What's up with the Fundie Connection to Chicago?

[luv2laugh]

I noticed in a recent blog post of the Bates family, that they went to pick up the girls from Chicago. I know lots of fundies that blog about making trips to Chicago. Does anyone know what fundies would be doing in a big city there?

[dawbs]

Moody bible institute is there...

That's all I've got.

[GeoBQn]

I think Gothard has a headquarters in the suburb of Oak Park.

[PennySycamore]

Isn't ATI headquartered in Oak Park?

[Kaylee]

And Hyles-Anderson College is about an hour south, in Crown Point Indiana.

It's an extremely fundie, unaccredited, college attached to First Baptist Church of Hammond, which is the largest IFB church in the world (and the first, if not only, fundie megachurch). They send buses all the way to Chicago to pick up kids and hand out tracks to get people to come to church, because it's all a numbers game there.

[Biscuit]

Wheaton College is close to Chicago also.

[luv2laugh]

Wheaton College and Moody Bible institute are nowhere near Fundamentalist Legalism. Evangelical, yes. But not too many fundies...

[ilovetchotchkes]

Wheaton College and Moody Bible institute are nowhere near Fundamentalist Legalism. Evangelical, yes. But too many fundies...

I used to live 6 blocks from Wheaton college.....

If Gothard is based in Oak Park, that makes me scratch my head. From my understanding, (and I've got tons of friends who live there) its like neo

Liberal~hippie~yuppie(yippies?) land. There's 2 synagogues and a giant universalist unitarian church there.

[Jeff]

http://iblp.org/iblp/contact/ does suggest that IBLP is headquartered near Chicago -- not surprising, as Bill Gothard lives in La Grange per his Wikipedia page.

Chicago itself isn't much to appeal to fundies, speaking as someone who lives there. We have evangelicals, but not many fundamentalists.

[Jeff]

And it appears that he s running his ministry out of Oak Brook, not Oak Park. Oak Park is one of the inner suburbs that has more in common with the city.

[yetanothermeg]

ATI is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Oakbrook,also home to McDonalds headquarters. The suburb of Oak Park is liberal NPR land. I recently read that Gothard lives in LaGrange, which totally surprised me. My husband and I were thinking of moving there a couple of years ago. Its a really pretty little suburb, very walkable, lots of historic housing. Sort of upper middle class. Not where I would have expected Gothard to live AT ALL.

[ilovetchotchkes]

And it appears that he s running his ministry out of Oak Brook, not Oak Park. Oak Park is one of the inner suburbs that has more in common with the city.

That makes much more sense (I live in the Chicagoland area and am familiar with most of the outlying suburbs)

[Mompom]

As a homeschooler from Iowa (non fundie), I know lots of homeschoolers who go to Chicago to see all of the awesome museums. I never thought about ATI though. That would make sense too.

[Lillybee]

Didn't Jessa, Jinger, Erin Bates and one of her sisters attend a music seminar in Chicago. One would guess that it was a fundie thing.

[bea]

OUR AWESOME WEATHER, OBVIOUSLY.

As people have said above - ATI, Wheaton College, Moody Bible Institute, Olivet Nazarene College, the list goes on.....

[CanticleoftheTurning]

OUR AWESOME WEATHER, OBVIOUSLY.

Chicago, awesome weather? HAHAHAHAHA!

It's decent in the summer, and this fall has been pretty nice so far, but the winter and spring drives me insane. Too many clouds! :doh:

[ilovetchotchkes]

Chicago, awesome weather? HAHAHAHAHA!

It's decent in the summer, and this fall has been pretty nice so far, but the winter and spring drives me insane. Too many clouds! :doh:

I haaaaaate Chicago winters. And every year, I swear like Scarlet Ohara that I'm moving someplace warm. And I never get around to doing it.....

[lilwriter85]

Wheaton College and Moody Bible institute are nowhere near Fundamentalist Legalism. Evangelical, yes. But too many fundies...

My friend's brother attended Wheaton. My friend grew up in an Evangelical Lutheran family and she has left the church. She told about the rules her brother had to follow Wheaton. I recall she said dancing and on campus dances were prohibited for many years.

[yetanothermeg]

Didn't Jessa, Jinger, Erin Bates and one of her sisters attend a music seminar in Chicago. One would guess that it was a fundie thing.

Yes, it was through ATI.

[FJSharkJump]

Gothard's home base of crazy is in Oak Brook?? This stuns me. It's a very wealthy, corporate, commercial area. Like, women and men in high powered corporate jobs. Pricey restaurants and malls. BMW, Lexus, Mercedes. Very, very upper middle class gated communities. Lots of latte-swilling yuppies and TINK households.

I figured Gothard would be living in some rural backwoods in the south or west, or at least in the middle of cornfields in the heart of the heartland. Not one of the more upscale Chicagoland burbs. Weird.

Seriously, I'm stunned. :shock:

(Plus, now I worry I'll run into him whenever I'm in the neighborhood. And that just gives me the willies.)

[fundiefun]

First Baptist Church has a fundie k-12 school in chicago's inner city and one in IN. This is the first fundie baptist school I have heard of in the inner city since most inner city schools were private or other religious groups. I know fundie baptist schools existed but I never pictured one running in inner city Chicago. I'm from Chicago and I guess this shows my ignorance to how fundie some parts of Chicago can be. The school motto is "A superior education in a protected environment".

http://www.cbshammond.com/

[FJSharkJump]

I grew up in Hammond, so I've always been aware of "The Baptists". But I didn't realize they had a school in Chicago, either.

I grew up in a conservative, religious home, attending a mainline church. And "The Baptists" were always seen as rather extreme, even by my family. And of course there was talk among friends in my ebil public school about the mysterious, weird "Hammond Baptists". So it just occurred to me now that I've been snarking fundies my whole life. :lol: And I grew up before the internet and before common use of the words "fundies" and "snark".

I think being one of The Free Jingers was my destiny. :mrgreen:

Seriously, this is so funny to me. I can't stop giggling.

[IceQueen]

Yes this stunned me too. I lived close to Oak Brook and everything about the area screams "I've got so much money!!!" the mall is great too! I wonder if I've ever walked passed him or his family and just didn't know it. A lot of businesses are headquartered there and there is some corporate space in the mall, but I can't picture an Oak Brook family being ATI or anyone in the suburbs that I'm familiar with. Yes I met some very conservative people, and Wheaton College is pretty religious, but never anyone in frumpers. And the women of Oak Brook seem to be too fab for frumpers ;)

[Biscuit]

Are they drawn to the Chicago area simply because it is the largest city in the Midwest? Are a lot of fundies closer to Chicago than large cities on the coasts? And Wheaton College...yes, it is evangelical. I guess I was thinking it had some attraction to ATI followers since Bill Gothard went there.

I've lived near Chicago my entire life, and there are small groups of homeschooling, skirts-only fundies here, although I don't think anywhere near the numbers you find elsewhere. I've worked in libraries and living history sites and come into contact with different fundamentalist groups, some of whom even wear headcoverings.

And they've been around here a while. About 25 years ago, I found a tract on my car. I don't remember the name of the group, but it listed everything they were against -- fornication, adultery, women wearing pants, television. It ended with this odd sentence:

What did Jesus say about television sets? He said, "Move them out!" :lol:

I kept the tract for years because I thought it was so strange, and that last line cracked me up! Wish I could remember what the name of the church was. It wasn't anything I was familiar with at the time, like Jehovah's Witnesses. I guess that was my first contact with fundies.

Then there was a student at my college who walked around campus (not a Catholic college) with his fist in the air, with a small plastic figure of the Virgin Mary stuck on his thumb. He had cards printed with bible verses that he would set up around his desk in each class. He was definitely my first experience with a Roman Catholic fundy!

[camdendayton]

The fact that Gothard doesn't live the way his congregants live shouldn't be too surprising. He's a life-long bachelor so not too much chance of running into his family at the mall. I also imagine that the IBLP staff does much of the fetching of goods and whatnot. IIRC, Gothard originally tried to minister to "street youth" in Chicago, converting many, but they quickly went back to their naughty ways, so he decided to focus on parents.