@CourtneySt89976 The Vow is probably the most helpful thing that I have watched because there are a lot of parallels to IHOPKC.

Coverage of NXIVM by the media when the story broke was very much of a lurid sex cult with beautiful Hollywood starlets. @CourtneySt89976 Peoples' experiences of sexual abuse while under years of coercive control & brainwashing were being treated as juicy gossip & lurid voyeurism for a titillated public, many members of which were also asking such helpful questions as "How could these people be so dumb?"

Who in the @IHOPKC has #MoravianFever & is willing to spend an hour helping me fact-check a claim? I would need about 12 volunteers, stalwart & true, who are willing to read 10 pages of Rimius' "A Candid Narrative" to help me find the source of a salacious rumor. Those of you who have been sharing the Deception Bytes blog post on Zinzendorf & thinking he was definitely a pedo might recall this other claim:

Good morning, @IHOPKC folks who are rethinking your lives. I continue on my autism history dive into the Moravian mythology promoted by IHOPKC as people reckon with Zinzendorf's own problematic erotic mysticism & ask if this was an influence or source for Mike. I continue to think that Mike probably didn't know much at all about Zinzendorf's teachings & will continue to hold this opinion until there is evidence that he was reading & drawing from Zinzendorf's erotic mysticism in the early days of Metro & IHOPKC.

Y'all, the 18th century equivalent of spicy Church Accountability Twitter was lit.

In the 1750's, there was an anti-Moravian pamphlet campaign in England.

This is an excerpt from Rimius' 1755 A Supplement to the Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhuters" We even get a little Ye Olde @WadeMullen Style Image Management Analysis here, & the style is *devastatingly* elegant.

18th @DrMichaelLBrown would most definitely have been scolding people not to write pamphlets & to let him do the thinking here.

google.com/books/edition/…

.@IHOPKC folks- As you are processing the slapdash "independent" investigation by Rosalee McNamara of Lathrop Group, a powerful law-firm known for its representation of giant corporations & Roman Catholic institutions embroiled in sexual abuse scandals... ...know that the practice of hiring law-firms that conduct opaque investigations on behalf of embattled clients (invariably declared "independent," sometimes with an equally vague & unexplained claim to be "trauma-informed") is common not just in churches...

Hey, @IHOPKC folks- I'm seeing some references to "Stockholm Syndrome" get thrown around. It isn't a real thing & has a problematic, misogynistic history. independent.co.uk/news/world/ame… When we use language like "due process," "Stocholm Syndrome," "cult," "trafficking," etc., we need to always ask: "Does this language bring clarity, or does it obscure?"

Vague, memey, bucket terms like Stockholm Syndrome tend to keep us from asking deeper questions.

Something that there is no easy way to talk about in advocacy work is the way that wicked ministry leaders will often use "Good Survivors" (meaning victims that they still have some level of control over) as human shields or pawns to discredit "Bad Survivors." Bad Survivors are a threat to the ministry's image. Leaders who either directly abused or enabled abuse of survivors unsurprisingly have no problem reabusing them again when they threaten the idolatrous self-images of leaders and communities.

.@SNAPNetwork , we see mostly Roman Catholic abuse cases in the trophy case on Lathrop Group's investigations page.

Do y'all have any thoughts for the @IHOPKC people who are being asked to trust @EricVolz that this is a trauma-informed investigation?

lathropgpm.com/services-pract…

https://twitter.com/hlgriffin/status/1735853426305556979

The reason I'm asking, @IHOPKC folk, is that, in addition to boasting about how great Lathrop's investigations are for protecting religious institutions, the trophies in the case are mostly Roman Catholic abuse cases, which means @SNAPNetwork would have likely been involved.

Yesterday, after Mike Bickle of @IHOPKC released his tortured fauxpology/concession, the next phase of a smear-campaign began to unfold on a Twitter account with the handle of @lucabrasi_ & the name of Mike Brown began to release old emails from Jane Doe to Mike Bickle. The @Lucabrasi_ account also partially released the real name of Jane Doe before taking down both the screenshots of the emails & the name, but he did set up a classy little quiz as to whether her name should be released, also since taken down.

@MatthewHartke @ihopkc This is great, @MatthewHartke . I put together some resources on the history of the twisting of Matt 18 by abusive leaders to evade accountability. The form that evangelicals, fundamentalists, & charismatics use was developed & spread by Bill Gothard.

https://x.com/hlgriffin/status/1726990679333818494?s=20

@MatthewHartke @ihopkc Because it has been embedded in so many sectors of white Christianity for over 40 years, Boomers & Gen X have been so formed by it that they treat it as an obviously "Biblical Process" that is plainly evident in scripture.

OH MY GOODNESS, Y'ALL-

FOR

SUCH

A

TIME

AS

THIS.

https://twitter.com/JosiahHawthorne/status/1731127586074382432

There is, alas, no surviving fanfic encompassing the Jesus/Philo crossover universes.

But y'all, there was some early Christian fanfic with Philo.

@natecdrums @Joel7Richardson @ericmetaxas @ihopkc Abusers are consummate image makers. They can sound sincere. They can sound convincing. They can do this for decades. When they slip, we empathize with them because we think what they reveal when they slip is "out of character." @natecdrums @Joel7Richardson @ericmetaxas @ihopkc Most of us never see beyond the performance, much of which is on stage.

They can say true & good things that we receive with a pure heart & that bless us.

They can play dress-up in the appearance of goodness.

.@DrMichaelLBrown is a name I hadn't heard for a long time until I started paying attention to how charismatic leaders were responding to the @MikeBickle8 abuse allegations & @ihopkc 's appalling response.

https://twitter.com/TaylorMatthewD/status/1729334744905638033

I was in @ChiAlphaUSA in college in the late 90's & 00's, was around Assembly of God folks for a most of my 20's...

.@IHOPKC folks-

Here are a couple of articles that come with a huge content warning of a common form of Clergy Sexual Abuse that uses the Roman Catholic Bridal Mysticism tradition to groom victims. The first is about Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. Why not technically clergy, Vanier carried immense spiritual authority & was considered a living saint until he died at 90.

Shortly after, survivors of his abuse came forward:
christianitytoday.com/news/2023/janu…

Hey, @IHOPKC folks- Reposting this 2021 article by @scotmcknight from the @ACNAtoo blog called "Spinning Matthew 18."

A predator-enabling reading of Matt 18 were spun out in evangelicalism/ fundamentalism/ charismatic movement by Bill Gothard of IBLP.

acnatoo.org/acnatoo-blog/s… Because of the influence of Gothard going back decades, this reading of Matthew 18 is so deeply embedded in contemporary evangelicalism & charismatic culture that we don't notice it as a lens through which we interpret scripture.

This reading just seems "plain" & "obvious."

@IHOPKC folks- as things about the Mike Bickle Clergy Sexual Abuse allegations come to light, it is important that you tread carefully if you come to believe that someone with whom he had a "sexual relationship" may be complicit in a cover-up.

clergysexualmisconduct.com/definitions Clergy Sexual Abuse is not "an affair" or "a moral failing" by an otherwise upstanding man of God who was tempted by a bunch of Bathsheba Jezebels who were Drawn To His Anointing & Sent by the Accuser to Become Accusers of the Brethren.

If you are a survivor of abuse in @IHOPKC or other communities & are thinking of talking to a journalist, please make sure that you ask them if they have training in trauma-informed journalism.

Make sure you are protecting yourself & others whose story intersects with your own. Here are some resources recommended by a trauma-informed journalist whom I trust to work with survivors of abuse.

Ask journalists if they have been trained by The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma (@DartCenter ).

Well, y'all- @IHOPKC is now not using regional law firm @StinsonLLP to conduct an investigation into Clergy Sexual Abuse allegations against @MikeBickle8 .

Instead, they are using a "local law firm," which they somehow forgot to name.

How is this better? Here is the link to the announcement on
@IHOPKC's Instagram page : instagram.com/p/CzfVs4zCbgf/…

I am in a Plato reading group led by the @CatherineProj & we just finished The Sophist, which is about how to recognize teachers who present themselves as possessing the truth but who are actually image-makers who create false pictures of reality with words, but seem real. I'm in this group because I need to understand Plato to understand Philo to understand what Paul is responding to in Romans, but the entire time, I have been thinking about the work of @WadeMullen & @chuckdegroat on image-management & narcissism in the church.

Current & former members of the @IHOPKC community are pushing back against leadership's decision to hire @StinsonLLP, a powerful Midwestern law firm, to investigate allegations of Clergy Sexual abuse against IHOPKC founder, Mike Bickle. julieroys.com/ihop-kc-indepe… Members of the wider church accountability/survivor community have been trying to get the word out to the wider @IHOPKC community about WHY a third-party investigation by a law firm is a sign that IHOPKC is not acting in good faith.

https://x.com/ladyjessicahaze/status/1721945419994022274?s=20

.@IHOPKC people- The bonus episode of @HeavenBentPod season 4 mentions that people are publicly naming victims without their consent.

Please do not ever do this.

If you see someone do this, tell them to take it down immediately. Whether someone is or isn't a survivor of abuse is their story to tell on their terms.

If their story intersects with another survivor or is witnessed by a third party, it's more complicated, but for the love of God, protect their confidentiality.