Leaving UPCI: One Woman’s Story Of Rules, Shunning, And Grace

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have a need-a-wait, former member of the UPCI. A need it's good to have you on and to share your story. I was reading through your email again today.

I've actually read through it a few times. You sent me so many things to talk about. I don't even know that we can fit this in one podcast, but you have such an interesting story. I want to get into that, but first, if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Well, I was raised in Minnesota, and the UPCI was born into it. My mom was a bus kid from Wisconsin, and she went to ABI to go to school and met my dad. He was second generation, and I was thinking last night, I don't remember exactly how my grandparents got in the UPC, but they did.

He was mentored by Robert Sabin, and of course we went to ABI, which was started by S.D. Norris. I don't know if you know who they are, but that's where I spent the first 16 years of my life.

My dad was a polio survivor, and so we moved to Arkansas to get out of the snow, and to put me into a UPC-ACE Christian school from a large public school from the Twin Cities.

So that was kind of a culture shock. And while I left there and went to school in Little Rock where it met my husband, and I started working in television, and worked for four years in a word of faith church that had a television station.

I was a statewide regional network for word of faith people, and then I did that for four years, and I left my child. We had Vinvitro. I spent six years at home with her. In that time we moved to Kansas City to attend a church, a UPC church here, kind of a long story how all that happened.

And about three years ago we had a really traumatic incident happen, and it opened my eyes to so many things, and I started getting on podcasts and listening to people that had stories similar to mine.

And I met a man who on online and connected with a young man that had been in the UPC and had gotten out, and I contacted him, we talked for a day, and we ended up long story short, we ended up...

going to the church that he was going to. It's a great church. It is a denominational church, but I honestly want nothing to do with the denomination anymore. I can relate. We went to several different denominational churches, and I'm not going to mention the names of them because I don't want to sway people in their journey, but I was of the same mindset.

I was going to go to a church that wasn't non-denominational. That was my one criteria. I want to go to something that's not like what I went to before because it was so messed up what I went to before.

So we tried out different ones, and I was of the same mindset. I did not want to devote my life to something that I didn't yet understand. And I wanted to learn more about it.

And the more I learned about it, it's, you know, I'm looking at it now in hindsight, I could probably spin off podcasts about each denomination because I was just so curious. I want to learn, well, why does this exist?

Why does this other denomination exist? And what you find is if you follow the trails of history all the way back, you find that they all seem to merge in one way, shape, or form.

But there is a limited number of splits for the major denominations, and an explosive number of splits for the Pentecostal denominations. And I wanted to understand that, and that's really, you know, that's how it evolved my website into what it is today.

A lot of that history, believe it or not, goes back to the early creation of the UPCI. And William Brannum, though he was not a UPCI minister, it looks very much like he was working with people who were forming what would become the UPCI with the intention of joining into it.

And for whatever reason, it never happened. But that history for me is just fascinating because all of these different streams of Pentecostal were to faith, charismatic, all of these things just come together into one big ball of spaghetti.

Yeah, I mean, I knew that the, you know, the AG and the UPCI had split at one point. And of course, I knew about the ALJC and the PAW and all of that. I knew Brannum was part of what started the UPCI, but they pretty much start their history with Charles Foxe-Partum, William Seymour, GTA Wood, you know, even in listening to your podcast, you know, you've talked about Hulkster and starting Calvary Tabernacle, which was, which was done by the Urshans.

And, you know, so that's a pretty popular church in the UPCI. And I've actually been in that church. So, you know, it's, to me, it was really interesting, but then also have been in word of faith and to hear those same names.

But then, you know, you don't hear the, the Amy Simple McPherson, and you don't hear the Catherine Coolman, and you don't hear the, I wrote some of them down. Kids, and you don't hear a lot of those, but yet, same thing in UPCI, you don't hear those, but in the word of faith, you don't hear about Partum and Seymour and Haywood and- us as much. So anyway, not to go down a rabbit trail. But that's been very interesting to watch your podcast. But I started watching them just basically because I didn't know what to do.

I, of course, I was raised in the UPC. And we were told that we were the only ones going to heaven that we had the truth and that anybody else was, you know, needed to be saved. And in fact, my husband, when we met was a Baptist and he had a re-baptized. Before we got married and, you know, all that. And so it's just, it's been an eye-opening thing for me. And I think

my parents weren't real strict on the standards growing up. But they were in some, some instances. Like if we were on a vacation, we could wear a swim suit. Or because it was Minnesota, if we were skiing or sledding, we could wear our snow pants. But if we were with the church, we had to wear a skirt over the top of them. So it was kind of like, I learned really early on, kind of the hypocritical side of things. But being raised in a Bible school, you, you know, you get everything. And my parents, my dad was actually baptized by Robert Saven and he was his

youth pastor. And he started, you know, going down this trinitarian work road where he was debating everybody. There was one, I don't remember the guy's name, it's my memory's getting really bad. But my dad started noticing that we were going down a rabbit trill and that it was not good.

And that there's something bad was going to happen. And so he was deteriorating physically from walking on crutches since he was four. And so he wanted to find a place that was warmer weather.

And he, we ended up going to a church in Fort Smith that was started by, or that was mainly done by Pastor Lumpkin, James Lumpkin, which I absolutely adore, south of the earth man. I mean, if the UPC had stayed in that vein, I think we would better off, honestly. And that's where we had the AC school. And I learned really quickly in the AC school that if I abided by the rules and was good to go to two shoes, that I was, they were going to leave me alone. And so I did all of that.

While I was there, I started working in the mall and there was a man that I was talking to, that was a trinitarian. And we used to just spend hours and hours and hours talking about on this internity. And so then I left to go to school in Little Rock. And I started hanging out with people and, you know, bars and having friends that were outside of the UPC. And so that's where I really learned to trim my hair and where I make up during the week and, you know, when I went out at night. And then I could put my hair up and go to church on Sunday. So, and that particular

church in Little Rock, we were considered the liberal, you know, UPC liberal church. And so, there were, we never had any issues with us, you know, a minimal amount of makeup and short hair on the platform. Those kinds of things were okay. We just couldn't, like, wear pants and jewelry and things like that. I actually want to talk about that a bit more. I don't think anybody has talked about that.

about that and it is, it's really important to people understand. So in Pentecostalism, you have all of these rules and it's basically, the structure is such that you're trying to control the people's outward appearance so that they don't look like, quote unquote, the world.

So the world can look one way and you can look differently. And yet at the same time, like you said, there's many, many people who go to these churches who don't really do this, but they do on Sunday.

And I knew people that were like this. I knew people, well, even in my family, there were cult rules that we followed and cult rules that we didn't follow and we were definitely in a destructive cult.

But broaden that to the whole scale of Pentecostals. I've had Pentecostal people contact me and say, we were so rigid, we would abide by every single rule every single day and we were trying to earn our salvation and we couldn't really perfect ourselves through these things that we're doing with outward appearance.

And they would go off and tell their story, well, I've had other people say, we only did them on Sunday because why in the world did they have all of these rules? Yeah, I mean, my parents were fairly rigid.

My sister and I differ on that. I think they weren't as rigid as she thinks they were, but my dad and his brother were the only ones that stayed in the UPC. Everybody else in the family was gone.

And he has four children, three of them are in the ministry. My parents took on an employee when they were at ABI that lost his mother while I was at school. And so I basically call him my mother and he's married to a legacy missionary's daughter and they are very rigid.

I mean, they are so strict, it's not funny. So he and I, you know, we used to put heads all the time. And if my parents had known that I was doing that, they would have had a fit.

So I had to hide it from my family. I had to hide it from, you know, everybody else. But I just never really, like, believed all of that. And since I've left, one of the things that just, there's a lot of things that just really bug me.

And that is, you know, they talk about jewelry being costly array, right? And you can't wear it. Well, now I'm seeing all of these ministers' wives at conference and, you know, youth conference and all of these things.

In Christian Louis Vuitton shoes and Gucci and Louis Vuitton and like, it's a big competition to see who's got the most designer. So what's worse, a $2 bracelet from Sheen, or a $5,000, you know, Louis Vuitton bag, which one's more costly?

And I'm finding now that I'm not in a UPC and I'm in another church. There's not that competition to dress up and have all of these things. Everybody just, they show up in jeans and t-shirts and it blows my mind.

And my daughter laughs all the time because she tells people I had to sing on the platform and, you know, three in heels and put my hair up and do it in a skirt and sweat myself crazy and they just think that we're- or like Looney, so that's one of the things I've really had to kind of struggle through and work through and I'm still struggling through a lot of it because I was in it for 50 plus years and my parents have both passed away thankfully so they're not, you know, it would break their heart.

So it's just, yeah, it was one of those things where my family just wasn't, I wasn't that strict, I should say. My family, I would say that we weren't as strict as many other families and I knew families, I've actually spoken to people who as children, they were not allowed to read books unless it was the Bible and they were just that sheltered and what I found to us and you may have seen similar, those who were sheltered the most, those who abided by the rule so much, whenever they got away from their parents, they just went hog wild.

They would do anything and everything and try anything and then they go back to their parents and parents would have no idea. But I was around those kind of kids and I was kind of this middle ground person because I did believe what we had was truth, although now I understand it wasn't.

I wanted to abide by all of the rules but I also wanted to put some critical thinking with the rules to understand why the rules and if I could make a good distinction is, okay, this rule exists because of this passage of scripture and it makes sense because of and whatever critical thinking applied to it, I would do it.

You had me hook line and sinker but if it didn't make any sense at all, I just, I was like scratching my head, why on earth? One of the rules, the weird rules that was more, I guess it was more isolated to this area, the men were forbidden to have beards and what's funny is I moved away and I forgot about it and when I moved back here, I had a beard and you can't imagine all of the, the backlash that I got from the family from this and it didn't make sense.

I mean, Jesus had a beard. Why would you invent a rule like this? But what they were trying to do is they're trying to show themselves differently than the rest of the world and if beards were popular apparently at some point they were, they said, okay, we're not gonna do this because everybody else is doing this but then the problem is society shifts so what is popular in one ear is not popular in another to put that into proper perspective when you walked into the building right on the bulletin board, it had a photo of the Beatles with circled their hair

and writing that said you will not have haircuts like this and I remember thinking this rule is so stupid because nobody wants their haircut like this. I mean, that was back in the 60s, right?

So I did apply critical thinking. The problem was critical thinking was so suppressed that eventually the rule is overwhelmed the critical thinking and when it comes to that point, you just basically become a mental zombie.

Yeah, when I was in school people would say, well, why don't you have a TV? Why do you do this? Why do you do that? And I would say, because it's my religion. I never understood it.

As I got older, I understood why they taught it certain ways, but my best friend and I, we are backyards faced, the backs of our houses face each other. My parents put a fence up because she was Nazarene and she was so worldly.

It was my mom's favorite world, word. But I would leave in the morning and walk over to her house. I put on her jeans, polished my nails, put on her makeup, go to the bus stop, come home to her house, undo everything and go back home.

My parents still this day never know. And so there was that. But it really came down to, I think, when all this happened and we were leaving, my daughter who was 13, I think, at the time or 14, when she found out I turned to my hair, it just blew her mind.

And when she was little, she used to go, I was like, girls don't cut their hair, girls don't cut their hair. And now that she's out and she's doing other things, she's like, mom, modesty isn't a skirt and she's right.

I worked in television and one of the advertising agencies, we did a railroad, rebuild engine line. And they had these huge railroad engines that would go over your head. And we were having to videotape and we had to wear pants in there.

I mean, I had to, it was a rule. But I was always on the ladders, changing lights and setting up different things for television. And here I'm in a skirt. Tell me how that's modest.

And people would say, well, you shouldn't be doing that job. My sister's in law said one time, you shouldn't be doing that job. But yet, it was my house that came to to watch videos when they needed to watch a video.

My parents didn't have a television. I, my grandmother moved in after I moved to college. And so they started watching, you know, then. And of course, we would, we would go out of town and we'd like in a hotel or, you know, at a grandparents' house, we'd watch it.

Or I'd sneak to the neighbors and watch soap operas and things like that or love boat or whatever. So it was funny because when I went into television as a career, my dad goes, well, I'm not surprised.

I used to go to the bathroom during the show and watch the commercials. And I don't have a formal education. I spent 20 years as a writer, a producer. And so it was just, you know, it was really funny.

But I, one of my cousins, church, I couldn't go there because I have a television. And I worked in television. There was no way I was going to be able to go. And, you know, now they're, they've gotten away from the monitors and they're, you know, more people admit they have TVs and things like that.

But I remember I was working for Word of Faith and one of the other producers came into my office and she said, have you seen the good movies lately? You know, my husband and I, we want to just kind of sit on watch movie.

And so I gave her the aim of a movie. She came back and she goes, you seriously watched that movie the whole way through? And I was like, yeah, she goes, there's so much cussing in that movie.

And it dawned on me at that point. The movie was what was wrong, not the movie, not the content of the movie. It's not what we were told was wrong. It was the box.

It was the movie theater. It was the actual TV. And so that changed my perspective on, you know, even as a parent, now what I let my daughter watch, I don't, I'm more particular about what's on the screen, not the screen is.

yourself. You and I have such similar backgrounds, it's funny, I could go down just talking about the stories of childhood for the rest of the podcast, but I'll let that go. Before we begin the podcast, you were talking about the connection between what you were in and the word of faith.

Yes. And what's interesting about this is if you were to ask anybody whether they're in the brand of my movement or they're part of this God's general's weirdness where they think that brand of what's God's general, and they're on the outside looking in, they would say that is not word of faith.

But when you get down and dirty into all of the doctrines, what we had was essentially word of faith, just a precursor to it. And we had, we were in something that was basically a group of men laying the foundation for word of faith.

Well, that developed and grew into this weird, a hodgepodge of doctrines that eventually birthed the official word of faith movement. And I've been studying that pretty deeply. I want to talk about your connection in the UPCI to the word of faith.

When I started working for word of faith, I was going to, because I was going to the liberal church and the pastor actually later used my expertise to start a video ministry and we were one of the churches that actually put cameras in the church in the UPC churches.

But I went to work for this word of faith. And I was going through in vitro. I had been working in secular television and the schedule is just absolutely grueling. And so I thought, well, if I go to a church, they'll understand my church schedule and they'll be more kind to me.

And like I said, I met a man in when I was working as a teenager and before I left to go to college, that was vegetarian. So in my best friend's mother, I also used to watch PTL all the time.

And I always thought that was so crazy, but the share of mother just loved that show. So I have your other house. So I had some idea of it. And I'd been to some concerts and stuff in this particular church and I'd watch them on TV and things like that.

And so I got the job as executive producer for the pastor and his wife, their flagship shows. And I have to say, you know, during that time, I met a lot of the word of faith, you name them, Paula White, Kenneth Copeland and Perry.

So I mean, all of them, I've met them. But the pastor and his wife of this, I still love them. I learned so much from him about faith and grace and just different things like that.

And they were friends with all those people, but they weren't and they preached some of that, but they also, he preached a lot of other things too. So I really had to say I enjoyed my time there, but it was very eye-opening because in producing his show, I would stand in the room and he would talk about, you know, Amy Simple McPherson and Kenneth E. Hagen and, you know, what's O. T. L. Osborne and all of them and how they were generals of the faith and they were generals of the word of faith.

And they, you know, they were, and so when you start talking about God's generals, I was like, oh, that's where that comes. from. Yeah. But it wasn't until I started listening to your podcast that I put together, you know, that Kitson and Brannum and Parnum and all they were all meshed together. Like they were all like, you know, you talked about one time about Hoekstra and Osteen, I believe it was, you know, John Osteen's dad. And I was like, they're so and like they, the word of faith, the pastor when I interviewed with him, he said, I don't want to, I don't

want to talk about what you believe. Don't be talking about that one is you understand, I was like, fine, I'm not here to do that. I'm here to produce a show. But on the other hand, a lot of times they would try and, you know, push there like when I was having trouble having a baby, he said, well, if you come to this church, God would heal you. And I was like, God, didn't heal me anywhere. You know what I'm saying? And so that, but yeah, I worked with all of those people. And, you know, they had to have planes because if they were in

what my husband and I joke, don't really call it unwashed masses, they would lose their anointing. Well, I've never heard, you know, like in the UPC, at that point, I was best friends with my pastor. He would stay in my, you know, we were friends. And so that was so odd to me.

I mean, I had the pastor's phone number, but people his church did not. And to me, that was just odd. And, you know, the, you know, I would go to the gig cream room to mic these ministers up.

We were doing telephones, but I was allowed to talk to them. And it was really interesting at one point because Tommy Tinney came. And, you know, he's Tom Fredson. And he was, do Brownswell Revival. We were doing a big special Brownswell Revival. And I went into the, into the green room. And he started talking to me. And I told him, you know, that what church I went to, because he was the pastor of the church that I went to that had, how moral failure, that just left was really good friends with the, with the Tinney said, come out of POA. And,

so we started talking. And I, like, got in trouble just for answering his questions. It was, it was just, it was amazing how different things were. And, um, yeah, it's just so odd. You know, you're talking about Hoekstra and the, all of the word of faith, the charismatic, the prosperity gospel. There was a point in time in which these people didn't care fundamental doctrines differences as long as you were part of the agenda. And I've been going back through time trying to figure out why this is because there's different key points in time where this happens. Usually it's surrounding some political event. For example, there's a big event

whenever FDR becomes president and have all these people saying that he's bringing in whatever it is he's bringing in Catholicism. Some people thought his false Jews, etc. It's weird because you've got this sudden surge of people with a variety of different beliefs coming together under the platform of religion speaking out against the very things that he's doing in politics.

And in my opinion, Christianity and politics, that, that should be two separate things. You shouldn't be doing this. But it happens again in the 60s, especially when JFK gets in office, and that's about the time whenever you see Hoagstra with Osteen.

Well, there are other circumstances that brought them together, but the point I'm trying to make is you had all of these people in what was called, it was actually branded an intra-denominational movement. That's how Brannum declared the voice of healing magazine, and that's how the campaign started out.

So what happened, you had a hodgepodge of doctrine, and what would happen, a man would get up and speak, and he might speak oneness, and you might have people in the platform who are disagreeing with him, but it's okay, because it's inter-doctrinal.

And there was even a declaration, I think it was either the first issue or the second where it says, we know we have doctrinal issues, but we're all coming together for the sake of the revival, et cetera.

But what happens when you do this is you start to blend doctrines, and so if you want to trace the lineage of how a doctrine came to be, you can't do it, because there's all of this cross-pollination.

One minister, here's another minister, and picks what he likes, and we call it spitting out the cherry seed when you're eating the cherry pie. Well, what happens whenever you have a thousand different pies, and they're all different, and you're trying to make one pie, it's not cherry, it's not apple, you don't know what it is.

And that's really what happens, so it spun off, and in my opinion, it kind of spun out of control, and developed into things like the word of faith. There was one of the hardest things for me in the word of faith was that you calling things that are not as though they were.

Right after I started working there, we always had to wear dresses, we always had to wear pantyhose, it was crazy, I was a lot, I was in a UPC, it was stricter than the UPC, what I had to wear to work.

The saints weren't like that, they could wear whatever they wanted to church, but to work we had to. And I had fallen, and I'd skinned my ankle really, really badly, and so I couldn't wear a lot of the things I had to get a special exemption.

And the pastor of the church kept saying, calling me the healed, and I'm like, I've got a gaping hole in my leg, why are you calling me the healed? And then at one point I said something to his wife about luck, and oh my Lord, you would have thought that I had cost.

So I learned to be really, really careful about what I said, but even recently, several years ago, Josh Herring was in our church, and I said something about, he had prayed for something, and it had come to pat you two months, two years later, it had resolved itself in a really traumatic way.

And we were kind of laughing because it was, and I said something about, isn't that, you know, coincidental, and he goes, no, and he just ripped my hat off about it. And I was like, after that, I just, I started at that point to that, and I had a run in with, I did a missionary video for a missionary that was a friend of mine, and Raymond Woodward came.

And he didn't like anything that I did, and everything that he ripped apart was technical stuff I learned in television, like working in it for 20 years. And he just, me like I was scum under his fingernails and I was like this is and that was the start of the unraveling for me and then of course when everything happened with my daughter and we were eventually kicked out of the UPC church that the pastor of that church had begged us to move to come to and I had known him my whole entire life. He was like six or eight

years older than me at at ABI and big you know if I told you the name you know he has he's high up in the UPC gave the church to his son and it just went downhill and his son just got down right nasty with me and you know so when we said we wanted to leave he said good don't come back. Well that threw me for a look it's like this is all I've ever known and your dad was somebody that I've been told my whole life that I needed to to look up to and you know that he could do

no wrong and that whatever he said was the word of God and I needed to do it. So it took me several months of just listening to podcast and praying and talking to people and one of the key people that I talked to had been their assistant pastor for a while and he and I had grown up at ABI we were in the quiz team the youth group of the same age and he had left when he when it became clear that he wasn't going to be the pastor that the son was and he left and took his uncle's

church in Minnesota and took it out of it and gave up his license and I called him because I've been told I couldn't talk to him after I he did that and we talked forever and it was so helpful and then of course when I connected with another podcast guest from the podcast that lived in Kansas city we talked for a day like all day long just going through the things and he ended up being really instrumental in helping my daughter because it was traumatic and you know it's it's there was so much in my head confusing me because of UPC and word of faith my husband had been Baptist

you know and just all of that was swirling around in my head and we left and it was it's taken me a good long while to kind of unravel some of that stuff. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation you can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley Steven Montgomery John McKinnon and others with links to the paper audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top and as always be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William- and brand and historical research, we want to thank you for your support.

You were talking about some of the names that you heard and names of people that you were with whenever you're in the TV business. There's something that you said that sparked a memory and I wanted to try to flesh this out because I don't know that I've talked about it much.

Whenever I get contacted by people who come out of any group that has a central figure, they'll say things like, before they come out, they'll say things like, well, if he's not the one, who is the one?

They're always looking for the one and it might be profit, it might be messenger, no matter what it is, because that's how they've been trained and manipulated as a central figure. And what happens is they come out of this and they try to find another one where there's a central figure because they're trying to plug back into something similar and they will often denounce mainstream dominations for doing the same thing.

They say, well, if you're, and I'm just throwing out a random denomination, if you're Baptist, you follow this guy. And what they'll do is they'll find some public figure who's not really representing the denomination as a whole, but he just happens to be in that denomination and he's just a public figure, has nothing to do with the structure and it's definitely not a central figure.

The difference is, in what I came out of and I'm certain it's the same in the UPCI, we had family dynasties. So you had the central figure and that was the elite, that was in our world, it was Brannum and in UPCI, it would probably be the president, et cetera.

And that's different, it's not a central figure, it's not the same level of destructive cult. But the families that were near to the highest person up, they had the privileges. And especially if you talk to the children of the people who are these dynasties, man, they could do everything.

I knew, there was a period of time, a long period of time when I was not allowed to have television, but the sons of the central figure, they all had televisions and they talked about it, you know.

We all had, we all had the rules that was for us, but then these family dynasties, they had their own sets of rules, some of them had their own sets of doctrine and depending on which dynasty you were in, you had a completely different kingdom that you were in.

Let's talk to that because I don't know, people who are outside of this, I don't know that they understand the complexities of that. No, and even in the word of faith, I mean, of course, Hagen's given his church down several lines, you know, Osteen the same thing.

And now you're seeing the fight with Fridae Star, that's a family dynasty. In the UPC, that's one of the things that really delusioned me was I knew the parent, the church that was handed down to the son, I knew the mother was from Arkansas and I knew her family and that's the thing I wanted to talk to you about because that, her dad's age group was the kind of the racist kind of group of men.

But I... Anyway, so you have these like we had two dynastic families that married and the children can do no wrong And that was one of the things that my daughter got so disillusioned about because You know we don't go around I mean when I tell you my brother's married to a legacy ministry if I minister missionary if I told you it was blow your mind You know, I have a missionary my one my cousin's sons was a became a missionary who's the ringbearer in my wedding He came to our church and he started talking about I was his cousin and people were just like

Huh Like you know these people you're you're related that he's here because I that's just not who we were We didn't go on time people who we were related to But again my cousin married into a dynastic family and so you know, and that's been bugging me for even before I left the UPC all of these churches are getting passed down to the children and And The saints don't like in our case most of the people have left they either left and said, you know I'm going to start I'm gonna go move for this job or that job or another job

Or they would you know, but now the entire youth group's gone It's just the whole church is crumbling beneath it's up because nobody wanted him and there were any but he was Crammed on or throw the vote was done on a Wednesday night when there was nobody there Nobody would come on Wednesday night because he was so boring But you know nobody was saying anything because if they did they would upset the dad who was high up in the UPC and You know, and that's the other thing being in the Missouri district. Oh my lord. It's one of the worst

As far as that stuff is concerned we would go to camp and my daughter She just she can't she knows who the kids are that are her age the girls are her age and she's like They're the ones getting to sing and they're the ones getting to use their talents and she's incredibly talented Incredibly musically in fact, she was looking at your Podcast the other day and she goes, hey, that's a violin on the wall. She's a viola. She's going to go into music education and She's doing phenomenal. She's headed to nationals right now for the fine arts with the church that we currently go to

But that was her that was the bug in her. She just couldn't she's like, oh now I'm now I'm okay because my cousins are Missionary and they know who I'm related to now. I'm what now. I'm included, you know and And that's the other thing if you're not one of those families you feel so left out and So not not included and this you know one of the things that drove me crazy in the word of faith was you know The front row was for the preachers and they would be in the green room and they would come out and they would go back in

They would you know you couldn't pray for your fellow saints only they could pray for it for the saints But they would come out and they're like celebrities You if you were new you could go meet them in the green room after church But as a saint you couldn't walk up to him and say hey, I'm having this problem Because you just couldn't you they were they were above everybody else they were And so and then then of course, you know being in a UPC and I'm probably going all over the place But there's a new thing they're starting to call these women the queen so and so and it's like

My dad, I wish I had a hold, I'm gonna write a book about my dad's life because my dad walked away from the man who mentored him and baptized him because he was going off the rails.

You just didn't follow a man. It just didn't do it. And so I was raised differently than that. So I'm not in, and I guess part of it is too, I worked in television.

I mean, I've met famous people like Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgeon and you know, my cut can be, I've met a lot of these famous people. They're just people. Some of the people that you see on your news every night or some of the worst, meanest people you've ever seen and some of them are the kindest, some of my best friends.

You know, we're anchors. But the first job I had, the guy was an anchor, he was very, very popular and he could, you know, hi, I'm so and so, not in one minute and the cameras are off and he's firing people and yelling at you and calling your names, I mean, and it happened in the word of faith TV too.

We didn't dare speak to Mike Murdoch. No way, Jose. The only, the only famous pastor that came through word of faith that was, oh, they cracked me up. He and his wife was Don Heggie because she wanted to talk to me and she came out of the green room and sat on the front row where I was floor directing and I was like, I'm going to get in trouble, but I, what am I going to do?

And they were being friendly to me. So there's like a separate, it's like a class system, I guess. You know, and when they have these conferences, they have these, like, we have a conference at our church.

The first five rows behind the pastor's wife were all the pastor and the wife and, you know, you couldn't sit there unless you were so and so and, and, you know, it just was, you couldn't go eat with them unless you were so and so and it was just, it was ridiculous.

I don't, I have never liked that, never. So let's talk a little bit about doctrine if you're able and you may not be able and you can stop me, but I have tried to explain this to people who were never in this kind of thing because people who are on the outside looking in, they look at some of the belief sets and they think, this is just so weird.

Where do you get this? And the people who are of the Pentecostal mindset will say, it's right in the Bible. Can't you see it? It's in the Bible. And they might even read the passage and the other guys just scratching their head think, well, I don't know that it says what you think it says.

And it all comes down to this. There are a lot of phrases that are used from passages of the Bible that have loaded language in the phrase and the Pentecostal mindset, I've heard Pentecostal preachers from a variety of different flavors who do this.

They'll preach and preach and then throw this verse out and not really explain how that verse fits with the rest of the sermon because the whole congregation already knows. And this works well when you've got people who are trained to understand your loaded language.

But when somebody outside comes in, they think, why did he just say that? That's like word salad, right? Let's talk about that. Did you experience any of that when you were growing up? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the gentleman that I was talking about that I spent time with in the mall and, you know, he came, he was converted to the charismatic, trinitarian.

And so he would ask me stuff like that, you know, like, you know, covering is not your hair. It's, you know, it's your husband or it's, you know, we would just, he would get into fights with me about that all the time. And of course, I would just re-agurgitate what the UPC had taught me and what I learned my whole life. And I've since then kind of dug into that a little more. I remember when brother, when Lee Stone King did the holy magic hair thing. It was like, well, if I didn't own that one, I was going to school.

Maybe I could have explained it differently. But now that I'm out, I've had a real come to Jesus about grace and the gospel and that sort of thing. But one of the things that, when I was working for word of faith, the pastor used to say, he'd say, people go around saying that God won't put more on you than you can bear. He goes, that's not even the Bible.

And, you know, and stuff like that. And there's a song that I to this day, I can't, I can't sing it because I, he gives and takes away. And he would not, that was, that was a hair, a hair, a hair seat, to him, you know, God doesn't come down. You know, we, it, it, there's rains on the dust and the unjust, you know. And, and I, I, I, there, it's part of me that believes that. Like I said, he really kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things. But, yeah, was a lot of that kind of stuff. And then, you know, you have stuff that the word of faith

says or cares about, you hear on television or you hear, you know, general Christianity, but then the UPC has their own way of, you know, saying different things. And I remember I was, well, I was when I was going to camp as a young person. There was a friend of mine who was a Hispanic, he was from Mexico. And I wanted to date him and we wanted to date my mom said, you can't do that. You're unequally yoked. You know, and then come later find out. It has now that you can, there's mixed race marriages all the time in prominent, you

know, UPC ministries, but growing up, that was a no-no. But being at ABI, we had people that were coming from all over the country all over the world to go to school. So I was exposed to everything. That to me was just never an issue. So when I moved to the South and some of the racial stuff that got thrown in that wasn't even the Bible or that was taken, you know, out of context or whatever, just, I don't know, it's just, it was very confusing for me. And I've had, like I said, I've had to work through a lot of stuff,

just listening to other opinions and going back to the word of God and talking to people that I trust. And the minister that married us, he had a, well, they call it a moral failing.

I don't know if it was really, it wasn't that big of a deal that he left the UPC. And I've called him, then talked to him. And I've had to repent to people and say, look, I'm so sorry because I cut you out of my life and I should have never done that. And so I'm kind of going off another subject here, but absolutely to answer your question. Yeah, there's so many different links.

I guess you would say. You know, you almost went where I was headed anyway. I want to talk to you that. I want to talk through your daughter's situation, but I want to do that next.

First, I want to talk about this. So I've mentioned on the podcast several times. I've read Dr. Stephen Hesson's book, Combat and Cult Mind Control. Very familiar with the bite model, behavioral control, control of information, emotional control, emotional manipulation, thought control, thought manipulation.

And all of those aspects can determine if the cult, or if the group of people is a destructive cult or not. And they're varying levels of destructiveness, depending on the varying levels of those categories.

One of the things that I put, I guess it does go in one of these categories, but I usually ask this question first. If a group shuns people who leave, I immediately rank them higher as a destructive cult.

Because if you're cutting people off just because they're not part of your group, you must think your group is the exclusive group. And once you get to that level, it is destructive. And there's even if the bite model doesn't, it will usually apply whenever you get to that level.

But even if it didn't, when you're at that level, you really believe that outsiders can't make it because the insiders have it. So it's destructive. Let's talk to you that a bit. Did you see, did you witness shunning?

Did you see other people who were shunned when they left? Oh yeah, it happened to me. I mean, I never really felt part of any of the clicks, any of the groups. I will have to tell you probably the last 20 years of my life, I've been some of the loneliest because we went through in V-Tro, and I was told, you're not praying enough, you're not fasting enough, you're not good enough, you're not doing this either.

But yeah, starting off with my best friend. My parents literally put a fence up and told me she was a whirling, she was raising Nazarene, she's not anymore, but moved me to another part of the Twin Cities, and then of course moved me to Arkansas, and I lost touch with her.

But having grown up in a public school for the first 10, I went through the 10th grade, I had friends that were not UPC people. And they were some of my best friends. I mean, my husband went through cancer several years ago, and it was too Baptist people that were the ones who'd taken my daughter to school and bring in us meals and that sort of thing.

So I have never been one of those people to shun people. I've been told not to talk to certain people, and I just, you want to stay out of trouble, and so you just do what you're told.

And so that's kind of where that came from for me, but it really hit home when it happened to my daughter, because at 13, she lost every single friend she had in the church from the time she was three.

She doesn't understand why the pastor, who prayed for her to become, to be born, who baptized her, who dedicated her. Won't speak to her. I wrote him a letter asking him for a conversation. I have gotten there He said nothing to me nothing. I have a child who was literally in therapy Because everybody she was told to look up to that was godly will not speak to her We were told we couldn't come on the premises. We cannot come back to that churchless with funeral or wedding We went to another VPC church for a year and she couldn't go

To the youth functions in this section because they're all held at that church And I contacted the youth press the brief present I contacted The the district superintendent and I'm like can you do anything about this?

They're like no, we can't we're not gonna go against the pastor because it's his church And that's really what pushed me out. I started putting here on a youth group in another church We drive an hour From our home in Kansas To go to church somewhere else because they love my daughter We walked in for the first time after she went to camp with them and this lady runs just Blast by me grabs my daughter looks me in the face since I love her. I just love her so much And she's proved it over the last year they've been you know

We've not been love bombed. We've been loved And I now realize how Isolating and mean and I'm loving The UPC was to me and my family Not everybody Just like with the word of faith. I don't put everybody in the same category I kind of judge people for who they are and how they treat me But yes, absolutely the shunning is it's you know, you're about in the omnisch right but My my daughter is a legitimate me Legitimately afraid that there are people in her family that will no longer speak to her and it breaks my heart

Yeah, it's so sad I've witnessed various levels of shunning. There are people who won't come around us because of well mainly because of what I do But it's not just me. It's also my children. It's also my wife And their children can't be around my children and we we had to do with this when we left it's really hard But there's also varying levels. I had other family members who would Allow us to come over and I'm using that word very loosely But they would never emotionally connect so you were there But it was never the same they were just completely

They wouldn't shut you off You know completely, but they would emotionally never connect even if you tried if you wanted to connect with him You couldn't do it and for me it's that's actually worse because you're there and it's like going to Going to a well and put the bucket down the well trying to get water and every time you put it down It just comes up empty. That's really what it feels like my dad had three siblings that weren't UPC and so But he had one like I said that was very strict and his kids are all very ministry minded and

This is one of the things I just really bought Others mean my dad was not one of those people that was shunned his family that wasn't UPC. He loved his sisters. The one sister passed away and he was there in the home with the kids when it happened.

He loved her. We heard stories. I never met her. It was before I was born. He loved his family and we were brought into that and we were always, we're going to go see them and we're going to go spend time with them.

If we drove through their town, we just stop in, right? His brother's family, the other one, you can't do that. You absolutely can't do that. And we went to a wedding and one of my cousins, children, they have the church and my daughter went and of course she was, I don't know, 10 or 11 maybe.

And she kept bugging my cousin. I want to spend time with you. I want to see you. I want to talk to you. It can be hang out. She said, yeah, yeah, we'll do that on Sunday.

So Sunday after church, she brings out the reception food in a buffet and she goes off with the pictures and all the mentionaries with her and her husband and her entourage, completely ignoring us.

And it happens all the time. I showed up at my husband's and her brother's house with one time and the wife told me I couldn't come in and talk to my cousin. He had to come outside.

I don't care who you are. If you're my family, you can come in my house if the bomb's gone off. I mean, it's just that kind of stuff that just, I don't, I was not raised that way.

My dad did not do that. He loved his family and they loved him back. And you, to this day, you will never hear a bad word about him from any of the body that he knew.

My mom was the only one that was penicostle in her family and I'm still friends with my cousins and we get along and I go see them. They're not, you know, in church per se.

But I don't shun them, you know, they're still my family and I love them and that bothers me. It's like, at the same wedding, one of my cousins came from one of the other families that was in the church and she felt like we were leaving her out and I said, no, there's just a lingo.

Were you B.C.? Or are all raised the same? We have different common things or you know, we're not leaving you out. It's just we've been raised differently. But yeah, it's, in that part of it has been very traumatic for my daughter because we moved to Kansas City so that she would have a youth group like I had and I had a fantastic youth group at ABI, a fantastic.

Some of us are, a lot of us are still really close. There's only three that are left in the UBCI though. We were really, and I want her to have that. But I will say this, she went through some stuff with the ice stuff at school and she's like, mom, it's so demonic in the school and there's kids doing this, there's kids doing that.

I didn't take her out of public school because I wanted her to be a light, not the other way around and she is, she absolutely is. But come to find out she's leaving early, driving to school, sitting in the car, reading her Bible, she's praying, she's studying things.

She showed me a song the other day that said, it talks about, it's the blood, it's not about perfection, it's not about performance. She wanted to pray sing at the last UPC church we were in.

and she was told she had to look a certain way because I put pictures on Facebook of us in Florida and her in shorts, we got a lecture. And she just, she was like, I was told to jump.

SG Norris would have had a fit if he'd heard that. He's like, you don't run, if it's not God, you're gonna run into water and hurt yourself. And so I had to explain to her that I was raised like that.

She was raised in this jumping, screaming, yelling, shouting, shutting people, portion of the whole thing. So I know I probably got off on a rabbit trail there, but yeah, she's the hardest thing I think I've had to deal with with her is spiritually she's grown, but she doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere.

She doesn't feel like she's included or that she's, you know, and as a 17, 16 year old girl, that's hard. Well, you've definitely been through some hard things and you found a good church on the other side that's more accepting and you've been able to change for the better, what advice would you give people who are making that adjustment?

Because I have a lot of people contacting me going through exactly through the hard times that you went through to get where you are now. What advice would you give them? I would say be kind to yourself and don't be so judgmental.

One of the things that my friend told me about my daughter was he said, she was afraid that if she turned to her, she was going to hell. And I told her, look, you go pray.

I'm not cutting your hair. I'm not telling you one way or the other. I'm not doing it. He said, you've got to do a couple of studying grace. You've got to. And I was sitting in the car in the pickup line and Jason Krab was playing.

I love Jason Krab. Of course, I know all of Southern gospel people because they're gay third and they run on the channel. And his thing was, his song was, when I was on the, when he was on the cross, I was on his mind.

And I started to ball and my daughter got in the car and I don't need to cry. But I said, subit, if I asked you what the gospel is, would you know, she's 13 years old.

She's in high school. She's been raised in the UPC and I'm scared to death. She's not going to know the gospel is. And she told me exactly. And I was like, thank you, Jesus.

Someway somehow you've gotten through to my daughter because I think sometimes they preach so much on the standards and the outward appearance that what happens is she would say, mom, I'm not listening to Billie Eiglish and Taylor Swift and you know, all this stuff.

But the other people in the praise team are, but they look perfect on the outside. Nobody's yelling at them. And I think the outward standards, one of the things I've learned is that a lot of that covers up a lack of love, a lack of understanding, a lack of biblical knowledge.

I mean, growing up in Bible school, I never really had that problem but I've among my peers now, I've seen that. They think if they look good on the outside, they can get away with whatever they want on the inside and they're mean and they're nasty and they say some of the worst things but they look good on the outside, they're things perfect.

So I would say give yourself some grace in that. area and really look at the motives of the people that are telling you that you're doing the wrong thing. Is it to control you? Is it to keep you in? Is it money? That was one of the other things when we left my dad. He lived with us last 10 years of his life and he had a van that was very difficult to drive for his wheelchair. And I gave up a BMW.

We lost our house. We lost luxury cars when we moved to Kansas City. Nobody seemed to care about that. It was how you paying your ties. My dad was giving money to the church and admissions. I was paying for his health care and his food and he was living with me because he couldn't afford anything else. So you got to look at the motives of people and you really had to study grace and you have to give yourself grace. You got to know what the gospel is. I was talking to somebody that was helping my daughter who's an amazing

he's a PK but he's like you talked to him by the UPC. He's a hellian. And he said he wanted to know you know he's from your dad just never was really judgmental. Like a lot of people have really judged this man. And he said when I held my daughter for the first time, he said there's nothing I would do to send her to hell as her father. And when I was going through in vitro and people were telling me you're not praying enough. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. God's punishing you. My dad said to me, he said Anita, I wouldn't do this to you.

Why would God do this to you? We have to look at our Heavenly Father. I had a fantastic dad, not everybody does. But you have to look at him as the loving Father that he is. And there's nothing that we can do that he's going to come out of the sky with the club and just knock us into hell for. I was very fortunate when I was inquisering that Brother Marvin Walker, we were studying Mark and he did the lesson on that. And so a lot of the fear of those things left me but I didn't realize they were being taught to my daughter. So I had to kind of go through all that

with her. But listen to podcasts. One of the reasons I'm doing this, I'm an introvert. I don't like being on camera. I'm a behind the camera person. But other people's testimonies leaving the UPC have so helped me. You know, some of your podcast, Grace Escape, Laura Lynn, I don't know if you knew Deanna Joe is in Canada. She was so helpful to me. And I talked to her as often as I can. She's not doing a podcast anymore but they're still on there. Those things helped me. It helps your critical thinking. It helps you work through the stuff that you've been told all your life.

You're going to go to hell for that you're that you're really not. I mean, there's still things that I do, you know, modesty wise and I will never have short hair. There's just things that I'm going to do because that's what I believe that's what I want to be. You know, in the word of faith, that pastor said, you give your best to God. You wear your best to church. People wear jeans to church and I used to judge them for that. Now I don't. I wouldn't personally do that because I want to give God my best. But you just you have to give yourself grace and and and just say people are

the best they can. The judgmental stuff has got to go away, and you've got to find a place that where you're loved. Where people say, you know, it doesn't matter what's happened to you, it doesn't matter what you believe. We love you. We want you to be loved. We want you to feel the love of God. And that's kind of where we are now. And even though it's a delamination, I don't know how to percent totally agree with. You know, I was shut down. I was like, because even the UPC, it's really performative. You don't raise your hands. You're back. So if you don't run the

aisles, you're back. My dad couldn't run the aisles. He always hated that. And I would just sit there like stone cold. I was done being told how to act. So when I went to this other church, I was doing the same thing. I was like, I'm not going to raise my hands. I'm not going to clap.

I'm not going to do anything. And this pastor is just, he's, you've got to get sound teaching and sound doctrine. And not from somebody who is, you know, he's, he's a doctor, but he would not, you wouldn't know that. But I was just, I would leave church and I would feel peace. I wouldn't feel judged. I felt like I learned something. And he, he got done preaching. He, he's saying this song and I just broke because that particular church allows you to worship how you want worship.

They don't look down their nose at you if you don't run the aisles and raise your hands and stand up the whole time. They just don't. And then it becomes a relationship between you and God, which is the most important thing. And I think that's what we lose focus on. We're in these denominations. We focus on standards and those who would, you know, what did, what did the general superintendent or what am I past or say or what? It's not about that. It's about your relationship with your, with God that died on the cross so that you wouldn't have to take the

punishment. When you think of the real story of the gospel and how much love there is there, we've got to give that to other people. And I think for me, that's always been in me because my dad was handicapped. I had one of my good friends was deaf. And I can't look down my nose at people that aren't perfect. They don't have their hair just so or don't have the name. I didn't have that luxury. And so, you know, you've got to find a place for your love. You've got to find people that can speak into your life. And you got to trust your, you got to trust your relationship with God,

your prayer life. Well, it's very good advice. Thank you so much for doing this. It's, it's been my pleasure. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. From 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.