Is it irony when a small bible college on the Canadian prairies advertises it’s conference on social justice with an emphasis toward violence against women, yet continues to ignore the request of survivors of abuse at it’s own institution?
Or is it hypocrisy?
I don’t know, but it’s rather sad.
Prairie Bible Institute is touting it’s Global Connections conference. It’s easy if you are known as a Christian missions school to look far afield and pat yourself on the back, while ignoring what is right at your doorstep I guess.
‘Global’ conferences on human trafficking seem so much grander than actually addressing what is right in front of you. It’s easier to invite your professors, successful students romping around the world being ‘missionaries,’ a few foreign nationals and well known para-church organizations to educate your students and conference attendees about how seriously your school takes historical abuses and the violence against the children who were through no fault of their own, subjected to the whims of the zealous at Prairie Bible Institute.
It is so much easier to attend seminars about violence against women and human trafficking in the comfort of your school auditorium, then to listen to PBI abuse survivors – to learn how the school which is educating or paying you failed so many. To voice opposition against sexual trafficking in Calgary or Calcutta is so much sexier and exciting than understanding the fallout of abuse on your campus and standing with those who want to see it never happens again. Missions is what happens somewhere else I guess.
I do not fault outside speakers brought into this conference, no one in leadership at PBI is going to tell their guests about the difficulties of addressing historical abuse on PBI soil, nor do I minimize the global scale of violence against women and human trafficking.
PBI survivors are understandably saddened and angry at PBI leaderships tone deafness.
Can hypocrisy be ironic?
It will be very interesting to see if any of the current students see the disconnect between PBI’s abuse of the victims who have come forward and bringing people in to deal with the same thing elsewhere in the world!
This move by Prairie to host an event on human trafficking and violence against women at its Global Connections conference is grandstanding. This gives Mark Maxwell another opportunity to play to his donors and cronies that his school is speaking out against the abuse of women and children. It is all show – it looks good to the mindless alumni and donors who don’t look beyond the smoke and mirrors. All they care about is that Mark is a reincarnation of their beloved LE Maxwell. Hell, the child molester that Mark Maxwell is harboring on his staff probably made the arrangements to bring in the speakers to this conference. She is probably taking the reservations and will make sure the guests who come have all their needs met. Who gives a damn that this sexual predator masquerading as a PBI employee in a prominent position violated her own daughter for years. Who cares that this daughter is struggling to put her life back together after all the damage that her mother did to her. Who cares that a 16 year old girl was raped in 2006 by a PBI staff employee. Who cares that PBI covered it up and the high school dean slandered this victim who was away from home and terrified of being raped by a man who locked her in a room and taunted her for two hours afterwards. Who cares that Mark Maxwell refused to respond to this girl and her mother who repeatedly sent him emails wanting to tell him the story. (After several months he responded when he found out they had contacted an attorney). None of this matters to PBI as they focus on the horrors that women and children face elsewhere in the world. As long as no one bursts the PBI bubble – that is all that matters. This conference will come and they will sit in their chapel and sing Kumbaya pledging to help these poor sex trafficked victims in Calgary, Calcutta, Bangkok, Kiev, Manilla, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and God knows where else – just as long as it is anywhere but Three Hills, Alberta Canada.
I am looking to see how may current/past students or staff have one logical statement to make on this. Look out either hate mail or dumb ass comment will come. Otherwise silence!
As a person who use to work for another certain ministry organization (Crossroads TV ministry, Burlington Ontario), I easily see the level of hypocrisy in this case concerning Prairie Bible Institute. The leadership of certain ministry will endorse a cause for the masses to support while that very same particular ministry will suppress and deny the significant problems in their own ministry domain. A shame indeed!
Had a look at the conference line-up and noticed that Samaritans Purse… a Billy Graham organization is discussing human traffic… an issue that deals so much with women and violence… strangely though GRACE another organization with connections to Billy Graham has continued to not be welcome at PBI… wondering what Samaritans Purse thinks of this. Not only that despite hosting this conference but there has been no indication that the culture of whitewashing serious sexual assaults or slander and personal attacks upon victims has changed in anyway… if it had my daughter would have received an apology and several staff would have been fired… great that they are having this conference but has there been real change or is it just putting on a public face of concern.
Have you ever heard of a congitive error called Subjective Validation?
It is the perception that something is true if a subject’s belief demands it to be true. Basically, Mr. Maxwell and most others at Prairie believe that PBI is blessed by God, created and maintained by divine ordinance. Thus, something so evil and vile as child abuse can not possibly exist at PBI. Oh sure, they have been conftronted, maybe even acknowledged a few individual cases. But even if they have, their minds surpress facts that that conflict with their beliefs.
They see no irony, no hypocracy in hosting a conference like that. This is why it is so important that you continue to do what you do. This is the modern age. Thanks to the internet, you can not hide from the truth. Information will and does get out.
Now, you probably only hear from two groups of people; those who want to join the fight with you, and those who choose to delude themselves, and fight against you. But there is another group, those who may not be speaking up, but are hearing the message. They are the ones who were contemplating attending, or sending their children there, and are changing their minds.
It is interesting for those of us who were at PBI during its heyday, all we heard was missions, missions, missions. Every spring and fall they had a missions conference where we would sit for hours listening to missionaries talk about the need for more help and then the organist would begin to play and the long-drawn-out altar calls would begin. There was enormous pressure put on us students to come to the front and dedicate ourselves to be missionaries. If you didn’t leave the pew (like me) you were made to feel like such a good for nothing Christian who hadn’t died to themselves. LE Maxwell would holler about crucifying ourselves, dying to the flesh, and giving up the pleasures of the world. I never felt called to go to Africa and so I never went down front. And I remember feeling like such a heel because of it. There was so much guilt put on you that you were wasting your training, you were not being a “disciplined solider for Christ”. Those of us who did not go to the mission field were expected to live frugal lives and financially support those who went. There was a sign on the wall front and center in the Tabernacle that read:
Is there a soul who died, who died because of me
Forever shut away from heaven and away from Thee
Because I tightly clutched my little earthly store
Nor sent they messengers to some distant shore?
I had a staff kid tell me that they had a mission barrel in their home and none of the kids in their home could keep any gifts given to them. If they received a gift from relatives, it went straight to the mission barrel. They were told “the children in Africa need it more than you”. So all their lives, they never got to keep a Christmas or birthday gift. And this is what PBI expected of us – sacrifice your life, your dreams, your plans, everything for missions. If you didn’t then you were still “full of the flesh” and useless to God.
Fast forward to 2012 and that same old PBI stinking thinking is still alive and well. We survivors are being told the message that “forget your pain and what you have been through; it is time to focus on the needs of abuse victims overseas and around the world. This is the same old manipulation used on us at the missions conferences. Can’t you hear the administration saying “quit feeling sorry for yourselves, you don’t have it half as bad as those who are caught up in human trafficking. Those are real victims, you just have an axe to grind with PBI and need to get over it already”. So if we were going to be good little Prairie-ites we would shut up and take up the cause of these victims who need our help. And the sad thing is that there is never going to be a time when there aren’t victims somewhere. We have stuffed the pain for decades, don’t you think we deserve our time to be heard?
I can just about predict what is going to happen at this conference. There will be some sad, sappy stories, people will cry for the little children, drop a few bucks in the offering and take a newsletter and prayer card. Then they can all feel good about themselves for doing their part to “save” these victims. They will go home to bash some more PBI survivors in their self-righteous way and say “thank God I helped the real victims today, not these good for nothing low-lifes.” And life goes on at Prairie Bible Institute and the survivors still stand out in the cold.
Just an update on this. They have a FB for this conference. Here is the link https://www.facebook.com/groups/pbigcc/?ref=ts&fref=ts The group is administered by Shannon Weiss and she is refusing to allow several of the survivors to join. This is not only hypocritical it is no accident. They are purposely turning a deaf ear to the survivors. Meanwhile today the conference started and the students are listening in the coziness of the chapel to the abuse stories of strangers while their own survivors have still not been heard or acknowledged and are left out in the cold.
That is funny. A global conference from a two bit bible college in the backwoods of Alberta that cannot even seem to get it’s act together in coming up with a reasonable code of conduct as it pertains to abuse…..let alone coming to grips with the abusers in their midst and in their past.
No, it is not funny. It is very sad. Just goes to show you the quality of their leadership team and the integrity of the people on this team. Very sad.
What is even more disappointing to me is the failure of their alumi and their student body to insist on the truth, and to insist on change. No wonder a degree from PBI has been devalued so much.
It is not hard to understand why some of these bible colleges are disappearing when you look at what has happened, and is happening, at PBI.