200 year plans

[uber frau]

The thread about the Botkin progeny reminded me about the GBot's 200 year plans. WTF is up with them, anyway? It's pretty obvious that PaBot has 'personality disorder'/evil dictator( :ugeek:) written all over him but where did he get this idea from? Most of the reformed fundies I know will at least pretend that their ideas have some sort of grounding in reformed or biblical tradition and twist a few proof-texts accordingly. I just find the idea so laughable that I wonder how anyone could take it seriously. I mean, how can anyone believe that you can plan for 3 generations down the track when you don't even know if your sprogs will reproduce or not?

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Heck, just within the past two or three decades, how many different lives and paths has PaBot tried out, anyway? Seems to me quite a few, and so he comes off as flighty more than anything, which surely must horrify him in those honest moments when he wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about where life is going.

But seriously, I mean, his own kids have to remember previous versions of the PaBot. What happened to the whole "take over New Zealand" thing? The media empire? What's with the quick move from Texas to Tennessee? The Great Commission? :eyeroll:

Not to mention of course that just like ALL of the fundies we snark about here, he defied his own parents to go live out this new radical culture of Stay At Home Daughters. What about his own parents' possible 200 year dreams?

It would be weird enough if PaBot was spouting all this stuff as someone who was living on an inherited family homestead with the support of his own parents, but he isn't.

[Marian the Librarian]

How are newlyweds Ben and Audri, and David and Nadia, supporting themselves financially? If they don't have jobs, how can they possibly bring in enough income to support their soon-to-be-born children? I doubt Ben earns a decent living from his (supposed) composing for fundie movie soundtracks. And what on Earth does David do all day, every day?

[MamaJunebug]

How are newlyweds Ben and Audri, and David and Nadia, supporting themselves financially? If they don't have jobs, how can they possibly bring in enough income to support their soon-to-be-born children? I doubt Ben earns a decent living from his (supposed) composing for fundie movie soundtracks. And what on Earth does David do all day, every day?

Not sure of the answer now, but for the first couple months of marriage, it should be pretty clear what he was doing all day every day! :lol:

[Brainsample]

Heck, just within the past two or three decades, how many different lives and paths has PaBot tried out, anyway? Seems to me quite a few, and so he comes off as flighty more than anything, which surely must horrify him in those honest moments when he wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about where life is going.

But seriously, I mean, his own kids have to remember previous versions of the PaBot. What happened to the whole "take over New Zealand" thing? The media empire? What's with the quick move from Texas to Tennessee? The Great Commission? :eyeroll:

Not to mention of course that just like ALL of the fundies we snark about here, he defied his own parents to go live out this new radical culture of Stay At Home Daughters. What about his own parents' possible 200 year dreams?

It would be weird enough if PaBot was spouting all this stuff as someone who was living on an inherited family homestead with the support of his own parents, but he isn't.

Sorry if this is redundant. (Google "Who is Geoff Botkin?" and it will probably redirect you to my blog where you can read more)

Botkin grew up in a fundie lite home in Oklahoma and attended U of Olkahoma in Norman (one of many college campuses targeted) in the '70s when his aspiring cult leader was targeting college students in the early '70s in an initiative called "The Blitz." They were all caught up in the very NON-REFORMED ideas of the day, consistent with Hal LIndsey's book, "The Late Great Planet Earth" about the impending rapture that was expected to come before the close of the 1970s. The group eventually called themselves The Great Commission International or Great Commission Ministries. It's now headquartered in Ohio. It is the official word of the group today that the now denomination does not take a position on human agency and eschatology, so you can be a member church and believe either Dispensationalism or Reformed Theology. But the driving initiative of the initial group was to get as many people saved ASAP -- specifically within that generation -- before the end of days. Their primary message and McCotter's message was very much Dispensational. McCotter had a special interest in newspapers, owning several which targeted college students and then failing to establish himself as the Christian version of Randolph Hearst, using the media to change public opinion to accept Jesus.

The group did heavy recruiting, were so controlling that they sent several people into mental hospitals, and it was so bad, one of the people who walked away from the cult went to school and eventually became one of the leading figures and top notch experts in cult psychology in both the counter-cult and the anti-cult movement. He (Paul Martin) exited this same cult that Botkin was in and has written a couple of books on the issue and founded the first, accredited inpatient psych treatment center for post-cult recovery. The group that Botkin was very involved with practiced an aggressive form of child discipline that sounds very similar to Michael Pearl's method.

Botkin followed Jim McCotter, the GCM cult founder and leader, from the early days of the cult, "The Blitz," to their attempt to get cult people into civil government during their initiative in '86 when they moved their headquarters to Silver Spring, MD. Botkin made the papers there, listed as the "administrative assistant" for the cult. (The group ran about 20 candidates in both local and federal government on both Rep and Dem tickets, and my own exit counselor was part of the effort to expose the group.)

In the late '90s, Botkin followed McCotter to New Zealand, then according to the newspapers in New Zealand, Botkin and McCotter parted ways. It was shortly thereafter that Botkin reappeared in the US, within the ranks of Vision Forum.

My germane point: Botkin is not really propagating or following things that are much different from what he learned in his cult of origin which lends itself well to the whole Vision Forum system very well. All spiritual abusive groups end up looking very similar, especially the extreme ones. The Great Commission which is now a denomination is not nearly as bad today as it was in the '70s and '80s, but what Botkin follows now seems to be more similar to that original and more extreme cultic system that was followed back then.

Courtship was a big element of the original cult. Ecclesiocentricity (priestcraft or what Doug Phillips describes as the family serving the vision of the patriarch) was followed by the Botkins in the original cult, but cult leadership took on the role of overseer as opposed to the head of family specifically, though the whole overfocus on authority and hierarchy did provide for the devotion to the head of family. In the seventies, the shepherding/discipleship model looked outside the family for governance and micromanagement, and mainstream Christians in Christian Reconstruction denounced this stuff in the mid '80s, making it much less popular, so everyone shifted into calling it "mentoring." The focus moved away from having an outside "accountability partner" into "mentoring." So the general systems of control and the general tactics are all very similar. Any ideological group will end up looking very similar. That's why you can pick up old fascist literature and it will read much like Vision Forum tripe -- it's all about faith, family, personal responsibility and love of country. Ideological totalism, no matter what its basis, ends up following specific dynamics (Robert Lifton's thought reform).

Jim McCotter was on the Council for National Policy along with all of the Christian Reconstruction heavyweights like Rushdoony and Howard Phillips and Gary North, etc. It seems that since the '70s and '80s, Botkin discovered Rushdoony's writings and incorporated them into his overall cult message package. He kept all of the constraining interpersonal dynamics/thought reform elements of the Great Commission cult, McCotter's "Media Mandate," and the Christian Reconstruction/Religious Right stuff, and he added Rushdoony's/North's message into it. And all of that looks very much like Vision Forum's take on things.

All Botkin did was switch "drugs of choice" by switching his cult of choice but remained a religious addict and appears to be a true believer.

Geoffrey's brother, Gregg, left the cult before the close of the '70s, as did most of the people from that original group of communal living homes in the '70s. "Vicky" as everyone called her in Olkahoma in the original cult needed only to change her preferred name to "Victoria."

[Marian the Librarian]

The group that Botkin was very involved with practiced an aggressive form of child discipline that sounds very similar to Michael Pearl's method.

Hence, the Botkin brood's "look at us, we're so happy, never mind our vacant eyes" affect today. I feel badly for them all, but especially the daughters.

Great analysis brainsample - thanks for the details.

[Brainsample]

Marian, thanks for the feedback. After I posted, I wondered if people were sick of me repeating this stuff like a broken record. It's important for me to emphasize that these guys tend to bounce around from cult to cult if they don't get the information they need regarding the group dynamic. Basically, human nature limits us to a set of predictable patterns, and when it comes to controlling groups that follow some type of idealism, and those groups use the end to justify less than virtuous means to achieve that common good and virtuous end, they end up doing the same things. Botkin is a good example of this. You just adapt some of the details, but it's pretty much business as usual. Manipulation and deception always tends to follow certain patterns. Until you learn about the patterns, you tend to take them for granted, whether you are a sociopath like I think Botkin is or whether you are the type that tends to follow the idealism, trusting others to do your thinking for you.

I repeat this stuff like a broken record because I want people to start trusting their gut -- there is something about these folks that all looks alike. And it's cool for me to see people putting that stuff together. But Botkin is a great example. (Another one with a similar history is CJ Mahaney who switched from a system very similar to Botkin's original group to recreate himself as a complementarian and as an ersatz Calvinist. He started out in "People of Destiny," and to keep up with the times and to distance the group from the cultic connotations just renamed the group as "Sovereign Grace." The dynamics remain the same, though the window dressing is updated a bit.)

Concerning Botkin and the child discipline methods, I put this in an old blog post. GCM set up headquarters and their lobbying group "conservative think tank" in Silver Spring in the mid eighties, bringing along many like Botkin who were still involved in the group since the "Blitz." The former members of GCM have preserved much of the critical documentation from the local newspapers then on their website. One of the articles talks about the child abuse they used to turn their children into automatons. I have heard exit counselors who observed and worked with this group during that time talk about how flat and docile the children were -- talking about how disturbing it was to see. Babies that didn't cry and three year olds that sat like statues. Very young children that should be busy and acting like kids that ran around doing work that you'd only expect an adult to do - stuff that was very inappropriate.

Here is one of the articles and the excerpt from my blog about it:

Though I exited from my unrelated shepherding and discipleship (evangelical Christian) group ten years after all of this newsworthy GC activity, I was exit counseled by the same people who were involved with countering this aggressive and virulent cultic “Bible-based†group in the Baltimore area. Over the dozen or so years since I first met my counselor, they shared some of their experiences with me, equipping me to carry on by helping others in the way that they so critically helped and comforted me. Two counselors related an interesting account of their visit to the home of one of the Towson State GC activists and how terribly odd their children behaved. They observed small children who did not fuss and were not busy as they just sat for hours while (the exit counselors) went on conversing with some of these leaders in the Great Commission group. They recalled a young infant who did not cry and who sat quietly and still in a high chair in the room with the GC activist for an extended period of time. They found that this was quite inappropriate and disturbing behavior for young children. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the case, considering the Pearls methods and the ATI "blanket training." Note these quotes from this article from former members of the Towson GC church. Sound familiar?

From the Mongomery County Maryland newspaper in the eighties:

http://www.gcxweb.org/Articles/MCS-02-06-1986-d.aspx

"Delithia Gross said she was encouraged by church members to discipline and spank her children until they stopped crying...The wives of the church elders would tell us that you could know you’ve broken a child’s spirit, that he has repented, by the sound of his cry, like he is almost out of breath,†Gross said...They would say, ‘You can tell, you can tell,’ when the spirit is broken. They would recommend that you use a wooden spoon,†she added...I didn’t go to discipline night because I thought it was disgusting,†said one ex-CGI member who asked that her name not be used. “The elder’s wives would tell us to keep spanking the child, even if you left black and blue marks, until you break the spirit,†she said...Crying is called rebellion. The idea is that if the child is crying, you beat him, discipline him until he stops crying,†said former GCI member Keith Cingel.

The Olkahoma group that Botkin started out it was treated quite aggressively, and they were required to live in sex segregated housing (unless married, but the marriages were arranged and approved of by the local group leadership). From what I understand and recall, both Geoff Botkin and Gregg Botkin married who the group either selected for them to marry, but I am 100% sure that the marriages had to be pre-approved by the leadership. They policed interpersonal relationships very heavily. And I understand that Gregg had many more friendships that lasted than did Geoff.

Geoff was part of a commune type group, and I think that when GCM had troubles and went through changes, I think Botkin transferred that group control stuff over to his own family.

[Brainsample]

Concerning the Botkin's return to New Zealand, this was discussed here at FJ at some point this past year. Perhaps on YUKU.

In 2008, Botkin did some big initiative and had private (pricey) meetings to invite homeschooling faithful followers back with him to NZ. In early 2009 (April, I believe), Botkin took a bunch from Vision Forum including Matt Chancey (who went for moral support) to solicit help from locals in NZ to agree to sponsor people from the US who followed him to NZ so that they could have jobs. I communicated with a couple of people who attended meetings and were appalled that they "made slaves of their daughters," I wrote to NZ immigration, NZ cult watch groups, and the US State Department and the Ambassador to NZ to tell them of Botkin's history. Not that I wouldn't be happy if these folks all left the US and became someone else's problem. (It would have seriously consolidated Botkin's control over whoever followed him there -- they would be removed from their culture and more dependent on the cultic network Botkin worked to form in NZ.)

I understand that since this early 2009 initiative on Botkin's behalf when he went to NZ to recruit sponsors for Americans, NZ seriously tightened up their immigration and visa rules. With the tsunami stuff in India and the upset in the Philippines, the UN pressured NZ to take more refugees, so I don't think that there was as much opportunity for people from the US to be accepted.

I've heard from people in NZ who don't want Botkin there and believe that Botkin would be at a particular risk if he returned there. I'd love to say more, but I only state online that which I believe will hold up firmly in court if I were charged with libel. The press in NZ was not a fan of Botkin or McCotter, either.

I've been told that Botkin recently bought a creepy looking run down youth camp at auction in Nunnley, TN, so maybe he can set up his doomsday cult in TN (full of the "faithful" that he wanted to take to NZ with him).

[gardenvarietycitizen]

No, thanks for putting that back up here, with the details. In fact it was your blog I'd read before with the stuff - and it is very wonderfully detailed.

[mirele]

I think New Zealand has enough trouble with the Exclusive Brethren mucking around in politics that they'd not like some American import by the name of Geoff Botkin.

[Witsec7]

Brain Sample, thank you for your in depth research and documentation. This is all in alignment with Abram Verede's big game plan as facilitated by Doug Coe and the C street gang.

riffle

[browngrl]

I'm glad you posted this information Brainsample. I was not aware of much of what you related. I only really started following the fundamentalist movement a year or two ago and it is good to read back ground information. Often I find that fundies will scrub their blogs - so unless you know their history they can look suspiciously benign.

[gustava]

Brain Sample, thank you for your in depth research and documentation. This is all in alignment with Abram Verede's big game plan as facilitated by Doug Coe and the C street gang.

riffle

Will you connect the dots for us? I know the players, but not the game.

[Crackedeggs]

Tennessee seems to be a popular place for these rubes..

and I am noticing more and more "dress people" here in NW-WC Ohio. Makes me

really wonder.

[fundiefun]

http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2009 ... n-and.html

This talks about Geoff Botkin's early cult affiliations and the New Zealand exodus.

[justlurking]

BrainSample, do you have any idea of how the Botkins are able to make a living? They certainly try to give off the appearance that they are "upper [middle] class"; however, I can't believe that Western Conservatory brings in enough revenue to support such a large family, and beyond Vision Forum events, I haven't seen/heard of Geoff being asked to speak at another venue.

The source of their income seems really shady to me.

[fundiefun]

Heres another link from those who left the cult Christian Growth Minsitries-CGM the same one Botkin was in and give their insight to what Daddy Botkin and MCcotter were planning.

[Brainsample]

Heres another link from those who left the cult Christian Growth Minsitries-CGM the same one Botkin was in and give their insight to what Daddy Botkin and MCcotter were planning.

Fundiefun,

Botkin was not in Christian Growth Ministries. That was a Charismatic group overseen by Bob Mumford, Ern Baxter, Derek Prince, Charles Simpson, and the other guy whose name escapes me at the moment. They were known as the Ft. Lauderdale Five. I attended a church that was influenced and planted by Simpson.

Botkin was in the Great Commission Ministries, a different group. They were not Pentecostal or Charismatic. They were founded by Jim McCotter who got started in Iowa.

Both groups came up at the same time and followed the concepts of the Shepherding/Discipleship movement (think Gothard -- he was one, too and from that same timeframe). It was a reaction to the Pentecostal/Charismatic Renewal and an effort to limit experientialsm. So the general mindset of having an overseer and following legalistic rules was common, and both groups followed this controlling pattern of priestcraft (having an overseer tell you what to do).

But formally, these groups were unrelated and Botkin was not a part of Christian Growth Ministries at all. Many of the shepherding groups would gather at interdenomiational meetings, just like CJ Mahaney's "People of Destiny" did, and practices were similar, but they were separate groups.

Christian Growth Ministries were Charismatics (gifts of the spirit and speaking in tongues) who targeted and planted churches and did not get get involved on college campuses as a target ministry. The Great Commission were just Evangelicals who started recruiting on college campuses and made this their intial focus (though they did eventually form a denomination and did a lot of church planting later). On college campuses, they set up communal homes for either men or women -- not something that Christian Growth Ministries did at all. Also Christian Growth Ministries (the Ft. Lauderdale Five) were not involved in Christian Reconstruction. Jim McCotter (Botkin and Great Commission) was and so far as I know still is a member of the Council on National Policy (along with Gary North and Howard Phillips).

[Brainsample]

Heres another link from those who left the cult Christian Growth Minsitries-CGM the same one Botkin was in and give their insight to what Daddy Botkin and MCcotter were planning.

There's also no link.

Larry Pile who left the Great Commission along with Paul Martin did write an article on the history of Christian Growth Ministries as another example of the shepherding discipleship movement (you need an overseer like family members need the vision of the patriarch), but the groups were not formally related.

[fundiefun]

I don't know why it didn't past but here is the link and I didn't realize I had the information mixed up my bad.

http://forum.gcmwarning.com/jim-mccotte ... ff-botkin/