Month: March 2018
"I used to be a deluded, ignorant, and hateful Christian like you until I learned to be better than you!" This is the essence of personal testimonies (variously called "deconversion stories," "ex-timonies," or "anti-testimonies") given by people who claim to have de-converted in some way from orthodox, Evangelical Christianity.
J. Gordon Melton is an American religious scholar who is known for his defense of various cults.
While there is no doubt that Melton is an expert at gathering and organizing research data, many cult experts believe he does a poor job at interpreting that data.
It seems anytime revelations of sexual harassment or other misconduct in a corporate, government, educational, sports, entertainment, or religious organization surface, we learn that people who had tried earlier to expose the misconduct were ignored, their evidence was swept under the rug, and the whistleblowers were often punished in some manner.
This dynamic develops because the case is usually not handled by a truly neutral party and the group politics involved do not favor the whistleblower.
