BCR Senate Candidates Belong to Ministry with Christian Reconstructionist Ties

According to recent comments posted by Hovannes Abramyan on CalStuff, former Berkeley College Republican candidates for the Student Senate, Amaury Gallais and Paul LaFata, are both members of the church group, Victory Campus Ministries:

Amaury could only rely on VCM (Victory Campus Ministry), the church group both he and Paul belong to.

According to other web sites associated with Victory Campus Ministries (VCM), VCM is a ministry affiliated with the Morning Star Christian Church and Morning Star International. It is at this point that the genealogy of Victory Campus Ministries starts to get interesting. It appears that Morning Star International developed out of an association with Maranatha Campus Ministries, but Morning Star doesn't like to advertise that fact.

Morning Star literature has been scrubbed clean of any reference to Maranatha. Bios do not include prominent positions in Maranatha. Activity is not described as Maranatha-sponsored, although clearly dated before Maranatha disbanded and before Morning Star was formed.

Maranatha literature and the Post-Maranatha web site indulge heavily in unrepentant and revisionist history. No mention of a run-in with a committee of cult-watchers, of deprogrammer kidnappings, of the carnage of destroyed lives. Nor of mass staff resignations and numerous conference speakers refusing to return. Only the vaguest reference to constant turbulence and dissent within the board, and that attributed to the devil.

Maranatha founder Bob Weiner’s mild recanting is not found; neither is there any mention of repeated personal confrontations with friends and associates over disturbing Maranatha practices; his berserk, retaliatory stunts against former members; or his thousand-and-one denials, ostensible explanations, contradicting versions, straight-faced lies, and vicious recriminations.

Maranatha Campus Ministries had an interesting history during the 1980s, largely due to controversy surrounding its founder Bob Weiner:

Mr. Weiner has had some explaining to do lately. His exotic blend of Bible-thumping, born-again Christianity and conservative politics is drawing criticism from an increasing-number of angry parents, Maranatha dropouts and other religious leaders. They complain that Maranatha uses a form of mind control that isolated students from their parents and then guides decisions on such personal matters as career choices, politics and marriage.

Last year, a committee including Baptists, Presbyterians and other evangelical Christian groups finished a yearlong investigation of Maranatha, concluding that Mr. Weiner's religion "has an authoritarian orientation with potential negative consequences for members." The committee added, "We would not recommend this organization to anyone."

Please note that the above quote came from a 1985 article in the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a bastion of leftist journalism. According to a 1984 article in Christianity Today, Maranatha Campus Ministries was guilty of treating its members in an authoritarian manner:

Pastors exercise authority over members. They have controlled the selection of marriage partners. (Maranatha members are prohibited from dating. According to Weiner's "dating revelation," dating is a worldly method of selecting a mate). Some pastors have kept detailed records of members' financial contributions. Those who don't give enough have been admonished for having a "spirit of stinginess." In an extreme case at the University of Kentucky, there was a revelation that women were not to use tampons. To members, disobeying a pastor is tantamount to disobeying God.

According to researchers within the evangelical community, the excesses of Maranatha Campus Ministries related to authoritarian treatment of its membership were related to a 1970s trend in some conservative Christian circles called the shepherding movement, also known as the discipleship movement. In this movement, members would give authority over their lives to another church member who acted as a "shepherd" on their behalf. The relevance of the discipleship movement to today's campus politics in Berkeley is that "shepherding" represented a very effective method of mobilizing activists for right-wing causes. Morning Star International, the parent organization of Victory Campus Ministries, has distanced itself from some of the more extreme versions of Maranatha's discipleship methods, although according to this discussion group the practices of discipleship and shepherding may have been euphemistically renamed "accountability partnerships." Yet despite Bob Weiner's official noninvolvement in Morning Star International, this church web site affiliated with Morning Star International suggests that Morning Star International is still on friendly terms with Maranatha and Bob Weiner.

The connection between Bob Weiner and Victory Campus Ministries is most troubling, because of Weiner's connections to the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which favors abolishing the separation of church & state and replacing the current American system of law with one based on the Old Testament. (You know, bring back the stoning of adulterers, homosexuals, and children who are disobedient to their parents. That sort of thing.) To be specific, Maranatha founder Bob Weiner was a member of the steering committee that founded the theocratic Coalition on Revival. It is unclear whether Rice Broocks, the current leader of Morning Star International, subscribes to the same Christian Reconstructionist beliefs as his former mentor Bob Weiner, but the parallels are quite troubling.

Update: In response to Hovannes Abramyan's post on Res Ipsa, I wanted to clarify that Paul LaFata and Amaury Gallais are the only two Berkeley College Republican candidates to date that I can verify as members of Victory Campus Ministries. In addition, Paul LaFata was not a candidate in the most recent election, although he has campaigned for Senate under the BCR banner. I apologize if my headline led people to think otherwise.


- posted by Jon @ 6:17 PM |