Thought Reform of the International Church of Christ

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Thought Reform

The International Church of Christ uses various means of the thought reform that Tobias and Lalich discuss. Beginning with the idea of deception, the recruiter tends to lead the potential member into a spiral of unknown information; they will not tell you from the start that they are a part of the International Church of Christ; instead they will say they are from a local congregational church that is interested in having new members join their congregation. Recruiters and members are also able to deceive potential members by being able to combine social events with Bible studies, not telling the person that they are actually attending a Bible study (Rauchno). Members are also being deceived by having this idea that they must fully submit themselves to the lead evangelist in order to ultimately reach salvation. People feel as if they must do everything the leaders ask for, whether it is time to do activities or financial contributions, which many ex-members complain about. Members are not given an option to contribute money; the church creates mandatory minimums placed on contributions (The letter). People do not go into the religion thinking they will have to give a particular sum of money a month; typically churches are happy with whatever amount of money one gives.
Dependency is also substantial within the church in order to maintain its members, and is seen as another method of thought reform. The act of using discipleship in order to make sure new members are on board with the churches beliefs and practices is a large portion of the type of dependency used in the church. The discipler, as previously mentioned, pretty much dictates what the disciple does in their life in regards to almost everything. There i...

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...st is known for, as well as its exclusive approach to being the only people who will ultimately be saved by God. It is very easy to see why someone would consider this group a cult.
However, they follow many biblical principles such as the Trinity, the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and salvation by grace. Although they do have deviations from mainstream Christianity, it can just be seen as a denominational split. Also, since Kip McKean resigned in 2002, the church has been taking many steps to reconstruct the churches reputation by lessening the degree of the discipleship as well as reconstructing the overall structure of the church. Therefore, by CARM standards, the religious group is not a cult, but a more radical Christian religion (CARM). However, the extremism it takes does not deny any question of abnormality and the ultimate decision is up to yourself.

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