Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Dennis Leap: Blanket Training Still Church Doctrine; Wives and Children Must Come When Called



Anyone that ever grew up in the church in the 50's - 70's know all about "blanket training" of infants and small children   Parents were supposed to force their child to lay on a small piece of fabric on the living room floor for 2 hours straight without making a noise or crying.  If the child cried thy were to be spanked and put back on the blanket.  This was to be repeated endlessly till the child could fully complete 2 solid hours of quiet time. 

If a child cried in services or made loud noises they were to be taken to the restroom and beaten till they stopped.  

Growing up in the Cincinnati church in the early 60's, under Carn Catherwood, the child abuse that went on then was appalling.  Spokesman Club sold paddles that were one inch think with holes drilled in them to cut down wind resistance.  I remember vividly when I was 5 or 6 watching one father take his child out to be spanked and the child saying loudly so that all could hear, "Daddy, please no!  No Daddy, don't spank me!" Other kids cowered in silence as they watched him walk down the aisle with the frightened boy. Catherwood used to tell parents that he wanted to hear the paddle hitting their kids and to hear them cry when spanked.  He wanted to hear them cry as he preached.  20 swats, no matter what.That "blanket training" is still church doctrine in the more aberrant COG's, particularly the Philadelphia Church of God.

Dennis Leap is back laying down the law when it comes to children and church. He has 4 major rules that must not be broken, otherwise the child may not make it into the kingdom due to the fact that they have become rebellious cigarette smoking, drug addicted fornicators that end up in heavy metal bands playing songs dedicated to Satan.

Dennis Leap writes: Teach Your Child Self Control:

Rule 1:    Blanket training
Teaching a child to sit and play quietly or sleep on a blanket during Sabbath services has been a tradition in God’s Church for decades. This training not only stops noisy interruptions during services, it is also a foundational plank for building self-discipline in children. 
Failing to apply this blanket training makes the teaching of self-discipline more difficult as children mature. Not blanket training shows a lack of love and respect for the brethren attending services with you and your family. God’s people need to attend services in undisturbed surroundings where they can hear God’s messages without regular interruption. Granted, there will be times when a disruption is unavoidable. Yet it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure noisy interruptions by their children are infrequent and dealt with immediately.
Practice each day by spreading a blanket on the floor and having your child sit on it quietly for about an hour. My wife always did her Bible study at the same time. Be sure to sit next to the child. When your child attempts to move off the blanket or makes noise, tell him “No!” once. Move the child back onto the blanket or give him a hand signal (forefinger against the lips) to be quiet. When your child moves off the blanket or makes noise a second time, discipline him or her. Continue the process until your child accepts the fact that he or she must remain on the blanket and be quiet. This is self-control in action. 
In the next rule from Leap he discusses that children must be taught to come when called.  Men re to use their wives as an example.  Wives are to come when called so that the children will come like Mommy.

In the church there was a far more sinister reason for this, one that I heard repeatedly growing up   "You need to learn to come the moment I call you r name, because it may be the time we need to flee and you will get left behind if you do not come immediately "   What could be more sickening that to tell a child that!
Rule 2: Teach your child to come when called (just like your wife does)
Start teaching your child to come to you when he is walking securely on his own. If you have done blanket training, you’ll know that your child understands you. 
My wife and I generally waited until our children were about 18 months before we began “come here” training. We set aside an evening to do this. We called them “come here nights.” I’ll be honest—this is a tough one.
Once children are up and running on their own, they do not appreciate being interrupted from what they are doing. To command them to come to you requires them to give up what they want to do and do what you want them to do. Children want to be their own authority. To submit to your authority requires self-discipline. 
There is great advantage in teaching this skill at an early age. Your children will find it difficult to submit to God’s authority if they do not learn to submit to yours. Their physical and spiritual safety depends on obedience to direct commands. 
The same fearful shit is being pounded into kids!  
On “come here nights,” I told my child to come here. I allowed my daughters a brief amount of time to hear, think and respond. If there was no action, to make sure she understood, I would ask either my wife or an older sister to come here, and she would do so, to demonstrate. Then I would repeat the command to the one I was working with. If I did not get the appropriate response, I disciplined her. I repeated the process until I received an immediate response. Depending on the child, some “come here nights” were short events—others were not. Be prepared to invest considerable time if necessary.
After you beat your child, it is important that they appreciate the spanking.

Rule 3. Teach your child to respond positively to correction 
When you discipline your child, make sure he responds with a good attitude and right behavior. Make it your goal to not finish a correction session until your child demonstrates a good attitude, repentance and right behavior. This requires love, patience, strong teaching and time—a lot of time—on your part. It will be worth all your effort. As Paul says, there will be great rewards when you meet this goal. Your child will be happier and on the road to real success. Remember, positive response to correction will help your child forever.
Next in is important to make you children work or do activities, especially memorizing the bible. 


Rule 4. Encourage your child to take on activities that build self-discipline
Memorizing scripture is also a valuable self-discipline builder.
Then to instill more fear into parents an children, he ends his article with he following comment:
This year we traveled to the Feast on an airplane, with a Church family with small children—and there was peace and tranquility! I was actually able to study and reflect on the most important Feast days of the year. What a pleasure it was to be in the company of well-trained children. 
God forbid if your child ever has to sit next to Leap on a plane.  If he or she does I hope it screams for the entire flight!

 









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34 comments:

  1. I was in the WCG for 15 years before I left. I have never seen or experienced any of this. I don't know if these stories are made up, but to me its a give away that they are not, especially that comment what the child said while being taken out for a 'spanking.'

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  2. Any truth that there is a sign above the entrance to Leap's congregation that says "Arbeit macht frei" (Works Shall Set You Free) like sign that hung above the entrance of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp?

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  3. How stupid are these ideas. Thankfully I wasn't blanket trained because I was 9 when I started going to church. I just wonder how many of those blanket trained children wanted to become members of WCG when they grew up? or did they leave as soon as they had a choice. And should we blamed those idiots for the tendency many of us have to fall asleep as soon as we start to hear anything resembling religion and Bible quoting.

    I remember Carn Catherwood from when I was young. My father admired him and told me stories Carn had told him about his own childhood. I believe it was that he came from a broken family and maybe had not had a father and grew up in difficult circumstances. I remember him as a young man, tall and good looking and very American. Shame he pushed those cruel child rearing ideas. Perhaps it was because he himself did not have a loving father.

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  4. I was spanked mercilessly by two abusive parents at home after church for any infraction. At church they were the best church members that God had ever called into the church, but the minute we got in the car to go home we knew it would be the ride from hell. We were told what punishment would be waiting for us a time. Usually a belt on naked skin. My parents alienated all of us due to their harsh treatment. None of my siblings will let their children be alone in our parents presence, if they even see them at all.

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  5. The stories are both true, and typical. This is not being artificially inflated or magnified. The problem has always been that since children have different personalities, different ones reacted in different ways. A normally docile type child would easily acclimate himself or herself to the training. However, a child with an indomitable spirit will resist, will become sneaky, and may even indulge in sabotage of things pertaining to the family. The churches would do well to delve into their methodology more deeply, and to make parenting more specific to the nature of the child, rather than take Leap (and others') "one size fits all" approach.

    There are many mental disorders and lifelong symptoms which can be caused by the type of child rearing and parenting skills taught in Armstrongism. Constant, obsessive-compulsive spanking can cause paranoia. Having nothing good or pleasurable to which to look forward can cause depression. A child can be unnaturally hardened, having his or her pain threshhold elevated by excessive corporal punishment. Hatred for all authority is another by-product, as well as loss of empathy for others.

    What is sickening is that in the intervening decades, so much knowledge has been brought into the field of parenting skills, and yet the harsher splinter groups insist on remaining with childrearing techniques that were even excessive and non-mainstream in the 1950s when the principal and the P.E. teachers all had paddles referred to as "The Board of Education". The difference was that these professional educators might need to use TBOE perhaps a couple times per semester, while WCG parents generally did multiple times each day.

    Armstrongism has always been a defective product in that when it is practiced in the way its originators intended, it produces uniformly bad results. This is yet another example.

    BB

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  6. "There are many mental disorders and lifelong symptoms which can be caused by the type of child rearing and parenting skills taught in Armstrongism. Constant, obsessive-compulsive spanking can cause paranoia. Having nothing good or pleasurable to which to look forward can cause depression. A child can be unnaturally hardened, having his or her pain threshhold elevated by excessive corporal punishment. Hatred for all authority is another by-product, as well as loss of empathy for others."

    I practiced this on my first-born son for most of his life with exactly that result. He became a hopeless alcoholic and finally killed himself. Armstrongism is worse than Nazis. They killed people they didn't like, armstrongism tricks you into killing your family or yourself.

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  7. I don't know how my brother and his wife "disciplined" their only child but they followed Armstrong to the letter on everything else --- and still do. The kid blew his brains out at 19. They said he was a "good kid" and apparently had no insight into why he killed himself. Damn, I hate religion!!!
    GLORIA OLSON
    TOPEKA, KANSAS

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  8. One person on the Elijah forum stood up against spanking. They said no shepherd ever beat their sheep but used a rod to beat off wolves.
    I think that is the truth but truth and the church don't always see eye to eye.
    Worship of hwa comes first and foremost.

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  9. Tragic!

    They just feel a sense of mission
    And the sense of all that is right

    Take it easy on them now
    They would be there if they could
    they're so full of what is right
    they can no longer see what is good

    Make it easy on yourself
    There's nothing more you can do
    You're so full of what is right
    You can no longer discover what is true

    A quality of justice
    A quantity of light
    A particle of mercy
    Makes the color of right

    Gravity and distance
    Change the passage of light
    Gravity and distance
    Change the color of right

    What they call love, is actually chains. What they call faith, is blinders. What they call knowledge, is entitlement. What they call right, is authority.

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  10. not only is blanket training sick (I was blanket trained and Byker Bob is right about the lasting issues it leaves one with.) but the real reason why they did this has nothing to do with keeping the child quiet during services. That, of course, was a byproduct, a result. But this was blatant brainwashing from the time a child was 3 months of age. How better to control the flock than to break them before they can express a coherent thought?

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  11. This nothing more than creating what some psychologists call 'obedience monsters.' This is conditioning children to be the mindless puppets of power hungry ministers. Note that the children are supposed to respond to the beatings with a 'good attitude.' This is teaching the children the art of faking reality. Everyone is supposed to make believe and pretend that the abusive tyranny in the church is good and proper, and Gods way, rather than Satan's way. Everyone pretend and make believe, and ignore reality.

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  12. 2.13 PM I couldn't agree more with your 'what they call love is actually chains... etc.' They have perfected to an art form, the putting of nice sounding labels to pure evil.
    Christ asked 'will He find faith (belief in the ten commandments) on His return?' The answer is no, at least not with "His" ministers.

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  13. I was spanked on almost every day of my childhood and I still resent Dennis and RCM. Somehow, I give Catherwood a pass because his really hot daughters were a rare and pleasant distraction to the harshness of growing up as Armstrong fodder.

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  14. Go easy on Mr Leap.He is right.If Donald Trump had "blanket training",he would make a great American President!

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  15. How shameful it is that Dennis Leap should preach such terrible ideas. It is terrible that attitudes like this were taught and are being taught within the COGs to this day.

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  16. Reading all this crap reminds me of why I am happy that my wife and I never had children while we were members of the church. I remember having a conversation with a good friend of mine who told me about spanking his daughter off and on for hours until he "broke her will" and she finally complied with whatever behavior he was trying to achieve. That was incomprehensible to me.

    I was a manager for more than 30 years. I sometimes thought how silly it would be for me to slap my employees, or hit them with a club, whenever they screwed up.

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  17. Never even heard of come here nights. I bet Herbert never did that to Loma. Nor some of the top ranking evangelists if truth be told which it rarely is. The poor put upon rank and file brethren were to do this. Thankfully my parents never did this and I was one of the lucky few who never went through this. My heart goes out to the battered children now adults who did and still do. I'm sure life behind the closed doors is far worse than we could imagine.

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  18. Do not withhold discipline from your children; if you beat them with a rod, they will not die. If you beat them with the rod, you will save their lives from Sheol.
    (Prov. 23:13-14)

    Well there you go. As long as they don't die, it's all good. lol or not lol
    Biblical Child psychology at its best

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  19. Yep, follow the Bible - Prov. 23:13-14 - and save your kids from a future hell by putting them in a present hell!
    As the Jews say, "WHAT A DEAL!"

    (Actually, most Jews know better than most Christians in realizing the Bible and Torah are NOT "God's Word"!)

    Perhaps it's from such stupid and ignorant Biblical passages that the term, "HOLY SHIT!" was inspired.
    Now, that's INSPIRATION I can agree with!

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  20. This week in "banned by HWA comments section": Butthurt(literally)/ex COGers complain about someone dare suggesting that children need to be taught and disciplined.

    What's next commenters? Should we encourage our children to chop off their genitals and become the opposite sex? How progressive!

    Really don't see anything wrong with spanking your child if they are out of line. Blanket training is how I trained my dogs to sit and be quiet and guess what? Works great on my children as well so now that they are older they're not problem children in the classroom! What a thought!

    Anyway, stay butthurt and keep nitpixking COG suggestions regardless of merit... It is afterall what this particular xcog site seems to bring out the most.

    Wew lad

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  21. "You need to learn to come the moment I call your name, because it may be the time we need to flee and you will get left behind if you do not come immediately "

    Probably for the best in many cases. The whole concept of "fleeing" will never be anything but a perpetual carrot/stick scam, but I can imagine worse things than if a bunch of child abusers leave their kids home while they scatter off to whatever forsaken desert and dessicate away.

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  22. This must of been the way the Nazi's taught the Hitler youth. Remove all the humanity from your kids until they are blindly loyal to the cult/state.

    Hitlers children. Loyal to the state, turning in the parents who didn't buy into the lie. The parents were executed.

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  23. Wew lad, the churches don't make 'suggestions.' Rather they are vicious dictatorships. The churches rob their members of their adulthood and rights. That's why these 'dissident sites.' Summarizing these complaints as 'nit picking,' is pure evil.

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  24. "Spanking" is to Armstrong-child-rearing as a cold is to full blown AIDS.

    It would have been nice had it been a few, occasional, loving spanks.

    As for the PoS, you guys do realize that there will probably be stonings there, right? Out with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and back in with the Old Covenant. If you believe that the evil and abuse that your leaders are perpetrating right now is actually going to diminish and improve, I'd suggest guessing again. Not that the Germans are Assyrian, but they would probably be more compassionate than your ACOG leaders!

    BB

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  25. You also have to remember that, when they could not break their kids, some ACOG parents subjected their kids to exorcisms! While that did not happen to me, I can't imagine the psychological violence that it would subject a young, impressionable mind to!

    Armstrongism was FUBAR!

    BB

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  26. The church interweaves proper child rearing, with the church governments war on mans God given natural rights. Governments war on natural rights is as old as mankind. Eighteenth century Thomas Paine wrote a few books addressing this issue.

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  27. Good grief... sometimes the whining about life, ACOG's etc being unfair on this site is (I'm searching for the right modifier here) sickening, overhwelming, insane, endless, annoying, childish, self centered, self righteous... I could go on.

    For something that you go on and on about how it is wrong, irrelevant, (and again, another long list of modifiers) the whiners can't seem to get past it or ever quite let it go. So to the contrary of all that it MUST have mattered and obviously STILL does else why do you waste your time and energy on something that is your past.

    Move on, move forward, contribute something positive and edifying why emulate and rehearse over and over what you all so obviously were abused and damaged by? It is often the case with the abused that they in turn become the abusers, I think with some here this is the case. Why is there the seeming obsession with with trying to balance the scales of (whatever injustice or wrong they feel unfairly burdened by) here on this board ... over and over and over and over.

    Many with their posts here have become that which they so bitterly detest. Really, there is a problem and you suffered and you're angry about and you blame Mr. X, or Mr. Y or Evangelist C or Apostle A? This is pretty much the theme of every discussion on this blog.

    Really, who suffered most, why is it a game of one upping each other "I suffered more," "no, I suffered more" "... well I was well connected in the hierarchy and I have even greater insight on the suffering..." to paraphrase the inexhaustible string of posts.

    Makes me wonder what is wrong with me coming here and looking at this stuff..

    I guess I should head the following: "Physician heal thyself" meaning before attempting to correct others, make sure that you aren't guilty of the same faults.

    Peace and,

    HAPPY SABBATH!

    :)

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  28. 7:25, the entire rationale behind the posting of the Leap article is not to initiate a tribal pity party for a subset of the readers and commenters here. The article illustrates that the evils of Armstrongism have never changed. They still exist in the present! You can expect people to speak out against these evils, and, yes, to illustrate them with personal experiences, for so long as the evils are perpetuated by the followers of false apostle Herbert W. Armstrong!

    And, 10:40, what you say of preserving our inalienable rights is certainly true of mainstream Christianity. However, Armstrongian cultism has always suppressed, diminished, and negated these rights, starting at the beginning with the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech, and the right to dissent. Look at what current church members are posting about the abuses in their ACOGs here on a daily basis, as their leaders cloak their despicable activities in the name of Jesus Christ!

    Some of you had best get used to the fact that, even though we ourselves have gotten over all of this "stuff" we are going to be speaking out against these unconscionable abuses for just so long as the conditions still remain in the present. Best way to shut us up is to correct the abuse, corruption, and false prophecies.

    BB

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  29. There's some truth to what July 2, 2016 at 7:25 AM

    I was standing on the mountain, back against the world
    Left it all behind me, how my life had turned
    Seen so much destruction, the fear upon your skin
    Don't let it turn against you, drive you down again

    Caught up in the moment, accelerated dream
    Possessed by a notion of how my life should be

    Pick up your pretty head, girl, stop crying to yourself
    Run into the wild places far from here
    We are darker angels, black lighting in our heads
    We are far beyond the moment, too far to care

    Standing on the mountain, our backs against the world
    When we leave it all behind us, how our lives have turned, whoa-oh

    All you true believers
    You gotta move on, gotta move on, gotta move on, yeah, c'mon now
    All you true believers
    You gotta move on with your life, whoa-oh

    I believe that it shines...

    I got a mortal skin
    Got a mortal life
    Wanna be immortalized
    Living in forever skies
    I wanna live forever

    Got a mortal life
    Got a mortal skin
    Wanna be immortalized

    True Believers

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  30. Basically, what I extrapolated from 7:25 am's childish rant is that it's ok for people to do wrong and not be held accountable, that Matthew 18: is of no use--you might as well put up with it! You are part of the problem and the reason why ministers in Lcg keep abusing the sheep with no repercussions...and why the buck has stopped at a Scarborough lawsuit.

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  31. The flip side of 7.25 AMs 'get over it' rant, is a monstrous vindictiveness in which they never forgive you, and eat you alive every day, for the rest of your life. One standard for me, another for thee.
    And they believe that they have a right to this double standard.

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  32. Anonymous on July 2, 2016 at 7:25 AM said...

    “Makes me wonder what is wrong with me coming here and looking at this stuff..”



    Why, it is so very obvious what is wrong with you. No doubt you are sent and directed by the Devil to come here and try to discourage the victims of his satanic abuse from saying anything about it and exposing his numerous impostor cults and the false prophets that lead them and how they operate.

    If you do not like it, why don't you go see an exorcist and get cured?

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  33. Dear Mr. HAPPY SABBATH!,

    If you are caught in the error of thinking commenters here are tripping over one another in trying to 'one-up' each other in describing the harm that pedophile HWA's cult has caused them, you are truly "off the track"!

    Luv,
    Satisfied Sunday Samurai

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