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Pastor John Maccoverupper(and his church) who for over 40 years protects rapists, pedophiles and domestic abusers
says there is no such thing as mental illness, calls PTSD ‘grief’
In what at least one critic has dismissed as the Dunning Krueger Effect in action, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, claims there is no such thing as mental illness.
More than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over one in five youth (ages 13-18) either currently or at some point during their life have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. About one in 25 U.S. adults also lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.
Days before the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Month, however, MacArthur, who is also the president of The Master's College and Seminary, called mental illnesses “noble lies” while speaking during a panel discussion at Grace Church of the Valley last Thursday.
A prominent Anglican church in Virginia waited 16 years to investigate or inform its congregation about a former youth pastor’s alleged sexual abuse, a third-party investigation has found.
According to the report by law firm Isler Dare, Jeffrey T. Taylor sexually abused three boys—two of whom were 13—while Taylor was a youth director from 1990-1999 at the historic The Falls Church Anglican (TFCA) in Falls Church, Virginia. Despite this, Eddie Isler, the investigator, told The Roys Report (TRR) he was unaware of any pending criminal charges against Taylor.
One of Taylor’s victims approached the church with allegations in 2007, and the parents of another victim came forward in 2021. However, it wasn’t until September 2023, after some parents complained to a bishop about TFCA’s lack of response, that the months-long investigation began. In October 2023, TFCA informed its congregation of the alleged abuse.
TFCA, which President George Washington and former Vice President Mike Pence attended, is a 300-year-old church after which the town is named.
In 2006, the congregation disaffiliated from The Episcopal Church. It’s now part of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA)—a denomination embroiled in an abuse scandal involving churches in Illinois and Washington D.C.
We bring you another tune straight from Radio Sovereign Geneva. This time we hear from some of the leading Calvinist voices and their view of children. John MacArthur holds a gnostic view of sin wherein sin is a substance to be transferred and exchanged; thus he believes the greatest act of depravity is when a husband and wife become pregnant. RC Sproul takes issue with John Calvin's claim that children are as depraved as rats. In Sproul's opinion, this is far too insulting to the rat. Voddie Baucham calls an infants a "viper in a diaper". While Paul Washer claims infants are born evil, possessed of murderous intent and hating God.
However, the Scripture are clear. These men are teaching lies and slandering God's innocent and helpless little imagebearers.
SBC’s David Allen, Incoming EC President Jeff Iorg, and the “Always Irritable” Pastor Mac Brunson Believe That Sex Abuse in the SBC Is a Distraction From “Real Ministry.”
Religious group facing “cult” allegations looks to recruit members on Yale’s campus
ASEZ, the university volunteer branch of the World Mission Society Church of God — a Christian group that has faced criticism for functioning like a cult and is known to recruit on other college campuses — has been active on campus, looking to recruit members to form an official student group.
Over 10 students have described to the News instances of being approached by a group known as ASEZ, which stands for Save the World from A to Z, with one student having characterized the group as “cult-like” and describing it as a “cult” that “masquerade[s] as just a religious group and a way to do Bible study.” Davornne Lindo ’22, the main student leader working to recruit students to the group, told the News that ASEZ’s mission is “to save the Earth from A to Z” and is an international volunteer group established by the Church of God, composed of university students from across the world.
ASEZ’s central beliefs stray from traditional Christianity
The Church of God was founded in South Korea in 1964. The main tenets of the church include the belief in “god the mother” as well as the sabbath on Saturday. The Church of God believes that Sahng-Hong Ahn, who founded the church in 1964, is the second coming of Christ. The church refers to him as Christ Ahnsahnghong, believing that he restored the Passover and fulfilled the prophecy of King David, which was only partially fulfilled by Jesus Christ. While ASEZ was established by the Church of God, Lindo told the News that members can be part of ASEZ — which is volunteer-oriented — without being a part of the church. But students who attended some of ASEZ’s meetings said they found the lines more blurred.
When asked by the News about ASEZ’s beliefs, Lindo read directly from its brochure, saying that “we cherish God’s love in the basis of the Bible-centric faith, communicate with the world citizens to resolve problems that the world is faced with and realize the well being of mankind.”
Tytiana Washington, ASEZ Coordinator for the Connecticut chapter of the Church of God, told the News that the church follows a literal reading of the Bible. According to their website, the Church of God teaches its members that Passover is a Christian tradition, that the symbol of the cross is a form of idolatry and to believe in God Elohim — God the Father and God the Mother. God the Mother reportedly refers to Ahn Sahng-Hong’s spiritual wife, a South Korean woman in her mid-70s named Jang Gil-ja. She is also described as ‘Heavenly Mother’ and ‘The Bride.’
Evangelical pastor Douglas Wilson wrote that men “conquer” and women “surrender.” Christ Church survivors are starting to speak out.
Quote:
To learn about Christ Church’s culture of abuse and social control, VICE has interviewed 12 former and current church members and Logos students, and reviewed court and medical documents, church correspondence, and business filings. Ex-kirkers describe a punitive community in which women are told they must defer to church leaders and cannot say “no” to their husbands, men are taught to strictly control their homes, and those who speak out can be isolated and harassed.
During Jean’s first year as a non-matriculating student at New Saint Andrews, Christ Church’s college of about 150 students, she met a charming, handsome upperclassman. His father was a deacon at Mother Kirk. By her second year, they started dating and soon he said he wanted to marry her. “I had stars in my eyes,” remembers Jean. “But then he got physical. I was a virgin, and it scared me.”
Within their first year dating, heavy petting turned to coercive sex. He’d get her drunk and refuse to accept her wishes not to have sex. He refused condoms. Jean, who had been raised on a steady diet of purity movement books, felt like she had no choice but to marry him, “or I was somehow unclean and unworthy.” Before they got married, she joined the church, taking covenant vows in front of the congregation. After her vows, kirkers came up and shook her hand, saying how beautiful she was. “That’s a big deal to men in leadership,” says Jean. They brag about how their women are more beautiful than ‘pagans’ wives.’”
The wedding, officiated by Wilson, was four years after she moved to Moscow. Starting nine months after they were married, they had a baby every other year until the couple had four children. One night, after their first was born, her husband came home drunk after she was asleep. He pulled her over, lifted her nightgown. She told him “not tonight,” that she was tired. He got angry. She tried clawing away, then pushing him away with her arms. He pinned her down, so she used her legs to kick him. That’s when he unbuttoned his pants. “When he was done, he passed out drunk and I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.” She was bruised and her insides bled.
She called a kirker friend about it the next day. The friend attended a Christ Church plant—a seedling congregation based in Christ Church’s doctrine and culture—and “she said the same thing was going on in her marriage.” Marital rape, it seemed, was normal. So, Jean didn’t report it. Jean’s husband raped her over and again a couple of times a week for about a decade, either with violence or by waiting until after she took a prescription sleeping pill. Sometimes, “I’d wake up with him having me or I’d wake up the next morning and be bleeding or see the signs.” Jean has since been diagnosed with PTSD from sexual assault.
Years into her marriage, Jean went to several pastors at Trinity Reformed, a Moscow Christ Church plant, and told them her husband had been raping her. Although they did notify Christ Church leaders, because her then-husband’s father was an elder who could be disciplined if his son continued to sin, the pastors at Trinity, “all told me not to report it and that I was wrong. These pastors told me a wife is not allowed to tell her husband no.”
Jean’s then-husband’s drinking increased. She says he held her against walls, slammed a lot of doors, pounded the walls, once pointed a loaded gun at her, raped her with a champagne bottle. The pastors at Trinity told her not to go to the police, not to separate.
Eventually, she prepared for divorce and left the Christ Church community, knowing she’d just be excommunicated if she tried to stay. One woman’s counselor called her after the split, telling Jean that she “was causing [her husband] to turn to porn now that I was divorcing him.”
In the time since leaving the Christ Church community, Jean’s car has been vandalized regularly, the air let out of her tires several times. Online, she’s had to block kirkers, including teachers from Logos, angry about her divorce. “I have been called a *****, *****, and ****,” she said.
Tia Levings discusses her dark reality in Christian fundamentalism, with evangelical patriarchy and religious trauma. Having appeared in the Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People, and written a harrowing memoir, A Well-Trained Wife she reveals how she had to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles––a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.
Cait West was completely under her father’s rule down to all her decisions. She was told he would even make the biggest decision of her life for her— who she was going to marry. She was gr**med to be a submissive wife under the patriarchy movement and stay-at-home daughters movement. Her homeschooling was completely unregulated and not much attention was paid to her education, because her sole purpose was to be a mother who eventually belonged to her husband. Terrified that anything less than strict obedience would land her in the fiery depths of Hell, she felt she had no choice but to go along with it well into her 20s. This is how she gained her independence and escaped that lifestyle.
A pastor’s wife’s questionable suicide sparks suspicion and highlights the fruit of abusive theologies
Mica Miller’s body was found at 3:03 p.m. April 27 in Robeson County, N.C., with a gunshot wound to the head, an hour and a half drive away from her home in Myrtle Beach, S.C., two days after serving her husband divorce papers.
Her husband, John-Paul Miller, known as JP, is pastor of a nondenominational church, Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach.
According to police, 9 minutes before the gunshot was heard, she called 911 and said, “I’m about to kill myself and I just want my family to know where to find me.” This was after purchasing a gun earlier in the day.
Fisherman Johnnie Jacobs told WBTW he had been fishing that night when he heard the gunshot.
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Her death is a tragedy we should have seen coming. In an affidavit, Mica’s sister, Sierra Francis, said, “Mica stated to me on many occasions, ‘If I end up with a bullet in my head, it was JP,” referring to her husband, John Paul Miller.
“I know my sister to have expressed the abuse and violence against her by her husband to others, including family members and members of the church congregation,” the affidavit said. “My sister also expressed to me that she was fearful that she would not make it to the divorce and that her life would be taken from her.”
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An abusive gospel
Many Christians who hear the story of Mica Miller will be deeply grieved by her death and the abuse she suffered. They will wish Mica would have clung to the gospel or that JP would have loved her as Christ loved the church as a picture of the gospel.
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An abusive attachment
While MacArthur and Piper may be miles from Myrtle Beach, the worldwide grip of their ministries influence the hierarchical theology in broader evangelicalism that leads women like Mica Miller to feel like God has put their abusive husbands in their life in order to give them “a cross to bear.”
And now in Mica’s case, she’s dead.
That hierarchy from a self-glory obsessed God who causes men to abuse women and expects women to recognize their abuse as coming from God, celebrate a gospel of violence against human bodies and submit to the all-male leaders and God above them creates an abusive attachment.
Trauma therapist Shane Moe told BNG: “As human beings, we depend upon our primary attachment figures (e.g., our parents, partner and God as we understand God) for our basic attachment needs to feel ‘seen, safe, soothed and secure.’ Given the nature and power of our primary attachment relationships, we often learn to relate to ourselves — for example, our thoughts, emotions, bodies or needs — in the same ways our attachment figures relate to us (or to those parts of us). If a powerful attachment figure relates to us in ways that are critical and shaming, we might spend a lot of time criticizing and shaming ourselves.”
Until the church is willing to reconsider its violent gospel, its hierarchies of authority and submission, its handling of mental health and its sacralization of abuse, tragedies like this are going to continue to unfold. As Moe observed, “Women captive to his theological system and its attending family and ecclesial structures have exhibited some of the highest levels of psychological suffering I’ve ever seen in my clients.”
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