Old ATI Yearly Conference in Knoxville Pics

[formergothardite]

So my mom has been going through old pictures that she never put in albums and it ends up we have tons of these pictures from Knoxville, so I took some to show FJ. I don't think these are all from the same year. With the sea of navy blue and white it is really hard to tell.

 

 

Reversal babies of the year. If you had a reversal baby that year you went and stood up front to show off your baby.

 

 

 

This was the Pre-EXCEL choir. I think it was ages like 8-12 or something like that. It was all girls.

 

 

 

The youth choir. There is also an orchestra made up of ATI students in the front.

 

 

 

I am pretty sure this is a choir of reversal kids. Could be wrong, though. But my mom thought it was a reversal kid choir too. Reversal kids were like god's special snowflakes that must be shown off as much as possible.

[Visionoyahweh]

Show off your reversal babies? That's so fucked up.

[ElphabaGalinda]

So reversal babies were a common/god's specialist snowflake thing? I've only ever heard that term in reference to the Maxwells before.

Thanks for the pics, very interesting.

[formergothardite]

The Maxwells used to be in ATI, so I bet that is when they went for the whole reversal thing. And yes, having a reversal baby was a really big deal.

The whole place was packed full. What a huge difference compared to now when they just use little places and even then they aren't that crowded.

[lizziesmom]

What is a reversal baby? Someone born after dad has a reverse vasectomy? This whole thing looks like the Nazi rallies in the 30s.

[formergothardite]

What is a reversal baby? Someone born after dad has a reverse vasectomy? This whole thing looks like the Nazi rallies in the 30s.

Yes, that is exactly what it is. Gothard was keen on building up a generation of followers, ends up most of the people in these pictures grew up to hate him. I wish we had pictures of the year that ALERT started and they marched in like solders and rappelled from the ceiling.

[lizziesmom]

Yes, that is exactly what it is. Gothard was keen on building up a generation of followers, ends up most of the people in these pictures grew up to hate him. I wish we had pictures of the year that ALERT started and they marched in like solders and rappelled from the ceiling.

Seriously? That is terrifying. What is ALERT?

[ElphabaGalinda]

Yes, that is exactly what it is. Gothard was keen on building up a generation of followers, ends up most of the people in these pictures grew up to hate him. I wish we had pictures of the year that ALERT started and they marched in like solders and rappelled from the ceiling.

Were you ever in those choir groups pictured? Sorry for all the questions...you should totally have an ask me anything thread...unless you already do and I missed it or you're not comfortable with that.

[formergothardite]

This is ALERT:

http://www.alertacademy.com/alert/about/

Basically, guys wanted to join the Army, Gothard couldn't have that happen, so he started his own where he could keep people under his thumb.

I was a teacher in the Pre-EXCEL picture. I am pretty sure I was sitting behind a screen. I was probably in the youth choir too.

I didn't go live at the training centers like so many other ATI students, so I never really felt like I should be the one to start a ask me anything thread. Plus my parents actually wanted us to go to college and wouldn't let us do all the ATI things, so I didn't get the full cult experience.

[formergothardite]

And I just realized that these all are on the same year 98, so I wasn't in any of the pictures. LOL. My parents stayed in after I went to college. But we have bunches of them and they all look just like this.

[formerlyfundie]

There is something incredibly creepy about the reversal baby thing. :?

They also have a yearly conference in Nashville in the summer, (it was on my birthday this year, only reason I know is because I was invited by a friend, someone I did NOT know was ATI, and she wanted to pay for me to go to the "Basic Seminar" as a gift :o and have me and my family be her "guests" to this year's conference :shock: ) and I remember one year driving through downtown and seeing PARADES of fundies, playing tourists and probably shielding their special snowflake children from the bars and non holy music.

I've yet to have a Duggar or Bates sighting, they apparently are in Nashville pretty frequently.

[formergothardite]

They used to just have one yearly conference that was just for ATI families. People from all over the country would come. You would see huge vans with ATI written on them (yes we did that in my family). It was a big deal to watch for those vans so that you could wave to a fellow ATIer. Some people the only vacation they had was to go to Knoxville.

But as number of ATI members shrank, they started having regional conferences at different times of the year.

[formerlyfundie]

I only found out about ATI a few years ago, even applied and everything but was denied for reasons still unspecified. I only found it appealing because I was pregnant with my first at the time, and saw the Duggar episode where they were in Big Sandy and thought "Ohhhhhh, what a wholesome family having wholesome fun! What exactly is this family camp they so highly praise?!" It all seemed like exactly what I wanted for my son...which I'm sure he'd have a great time climbing walls and doing WHATEVER the boys do to learn "character". But then I had a daughter...and she's not a "happy housework" song type of child and she's almost 2, she has a strong will and would lose all her light if we had been accepted. Bullet. Dodged.

I guess for some reason I thought ATI would be as popular as ever nowadays with the Duggars and Bates and other families being in the spotlight.

[formergothardite]

From what I can tell ATI hit it's peak in the 90's. After that, the people who originally joined in the 80's had kids who had grown up and the kids who had grown up hated Gothard and didn't sign back up with ATI, which is what he thought would happen. Plus, now there is so much out there about ATI, that if anyone starts to google they will see it. I think once he dies, ATI will slowly fade away.

[Visionoyahweh]

Everybody's white.

[formergothardite]

Everybody's white.

[Visionoyahweh]

Very, very white. I did meet one AA teen in ATI, but that was rare. Also, a lot of the ATI families I knew were very well off. We were kind of the poor folk in ATI and we weren't really that poor. Lot's of business men, doctors, lawyers, politicians. Really, to have 15 kids, pay to join ATI, plus pay for them to work for Gothard, you really couldn't be poor. Gothard's whole cult depends on members being wealthy.

That's true about money. Rich members provide in the cash, and poor members provide employees that will work for free/as salves at ATI's various missions. camps, ministries, etc.

[formergothardite]

Actually you even need the to be rich to work for free for Gothard because you had to pay to work for him. Gothard had the greatest idea ever, he convinced people that not only should their teens work for him for free, they should actually pay him for the joy of working at a training center.

I'm guess the bad economy and not only have less members, but poorer members is why a lot of the training centers were sold or sit empty. People couldn't afford to pay him so their kids could work for him.

[Visionoyahweh]

Actually you even need the to be rich to work for free for Gothard because you had to pay to work for him. Gothard had the greatest idea ever, he convinced people that not only should their teens work for him for free, they should actually pay him for the joy of working at a training center.

I'm guess the bad economy and not only have less members, but poorer members is why a lot of the training centers were sold or sit empty. People couldn't afford to pay him so their kids could work for him.

Oh really? Nothing is going to hold this cult together once Gothard passes on. So many wrecked lives.

[formergothardite]

I think you pay like $50-75 a week to work for him. Ages 14 and up! It is really such a great scam, but you are right, after he passes there is just no way it can be held together. I'm better they will try for a couple of years and then just give up.

I do have to say that I love the Dallas Training center. It is just so beautiful and I hope that somebody besides ATI will buy it and restore it.

[Jana814]

Show off your reversal babies? That's so fucked up.

Got that right!! How weird!!

[formergothardite]

I sometimes what it must feel like to have your life's work end up like Gothard did. He has pretty much spent his whole life on ATI/IBLP, and at the end of the day, instead of creating adoring followers who are thankful to him, he just has thousand of former students who hate him and can't wait for him to die.

On some level that has to bother him.

[formerlyfundie]

Everybody's white.

:idea:

Maybe that's why I got denied...because I'm not.

[Seven Severn]

It's interesting that Gothard doesn't seem to have a succession plan. Wouldn't it be funny if Boob unselfishly (please note the sarcasm) took the mantle upon himself to keep the thing running?

How many centers were there at peak and how many are now closed?

[formergothardite]

I know there were ones in Russia, Mexico (I could be wrong there. They had Children's Institutes in Mexico all the time), New Zealand, Australia, Indianapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Little Rock, Michigan. And possible more. It is really hard to tell how many they have now because they never own up to it when they shut down a program.