The following behaviors are listed as "brainwashing techniques" by one of the foremost works on the topic, "Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control" by Dr. Kathleen Taylor. The first 8 are "Lifton's Totalist Themes" from Robert J. Lifton's classic work, "Thought Control: The Psychology of Totalism" which are indicative of totalitarian organizations.
NOTE: It is important to note that none of the behaviors epitomized by Hope Christian Church ASU here are considered “normal” for Christian ministries or faith-based groups to engage in. Any ideas such as “that is just how Church-groups operate” would be egregiously in error.
NOTE: It is important to note that none of the behaviors epitomized by Hope Christian Church ASU here are considered “normal” for Christian ministries or faith-based groups to engage in. Any ideas such as “that is just how Church-groups operate” would be egregiously in error.
Dozens of experience reports were collected from former members which demonstrate these violations by Hope Christian Church ASU.
1: “Milieu Control”:Control of an individual’s communication with the external world, hence of his or her perceptions of reality
Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU exerts a large amount of control over members’ social lives, and treats as strange members’ attempts to pursue Christian knowledge or education outside of the Church. Seeking spiritual guidance from others outside of Hope (even family members) is also strongly discouraged. This results in members’ communication with the outside world, as well as their flow of information from the outside being limited.
2: “Mystical Manipulation”: Creating a sense of awe or enthusiasm for the group by manipulating circumstances or information to create an impression of supernatural wisdom or divine favor
Summary: Leaders at Hope Christian Church ASU will often fabricate circumstances to create the impression that they are special or “anointed” in some sense.
3: “The Demand for Purity”: The belief that elements outside the chosen group should be eliminated to prevent them contaminating the minds of group members, along with the enactment of unreasonable standards of perfection or “excellence” within the group
Summary: Other ministries, especially local ones, are often criticized by Hope Christian Church ASU, and members are discouraged from involvement in any other Christian groups besides Hope, or other campus clubs which are not affiliated with Hope (not one of their “front groups”). This is expressly because contact with other groups might take away from Hope’s influence over its members, and “lead them on the wrong path”
4: “The Cult of Confession”: The use of and insistence on confession to minimize individual privacy
Summary: While confession of sins is common amongst Christian groups, Hope Christian Church demands it to an unreasonable and unbiblical extent. Furthermore, while the stated reason for demanding so much confession by members is so that they might “receive healing”, later, sins which students have confessed to Hope leaders are often “dangled over their heads” suggesting that healing was not the real intent. Members are also encouraged to keep tabs on, and report the activity of other members to Hope leaders, if the activities are such that Hope leaders might find them concerning.
5: “Sacred Science”: Viewing the ideology’s basic dogmas as both morally unchallengeable and scientifically exact, thus increasing their apparent authority
Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU often presents their dogmas as being unfalsifiable, in that anything and everything fits perfectly with their ideologies, which are therefore not challengeable. Here we refer to dogmas not central to Christianity, but specific to Hope Christian Church ASU.
6: “Loading the Language”: Compressing complex ideas into brief, definitive-sounding phrases, ‘thought-terminating clichés’
Summary: Leaders of Hope Christian Church often compress complex ideas into a number of “catch-phrases” or slogans, which are repeated ad nauseam until they (effectively) lose meaning. In discussion, these slogans are often presented as constituting an entire argument, or taking the place of an entire round of rational discourse. In other words, if a slogan can be applied to a situation or an idea, that is all the discussion that’s necessary on the subject.
7: “The Primacy of Doctrine”: The idea that a dogma is more true and more real than over person anything experienced by an individual human being
Summary: As mentioned previously, Hope Christian Church often gets members to question their own judgment, in favor of Hope leadership a specific subset of this phenomenon is to take someone’s personal experience and make it seem “not real”; to present the ideologies of Hope as “more real” than anyone’s experiences.
8: “The Dispensing of Existence”: The right to control the quality of life and eventual fate of existence for both group members and nonmembers, often made possible by the group’s supposed special status. Often this can include an implicit or explicit “threat” being in place if members decide to leave the group.
Summary: Stories have been told of explicit threats being issued to former members who have left Hope Christian Church ASU, and talked negatively of their experience afterwards, leadership at Hope Christian Church ASU attempts to manipulate members who wish to leave into staying, and as mentioned exhaustively on this site, former members of the church are shunned, and are often belittled and told bad things might come if they leave the church.
NOTE: The general consensus in social psychology is that the 8 points above alone (not to mention the handful of others in this section, or dozens of others in Part IV) are sufficient to assert much authority over the minds of individuals within a group, and therefore are sufficient criteria for categorizing a group as an authoritarian cult. Even if all 8 points are not met (as they are with Hope), observing even a handful of them within a group is a major cause for concern
9: “Cults often seem more youth-oriented, emphasizing their novelty and radicalism.”
Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU has a specific interest in freshman students, above all other students. Likewise, Pastor Brian Smith has, countless times described Hope in sermons as different from other churches, using the word “radical”, and other descriptors of novelty or radicalism, always with a braggadocious tone.
10: “RealityShift”: “Lowerstatus cult members will tend to shift their beliefs towards the beliefs of higherstatus members, and particularly the cult leader; the reverse is not the case.”
Summary: This is seen almost without fail amongst members of Hope Christian Church ASU, who learn to parrot back what they have heard or what they know their leaders want to hear, until they are able to simply support the ministers’ positions to a t, regardless of whether they have doubts about the efficacy of said positions. Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU exerts a large amount of control over members’ social lives, and treats as strange members’ attempts to pursue Christian knowledge or education outside of the Church. Seeking spiritual guidance from others outside of Hope (even family members) is also strongly discouraged. This results in members’ communication with the outside world, as well as their flow of information from the outside being limited.
2: “Mystical Manipulation”: Creating a sense of awe or enthusiasm for the group by manipulating circumstances or information to create an impression of supernatural wisdom or divine favor
Summary: Leaders at Hope Christian Church ASU will often fabricate circumstances to create the impression that they are special or “anointed” in some sense.
3: “The Demand for Purity”: The belief that elements outside the chosen group should be eliminated to prevent them contaminating the minds of group members, along with the enactment of unreasonable standards of perfection or “excellence” within the group
Summary: Other ministries, especially local ones, are often criticized by Hope Christian Church ASU, and members are discouraged from involvement in any other Christian groups besides Hope, or other campus clubs which are not affiliated with Hope (not one of their “front groups”). This is expressly because contact with other groups might take away from Hope’s influence over its members, and “lead them on the wrong path”
4: “The Cult of Confession”: The use of and insistence on confession to minimize individual privacy
Summary: While confession of sins is common amongst Christian groups, Hope Christian Church demands it to an unreasonable and unbiblical extent. Furthermore, while the stated reason for demanding so much confession by members is so that they might “receive healing”, later, sins which students have confessed to Hope leaders are often “dangled over their heads” suggesting that healing was not the real intent. Members are also encouraged to keep tabs on, and report the activity of other members to Hope leaders, if the activities are such that Hope leaders might find them concerning.
5: “Sacred Science”: Viewing the ideology’s basic dogmas as both morally unchallengeable and scientifically exact, thus increasing their apparent authority
Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU often presents their dogmas as being unfalsifiable, in that anything and everything fits perfectly with their ideologies, which are therefore not challengeable. Here we refer to dogmas not central to Christianity, but specific to Hope Christian Church ASU.
6: “Loading the Language”: Compressing complex ideas into brief, definitive-sounding phrases, ‘thought-terminating clichés’
Summary: Leaders of Hope Christian Church often compress complex ideas into a number of “catch-phrases” or slogans, which are repeated ad nauseam until they (effectively) lose meaning. In discussion, these slogans are often presented as constituting an entire argument, or taking the place of an entire round of rational discourse. In other words, if a slogan can be applied to a situation or an idea, that is all the discussion that’s necessary on the subject.
7: “The Primacy of Doctrine”: The idea that a dogma is more true and more real than over person anything experienced by an individual human being
Summary: As mentioned previously, Hope Christian Church often gets members to question their own judgment, in favor of Hope leadership a specific subset of this phenomenon is to take someone’s personal experience and make it seem “not real”; to present the ideologies of Hope as “more real” than anyone’s experiences.
8: “The Dispensing of Existence”: The right to control the quality of life and eventual fate of existence for both group members and nonmembers, often made possible by the group’s supposed special status. Often this can include an implicit or explicit “threat” being in place if members decide to leave the group.
Summary: Stories have been told of explicit threats being issued to former members who have left Hope Christian Church ASU, and talked negatively of their experience afterwards, leadership at Hope Christian Church ASU attempts to manipulate members who wish to leave into staying, and as mentioned exhaustively on this site, former members of the church are shunned, and are often belittled and told bad things might come if they leave the church.
NOTE: The general consensus in social psychology is that the 8 points above alone (not to mention the handful of others in this section, or dozens of others in Part IV) are sufficient to assert much authority over the minds of individuals within a group, and therefore are sufficient criteria for categorizing a group as an authoritarian cult. Even if all 8 points are not met (as they are with Hope), observing even a handful of them within a group is a major cause for concern
9: “Cults often seem more youth-oriented, emphasizing their novelty and radicalism.”
Summary: Hope Christian Church ASU has a specific interest in freshman students, above all other students. Likewise, Pastor Brian Smith has, countless times described Hope in sermons as different from other churches, using the word “radical”, and other descriptors of novelty or radicalism, always with a braggadocious tone.
10: “RealityShift”: “Lowerstatus cult members will tend to shift their beliefs towards the beliefs of higherstatus members, and particularly the cult leader; the reverse is not the case.”
11: “I suggest, you persuade, he brainwashes”
Summary: Hope members are often encouraged to participate in a “triangle offense” strategy of influence, where three current members take on different roles in influencing students and bringing them into the church.
12. Neuro-Linguistic-Programming techniques, such as “fractionation”: fractionation involves evoking bad memories from someone to create a negative emotional state, followed by the evoking of positive memories or feelings which are “anchored” to the person or group employing the tactic
I was once in Faith Christian Church in Tucson, back in 1997 when I was just a freshman. Brian Smith was my "assigned pastor." He is a very manipulating and persuasive person. He will make you feel like you are nothing. Of course this is true compared to Almighty God. The issue is that Brian Smith is not God, but he makes his followers feel as though he is as close as you can possibly get to being like God. Beware if you are affiliated with his church. You've been warned.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. We agree that not only Brian, but many of the upper-leadership at Hope can be very persuasive and manipulative (presumably they learned it all from Steve Hall) and the practices we detail here demonstrate that. Also, I think you're right that there's definitely a kind of "cult of charisma" around Brian in his ministry.
DeleteWill you keep our efforts in your prayers?