Question from a reader:
Years ago my husband and I attended a Bill Gothard seminar. An article you shared cited significant issues with him and his teachings. What are those concerns?
Answer from Eternal Perspective Ministries:
We recommend Jinger Vuolo’s book Becoming Free Indeed. She explains the problematic legalistic teachings, and also mentions Gothard’s moral failings. Alex Harris, a friend of our ministry, writes, “Vuolo engages in a systematic theological takedown of Gothard’s controlling, fear-based, and gospel-distorting teachings, sharing her own journey of disentangling her faith and holding on to Christ.”
You might also like to read this article by a man who grew up in a family dedicated to those teachings.
He writes, “You were expected to be perfect, but the expectation was separate from Christ’s righteousness being credited to you. The cross became an event in your past that took you from a negative on the number line of righteousness to zero, neutrality with God. Your advancement beyond zero was predicated on your ability to follow biblical (and sometimes extrabiblical) commands.”
He concludes, “Any faith placed in a system is misplaced. The answer is not a system, but a Savior. A Savior who promises his grace will be sufficient, who promises to complete the work started in us, who promises to remain faithful when we are faithless, and who promises that nothing can separate us from his love.”
Randy writes:
While Nanci and I attended Gothard's conference in Portland in 1973, when we were 19 and a year out of high school and were Multnomah students, and benefited from it in certain respects, Gothard himself and the organization became legalistic and cultish. While professing and teaching the importance of sexual purity, his unaccountable power allowed him to sexually harass and abuse a number of women. (Over sixty have come forward, and he resigned in 2014 because of the accusations but denied his guilt.) Another tragic downfall of a Christian leader who should have stepped out of ministry decades earlier.
