More on Tom Chantry and the ARBCA debacle

*UPDATE: Tom Chantry’s sister-in-law commented on this post to say that she supports Chantry and her Facebook posts were about something unrelated. For her exact words, see the comments.

https://thewartburgwatch.com/2022/03/01/latest-court-documents-from-thomas-chantry-case/

As I mentioned, I found out about this recently and I’ve been careful to expose myself only in small doses because it’s upsetting. It feels like I’m getting church gossip years after everyone else. I’m absolutely used to church scandals among people we revered (look at Ravi Zacharias) but these are people I knew. It’s a totally different subculture probably more akin to something in the middle east than mainstream North America, at least in regard to the divide between the women and the men. (All cis-gender because nobody ever came out as trans or non-binary, at least without leaving the church first.) But I was a teenager going to bonfires at these people’s houses. I rarely spoke to the men but many of the women were good and kind and loved their children. They had absolutely no control over their lives, with their husbands arbitrarily making decisions like “We’re going to change churches now so too bad about you losing all your friends.” It’s so totally and absolutely believable to me that some of these machista husbands were also abusing the numerous children that were born in these largely homeschooling families. What surprised me was that Karen Chantry in the video above actually considered “disobeying” her husband. I wish I knew where she ultimately decided to go to church that week.

Last time I came across this, I was hurt that everything had been kept so hidden from me that I had to find out about it all on the internet. This time, I was worried about an old friend. There was a woman named G**** who I vaguely thought was weird because she was nice to her kids. One time we were at church and for no reason at all she just randomly told one of her children that she loved them. I don’t think I’d ever seen an adult do that and I thought she was a bleeding heart or something. She was a prominent member of our community, and I remember when she graduated college, got married, and had kids, which all took place while I was an adolescent which made her “cool” in my eyes (if a bit sappy). G**** is and was the sister of Karen Chantry, the wife of Tom Chantry who are talking on the YouTube video.

So I did what any concerned acquaintance would do and I stalked her on Facebook. Most of her stuff is not visible to the public but I found these:

I’m not even going to get into John Piper, AKA my dad’s favorite theologian EVER because I already covered him here: https://apostateturtle.com/?p=87 But I felt pretty put at ease that G**** and her dependent children are doing just fine.

One thing in the category of “this is shocking for me but will come as a surprise to no one else” was this comment on the blog post above:

I’ve been involved with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) for years and although I have had numerous people both in and out of that organization, including doctors and therapists tell me that my church of origin was a cult, I can’t remember having seen the word “cult” applied to my specific group except by me. I’m not going to give this any more time because my readers will be rolling their eyes at my being stunned by the obvious, but it felt good. It was validation that other people have been through this. They may have coped better or worse or differently, but I’m not the only ex-ARBCA-church member who wishes things could have been different.