Blog on the Lillypad is a facinating place.
Jeri Massi’s blog is quite unique.
Reading it is a bit like going through a maze or connecting pieces in a puzzle.
Readers are treated with intelligence, and digging for the gold is worth every minute. You just never know where you are going to jump to next.
Jeri came from a tough background - abusive, but perhaps not in the way most of us understand that word. She was part of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist sect in the US, and attended Bob Jones University. To leave such a closed cultish world of IFB is to face what most of us don’t have to.
Half the fun of her blog is that Jeri is very bright and very diverse as well as being a professional writer. She has a black belt in martial arts, gets a back injury treated without medication, has published with Moody Press, and is an avid Dr. Who writer. There’s more, head over for yourself and enter her world.
What stands out to me most is her courage. Jeri is one of the very few who has reported abuse of the leadership of some Independent Baptist churches to law enforcement. She has paid a price.
She hangs out at the FFF - Fighting Fundamentalist Forums, where faithful followers in this sect take on those who have denounced the heresy, have been kicked out, or have fought to find their own lives. Sorting out her screen names and some of the forum posters she mentions was part of the puzzle for me.
It takes strength and fearlessness and grounding in God’s word to face the obsession, abuse, and threats of some of the IB ‘pastors’ that she stands up to.
You can read about of their sickness on her blog - trust me it is creepy stuff, with undertones of sexual impurity, obsession, astonding arrogance, threats and violence.
It’s understandable the blog has no comment section. By posting some of the threads at her blog, she shows the leaders of this movement as they are.
I highly recommend her blog, but what I really want to point out is her latest book - Secret Radio.
It is a fictionalized account of time in ‘bible school’. The characters are wonderful, unique, and you can feel the tensions and friendships develop, while even caring for the less likeable ones. Secret Radio is top notch descriptive writing. The dialogue of each character is true. Jeri takes us into the world of the girls dorm. You can see, smell, hear and identify with the vividness of a writer who has been there.
The humour and pathos offsets the pain, and like Jeri, the main character, Grace, has just enough rebellion in her to keep you hoping for the best. You have to know what happens next. So, I’ve been making weekly trips to her blog (she has published it as a serial) to find out how her characters deal with such an oppressive environment where fear rules. You want them to get through and get out, hoping they will find compassion. Even the meaning of the title weaves into the intricacy and humanity. Secret Radio has the grace only a talented writer can give.
I recommend Secret Radio for this weekend’s reading.
You’ll be hooked from the get go.
It is now in book form, and you can order a copy.
Secret Radio is posted in serial form off Blog on the Lillypad.
UPDATE: Blog on the Lilly Pad wrote a primer - a Independent Fundamentalist Baptist 101 and a Bob Jones University 101 for those of us far removed from these cultures.
Published 4 years, 1 month ago
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Thank you very much for the review! But I must interject this one REALLY URGENT note: Bob Jones University was not abusive. It was very authoritarian, and some times the sloganism of IFB Fundamentalism got picked up by some of the people there, but it was an extremely just place.
The school administration laid down the rules and followed them for everybody. Faculty kids and even the children of the executives were disciplined the same way as everybody else.
Bob Jones University differs from the type of school I write about in SECRET RADIO in that BJU is not backed by a local church run by a pastor who is the sole elder of the church. BJU is interdenominational, and it is governed by a board. The sexual sins that have been tolerated or covered up in the highest places in some Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) schools would never have been tolerated at BJU. Harming, using, or abusing a student was about the most offensive crime on the BJU campus.
I worked in the school as a student, a grad student, and a staff member (3 years), and I can attest to the school’s genuine concern to protect student welfare and their dignity. One year, the administration removed two faculty members (and one was a dean) from their teaching roles because they spoke too harshly to students and humiliated them in front of others.
While I disapprove of some of the actions of BJU over the years and even disagree with them on certain points of theology or practice, I can say that they have always been very clear about the way the school is run, and they stay true to what they believe is the right thing.
In the story SECRET RADIO, Grace refers to a distant school called Interdom that everybody hates because it is not strictly Baptist and it keeps winning academic awards and it emphasizes that high standards of education are essential for the ministry. *THAT’s* supposed to be a BJU-type school.
To clarify a bit on what you wrote. I grew up in a home that was abusive. I willingly went to BJU to get away from my home. The people at BJU did teach me how to live as a Christian adult. One faculty member persoanlyl taught me how to write by reading my stories for FOUR YEARS and critiquing them for me. All free of charge.
Probably the only really harmful thing ever done me at BJU was that there were one or two teachers who would say, in class, that students should not marry kids from broken homes because we were more likely to divorce. That was always painful for me to hear. (It’s also untrue, doctrinally, as we are new creatures in Christ.)
When I was on staff at BJU the woman who was the head of my team said it, too. I cried about it, and a godly older woman who was an executive secretary helped me get the strength to go back and calmly confront the woman who said such a thing, tell her about her error and say why it is exactly opposite of what the Bible teaches about what we have in Christ. I did so, and the woman apologized. After that, I never heard that claim made again.
Over time, I have revised some of the views I had while I was at BJU, but these views are all minor points, not major doctrinal points. Probably, my only real grievance against BJU is that after decades of talking about separation to maintain doctrinal purity, they have not separated from elements of the IFB or at least cried out from the pulpit to defend the victims of abusive IFB churches and schools.
Thanks for the great review!
Bene,
For the second time in telling your readers about Jeri’s blog, you’ve implied that the “independent fundamentalist sect” that Jeri describes is synonymous with Bob Jones University and that BJU is like the “closed, cultish world” that Jeri denounces.
I have read Jeri’s blog, and that is not what she’s saying at all. I mentioned this the last time you directed readers to Blog on the Lillypad, and Jeri tried to explain the same thing to you then in a comment she left here. I know it’s complicated if you’re not familiar with what she is writing about. But please be careful not to tarnish the reputation of a genuinely Christian university by linking it to the extreme versions of religion that Jeri is writing about. She doesn’t do this on her own blog, and I would hope you would not do it on yours.
Oops. I see Jeri has corrected the misperception already.
Thanks, Jeri. (and I’ve enjoyed reading your blog too!)
Thanks Bet! The more reviews the merrier! I hope, if you are reading SECRET RADIO, that you will review it on your site. Here’s the link: http://home.earthlink.net/~graceblog/blogger.htm
–Jeri
I know Bet - I made a serious mistake in my infererence re: the university. Jeri contacted me immediately and I corrected it.
Please forgive me, I have no intent in tarnishing a university. I know very little (nothing really) about Bob Jones U and US denominational subtleties and have no idea what BJU is affliated with.
Please accept my apology, I am sorry I upset you. I’ll try not to make the same error again.
That’s definitely one of the problems of writing about the topic Jeri has tackled, Bene. It sometimes results in confusion about who and what she’s talking about. Those who know the players understand her distinctions, but I fear that those who don’t have the background to know the difference just lump everyone all together. And that is a serious misconception. I’m glad Jeri let you know about the mistake.
OK, I have written a handy newcomers guide to Fundamentalism. Here is the link:
http://www.pipeline.com/~jeriwho1/2004_09_26_archive.html#109623415884798763
(You’re application will not let me embed links for hyperlink texts!)
Hi Jeri:
No, sorry, the thousands of pieces of comment spam prompted the decision to remove hyperlinks in the comment section.
I trust the post has been corrected clearly, your friend is correct, I don’t have the background, and inadvertently fostered a serious misconception.
If there is anything else I can do to prevent any more distress, let me know.
Secret Radio a good book, and I wish you well. Blog on!
Thanks for reviewing the site and the book!
–Jeri
You do top notch work Jeri, and you deserve a far wider audience than a little post on a Canadian blog. I’m praying for you, what you are doing is important to those who leave an abusive environment to learn to be Bereans. Blog on!
Jeri may not be wanting to discredit BJU as a “good” university, but that sure doesn’t MAKE it a good university. BJU has no good reputation to tarnish, in my opinion. It may not be as wacko as the IBF that Jeri is attacking, but a dangerous cultish place it is.
Jeri, I appreciate your stand against the IBF, and I’m glad you were able to leave that behind. However, defending BJU is hardly an admirable thing when it comes from someone who is trying to warn others about the dangers of cultish fundamentalism. Jeri, just because an organisation doesn’t seem to physically or sexually abuse its members, doesn’t mean it isn’t abusive or cultish. BJU fits pretty much every definition of an abusive cult there is. Please don’t defend their reputation…warn people about them instead.
BJU is definitely strict and authoritarian. But I attended there, got a good education, because a Presbyterian WHILE I WAS THERE, and now have a good job as an analyst/tech writer with a clinical research firm. I have never given money to BJU and have never been pressured to do so by BJU.
Since leaving BJU, I have started attending movies, and I drink beer. However, in spite of breaking with their outlook on these points, I have never been blacklisted by them, am still welcome on campus, and carry on regular communiction with many people who work there. Indeed, my open and frank criticisms of BJU (which has its flaws, though I don’t think it’s a cult) have never been treated harshly or answered with insults by *anybody* there.
So I would say that though they are strict and religiously paternal, they are not a cult.
What characteristics about BJU make you think it’s a cult?