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Investigator Mike Winger is on the left. The subject of his recent exposé, Shawn Bolz of Bethel, is on the right |
Mike Winger is a Christian trouble shooter who, when it comes to exposés dares to go where other Christians are too frightened to go in case they reveal something they don't want to believe. I had a look at Mike's work in relation to Bill Johnson's Bethel fellowship as far back as 2020....see here:
I was impressed with Mike's work: To me it came over as thorough, dispassionate and fair. I'd naively hoped that since 2020 Bethel had cleaned up its act a bit. But then came Mike's recent revelations about Bethel's prophetic faker Shawn Bolz. Read more about that here...
....and here....
Why the Church needs to re-think what prophecy really means | Opinion | Premier Christianity
Emilia Fuller, an ex-member of Bethel, wrote the following article in the Christian Magazine Woman Alive ....
Bethel, Shawn Bolz, and the question of accountability | Opinion | Woman Alive
The quote below taken from Emilia's article struck a chord with me:
When the news broke [about Shawn Bolz] through a
6-hour YouTube video by American
evangelical theologian, Christian apologist, and YouTube personality, Mike
Winger, my phone erupted with messages sharing the link. I was honestly neither
surprised nor affected by the revelations. Having experienced many years of
sustained psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse in my time working at
Bethel, I was curious to see what response would come from both Bethel and
Bolz. If I’m honest, I didn’t expect much – as my own experience had shown me
when I tried to bring things into the light, I was either gaslit, stonewalled
or silenced by their culture of honour.
We have seen two very different
responses, from Bolz – a letter to his subscribers notifying them he is taking
a sabbatical with no admission of guilt or ownership. And then Bethel, who by
all accounts have taken full ownership and I would say are in the process of
repentance, that I believe is actually genuine. This I was not expecting.
Well, there's good and bad in there....
The Bad: Ms. Fuller's attempts to shine a light on Bethel's issues were met with stonewalling by Bethel members. That's very much the kind of thing which happens among the cults. It's so drummed in to cult members that they are part of a radically righteous elite Christian community they find it impossible to think there is any need for healthy self-criticism. They simply don't want to believe the victims of abuse because it challenges their rose-colored-spectacled view of the cult and above all it puts a question mark over the huge social investment they have made toward the cult community. Cult members are so taken in by the cult's teaching that they are also unwilling to question what they themselves have become in order to fit in with the cult's ethos. The cult's teaching is usually administered at the inception of the movement by some utterly self-believing, uncompromising charismatic leader (who may well have personality disorders such as narcissism). The resulting community bonding effect which inculcates members with a fierce loyalty was very clear at Noel Stanton's Bugbrooke cult. Bethel may not classify as a cult in the strongest sense of the word, but the precursors are there. Those precursors helped to make them susceptible to Bolz's teaching.
The cult isn't all bad: But therein lies the rub: Cults offer real social benefits such as a satisfying cooperative community, a sense of belonging & acceptance, unity & gravitas of purpose and above all a message of ultimate meaning; all much sought after in these modern days of social fragmentation, tension and emptiness. But this is just the bait which ultimately draws the uninitiated into a tight social matrix, disconnected from the outside world and which is very hard to shake off. In order to stay bonded with the cult ethos members may have to live a life of pretense which can take its psychological toll.
The Good: However, if Emilia is right, it does look as if genuine self-criticism has set in at Bethel. (I wonder if Emilia feels that they didn't listen to her because she was a woman?) Self-criticism does happen sometimes. For example, once Noel Stanton had died and his fierce & intimidating charismatic hold released, the Bugbrooke cult, under outside pressure, self-examined and decided that the community was so blighted, flawed and pathological that it should dissolve itself; and none too soon too. Now, that unfortunately didn't happen at Jones Town; we know what happened there; it's too upsetting to mention.
NOTE:
Shawn Bolz looks uncannily like Mark Driscoll, another controversial figure who I wrote about here:
Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair
Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair. Part II
Views, News and Pews: A Foot Note on The Mark Driscoll Affair.
The theme here seems to be that of dominating Alpha males!!
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| Mark Driscoll |
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