of years ago and they were tripping all over themselves trying to be gayer and more sexually open than anyone else. No, I’m not being cynical either. This is the perception that we get of them from the news. I have no idea if they have any other thought processes other than trying to have sex, and especially homosexual sex.
After reading Mr. Jenkins’ comment, I can only conclude that someone is certainly obsessed with sex. Especially gay sex.
Houghton, really? We loved our visit there. It was first choice bot all the lake effect moisture be problematic to a student allerfic to mold. But ACU has been great (and very dry). They teach the students as adults, as they should be.
Wow. This is exactly what it felt like while attending my bible college. It was so frustrating trying to explain to those close to me how frustrating this was
When I was in school (Ok, I’ll admit it, the good ol’ Bob), I actually had multiple teachers on several occasions refer to us as children. I kid you not. I even had one go as far as to tell us all to shut up and sit down and if we had any questions we were to raise our hands. This was in an art class where it was pretty helpful to walk around and get ideas from each other and discuss your design. I am so glad to be done and finally an “adult” at 23 years old! 😛
I need to add that it is not just college students. At one time in my past, I was pretty close to some staff people – and the policies that they had for adults working at the church were amazing in the very, very poor attitude they had toward these (supposedly) Christian brothers & sisters. They acted like they were all second & third graders that could not get along.
One of my favorite movie lines of all time is Dory to Marlin in Finding Nemo:
Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.
Wow. I’m kinda glad now that I decided to ignore my ex-pastor’s advice to go to a Fundy Bible College and started out in a community college instead. In community college, nobody policed you. The help was there, but you had to go get it. I can see how a fundy kid would interpret that as some kind of diabolical system that brews temptations like mold.
Heck, this is how many fundie parents view their own grown children. I can recall many times when my parents would not accept advice from me or my siblings, even if their adult friends agreed with me. If the advice came from their children, to my parents that advice was suspect.
Many fundies seem to believe that “children should be scene and not heard” in actually in the bible.
One of the great things about modern technology is that often parents need to ask children for advice on how to operate the computer or I-pod. Probably right now somewhere in fundieland, a MOG is asking his 10 year old son how to delete his web surfing history.
😛 🙂
And the 10-year-old son did, right after he emailed a copy to everyone on the e-mail list and saved a copy… 😈
Wow! This seems to be a vicious cycle – Fundy kids don’t grow up making choices, so they can’t think for themselves and have a low maturity level. When they get to college, they are watched over like little children because of their low maturity level, so they never learn to think. Those poor young people never stand a chance.
On another note, many staff members have to put up with the same treatment – sit down, shut up, and let the pastor make all the decisions.
It’s just now how you should treat grown people.
IMO, it’s not just college students. So many fundy pastors refer to their congrations as “babes in Christ” and refuse to let them grow up. Week after week they feed adults the spiritual equivalent of formula and strained beets and wonder why they’re not growing in the Lord. Or maybe I’m being too generous and they’re keeping the sheeple ignorant on perpose. Much easier to control that way 👿
What would a mannogid do if the congregation actually started thinking for themselves? He needs to be able to tell them what to read and, most importantly, what NOT to read. Who to listen to and who NOT to listen to.
Haha that’s my church. Their version of deep Bible teaching is a cursory glance at Revelation 🙄 I would love love love to see them in Ephesians! Or any of Paul’s epistles other than Heb. 11!
Looks like good ol’ WCBC.
Yes, it does! Most definitely.
Indeed it is. Spent four years there. And 40k. Yikes, that thought hurts. 😯
Sort of like “I spent $40k and all I got was this crappy unaccredited degree that is hardly worth the paper it was written on”.
My condolences.
It does go deeper than the colleges. Fundy Highs are worse. As well as Fundy Baptist. The pastor of the church that sponsored our Fundy High “preached” a sermon every September, when the new TV season started, from the TV Guide. He would tell the church what shows they could and couldn’t watch.
I do remsmber some of the the list of inappropriate shows, over thirty years later. Sesame Street was a perrenial favorite. It had evil music. Since we went to a different church, my younger siblings were allowed to watch those evil PBS programs.
So you can make life-determing and life-altering decisions about the state of your eternal soul and the direction of your life at the age of 5, (i.e. ‘I want to be a missionary, I want to marry a preacher, I want to tell everybody about Jesus), but 13+ years later you can’t be trusted to pick the right clothes or go to bed on time.
Well put!
I was accused once by a public elementary school teacher that in my perfect Christian little world I didn’t understand why the kids “needed” to read this book I was objecting to. Yet my son knew his biological Dad who deserted him at age 4 (and never heard of him again), our then pastor had adopted 9 children with very heavy emotional and physical baggage out of the Michigan adoption catalog (comes out monthly, shows all those kids nobody wants – see http://www.mare.org), and once in Christian school the teacher and principal commented that of all the children in the classroom only one was living with both her biological parents. We also worked in the Reformers Unanimous ministry, among other things had a convicted murderer over for a cookout (he had served his sentence), had people go through withdrawals at our house, plenty times turned on the local news and see familiar faces there, either in trouble or dead; my kids knew the homeless ladies I picked up on Friday nights at the Rescue mission,….I could go on and on. We were definitely not detached from the real world in fundy life. My stepdaughter went through the R/U residential program in Rockford. My kids know that their step/halfbrother’s wife had an abortion, and that she was a stripper. They know of his court appointments and his heroin addiction.
They saw me and my hubby fighting, and they saw me leave. We must have really sucked at this fundy living thing, because one thing it didn’t do for us was keeping us in la-la-land. We’re too screwed up to do it right, haha.
Ok folks, I’ve been gone for a while but a crazy post on fb from a member of my old fundy church pissed me off and drove me back here so hello again! I know I should just drop the craziness from fb but their insanity still blows my mind…ok I will admit it I am nearing 40 years old. My father for most of my adult life treated me as a child. Even though i was in fundy training to be a Jr MOG (youth pastor) upon graduation i took a job in the evil world and according to those surrounding me, “abandonded my calling.” my over all childhood and college days in no way trained me for life. Several years after college and after all the guilt of “throwing away my life” I escaped!!!! I ran to the hills I ran for my life. I found a great church that loves me and finally after all these years I am free thinking adult who has not lost my way but I do think you are all crazy (the fundy fundies that is) and I pray you stop screwing up kids lives. I plan for my kids to have a much different life than I. Glad to be back!
Hi again, Wheels!
Even after an initial inoculation of freedom, occasional boosters of grace and love are recommended if one is going to be re-exposed to the IFBX!(x=extreme)
then there was my teaching year….I taught German for one year to grades 7-12. I have no teaching degree, but parents and teachers were excited to have a native speaker of the language teach. The kids simply were who they were. Some worked hard to succeed, some worked hard to still struggle, some didn’t have to work hard to succeed, etc.
I wouldn’t do this now, because the school has had such a turnover, and I realize now that just walking into a classroom with no experience is less than what the kids deserve, and what the parents pay for.
Just in the recent years that school has had teachers that just weren’t good teachers, and they kept leaving. If anything, that’s the main problem I see with this private school philosophy. Flying below the radar, and having teachers that either make everything too easy (“study sheets” for tests that contain all the answers they will need), or not finishing the whole curriculum for the year, or not communicating problems to the parents….
What is devastating to some, who have grown up in a fundy culture and possess what I would call “a loyalty gene”, is to have children who have no such “gene”. These kids seem to just have to find out what the real world is all about. They almost have to question and buck the fundy system. They are often met with the “all or nothing” compliance system from fundy high schools/colleges. They are rarely taken from where they are in their spiritual journey to where they could be. It’s either “shape up or ship out.” Much of what they are excepted to “shape up to” has nothing to do with biblical principles, just fundy opinions or extreme right wing interpretations of biblical principles. They are often compared to the fundy “cream of the crop” among their peers and when they make attempts to better themselves, they are often ignored because of how short they fall of the unrealistic, cookie-cutter expectations.
The “loyal” parents are often at a loss as how to help these kids/young adults. It sure does make the fundy/former fundy parents think about how they should treat others, who do not display blind loyalty to authority.
YES!!! Yes yes yes. My mom is loyal to extreme, whatever church she is at. I’m not going to sit around with my eyes shut saying la-la-la-la and she just doesn’t get it.
I’m in my 50’s, and I still see college aged people as children, still developing and growing and in need of care and protection. No, I do not think the decisions of most 21 year olds are as valid and endurable (for them, for the rest of their lives) as the decisions of that same person at 27-28. I wouldn’t deal with young adults the way that Fundy U does, but neither would I assume they are competent adults. Many are not.
Pulled the fundy U card Bass
I strongly disagree with this statement:
<>
This attitude does nothing but stunt the growth of college and college aged students. Some of those “incompetent” adults serve in the armed forces and protect our country. Others, like my grandparents, my parents, my aunts, uncles, and others, married at “incompetent” ages, raised families, and with a few exceptions, stayed together and loved each other for life. Treat students like kids, they’ll act like kids. Treat them as adults, and most will rise to the occasion.
I came to be a Christian while in a large secular University. The Campus Minister treated us like adults. He loaned us one of his cars to make a missions trip to Mexico. And we went by ourselves. Then I left that school and worked for 7 years. I went back to graduate school at MBBC. They began treating me like a child. I was not allowed to rent movies. I lived off campus and my wife was not allowed to wear pants. If I had a student come babysit my children any movie they watched in my home had to be approved in writing by the dean of women. (My only question was, “How would they know what the student watched or didn’t watch?”)
We had to fill out little reports every Tuesday telling where we went to church. Sunday am, pm and Wednesday. And you were required to wear suit and tie to every service except Wed, where we could skip the jacket.They even told us what kind of music we could listen to in our homes, off campus. I followed some of the rules, but the ridiculous ones were a joke. The students got to know that if we asked them to babysit, they could watch any movies they wanted. So we would ask one girl and she would ask if she could bring a few friends. Several times they brought 5 or 6 other girls. Our kids had a blast. And when we tried to pay them, they laughed and said, “We should be paying you, we had so much fun.” These on campus students felt like they were in a stranglehold and any chance to escape was welcome. I could tell many more stories, like the 4 girls who skipped church and had a car accident and killed several of them. Of course they were used as sermon illustrations about disobedience to God. That made me sick. After a year and a half, I realized what I was in but I was too far along to just quit, so I finished. There was one benefit, they gaine regional accreditation while I was there.
sounds like a CULT to me…
Anytime a group has that much control over what someone does it is either the military, a penitentiary, or a cult.
I attended 1.5 years at Golden State Baptist College. This picture looks like it may be at GSBC but I’m not sure. You are more than treated as an infant…you are treated as a complete criminal. My friend & I wanted to stay healthy so we went running at a local high school track (with a pass) and were accused of wearing immodest clothing & taking our shirts off. ?!?! So, we tried running around the campus & we were told to stop because we were causing men/guys to lust exercising in front of them. We were told to get a mini trampoline & exercise privately the way Mrs. Trieber did. 😕 That is only one instance… it was awful. I was kicked out just after making a final and LARGE payment for “not having the Golden Spirit”. No other explanation… just had to go and no refund of course. 😡
Not that men who lust after women who are simply jogging – while wearing “modest” clothing, no less – should be the ones getting into trouble….of course not. It is always considered the fault of the women.
Jogging while wearing Burkas would not be enough to satisfy those in Baptist Taliban college administration. 👿
It really sucks that they waited until you made a large tuition payment to kick you out…but, just like my former fundy church south of yours, it is often about $$$$$$.
There was also a rule no coming to class with wet or damp hair because it would make guys think about how your hair got damp…
It is after my experience at Golden State that I realized fundy pastors, administrators, etc. are complete perverts because everything is somehow sexualized and blamed on the women. Sickos.
Ah, did you go to West Coast? At Golden State it was a sad joke about how there was always a round of “cleaning house” after payments were due. 😕
What?!! Did they have a rule giving demerits to guys who forgot to zip up? Were they penalized? :snort:
I tend to be grateful when women “make” me lust after them!
Its funny that they won’t let young women exercise, but then they criticize women if they gain some weight.
Yes. Exactly. It sexual if you exercise. But if you don’t, you will never get a husband. It’s a lose-lose situation… I just chose to sneak off and run around the track. Guess I really didn’t have the “Golden Spirit”! HA! 😆
Haha! Yes, we “make” people. How awful of us! 🙄
All of these comments remind all too well of WCBC’s rules. My girlfriend at the time/now soon to be wife (I was one of the lucky few to meet an amazing girl who has the ability to think for herself) would tell me all of the ‘unwritten rules’ the girls had to abide by. I was appalled.
Some of the rules could only be thought of by a man with serious sexual issues. Like not being able to go to class with wet hair? Really?
Unfortunately, as a result, the vast majority of the students suffered with serious immaturity issues.
I thank God my love and I were able to break away and still remain Christians.
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A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
Hello???
Indeed
It isn’t just Fundy U Admin, I have a hard time realizing my kids are older than they are, and capable of doing much more than I think they can.
I think that’s just a Mamma Thing. Just ask my older son, now a college freshman. He says I’m the Queen of Nag. (Does this helicopter propeller make my head look fat?)
You beat me to it. I think all parents see their kids like this.
The back-slidden girl in the bottom picture is obviously trying to defraud the boys around her with her short skirt. True, she’s covering them up with her hands for the picture, but everyone knows they are there.
Nice
You nailed it. What makes it worse is that many Fundy Parents send their children to Fundy U because Fundy Parents still see their adult children this way too. If Fundy Parents truly saw their kids as adults who can make their own decisions, they would think twice about the Nanny State that is Fundy U.
On the other hand, some teens are far too immature to attend college, but it is the common practice, so parents feel trapped.
I wasn’t ready to go away to college when I was 18, so I went to community college. Best. Decision. Ever. It allowed me to get used to college without having to learn how to live on my own. Plus, it was cheaper.
“Shiny, happy people!” 😀
I detested collegian meeting for this very reason. I hated it. The maturity of these college kids was infantile….
+1 … said the collegian pres…
I went to Maranatha Baptist Bible College(MBBC) in Watertown, WI after only being saved for a little over a year. Talk about culture shock! I couldn’t believe how immature the students were and the fact that I had to get a pass to go home…….puulllease. My mom trusted me to make my own decisions when I was 18 and going to this place made me feel like I had been regressed back to grade school.
I remember walking through town and hearing, “hey fundy, nice skirt!” LOL. I only lasted two years and then I left. According to the Dean of Women, I was listening to Satan if I left school which was a horrible scarey thing to say to me b/c I was a new Christian.
This is EXACTLY how the fundy u sees the students. Not as young adults who are legal to vote or who can make their own decisions, but as 10 year olds who they have to try rule ever aspect of their life. This is why I only made it 1 semester at bju and a full year at pcc then I went to a “liberal” Christian university that was fully state accredited, treated us like people (curfew was midnight on weekdays and 2 am on weekends. If you did not want to get in trouble, just don’t come back that night and they had open dorms once a month so you could actually see that these “strange” female creatures lived like normal humans as well and did not just “pop” out of these big buildings to go to class.
Doesn’t ring a bell here. My older son really grew up in college, due to his good work ethics he was given an area of responsibility that suited his Asperger’s, and it really made him feel good about himself that he continues to be able to contribute. Also, the rules where a road map for him, us Asperger people get lost in the options at times. Rules make things easier, in dating for example.
I used to have responsibilities at AA meetings, like being there early to open up, make coffee, clean up afterwards, be treasurer, lead the meeting, etc.
I could function very well in these situations where I understood the purpose. Mingling with the crowd after the meeting was impossible for me. I get completely lost in the crowd, I cannot connect. I’m fine one on one and in structured situations. I do realize that for neurotypicals (“normal” people) that whole fundy U thing is a different experience.
I have an adult son with Asperger’s. He is a college junior at a public university and is doing well. He does much better when there are rules, guidelines, and responsibilities, too.
Sometimes you feel like your swimming upstream in an unfamiliar river and then you find someone who is on a very similiar journey as you. Made me smile today.
Actually, as an aspie also, a Fundy U would have been like wearing a collar and leash around my neck. No way would I even have let my parents tell me how to live my life at that age much less send me to a Fundy U.
Some of us aspies are famously too stubborn for those kind of unwarranted restrictions and would raise holy hell if we were treated like children when we’re adults. I get so sick and tired of people always trying to infantilize us. We may need extra help at times but we are not babies, for god’s sake.
just by living you make mistakes. college is where you learn from your mistakes. you dont go to class you dont pass. you drink to much beer you get a hangover. you find out that the date that let you go all the way let everyone go all the way and you go to student health for antibiotics. you learn that the sociology professor is an a**hole but he teaches you how to think for yourself. I spent 3rd through 9th grade in private school. I didnt learn about the real world or how to interact until public school. the sooner you learn life skills the better off you are I have never put my children in private school and.never will in a.college level or.otherwise
BJU is particularly proud that they think of themselves as parents for their students…..but I’ll go ahead and call attention to the elephant in the room. MOST STUDENTS IN FUNDY U ARE EXACTLY HOW THE ADMIN PERCEIVES THEM TO BE!!! They are innocently ignorant children with the maturity of a 3rd. grade student. Sure not all of us fit that mold but for the most part the average Fundy U student is about as capable of handling life as a child in the desert. I’m just saying…..
You are right about the immaturity. The “authority” figures at the school don’t let the students make any decisions other than what tie they can wear with their suit(any color but pink). Without the ability to make any life decisions, they are left in the cradle where they will never grow up. The exceptions to that rule are the backsliders and rebels that figure out early in life that they want something more. Luckily I got out of fundyland just in time. No fundyU for me!
Unfortunately, a lot of the kids in Fundy U come from backgrounds that didn’t give them opportunities to decide for themselves, learn from their mistakes, and grow up. If you’ve always been told what to do, your maturity level is probably closer to what you’d expect from the second picture than the first. They’d be lost in a secular school. To too many fundies, that’s a feature, not a bug.
And this is what bothered me almost more than anything else at Bob’s. The constant paternalism, checking up, condesencion. I blame Bob’s for my continuing radical anti-establishment streak.
This problem just doesn’t exist with fundamentalist schools. I transferred to Houghton College back in the early 70s from a community college. At the community college, we were treated as adults. At Houghton, we were children. I especially saw this attitude among the older women faculty. Things have most likely changed over the years, but when I went back to Houghton for Homecoming, I got the same feeling again.
I think that the prevailing attitude in these institutions is that we need to be watched so that we don’t fall into sin. They are also obsessed with their reputation.
Just recently, I went to a KJV-only fundy church in Erie, PA. The pastor was obsessed with the idea that members–all 14 of them in the congregation–would do something to harm the reputation of the church. He was also obsessed with the idea that if people found out “we” were members of his church, we would be persecuted for our beliefs. Where in the world does he even get the idea that anyone really cares if people attend church or not. I never got that attitude from mainline churches.
I guess that it all comes down to a control mentality. Leadership feels that it needs to control people. I was in a Sunday School class for singles for a while, and we were treated, ever so subtly, that we were somehow inferior because we weren’t married. This became painfully obvious when a couple that “got the hint” announced their engagement, and the leaders were so proud that they would be graduating from the singles group. I decided to depart at that point. This was also the type of place where rumors started to fly the moment a guy was seen in a prolonged conversation with a single woman.
While I was still a member, I remember staring at the leader, who was making some sort of jackass comments, and the leader went unhinged because I was challenging authority by my nonverbal communication. This wasn’t a fundy church as such, but the problems still exist because people have been brainwashed with this mentality.
Fortunately, I’m in a church where this mentality doesn’t exist. However, in the fundy mindset, all Lutherans are going to hell anyway because they don’t know Christ, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
We are?
seriously?
I am also super glad to be in a Lutheran church today….:)
LCMS saved my brother, in more ways than one. Very thankful for my Lutheran brothers in Christ!
The only thing I know about Lutherans is that they are anything BUT single. In fact, Lutherans have got to be the horniest people around who will ***&! literally anything or anybody: man, woman, groups, etc. The only thing I know about Lutherans is that they were in the news only every day a couple of years ago and they were tripping all over themselves trying to be gayer and more sexually open than anyone else. No, I’m not being cynical either. This is the perception that we get of them from the news. I have no idea if they have any other thought processes other than trying to have sex, and especially homosexual sex.
After reading Mr. Jenkins’ comment, I can only conclude that someone is certainly obsessed with sex. Especially gay sex.
Houghton, really? We loved our visit there. It was first choice bot all the lake effect moisture be problematic to a student allerfic to mold. But ACU has been great (and very dry). They teach the students as adults, as they should be.
Wow. This is exactly what it felt like while attending my bible college. It was so frustrating trying to explain to those close to me how frustrating this was
When I was in school (Ok, I’ll admit it, the good ol’ Bob), I actually had multiple teachers on several occasions refer to us as children. I kid you not. I even had one go as far as to tell us all to shut up and sit down and if we had any questions we were to raise our hands. This was in an art class where it was pretty helpful to walk around and get ideas from each other and discuss your design. I am so glad to be done and finally an “adult” at 23 years old! 😛
I need to add that it is not just college students. At one time in my past, I was pretty close to some staff people – and the policies that they had for adults working at the church were amazing in the very, very poor attitude they had toward these (supposedly) Christian brothers & sisters. They acted like they were all second & third graders that could not get along.
One of my favorite movie lines of all time is Dory to Marlin in Finding Nemo:
Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.
Wow. I’m kinda glad now that I decided to ignore my ex-pastor’s advice to go to a Fundy Bible College and started out in a community college instead. In community college, nobody policed you. The help was there, but you had to go get it. I can see how a fundy kid would interpret that as some kind of diabolical system that brews temptations like mold.
Heck, this is how many fundie parents view their own grown children. I can recall many times when my parents would not accept advice from me or my siblings, even if their adult friends agreed with me. If the advice came from their children, to my parents that advice was suspect.
Many fundies seem to believe that “children should be scene and not heard” in actually in the bible.
One of the great things about modern technology is that often parents need to ask children for advice on how to operate the computer or I-pod. Probably right now somewhere in fundieland, a MOG is asking his 10 year old son how to delete his web surfing history.
And the 10-year-old son did, right after he emailed a copy to everyone on the e-mail list and saved a copy… 😈
Wow! This seems to be a vicious cycle – Fundy kids don’t grow up making choices, so they can’t think for themselves and have a low maturity level. When they get to college, they are watched over like little children because of their low maturity level, so they never learn to think. Those poor young people never stand a chance.
On another note, many staff members have to put up with the same treatment – sit down, shut up, and let the pastor make all the decisions.
It’s just now how you should treat grown people.
IMO, it’s not just college students. So many fundy pastors refer to their congrations as “babes in Christ” and refuse to let them grow up. Week after week they feed adults the spiritual equivalent of formula and strained beets and wonder why they’re not growing in the Lord. Or maybe I’m being too generous and they’re keeping the sheeple ignorant on perpose. Much easier to control that way 👿
What would a mannogid do if the congregation actually started thinking for themselves? He needs to be able to tell them what to read and, most importantly, what NOT to read. Who to listen to and who NOT to listen to.
Haha that’s my church. Their version of deep Bible teaching is a cursory glance at Revelation 🙄 I would love love love to see them in Ephesians! Or any of Paul’s epistles other than Heb. 11!
Looks like good ol’ WCBC.
Yes, it does! Most definitely.
Indeed it is. Spent four years there. And 40k. Yikes, that thought hurts. 😯
Sort of like “I spent $40k and all I got was this crappy unaccredited degree that is hardly worth the paper it was written on”.
My condolences.
It does go deeper than the colleges. Fundy Highs are worse. As well as Fundy Baptist. The pastor of the church that sponsored our Fundy High “preached” a sermon every September, when the new TV season started, from the TV Guide. He would tell the church what shows they could and couldn’t watch.
I do remsmber some of the the list of inappropriate shows, over thirty years later. Sesame Street was a perrenial favorite. It had evil music. Since we went to a different church, my younger siblings were allowed to watch those evil PBS programs.
So you can make life-determing and life-altering decisions about the state of your eternal soul and the direction of your life at the age of 5, (i.e. ‘I want to be a missionary, I want to marry a preacher, I want to tell everybody about Jesus), but 13+ years later you can’t be trusted to pick the right clothes or go to bed on time.
Well put!
I was accused once by a public elementary school teacher that in my perfect Christian little world I didn’t understand why the kids “needed” to read this book I was objecting to. Yet my son knew his biological Dad who deserted him at age 4 (and never heard of him again), our then pastor had adopted 9 children with very heavy emotional and physical baggage out of the Michigan adoption catalog (comes out monthly, shows all those kids nobody wants – see http://www.mare.org), and once in Christian school the teacher and principal commented that of all the children in the classroom only one was living with both her biological parents. We also worked in the Reformers Unanimous ministry, among other things had a convicted murderer over for a cookout (he had served his sentence), had people go through withdrawals at our house, plenty times turned on the local news and see familiar faces there, either in trouble or dead; my kids knew the homeless ladies I picked up on Friday nights at the Rescue mission,….I could go on and on. We were definitely not detached from the real world in fundy life. My stepdaughter went through the R/U residential program in Rockford. My kids know that their step/halfbrother’s wife had an abortion, and that she was a stripper. They know of his court appointments and his heroin addiction.
They saw me and my hubby fighting, and they saw me leave. We must have really sucked at this fundy living thing, because one thing it didn’t do for us was keeping us in la-la-land. We’re too screwed up to do it right, haha.
Ok folks, I’ve been gone for a while but a crazy post on fb from a member of my old fundy church pissed me off and drove me back here so hello again! I know I should just drop the craziness from fb but their insanity still blows my mind…ok I will admit it I am nearing 40 years old. My father for most of my adult life treated me as a child. Even though i was in fundy training to be a Jr MOG (youth pastor) upon graduation i took a job in the evil world and according to those surrounding me, “abandonded my calling.” my over all childhood and college days in no way trained me for life. Several years after college and after all the guilt of “throwing away my life” I escaped!!!! I ran to the hills I ran for my life. I found a great church that loves me and finally after all these years I am free thinking adult who has not lost my way but I do think you are all crazy (the fundy fundies that is) and I pray you stop screwing up kids lives. I plan for my kids to have a much different life than I. Glad to be back!
Hi again, Wheels!
Even after an initial inoculation of freedom, occasional boosters of grace and love are recommended if one is going to be re-exposed to the IFBX!(x=extreme)
then there was my teaching year….I taught German for one year to grades 7-12. I have no teaching degree, but parents and teachers were excited to have a native speaker of the language teach. The kids simply were who they were. Some worked hard to succeed, some worked hard to still struggle, some didn’t have to work hard to succeed, etc.
I wouldn’t do this now, because the school has had such a turnover, and I realize now that just walking into a classroom with no experience is less than what the kids deserve, and what the parents pay for.
Just in the recent years that school has had teachers that just weren’t good teachers, and they kept leaving. If anything, that’s the main problem I see with this private school philosophy. Flying below the radar, and having teachers that either make everything too easy (“study sheets” for tests that contain all the answers they will need), or not finishing the whole curriculum for the year, or not communicating problems to the parents….
What is devastating to some, who have grown up in a fundy culture and possess what I would call “a loyalty gene”, is to have children who have no such “gene”. These kids seem to just have to find out what the real world is all about. They almost have to question and buck the fundy system. They are often met with the “all or nothing” compliance system from fundy high schools/colleges. They are rarely taken from where they are in their spiritual journey to where they could be. It’s either “shape up or ship out.” Much of what they are excepted to “shape up to” has nothing to do with biblical principles, just fundy opinions or extreme right wing interpretations of biblical principles. They are often compared to the fundy “cream of the crop” among their peers and when they make attempts to better themselves, they are often ignored because of how short they fall of the unrealistic, cookie-cutter expectations.
The “loyal” parents are often at a loss as how to help these kids/young adults. It sure does make the fundy/former fundy parents think about how they should treat others, who do not display blind loyalty to authority.
YES!!! Yes yes yes. My mom is loyal to extreme, whatever church she is at. I’m not going to sit around with my eyes shut saying la-la-la-la and she just doesn’t get it.
I’m in my 50’s, and I still see college aged people as children, still developing and growing and in need of care and protection. No, I do not think the decisions of most 21 year olds are as valid and endurable (for them, for the rest of their lives) as the decisions of that same person at 27-28. I wouldn’t deal with young adults the way that Fundy U does, but neither would I assume they are competent adults. Many are not.
Pulled the fundy U card Bass
I strongly disagree with this statement:
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This attitude does nothing but stunt the growth of college and college aged students. Some of those “incompetent” adults serve in the armed forces and protect our country. Others, like my grandparents, my parents, my aunts, uncles, and others, married at “incompetent” ages, raised families, and with a few exceptions, stayed together and loved each other for life. Treat students like kids, they’ll act like kids. Treat them as adults, and most will rise to the occasion.
I am in Fundy U. right now. I think the people in charge do treat the students like little children. I had more freedom in high school than here at Fundy U. What concerns me is that, due to the Perfectly-Biblical Rules©, I won’t learn how to make my own decisions. I’m a very patient person, so I can bide my time till I’m out of this voluntary prison. But nobody’s giving me any reasoning behind any of their rules, so how on earth do they expect me to keep living the Fundy-U.-and-God-Approved Lifestyle when I get out on parole?
It is all about control, not reason.
I came to be a Christian while in a large secular University. The Campus Minister treated us like adults. He loaned us one of his cars to make a missions trip to Mexico. And we went by ourselves. Then I left that school and worked for 7 years. I went back to graduate school at MBBC. They began treating me like a child. I was not allowed to rent movies. I lived off campus and my wife was not allowed to wear pants. If I had a student come babysit my children any movie they watched in my home had to be approved in writing by the dean of women. (My only question was, “How would they know what the student watched or didn’t watch?”)
We had to fill out little reports every Tuesday telling where we went to church. Sunday am, pm and Wednesday. And you were required to wear suit and tie to every service except Wed, where we could skip the jacket.They even told us what kind of music we could listen to in our homes, off campus. I followed some of the rules, but the ridiculous ones were a joke. The students got to know that if we asked them to babysit, they could watch any movies they wanted. So we would ask one girl and she would ask if she could bring a few friends. Several times they brought 5 or 6 other girls. Our kids had a blast. And when we tried to pay them, they laughed and said, “We should be paying you, we had so much fun.” These on campus students felt like they were in a stranglehold and any chance to escape was welcome. I could tell many more stories, like the 4 girls who skipped church and had a car accident and killed several of them. Of course they were used as sermon illustrations about disobedience to God. That made me sick. After a year and a half, I realized what I was in but I was too far along to just quit, so I finished. There was one benefit, they gaine regional accreditation while I was there.
sounds like a CULT to me…
Anytime a group has that much control over what someone does it is either the military, a penitentiary, or a cult.
I attended 1.5 years at Golden State Baptist College. This picture looks like it may be at GSBC but I’m not sure. You are more than treated as an infant…you are treated as a complete criminal. My friend & I wanted to stay healthy so we went running at a local high school track (with a pass) and were accused of wearing immodest clothing & taking our shirts off. ?!?! So, we tried running around the campus & we were told to stop because we were causing men/guys to lust exercising in front of them. We were told to get a mini trampoline & exercise privately the way Mrs. Trieber did. 😕 That is only one instance… it was awful. I was kicked out just after making a final and LARGE payment for “not having the Golden Spirit”. No other explanation… just had to go and no refund of course. 😡
Not that men who lust after women who are simply jogging – while wearing “modest” clothing, no less – should be the ones getting into trouble….of course not. It is always considered the fault of the women.
Jogging while wearing Burkas would not be enough to satisfy those in Baptist Taliban college administration. 👿
It really sucks that they waited until you made a large tuition payment to kick you out…but, just like my former fundy church south of yours, it is often about $$$$$$.
There was also a rule no coming to class with wet or damp hair because it would make guys think about how your hair got damp…
It is after my experience at Golden State that I realized fundy pastors, administrators, etc. are complete perverts because everything is somehow sexualized and blamed on the women. Sickos.
Ah, did you go to West Coast? At Golden State it was a sad joke about how there was always a round of “cleaning house” after payments were due. 😕
What?!! Did they have a rule giving demerits to guys who forgot to zip up? Were they penalized? :snort:
I tend to be grateful when women “make” me lust after them!
Its funny that they won’t let young women exercise, but then they criticize women if they gain some weight.
Yes. Exactly. It sexual if you exercise. But if you don’t, you will never get a husband. It’s a lose-lose situation… I just chose to sneak off and run around the track. Guess I really didn’t have the “Golden Spirit”! HA! 😆
Haha! Yes, we “make” people. How awful of us! 🙄
All of these comments remind all too well of WCBC’s rules. My girlfriend at the time/now soon to be wife (I was one of the lucky few to meet an amazing girl who has the ability to think for herself) would tell me all of the ‘unwritten rules’ the girls had to abide by. I was appalled.
Some of the rules could only be thought of by a man with serious sexual issues. Like not being able to go to class with wet hair? Really?
Unfortunately, as a result, the vast majority of the students suffered with serious immaturity issues.
I thank God my love and I were able to break away and still remain Christians.