[OBW]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

I use the word poison because a person that we preached the gospel to and who prayed with us one day would not talk to us other than to say this group had talked to them the next day. That is not "warned".

But if the group that was being warned against had been the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, you would have hoped they would not talk with those heretics the next day and would never have categorized it as "poison."

I'm not equating the LRC to the JWs or Mormons. But there are many who believe that the LRC is quite heretical in some ways, and "cultish" in others, although within the general bounds of Christianity. Should their warnings be insisted to be "poison" just because we don't think that badly about the LRC? Would you warn others about The Way, Garner Ted Armstrong's group, or some other extremely marginal group. Remember, someone doesn't think they are marginal. But would you want the people you warn to still be going to meet with them the next day?

The point is not that the assessment of the LRC is entirely correct, but that the result of their warnings is not something dire and subject to legal sanction. We might even "warn" people about the RCC. Do you expect them to sue you?

Argue why the SCP assessment is wrong. But looking at the result is meaningless because if their assessment was correct, I would want the result to be even stronger than it was.

In your earlier post you said:

The book was commissioned by either Inter Varsity or Campus Crusade. I don't remember which. These were campus organizations not affiliated with a particular denomination that were designed to steer believers to them. Their gospel was weak and ineffectual and they became jealous of the LRC gospel work. As a result they commissioned this book and once it was published they distributed it. This analysis is far too naive.

On what basis was their gospel determined to be "weak and ineffectual"?

Is the characterization of the motives for the book little more than a spin? Might they have countered that they believed that there was something sociologically dangerous about the LRC and they felt that an open exposure of the problems and errors they saw was needed?

Does the fact that a group that was evangelizing on the Berkley campus funded or requested the study evidence that it is tainted?

Was competition for converts so great that there was a battle for them? It would seem that the group that ultimately does not "keep" them, but instead steers them to other churches has no reason to compete. It is not so personal with them. But the other has a vested interest in the outcome. Numbers means more money. For Campus Crusade, funding generally comes from outside. Their existence on campus is almost always as a para-church mission group.

None of these questions determine whether the findings by SCP were correct, or were presented in a fair manner. But neither does the LRC's charges of "commissioned" or "in competition" direct that what was reported was false or misleading. There are other Christian groups on most campuses and they are not "competing" in the way that the LRC seems to think that they were with Campus Crusade.

In any case, while I might have doctrinal disagreements with the Baptists or the Methodists, I generally would not be fighting them on the campus (or anywhere else for that matter). And if there was a group of Buddhists on campus, I might not even fight them other than in the typical way of warning anyone that showed an interest in their group.

But if there was a group that I thought was somehow wandering into Eastern mysticism or other more serious error yet was putting on a front of being mainstream Christian, and attracting a lot of people, I might commission someone to look into them as well.

The point here is not that they were right in their assessment, but that they were not necessarily doing something unusual or even illegal. Just something that didn't sit well with the LRC.

As I mentioned the other day, I read The God Men a few years ago. I cannot say that it is entirely accurate on every point because I do not have the facts to say one way or the other. But what I do know is that they pretty well captured the sociology of the group, and reasonably questioned the origins of some of the practices. Their conclusions were not ridiculous or obviously flawed. There is some question as to whether their assessment of a private account of overt control was correct, or whether the account was later withdrawn in part due to that very kind of control. Unfortunately, something that is nearly impossible to prove one way or the other unless multiple personal witnesses are made and are not later withdrawn or alleged to be misrepresented. And, as I mentioned the other day, the LRC has a history of getting people to tell things different from the truth for the purpose of painting a picture that is not true to life.