Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"The Public Can Investigate": Discovering the Worst-Kept Secrets of my High-Demand Church - Paul Jensen
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Disclaimer: This session was delivered for the 2023 ICSA Conference. The speaker of this session does not speak on behalf of ICSA as an organization.
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Abstract: I am the son of a pastor in the world's largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God. When I left home, I also left the church. Now in my forties, in recent years I have found myself wanting to better understand the unique religious environment in which I grew up.
Drawing from Assemblies of God archival documents, historical news accounts, court records, and the personal diary of an early adherent, I will present evidence that the A/G fabricates key parts of its origin story to obscure its roots in a network of isolationist, authoritarian cults that operated across the US during the late 1800s to early 1900s. I will show how contemporary AG documents reference the foundational roles played by cult leaders such as Frank W. Sandford and John Alexander Dowie, while obscuring their abusive and even criminal activities. I will demonstrate how the teachings of these cult leaders continue to influence the AG's core doctrines today, and how psychologically manipulative tactics persist. I will use Robert J. Lifton's framework of psychological totalism as a reference point.
I will present this talk from a first-person point of view, sharing what it was personally like to grapple with these discoveries.
"The Public Can Investigate": Discovering the Worst-Kept Secrets of my High-Demand Church - Paul Jensen
-
Disclaimer: This session was delivered for the 2023 ICSA Conference. The speaker of this session does not speak on behalf of ICSA as an organization.
-
Abstract: I am the son of a pastor in the world's largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God. When I left home, I also left the church. Now in my forties, in recent years I have found myself wanting to better understand the unique religious environment in which I grew up.
Drawing from Assemblies of God archival documents, historical news accounts, court records, and the personal diary of an early adherent, I will present evidence that the A/G fabricates key parts of its origin story to obscure its roots in a network of isolationist, authoritarian cults that operated across the US during the late 1800s to early 1900s. I will show how contemporary AG documents reference the foundational roles played by cult leaders such as Frank W. Sandford and John Alexander Dowie, while obscuring their abusive and even criminal activities. I will demonstrate how the teachings of these cult leaders continue to influence the AG's core doctrines today, and how psychologically manipulative tactics persist. I will use Robert J. Lifton's framework of psychological totalism as a reference point.
I will present this talk from a first-person point of view, sharing what it was personally like to grapple with these discoveries.
