[James33]

Honestly for me .. my eyes were opened when my former Pastor's eyes were opened. He became more "liberal" but still considers himself an IFB. I visited recently and it is very different than it was 10 years ago.

[exOBCstudent]

For me, it was when OBC senior leaders turned on me when I told them my parents didn't agree with Jim Vineyard's direction for the school, so they were going to pull me from the school after my current semester. They didn't realize that I was still loyal to the school and would've done nearly anything they asked, but conversely, I got the convict treatment...immediately dragged away by two staff members, isolated from everyone, escorted everywhere, then shipped out of my dorm room the next day. My head was spinning so fast in disbelief, especially since I had done nothing wrong and was one of the insiders, one of the club, one of them all the way. That was the rude awakening I needed to finally see behind the smokescreen...how they really treated those they disagreed with (and could control). My fundy detox took a few more years after that, but I remember in detail that very day.

[Workin' Mama]

There are several reasons I left the IFB. This cartoon graphically illustrates one of the main reasons.

https://nakedpastor.com/2016/05/the-pres...ect-child/

It was hard enough being the "perfect" single young woman in a fundy church. But being the perfect wife and mother, and forcing your kids to be perfect? Impossible, and extraordinarily cruel to the kids.

[Dr. Jezebel]

When Christian leaders blamed victims of sex abuse for leading astray pastors instead of blaming pastors for preying on their congregation.

[Workin' Mama]

Probably the #1 reason for leaving for me was, the theology  that whenever human beings suffer, that we are deserving of that suffering because we are all sinners. Have you been diagnosed with cancer? Lost a loved one? Been raped? Been unjustly fired from your job? Don't feel bad. Don't feel angry. You don't have a right to be upset, because you deserved it, just for the crime of existing as an (inherently sinful) human being. Just be glad you're not in hell right now.

That, and the BJU Grace report, and my former church's close association with and support of BJU.

Oh yeah, and the teaching that if your child gets in trouble with another adult caregiver (such as a Sunday school teacher, school teacher, coach, etc.), that you should always believe and side with the other adult, rather than your child. Sounds like open hunting grounds for a sexual predator. . . . I didn't feel safe having my kids in that environment.

What's puzzling to me now, is why I didn't leave much sooner. Why didn't I leave just because of the sexism and misogyny openly preached and practiced by the IFB church? Why did I put up with it for so long? Why would an educated, grown-ass woman in a free country keep attending and supporting a religious organization that treats her as a second-class member -- for over a decade of her adult life? Oh well -- I guess that's why all the cult recovery websites tell you to be kind to yourself.

[Ricardo]

When the group of parishioners who did not vote for our new pastor at the time set up a trap for him and had him kicked out. They did not like the charismatic slant the new pastor had brought with him.

I just did not feel I could fellowship with that group anymore.

At the same time I found out -in my first class at Divinity School- that the last 13 verses of Mark are widely accepted as later additions to the Bible. Are they or are they not "inspired"? Are they or are they not the "Word of God"? Who decides these issues?

These issues are decided by church committees.

I have had ample evidence of lousy decisions taken by multiple church committees, going back all the way to the book of Acts and to the churches described by Paul.

When I realized that IITim3:16 cannot be used to claim inerrancy for the NT, even though it is still used precisely for that in my church's statement of Faith and Practice.

It felt like "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

[Neigh I Say]

One thing for me was the hypocrisy/contradicting themselves about standards.

Pants/skirts: A youth leader said that this was just inherent to God’s ordained genders; that even though both men and women wore robes back then, give a guy his pants underneath; and that bathroom signs—I’m not joking—proved that even the world understands this. But the camp we went to said they just wanted to keep the distinction of the sexes, but preached it like it was a moral issue. (But why is it so important to tell from a distance what gender someone is?? Are you afraid you’ll bang the wrong one?)

Then the youth pastor’s wife shocked me by telling me the church just didn’t want to police girls on tightness of pants—that made no sense because they already police them on everything else, and I didn’t know how to digest that she disagreed so fundamentally with her husband and the rest of the church authorities. If this was The Right Way, why didn’t she, someone I really looked up to, believe it? And why would she let other people teach this to her girls and put them through all this?!

And what are culottes anyway but loose PANTS?!

Music: Anything with a certain beat was bad and sinful, but then they played You’ve Got a Friend in Me over a picture slideshow, which has that beat!!! Are we supposed to reject certain music, or aren’t we??

We were also told not to slide, “because that’s not the style we want for our church,” but I couldn’t help noticing that everyone got REAL slidey while singing Victory in Jesus!!

Cursing/swearing: Our pastor always used that verse about Peter cursing and swearing to mean don’t use “filthy language,” but I feel like he HAS to know that’s not what that means in context. But if confronted, I can imagine him saying it doesn’t matter because swearing is bad anyway, so who cares what verse he uses to prove it? XP

He also has two different conversion stories. He’ll preach to us night and day about lying is bad, if I recall has even said that accidentally saying something incorrect is lying, but has no problem using the “I was 17 and president of the youth group and looked godly but I wasn’t even saved” story to guilt-trip the congregation and the “I was saved when I was five and it was perfectly legitimate” story when privately trying to give me assurance of my salvation. Anything for a good sermon illustration, hmm?

I was also told by the youth pastor’s wife, while I was having a lot of anxiety over trying to sort out whether all these standards were necessary, that “God is setting you apart for something really special.” Shouldn’t everyone be asking questions and wanting to be sure of what was right? Wasn’t that what we were being taught with all those apologetics? Does that mean I’m a modern-day Sampson and have to follow stricter rules than everyone else to get essentially the same level of approval?

Communion: Why is it this few minutes especially when God will strike you down for being in sin?? If we’re under the blood of Christ all the time, why does drinking grape juice out of a plastic cup make any difference?!

Love: They say God loves you, but act like God hates you; but if you feel like God hates you, that’s bad and your fault, because they SAID God loves you, so you’re just a flawed human who can’t comprehend true love.

I swear that they were the ones who taught me that everything I did had a prideful motivation, like taking credit for things, etc, and so I needed to forcibly humble myself, and think nothing of myself. But when I read otherwise in the Bible, and brought that up in a youth Bible study, the youth pastor heartily agreed with me that we weren’t supposed to beat ourselves up. But I didn’t do this to myself!!!

Sevice attendance: The sermons were always the same, always “don’t be rebellious, don’t backslide, don’t be prideful, don’t do [pick a standard]”—always preaching to the hypothetical people living in sin. So why should I be there “every time the doors are open” if you only preach to hard-hearted, godless people?? And yet they talk about leaving behind milk and choosing meat...

And just knowing I couldn’t live like this—that other people in the church didn’t, and I didn’t use to, and everything was happier without these crazy standards. I could barely function for a while because everything I did, everywhere I went, I had to worry about if I was sinning.

Another major thing was that I didn’t like how they treated people. They taught me to care more about converting people than helping them or genuinely being friends with them, so basically using them/manipulating them for our own purposes. It was disingenuous and felt wrong. And they trained us to push hard when door-knocking, because that could be this person’s one and only chance to accept Christ, and if we didn’t say everything just right, they would go to hell, and if we didn’t try hard enough, their blood would be on our hands. I still have the CD of the sermon where that last bit was said. And I made so many people uncomfortable, and it felt so wrong.

I also didn’t like how they viewed atheists. The extreme demonization of them was just not okay.