No longer singing solo

It absolutely astounds me: every time I do a search connecting Sovereign Grace Ministries or Covenant Life Church with the word 'cult', more and more hits appear. All this, after so many years believing myself a lone dissenter. Every new site and story validates and echoes my own experiences.

I'm not sure how free I'm willing to be in this blog, given my family and former church friends still read it... But I'd still like the avenue to be open.

My family started attending Covenant Life when we moved to Maryland on a temporary duty assignment for my dad's work. My parents had known many of the pastors and church elders in high school - back in the day, most of them had participated in TAG and Young Life together. (If I'm not mistaken, my parents met through one of the groups when my dad played guitar for the worship band.)

I think initially my parents were drawn to CLC out of curiosity and to reconnect with old friends. At the start I was extremely shy and the size and activity of the church scared the shit out of me. I was in the first through fifth grade ministry when we started going and I remember crying in humiliation because I was the shortest kid in the class of hundreds despite being one of the oldest. The little things in childhood are often as tragic as the severe. :-P

As the year came to an end, we packed up to return to our home in Littleton CO.
(I think someone must have been house sitting while we were away... Before now I'd never really thought about it!) Within a month my dad made the announcement that the house was going on the market and we were returning to Maryland because he felt god was calling the family to be part of Cov Life. This was probably the most unsettling moment of my young life, as suddenly, without warning or consultation, every decision about my home, life, future, church, and what have you were thrown under the bus. Nothing more greatly unsettles a child's understanding of the world than total change without warning.

My biography will continue another time, I'm sure... Right now I'm still trying to determine the direction this blog will take. I know that I want to discuss faults I see with the Sovereign Grace system, my story somewhat, why I believe SGM is a cultic system at the very least, full-blown cult more accurately, and the detriment I feel rigidly determined religious organizations like this play to our society. I may quote Dawkins at you, Thos. Jefferson, or other great thinkers as I come across them... Dawkins has of late been one of my favorite authors whenever I can swallow his pretension. :-P

Probably, this will be a my-life-relatively-uncensored blog. I'm going to curse in it when I feel like it (which will probably be often, if the typing should reflect my speech), discuss events I've attended and people I've talked with and experiences I have. Given that I know my family, both immediate and extended, are likely to read this, I'm not sure just how much detail I'll go into... But time will tell.

So if you read this, expect it to be much more political, inflammatory, frank, and uncensored than Novare Project. That blog was started with the intention of discussing my ED and recovery, and I've "tried" to keep it relatively politically, spiritually, and philosophically neutral. Given that I am the rather vocal person I am, that end hasn't been fully achieved... But I'm not going to try to rein anything in here!