Elitism in High-Control Christianity: When "Super Faith" Becomes Spiritual Harm

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder of Indwell Movement.

Jenny's good to be back after the holidays and get back into talking about youth with a mission and all of the array of things that are similar, not just with that group but with many of the others.

And the topic that I was thinking through today, I can't remember if it was with you, I was talking with or another person, but honestly it fits. It's like a cookie cutter stamp of cults.

They all develop the same type of problems, and this is something that I grew up with. This is something that I know that I have had members of YWAM say that they also shared.

I know Jed has talked about this, but this idea of elitism. You're basically in groups that are teaching you that in the rank and file members of Christianity, you're slightly above the rest of them. You're super-Christian, you're the elect one, you're the chosen few, you're doing the work that nobody else would do, that kind of thing.

Well, over time what happens is you develop this elit mentality. Now for an adult, this comes with an array of problems that you get over time, which we'll get into that some, but it's quite different from what it does to a child.

I grew up with the elit mindset, we were the chosen few, the one in a million, we were the elit of gods, we didn't call ourselves gods army, but we sang the song, we're marching in gods army, we did all the things, right?

So I grew up with this mentality. Well, you can hold yourself like this for so long, but eventually you start to wear out, and that's where I wanted to go with you. Just talk about some of the problems that form in your head when you're trying to become a superhuman.

Thank you so much, it's really good to be back. I've been very excited today to dive back into discussion. And I know we've talked about this in a previous episode, but what comes to mind, even as you're describing that, is this phenomenal book called Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame by Patricia D. Young. And it's the idea that if you are seen as an object and your value and your worth and how you are seen is based on performance, that will inevitably produce chronic shame.

Because there is this... felt sense that who I am is not enough. It's about how I am filling the role and performing what is expected of me. And I think that the higher people tend to climb in these systems, the more and more brittle their sense of self becomes. Because on one hand, there is, however many people sitting listening to you talk who have come to hear your wisdom.

And on the other end of that, I think there is this sense of, am I a fraud? Is this real? This doesn't feel true for me. And it creates this real sense of, again, I know I keep using this phrase, but chronic shame, which we tend to pacify through dissociating and disconnecting from what that feels like, or continuing to project these grandiose images of our performance and trying to have others prove to us that we're good because we don't feel good in and of ourselves.

Absolutely. And before we get too far, I want to narrow down the definition of this because whenever I say elitism, I've actually seen it in the comment feeds, people will say, well, we never saw ourselves as elite. We didn't see ourselves as better than somebody else.

I know that when I was in the Brannum cult, I would have never said that. That's just not my way of thinking. But it isn't really just simply that elitism isn't always, we're better than you.

It can go in different ways like it. We know more. We have the mysteries. We're the ones who, we see more than the other Christians, or we go deeper with Christianity than the other Christians.

We're the ones who are paying the price that the others won't pay that kind of thing. We're the martyrs, right? Well, there's elitism comes in many different flavors. It isn't just simply we're better than you, but it's we're different than you. That's in its essence. That's what it is.

And in that difference is your spirituality. So because we're different, because we're doing these things, the other Christians won't do, because we're, we have the secret. In our cult, we had the secret mysteries. Brannum came to reveal the hidden mysteries. We had those. The other Christian churches down the street, they didn't have it. We did. And so you build up this mentality, and it creates these tears of spirituality. And what the elitism I'm describing basically, you're at the top of the tears that you have, your cult leader has basically created in his mythology that he's presenting. Wait, let me think of Jeff Charlottes' work around the family.

And what can be justified if you identify as being chosen by God? And I think it's, you know, something I want to hold delicately, because I know that there are different faiths and theologians and ways that people experience their Christianity. And when There is this idea that I am chosen by God and billions of other people are not that will have an effect on the way that you see yourself and the world.

If you believe I am a sovereign being just like every other being that is sovereign, that will change how you view yourself and the world. And our theologies are not separate from our psychologies.

And so if our theology is that God has specifically chosen me or he has specifically given me this message, that is going to inherently become exclusionary. And then again, I think that it becomes like this house of cards that the higher up it gets, the more precarious it is.

When you mentioned earlier a few times the chronic insecurity, that is something, honestly, one of the reasons I wanted to have this discussion with you instead of some of the others, as it relates to the youth, this is really what turns into the huge problem that I have whenever I am thinking about, all of these different ways in which children can be harmed in these kind of movements.

The elitism, the way it is presented, you are something that is more than human. You are trying to present yourself in ways that other humans aren't. We know the mysteries, we're the ones who have the secret knowledge, whatever it is that your group teaches.

Well, as you're rising up in the movement as an adolescent to a teenager, especially for me it hit me in the 20s, they really never were clear of what these so-called mysteries were. They would talk about them, but they never were clear.

I know I've talked to Jed about IHOPKC, he said they would have these missions, and yes, you were doing the mission and you felt good because you were doing the mission, but you really never made that full connection.

You didn't fully understand it, you just did it. You acted and therefore you were spiritual because you acted. What this does over time, because you can't logically make sense of what it is that they're doing or saying, and because they themselves don't really know, that's the funny part of this if you know the upper tiers.

We never really can come to terms with M-I-N or M-I-Out, am I part of this elite or am I not? And I know for our group, we would have these, I think I mentioned with you, these altar calls where children were just crying their hearts out, teenagers all the way up into I think even in the 30s.

Every Sunday, the same people over and over and over because they did not know if they were saved. After leaving this and we started attending normal churches, not cult churches, you got this feeling of security.

You were taught the gospel and the gospel, Jesus came to save and in his dying, everybody can live and be happy and be secure and be free because Jesus has saved you. That's how a Christian church is.

We never really had that. He was a... always this insecurity. In youth with a mission, what was your experience? Did they give you a solid sense of security or did you have like what I had?

It's so interesting. I feel like it's similar to other things we've talked about where it sounds like your particular flavor of cult did more kind of fear based kind of these like negative carrots that they dangled.

And not to say that why I'm doesn't do that, but in my experience, it was actually, again, more of this insidious positive carrot. And what I remember is that there was such an emphasis on the book of Revelation.

And that was a big part of the call of why, when was this very particular translation of the book of Revelation that was removed from historical context and what apocalyptic literature was and what the symbology meant.

It was specifically translated and interpreted to be about now. And one of the things that it would talk about was the 144 people that would share thrones next to God. And there was this not so subtle, are you gonna be one of the 144?

And again, if you think about billions or trillions of people throughout all of time and thinking that you are a select group of 144 people, it is gonna share real estate in heaven with God, that's gonna do something to you and that's gonna produce such a sense of grandiosity.

And it did for me. I was so convinced that I had been placed and called into Northern Uganda to save this region. And I was stepping into a context of a battle that had been going on largely due to colonization and imperialism that had no historical framework from.

I was looking at it in a very a historical way and thinking, well, I'll just show up. I'll teach these people about Jesus. I'll follow what God's telling me and then everything's gonna turn around.

And that then really isolated me from people that I didn't feel like I could be vulnerable with where I didn't feel like I could share my doubts, my fears, my insecurities, because if I admitted that I was gonna have those, was I really gonna be chosen by God and maybe even potentially one of the 144 thrones.

You know, it's odd because I was thinking as you were talking, if I were to have answered, if I were to talk about my experience while I was in it and then compare it to what I say now.

I would say that I was very positive. It was like the positive carried on the stick and it was the 144,000 because we had the same exact doctrine, 144,000. I can't tell you how many, sermons that I heard 144,000.

And the roots of that, I've talked about it in some of the other podcasts down to the British Israel doctrine and how all of that came to be. But what they were doing was they were presenting a Doomsday scenario.

They were giving you a positive outlook that we are the chosen one, we're the lead, we're going to be the raptured ones. And we need to quickly save the loss because we're the special people.

While you're going through it, it is very positive. But the consequences of that type of elite mentality over time, especially in the teenage years, it turns into a negativity which I had. I was a, I didn't realize until long after leaving.

I was severely depressed until after leaving and waking up and realizing, wait, what they did to my head was wrong. But I would have told you that I had a positive experience in that it was a positive cared on the stick.

But you can never live up to the standards that they're pushing. And that's really where the key for the negativity comes in. If you are trying to present yourself as this, we had, one of the doctrines we had was perfectionism.

You be there for perfect, right? This kind of doctrine, well, no human can do this. No human is perfect. And so the moment that you're not, the moment that you do something stupid, which every teenager is going to do, then you start to wonder, well, maybe I'm not part of this elite because they're talking about how they're perfect.

And I see these figures on the platform and they're crying their hearts out to God. Well, they're the perfect ones. I'm the one that's not. And I had friends that were like this. And so they would go to the altar calls and they would cry and pour their hearts out.

And I feel so bad for them because there was a single person who was claiming perfection that was actually perfect. But it was that positive, that fake positive experience. And I look at it more like, when I try to put a frame of reference around it, it's more like the kid walking through the graveyard at night whistling.

He's trying to pretend that he's not scared. These people are trying to pretend they're not perfect. They're talking about this doomsday for all who are lost, who don't come into this perfection, to this mentality, this elitism.

And then what happens is over time, if you're, especially in your developing years, you start to make this distinct separation between you and what it is they're claiming. And not understanding that the people who are claiming it also aren't perfect.

And go right down the line, look at all of the leaders who have fallen because of the horrific things that they've done, that most of the members of their congregations would never even dream of doing.

Some of them earning prison time for it. And they're teaching that same elite mentality. Well, everybody who's sitting in the pew doesn't really make that connection. Well, he's teaching this elite mentality that he doesn't even have.

And they remain in the cult developing. all of these fears. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about the fears and the experience. Part of the fear in that experience for me was that because there was such a strong emphasis on the great commission and making disciples of all nation and kind of this idea that once the final person says they're final prayer then Jesus is going to come back. There was never an ability to whether I was sitting on an airplane, whether I was walking through a mall, talking to someone, whether I was with my family, there was always this sense of what are you going to do to proselytize?

What are you going to do to disciple? What are you going to do to share this message? And just even from a nervous system perspective, it puts you in a state of sympathetic activation and stress where you're constantly producing adrenaline and cortisol and these hormones and neurochemicals that we produce to do action are always coursing through your body. You're never given permission to just hang out and be with people. And I think that we are very, very hyper social beings and our nervous system is wired to feel safe with other beings that we can feel safe with. And so

if we've kind of flipped that where every time I'm with another person, I'm having to treat them as a project, then that becomes such a stressful state for our nervous system to be in.

Exactly. And it's jumping ahead a bit, but what you're saying really ties in with where I was headed with this, there's this feeling of what's a good way to call it, the exit wound.

You can't maintain that type of rhythm. They call it high demand, high control groups for a reason. You're in this high demand, you're in this high control. Well, what happens when you become exhausted and you need to just take a break? So after I left, I started experiencing other churches, some of them mainstream, some of them independent. And it's really interesting whenever you think about what happens when you decide to step away. If you're going to church every Sunday and your people are seeing you and you become part of the group, well, what happens when you decide, well, I am

right now, I am just too stressed out and I'm too triggered by going. And this is a real thing for me. When I go to church, I often get triggered. And there were times where I would just sit out for a few weeks and they wouldn't show up. My wife would go, she's not as triggered as I would.

I am. Well, what gets interesting is you can watch how the group reacts if you don't show up. They want you in some of these high demand groups. They want you to be participating because if not, you're not with us. You're not part of this elite status.

And so you suffer traumatic burnout whenever you try to push yourself into doing things that you're not Even healthy enough to do and I could go I could literally tell which churches that we were attending after leaving the Brandham called which ones were cultish and which ones were not by how they responded if I didn't show up on Sunday That was that was one of the funny things but they have this falling away Narrative that they try to push that if you're in this rhythm and you're part of this elite system Those who can't keep up those are the ones who are falling away and those are the ones we need to set be yourself

Biggie separate from them. That was one of the doctrines. We would do this kind of thing and It's it it becomes so unhealthy because people get in this mental state where they can't take a break and Like I said, this is not just an occult environment. I experienced this in some mainstream churches They just get in that rhythm and that mentality and they don't realize how destructive it actually is Burnay Brown has this quote that says fitting in is the opposite of belonging And all of these performances are ways to try to fit in and to fit the mold and

That is the opposite of being able to say I belong here just as I am when I'm tired when I'm sick when I'm grumpy When I'm happy when I'm feeling generous like all of the spectrum of me gets to be present but it's so um It's so binary and it's a split where it's like only these parts of you are welcome here and and so over time the more and more you try to sequester or exile those other really Human parts of you anything that we try to consciously or unconsciously suppress Is always going to find a way to pop up again and I tell my clients

It's often like if you there was a dam of water that had like a water spout Pouring out and you tried to stick your finger in it And inevitably that water is going to find another crack and eventually you're going to run out of fingers and toes to try to hold it back And the whole thing is going to come down and I think that's what actually ends up leading a lot of people out is And that's what led me out was like my body just couldn't anymore My immune system stopped working. I was having insane amounts of cavities and things that I had never had before

Just because my body wasn't able to do the normal natural things of replenishing itself that it can when I'm in arrested state The amount of people I know that have developed autoimmune disorders or various health complications because of Years or decades of this type of stress. It's really real. It's not only a head stress. It's an entire body and an entire being stress and And still makes it hard for me to trust relationships that I can be messy and imperfect in.

And I think that that's a lifelong journey of learning. There are places where we can go and be human and still be still belong. It is. Anytime I think of the finger in the damn analogy, my mind automatically goes to the far side.

I don't know if you've seen the comic where the guy has his finger in the damn and on the other side or two piranhas saying, look, a worm. And honestly, that's how I feel whenever I was in the call.

The people who you are trying to help hold the damn, hold the water in, right? You're doing your job and there are people in the cult who are actually making it harder for you because they're pushing you so hard to the point of exhaustion.

And I think it was with you, I talked about this, maybe a different person. But over time that burnout starts to manifest itself in ways that are very physical and sometimes can develop into chronic illnesses.

There are numerous dehabilitating, psychological, neurological damage that you can get from this kind of thing. And when people see this in the cult, they see you burnt down and they look at you as though you're doing God's work, you're part of the martyr, you are, I don't know, you're more devoted than the rest of it.

And even in that burnout state and that super devoted state, whatever you want to call this, you start to see yourself as elite because of your martyrdom, because you're pushing yourself. I think that's one of the things you mentioned in the first conversation that I had with you.

So your exhaustion gets reframed as faithfulness. And at that point you start to continue your self-in-exhaustion and it leads to physical ailments. It really does. When people leave that type of high-demand environment, I have watched in the support groups before and after photographs.

The person looks just so sickly while they're in the cult and then they leave and then suddenly they look like they've lost 10 years. They're 10 years younger, I should say. It's crazy and it all has to do with this elite mentality in a normal group.

When somebody sees that you're overexhausted or tired, he says, hey, sit back a while. Just take a rest, relax. You don't have to push yourself so hard. I'll never forget being told this and I was like, I can't do this.

I don't know how to do this. Yeah, I mean, my mind is going to so many times where we've talked about emotionally manipulative worship services. And those were the times where it felt like my body could finally collapse.

Like a million, you know, all of the other hours. I was go, go, go, go, go. And then as soon as it was this... emotionally evocative, manipulative service, my body would collapse. And the amount of times I would literally be laying on the floor sobbing.

Just very unwell. And I would have leaders come around me and put their hand on me and say, God, so proud of you, Jenny. You are doing such good work. You are changing the country of Uganda.

And it was, it was so confusing because I felt like I was so done. And then it was in those moments where it was like, nope, this is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And I'm not a theologian, but it seems to me that that's actually the opposite of how Jesus lived.

I love the stories of him just on a boat, taking a nap. And his disciples, like, hey, you've got to get up. You've got to do this. And he's kind of like lazily saunting out there and calming a storm or whatever. Like he totally took care of his needs, which I think is such an important example to follow.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a complete opposite whenever I think of what you and others have described in youth with a mission. My mind always goes back to Jesus. Everybody's trying to become this spiritual authority or superiority. You can kind of get the sense of this.

And Jesus points to the children and says, be like these. And if you think about what that's saying, that's saying that don't work yourself up. I've taken care of all of this for you.

You trust in me. Well, now how does youth with a mission fit into that picture? How do you say that burning these children out is a good thing. And that's what Jesus would want.

I can't imagine a situation where that's what Jesus would want. But that's what the mentality is doing. You're training children to be elite. That's really the bottom line here. And whenever I think about the idea of teaching children to be like this, I try to put myself into their shoes compared to what I came from.

And there are so many similarities, even though what I came from was entirely different and far more destructive. In many ways, I see the same unhealthy attributes manifesting on both sides of the equation.

And I think I've probably mentioned Minas Alami is a thinker that I really appreciate. And she said, tyrants have always understood that the more robotic people are, the more easily manipulated they are. And I don't think William Brannum was necessarily sitting around with Lauren Cunningham, although there are certain connections between these movements.

I think that the higher up people get in leading these types of high control religions, the more, for lack of a better word, skilled they are at knowing how to manipulate people. And knowing that if you can completely exhaust someone's connection to their body to play.

measure, to rest, to social connection, then they're going to be that much more likely to just fall in line with the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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So we talked about the elitism and some of the problems that exist whenever you have this mentality. Interestingly, this conversation ties into a greater conversation that you and I will eventually get into talking about the Seven Mountains mandate and the overarching themes and agendas that are really behind all of this.

Not many people make the same connections unless you've experienced it is very difficult to understand. But the elitism, when you're in that mindset, you are being indoctrinated with a sense of pride. That's really what it is at its core, it is pride.

And there are numerous passages through the New Testament to talk about the sin of pride, which is interesting if you think about it. Well, when you're in this elit mentality, you are being taught to be prideful because you are the chosen ones, you're doing the special work, all of these things.

Well, true humility, it kind of disappears and it becomes agreement to and submission, I guess, is the better word. It becomes agreement and submission to the doctrine because to be prideful, to be part of the supernatural elite, well, you have to adhere to those doctrines, otherwise you're not part of it.

So when you think of the us versus them mentality that's being projected where the elite ones, the other Christians are not, that pride and that sense of disconnection from the rest of Christianity, it turns into a compliance.

I must believe what they say, I must do what they say, I must act like they act. Then combine that with the pressure that you've described and others have described where you're pushing teenagers, 20-year-olds to complete burnout.

While they're in that compliance and that submission, you have literally just taken up people and put them under slavery and For me what watching children grow up in this type of environment is just I can't imagine Apparent letting their child be like this. I don't think it's I don't think it's fully explained and we've talked I think a little bit about Dr. Stephen Hassen's bite model behavioral control information, etc Well, if you're not making parents aware that the children are going to be taught to become I don't know how I don't know how it's pitched and youth with a mention youth with a mission in our cult

It was called the bride. We would just simply say we're the bride. We're the God special people different different phrases when we were recruiting we never told them this we never told them that we will be Up here in the hierarchy of Christians and all other ones are going to be down here So whenever I see this I see a group of people that are misleading parents into what the mission actually is then the children get into it and from what I'm learning from you and others There really isn't a clear definition of what the mission is youth the youth has a mission and it's basically to be part of the mission

So in that you even start to build the cycles of elitism and submission So the elitism basically develop itself into a submission and that brings people into a worse mental state It really was the sense of the great commission and this Appropriation of Jesus speaking to his disciples and saying go and make disciples and it was this idea that God Jesus was speaking directly to us and and that was a big part of the mission But as you mentioned the seven mountains mandate disciples really meant positions of power and authority in the spheres of society and

How do we get more and more Mariannets in each of these positions to be accountable to The the agenda of the mission right it turns into basically a I don't know a special knowledge, but it turns into When you really think about it it turns into a bonding agent the people who are part of the mission They bond with each other and they they get the shared Cohesiveness that you're not going to find in other churches or other groups Which you can say that happens to all Missionaries all people who got on a mission together. There is a bond that forms

But whenever there is the idea that you are Doing a special work that no other Christian can do you're part of the great commission you're you are the chosen ones right That creates a bond that's even stronger and when you think about the cult dynamics, the group thing, et cetera, it really creates this situation where you've got a train running down the rails with no tracks.

You don't know where it's going to end up. For me, the complexity of this mission without having a clear definition, just simply the great commission, all Christians are supposed to do this. How do you separate what are the Baptist or the Methodist doing for their part in the great commission?

There's really no explanation as to how the other Christians on the outside of the group are performing the same task. So where I'm headed with this is, what happens eventually, and this happened, I know this happened in my group and some of the others that I've dealt with, over time, whenever you start to have that elite mindset and that special bonding agent where everybody's becoming this unhealthily close unit, what happens is the Christians on the outside because they're not part of that unit, you start to look down on them.

Even if you're like my mentality, my personality, I can't look down on other people, even though it's so very deep into me to love other people, you can't help but not separate yourself and be like this because you are being trained in this way.

Did you ever experience anything like that, that mentality when you're in Y-Wam? Absolutely. Yeah, I think there was the sense of, this is the right way to be a Christian and there was so much emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit and so it was like, if anyone isn't speaking in tongues and they're probably not even a true Christian or born again, even though that wasn't explicitly said, it was always kind of the felt sense of it, is if you're not having these really charismatic expressions of the quote unquote gifts of the Spirit, then you're probably not in.

And I grew up in a more fundamentalist, conservative, evangelical world where my family didn't believe in speaking in tongues or things like that that I was so concerned for their salvation and if they were truly born again.

And I think that only amplified for people in other religions or people that were atheists, it was like a really infantilizing view of people and I think it was really the opposite of honoring someone's sovereignty and really being able to come out of like, this is the one way to access this spirituality or this belief but really holding like, can I trust in your sovereignty and your connection even if it really differs from how I believe or I experience the world and how can we respect each other.

agency and I think of this type of control as the opposite of honoring someone's agency and I think what it also makes me think of is the flip side of that when people do have a little bit of time at home or maybe they're in between their discipleship training school and something else and they do go home. What is a really common experience is people getting extremely depressed people getting even suicidal people having a lot of sense of futility and aimlessness because all of that was put on them in this world this is where your purpose is this is what

the mission is and so if you do get rare experiences of stepping out of that it becomes really destabilizing in a sense of just overall wellness and connection to self and and the world.

As a father I have I have children from age 16 now to the mid 20s three three boys my middle son is in his 20s I think he's I think he turned 21 recently even at 21 I will tell them I'll teach them things by letting them experience and making mistakes. In fact I'll give them tasks sometimes it maybe it's working on a car whatever I know they're going to screw it up and I'm prepared to pay for it because in their mistakes they're also learning and I'm one of these people that I learned from experiences and I have made countless mistakes and the things

that I've done I know that they can I don't want them to be afraid of making a mistake I want them to instead learn to accept their mistake and then change and make a correction because that's how you learn that's how you grow when you're in this elite mentality there is this notion that you can't make a mistake and that's really where the problem the heart of this entire conversation lies with that because if you're in the elite mentality and you do something wrong you are told to go pray more you're told to go submit yourself more there are many different Bible verses that

they rip out of context to push this agenda but basically you are the one at fault don't make a mistake and you can't survive like this more to the point if you are teenage 20 years old you can't grow and learn like this and this is not a problem this unique to youth with a mission I have in fact in some of the churches that we've experienced I have watched the way that they tried to train the kids and I've seen similar things they don't want them to stray too far because let's be honest if they do then the church gets a black eye right however there has to be some

variants and some allowance for learning through your mistakes digs, but in the elite mentality, there is 0% allowance. So what happens is people, over time, they begin to no longer trust their own perceptions and they no longer trust themselves to be able to correct a mistake if it happens. And it creates the sense of insecurity. And I'll never forget, whenever I left, thinking that I was a secure person, that I was happy, lucky, free, free is a bird, right? And then suddenly realized, no, I'm actually the exact opposite of that, but I was trained to think that I was free and that I could learn and

I could grow. I was learning, basically, that I was being taught what was learning in growth, and it was completely incorrect as far as humanity goes. So the heart of this conversation, what I was was wanting to head with this is essentially this. If you allow this elitism to continue, especially during the ages when children or early teens, late teens, early 20s, as they're forming their pathway in life and beginning to understand, how do we experience life? How do we make a mistake, learn, correct it, grow from it? That elitism is actually hindering their mental growth. It makes me think about how, you know, probably

because I spend a lot of time researching and talking about purity culture, that you could almost switch elitism with purity culture, that it really is this sense of you have to do good, you have to be pure, you have to do all of these things and then you fit in.

At the end of the day, what purity culture is, is a refusal to face fear and disgust. And it is an aversion from the parts of being human that are aversive and disgusting and fearful and part of our experience. And again, I think if we look at Jesus who spent much of his time with people that those who were most religious felt were fearful or disgusting, he actually drew closest to those people and not out of a sense of paternalism, but out of a sense of let's talk about life, let's do life, let's talk about the divine, let's engage the

world. And he had the hardest, most crushing criticisms for the Pharisees and the people that did abide by these elitist purity rhetoric rather than those who were seen as sinners or outcasts. And I think that also starts with our own self. Like, what are the parts of me that I have cast out that I have set our bad? Because what will happen is that I will inevitably start to forget.

Jacked that onto other bodies. And I know we've talked a bit about this, but I think that the outgrowth of that will inevitably be white supremacy and the ways in which we societally then will not look at people we say are fearful or disgusting or we will harm them because we can't deal with those own parts of ourselves that we experience as fearful and disgusting and which I think the good news is we actually can and we have enough capacity and agency and sovereignty to engage all of those parts of us.

And we have the ability to become ordinary. That's really at the heart of it. That's really the opposite of elitism is ordinary and ordinary faith in these groups is treated as failure. That's the bottom line.

If you are ordinary, if you're just another church or you're a failure, in fact I heard sermons that were saying things like this. If you're just an average church or why don't you just go to the church down the street?

I would hear things like that and that created the us versus them mentality, which is insane, but the pictures that you're describing from the New Testament where Jesus is talking to the pointing of the children, be like these.

What he's saying is be, be like the children, be ordinary. You don't have to be like the Pharisee who's trying to put themselves into an elite status and they're just humans, like the rest of you, be like the children.

Ordinary faith has treated us failure in the groups. And more than that, normal Christians, like I mentioned, we talked about the Christian church down the road. Normal Christianity is framed as compromise with the enemy or in some cases just complete failure.

So you start to look at other Christians as though they're complete failures. And as you're developing in my teenage years, I can't tell you the harm that that did to me. I can remember going to a friend's house and they were devout Christians.

We would go, before we were able to eat, we would say the prayer over the meal, but they even took it further. They would sing these hymns before they ate their meal because they were that devoted to Jesus Christ.

I remember thinking they're doing all of this in vain because they don't know our secret. They don't know the things that we know. They're not elite like we're elite. They're just another average church goaler.

And the freedom of the gospel is that you can be an average person. You don't have to listen to ministers who are saying if you're an average church goal, you're a failure. You don't have to be this elite mentality.

So in the end, what it gives you is this hidden pressure that you don't even know exists whenever it's building up. And if you ever decide to leave, it's a complete failure because you're not just losing the community, you're losing your exceptionalism or your pride, your elitism.

So people are actually afraid to leave for that reason. I agree. And if we can move past that, then it also frees us from a constant state of surveillance. And there is actually so much freedom on the other end of that where it is hard to step off of that pedestal, off of that hopeful throne one day.

But the benefit of that is that you get to breathe. You get to like feel your toes in the grass. And you get to not worry that there's some being constantly hovering over you, making sure you're not going to slip up.

But you get to live. And to me, I think that that is our birthright is to be able to live and move and breathe. And that's where there's freedom and the spirit of God, I would say.

And even freedom in listening to you and I. That's one of the other things the elitism teaches. There is this fear of hearing the other side. And so we would say these things. You don't read books by the enemy.

Well, I came to find out. After leaving, I'm starting to understand well, some of the critics are actually correct about the things they say about our group. And I began to wonder how much of what we had is correct.

In that elite mentality, you're not allowed to listen to the outside voices. When I was going to grad school, I had people from YWAM warn me and say, this is a graduate school that is very focused on deconstruction.

And even at the time, I said, well, if something can be deconstructed, I would want it to be. I wouldn't want to just follow blindly something that has been constructed. And I really, truly believe that that which is true and lovely and beautiful will remain no matter the types of deconstruction we're able to bring to it.

Because I actually, I think people are often confused about what to do with me. And there is this binary of like, are you a Christian? Are you not a Christian? And I don't actually have a necessarily neat answer for that.

But I actually feel like my trust and my faith in God has actually become more expansive because I actually, I can be human. And I can trust that God is God and I am me.

And I don't have to be God. And I don't have to keep my mind in these constructs or in these constraints. Because I think that love and truth is actually a lot bigger than that.

And what certain people have said about certain things. Well, that is the irony, actually, because the elitism mentality over time, as you adhere to everything that they teach as the elitism, Eventually what it becomes is a leash.

The elitism actually becomes a leash and when you think about that, it hits you really hard because you're thinking that you're better than everybody else, but yet you're on a leash. So are you better or you worse off than the rest of the world?

That's where it gets really odd because your identity becomes fused to the group and your identity is actually developing because of the group. Your authentic self gets suppressed and so who you are gets constrained and you're on a leash.

If you leave, it feels like you're betraying God. If you leave, you feel like you're not part of the elit and then also if you leave, those who leave, the group usually talks very ill against them, evil against them.

So you're afraid to leave because of what people will say. In the end, like I said, it's just simply a leash, but the problem is because you are on this leash and not recognizing that you're on the leash, it is limiting your spiritual growth, your human growth, your mental development, your psychological development.

You're on a leash that is constraining you in ways that go far beyond the church. So in the end, what do you do? How do you solve this? If you've left one of these groups, what is your advice to somebody who suddenly realizes that they were in an elite group, but that elite group was actually a leash?

I mean, I think like so many things, it's the kind of, I know this can be trite, but I don't mean it in that way that, you know, it is, it is, you can take the person out of fundamentalism.

It's a lot harder to take fundamentalism out of the person and I really think it's going to be a lifelong journey for me, for all of us, to press into these places that we have been leashed, that we've been constrained.

And again, I think about where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And so a big part of that is facing our avoidance of what feels fearful and what feels disgusting. And how do we grow our capacity to sit with difference and things that we have been taught to fear?

And if true love really does cast out all fear, how do we grow in becoming more loving? And I think a big part of that begins with ourself. I think we are relational beings and so how we relate to ourself is often how we relate to the world.

And as you've mentioned in several ways, I think kids are actually the best teachers for us before they've learned these constraints and the ways in which we have adopted that we should move through the world and they're just who they are, an apologetically, frustratingly, joyfully, like, they're all of it.

And so I think that that is... The great message is actually look to the children, look at how they're living, look at how they come into the world as self-actualizing beings and both protect that for them and let that be a support for you to go, wow, when was the last time I felt this free?

When was the last time I felt this unrestrained love or awe or wonder and what is keeping me from being able to engage that and how can I grow my capacity to feel my fear or my disgust or the things that make me want to turn away or reject something, how can I actually let myself move through those and know that I can grow those muscles to be with those things?

Yeah, it's very similar to what I say, my advice is always to go outside of your element. If you have been in a, you mentioned fundamentalism, if you've been in a very fundamentalist church, go to one that's very liberal. And I'm not saying that you have to believe everything that the liberal say, but if you go outside of your element, it gives you a view inside of the boxes that you've never looked in. I have in the Brannum cults and many of the Christian identity cults that were related. You had this fear of the Catholicism. You basically, Catholics were the

enemy. They were coming to invade the United States. And therefore, everybody who's in a Catholic church is evil. That's really the conclusion you went to. And I've actually told people who somebody said, well, the only church in my town that I can go to besides this cult church is this Catholic church. And I said, have you been? And it's not that I'm advocating to go to the Catholic church or become Catholic. I'm actually, I see many, many, many problems with that.

However, the people who go to the church, the temple, whatever they call the Catholic churches, they're also people like you and me. And look at Jesus who went and sat with the prostitutes. Do you not think that the religious leaders condemned him when he went to sit with a prostitute?

How is going to a Catholic church any worse than that? And I'm not saying to join a Catholic church or anything like this, but go outside of your element because what it will teach you is that while you were built up into this elite mentality, this pride that's looking down on the people and say it's not Catholic, say it's Baptist, or say it's Methodist, or whatever is the group that you have been trained against. Well, when you get to know those people, you start to realize, hey, they're not much different than me. I don't believe what they're being taught,

100%, but there are things that I can find that we are in agreement in and they like the things that I like. They want to be Christian, just like I want to be a Christian. I'll never forget my surprise when I left and I started talking with family members who had been completely erased from my thoughts because they had left the cult.

One of them said, I listened to all of these sermons, how the Catholic Church was the enemy and I became a Catholic. And even I'd been out of the cult for five years and I thought, oh my gosh, he's got a demon.

As we continue to talk, and he's actually been on the podcast a few times, as we continue to talk, he actually, there are many things that we were in agreement with. Or several things we weren't, but many things we were, and in that unity we had conversation.

So I'm able to open up to him, whereas before, there was this wall that I couldn't break through because I had been trained in that elite mentality. And so I tell people, go outside of your element, try to experience things that you would never experience before and see what you like, what you dislike.

You can grow from this and it's not that you have to, you know, again, I'm not advocating to join the Catholic Church or anything like this. But you start to get a view into the box.

If you want to end up disagreeing with it, well, instead of disagreeing with it because you've been told to disagree with it, now you can make the decision for yourself. I disagree with it because I experienced this, this, and this, and this is why I disagree with it.

Something my therapist often used to say is nothing is a problem until it's the only solution. And so if you do find a church that fits like a glove and checks all the boxes, that might actually be concerning.

Like, could you actually stay in a community where maybe you don't agree with everything? And maybe there is some friction. And maybe you get to ask questions and that gets to be okay. And that's actually welcome because that means you're not all fitting in and conforming to one thing.

But maybe, you know, I really like this, this practice that is part of the Jewish tradition of midrash where it's you read a scripture and then you literally basically argue about it. And the idea is that God is speaking to you about the scripture and God is speaking to me about the scripture.

And if God is big enough to speak to us both, we might not see eye to eye about what this is. And the moment that everyone starts to see exactly the same way, uh oh, that might be a moment to pause and go, wait, did we just find ourselves in another cult situation where our own humanity and friction doesn't get to be a part of the community and the way that we engage one another.

And honestly, it's that very reason that I structured the podcast and the way that I have where everybody, I don't care what you believe or don't, everybody's welcome to share your story. We can talk.

We can learn from each other because I have learned that while I was learning inside of a box with everybody who was of the same mindset, I wasn't learning at all. And I began to learn outside of the box and yes, I learned many of the same things, but I learned different views into those same things.

And so my understanding grew and... my learning experience grew. So thank you so much for doing this. Yes, thank you. I really appreciate that. And I think that that is my hope for the world and for ourselves is that we can find connection even across difference that we get to be our whole selves together. So I'm really grateful to be here and continue these conversations with you.

Absolutely. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and indwell-movement.com. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.