Episode 009 – T Leaves the Revival Centres (Leaving Part 1)
8 May 2021
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
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B: Okay here we are – Episode 9 of I was a Teenage Fundamentalist.
T: Ah that’s crazy, that we’ve done nine episodes. And did you see that we are creeping up to nearly 1000 downloads.
B: We are! Nearly 1000 downloads, and when I look at other podcasts I compare against them, I go look at that, they’ve got 500,000 downloads! We’ve got 1000.
T: We’ve been around for eight weeks.
B: This is true. Almost nine.
T: Almost nine – well this is week nine.
B: True, let’s call it nine.
T: I just want to remind people that what would be helpful for us is to share this with people. That would be really good, and the other thing is to make sure you give us a rating on your podcast platform, and spread the world.
B: That would be great. There has been quite a few people joining us on Facebook, particularly over the last three or four days, we’ve had maybe another half a dozen ask to be a part of it, so it’s good. It’s growing. People are starting to engage, to message a bit more and find out a bit more, so it’s exciting stuff.
T: Look us up, I was a Teenage Fundamentalist on Facebook. And we’ve closed the group, so it’s not public anymore. You need to apply to come in and then you know that not everyone’s going to see what you’re saying in that space.
B: Yeah that’s it, it does protect your privacy, but also you can direct message us if you’ve got anything to ask. Now, we’re going to call this episode T Leaves the Revival Centre. It’s a pretty simple one, and I think this has been borne out of the fact that several times over the past few podcasts you’ve said I don’t want to talk about the Revival Centre, but then you talk about the Revival Centre, so I think there’s something in it.
T: I think you’re right.
B: I think there is some shit buried deep that we need to excavate.
T: And look mate, even preparing for this one, shit was going on just thinking about it, so 100%. I think the reason why I say I don’t want to talk about the Revival Centres is because I really want this podcast to be more about mainstream Pentecostalism, but that being said they were really quite a large Pentecostal church, and they were a big part of my journey, and other people’s journey as well, so why not.
B: I think we need to talk about it, and specifically you’ve talked about leaving the Revival Centre and getting out. Tell me about that.
T: All right man. Well it’s a big story and I’ll try and cut it down a little bit, but the Revival Centres practice shunning. What that means is if you leave the Revival Centre, or you were excommunicated from the Revival Centre, everyone stops talking to you. That’s the official line. You get some people that will do sort of sneaky visits and stuff like that, especially around family members, but the way it was, or at least the way it was when I was in there was when you left or were kicked out, that’s the end of your time and everyone cuts you off.
B: That’s for good, is it?
T: It depends on the sin.
B: Okay.
T: So you can be excommunicated, or put out for a time, and you can be excommunicated or put out for life.
B: When some people are put out, do they think hey this is pretty good being out here? Or does it generally work as a deterrent?
T: Yeah, I think it can work both ways, but largely it works as a deterrent because people try to get back into the group, and then they start to behave.
B: Ah.
T: They keep the rules especially when you’ve got family or kids or anything like that. It must be really, really difficult.
B: So quite a successful cult.
T: Yes.
B: That’s good! Good to see.
T: Yes a very good cult, so far as cults go. While we’re on that topic, I just want to quickly say I don’t necessarily see Australian Christian Churches/AOG as a cult. I think they’ve got cultish aspects, but I want to draw that line because if we call everything we don’t agree with a cult, then what’s a cult. So I don’t think that the AOG/ACC are a cult but they certainly have cultish tendencies, but the Revival Centres? Hardcore fucking cult.
B: Okay.
T: Go ahead, sue me. Fucking cult.
B: Let’s talk about that then. Let’s talk about the cult, and talk about the leaving.
T: Yeah sure. So I was probably about 16 so I’d been in there for a few years. There was a couple of Maori who had joined the church and they became really good friends. They were a bit older than me, maybe five or six years, maybe even ten years older than me, I can’t remember. But they were great, and they were so passionate about their faith. Everything was choice bro, and yeah little bro and all this kind of stuff. I loved them, they were great people.
B: Did they call Jesus bro?
T: Jesus bro, Jesus was choice bro.
B: I’m pretty sure they would have.
T: Yeah maybe. Dunno. Anyway they were wonderful and I really was drawn to them. They were a couple, a male and a female, and I loved them. They decided they were going to leave the Revival Centre, and one day they pulled me aside and said hey little bro, and said they were leaving. They were going into a Christian Revival Crusade, or a CRC, because Pentecostalism loves an anachronym. They left the group, left the Revival Centre, went there, had a sit down with me, told me they were going, and said we know this is going to be hard for you because you’re never going to be able to see us again. I was like no that’s bullshit. I didn’t agree with the way the Revival Centre did this to people, the way they kicked them out and had nothing to do with them. In my heart I knew it was bad behaviour, and it was wrong.
B: Did you ever voice that?
T: No, of course not. Because then you’d be out and no one would be speaking to you. So they did leave, I stayed in touch with them for a little while, I even visited their church which is an excommunicable offence to do that.
B: Wow.
T: If you go visiting other churches you’re out.
B: Did you go in disguise?
T: No, I didn’t need to because I was a nobody. So I went along with them and visited their church, and their church was just a typical Pentecostal happy clappy dancing, raising of hands, everything the Revival Centre isn’t. I thought about leaving, and I almost did, going with them. But I dunno, there was fear.
B: Why were you thinking about leaving yourself?
T: Because the Revival Centre was shit. It was controlling – even I could see it as a 16year old, and there was a lot of fear.
B: Yep.
T: So anyway they left, and I didn’t. I think that was a decision there on my part to stay that meant I had to immerse myself even deeper into the group – this is my commitment, this is what I’m doing, and so I immersed myself into the group. After a little while though, I was just approaching 17 and I went on a summer camp and met this pastor’s daughter from another Revival Centre in another town. She taught me a few things, B. Let’s just say there was a little bit of heavy petting and stuff, she taught me a few things about – I dunno. I don’t want to say sex.
B: Anatomy.
T: Anatomy! I think you can say from a Bill Clinton definition, we didn’t have sex.
B: Okaay.
T: But from an everybody else’s definition, according to what Bill Clinton got accused of, we did stuff. We maybe had sex. But it wasn’t full frontal, it wasn’t genital to genital, and that’s important to say because in the Revival Centre, and especially the Revival Centre when I was there, if you had full frontal intercourse, they kicked you out and you had to marry the person that you did it with before you could come back in.
B: Oh okay.
T: Right, so I later found out that also if you got into heavy petting, which was me and this girl, you could also be forced to get married.
B: Wow.
T: Yeah, they kick you out and force you to marry. So if you fool around with a girl or a boy in the Revival Centre you don’t want anyone to know, because you may end up stuck with that person for the rest of your life.
B: Wow.
T: Yep, that’s how serious it is. And that’s based on 1st Corinthians 7, 1st Corinthians 5 and 6. And there’s stuff in there basically arguing – Paul is talking about should people marry or not marry. It’s not nothing to do with forced marriages, and he says it’s better for a man to marry than burn with passion. And the Revival Centre says so we take the Lord’s advice, and we force them to marry. But of course there’s nothing in there about forced marriages. Later on though, that evolved to where they started to stay if you commit adultery, you’re out. We don’t care whether you get married or not, you’re out forever, you miss the first resurrection, you don’t meet Jesus in the air, God bless you, good luck, right. But that didn’t come until later on. So I had the experiences with this girl, and also I was seeing that the Revival Centre was being far more controlling than they had before. Maybe I was just maturing and seeing it more, maybe they were getting worse, I dunno, and I decided I wanted to leave.
B: Yep.
T: Now I want to stress something, I was 17. Unlike being a 50 something I am now, I was a 17 year old kid, so I hatched a plan. I knew the way they kicked people out was wrong. I believed that. Kicking people out for a short period of time or forever, was wrong. However, I was indoctrinated enough to believe this might be God’s one true church. So God’s one true church, and yet they’re kicking people out and I knew it was wrong. The cognitive dissonance was there, but I was 17.
B: Between a rock and a hard place.
T: I was 17 – lots of hard places. So what I did was I hatched this plan, I’m going to have sex – full frontal, and not with someone inside the church, because if you did it with someone inside the church you could end up marrying them, right. So what I’m going to do is have sex with someone outside the church and dob on myself, then they’ll kick me out.
B: Ah. Good strategy.
T: Then they’ll kick me out, because back then it wasn’t for life, but I’ll just never come back, and when Jesus comes back and says why did you leave the Revival Centre, I’ll say I didn’t, they kicked me out.
B: Oh. My. God.
T: I was 17. This was my plan, it was perfect. So I went out with my school friends one night, we went to a club, met a girl, went back to her place, did the deed. Ironically she later joined a Revival Centre split group, nothing to do with me.
B: I blame you.
T: Well see from the AOG perspective, I gave her Revival Centre demons when we had sex so she got sucked in later on. Those of you that don’t understand that, don’t worry about it. So anyway, I did the deed, I rang the pastor of my local Revival Centre who was always great to me. I rang him up and he was all hey man, how are you, he was great. Treated his own kids like absolute shit but he was always nice to me. So I rang him up and I said Hi Pastor I, I have something to tell you, and I was really nervous. Actually, I’m a little bit nervous now, telling you the story.
B: I promise I won’t cast you out.
T: Yeah, you won’t kick me out of the podcast?
B: Well, let’s see. Just keep going.
T: So I rang him up, and I said I’ve got something to tell you, and he goes oh okay, what’s up man? He was always all this forced youth-y bullshit, and I told him. And his whole tone changed, and he went – oh. Have you. And I was like yeah, this is what I did. And he goes is she in the Assembly? And I was like ah, no. Ticking that box, right. And he goes well, some would say you’ve lost your salvation. Boom. My hands, my face, my whole body just went hot because that wasn’t the plan. The plan was I get out, I can go to another church, Jesus will come – this was the first time I had heard, and this was 1988 right, this was the first time I had heard anybody in the Revival Centre say lose your salvation forever.
B: You didn’t read the fine print.
T: Well there was no fine print back then. They hadn’t published this sort of stuff. They did later. And he said some would say that you’ve lost your salvation, and I can remember I said to him um, who would say that? And he goes Pastor Lloyd, the head of the Revival Centres, he would say that. And something in me at that moment – and this is really serious, I don’t want to joke about this – something in me at that moment was crushed, because my plan had failed, but more than that, according to these people who I trusted and believed about spiritual things, I was fucked. That’s the end for you. Because by this stage they weren’t kicking out for life for this sin, so he said ring this girl and see if she’ll marry you. So I had to ring my one night stand, I did have her number – because that’s manners, right, to get the number.
B: Of course.
T: Cos I didn’t want to lie to him.
B: It would have been a home phone back then.
T: It was. So I rang her and I told her everything, the whole story, which is maybe why later she joined the Revival Centre, right. And I said so I have to ask you, will you marry me? And she said no. And I said great. I rang the pastor back and said nah she said no. And he said well you won’t be allowed back into the Revival Centres until you marry. I’m 17.
B: Marry ANYONE.
T: Yes marry anyone, because that’s the advice, it’s better to marry than to burn.
B: Fairly nonsensical.
T: There was a gay guy who had gay sex and they said go out and find a woman to marry and then you can come back. Because that’s how you fix homosexuality, you force people into heterosexual marriage.
B: We have seen that many times though in Great Big AOG.
T: We have indeed. So yeah I was at that moment told you’re out, you’re out until you marry. And I knew I wasn’t going to get married for a long time, but at the same time they whacked me on the arse as I was leaving the door and said by the way you can never leave. Now I was 17 and I was thinking I had this plan and of course they’ve stitched up those holes, of course that’s what they’ve done.
B: So was there a formal advice that that’s it, you’re out?
T: Well, interestingly enough they were like you’re out until you get married, but we will check in on you once in a while. So what I did though was I rang a friend of mine who had joined Great Big AOG who had left the Revival Centres. Actually, his father was the one who had done that exorcism.
B: Ah ok.
T: They left a couple of years before, so I rang him up and I told him what had happened, and he said don’t be stupid, of course you haven’t lost your salvation. He was recounted the story to me years later and he said to me you were trembling when you rang. Because, B, I was that afraid. I really thought that I had lost my salvation. When I reflect back on what happened over the next few years, I was never diagnosed but it really is clear I suffered PTSD. Hardcore PTSD, the dreams, the snap backs, the jolts of fear, because when you think of a soldier going into battle and they think they’re going to be killed, or they’re close to being killed and the whole PTSD comes from that, it was the same kind of thing except it was worse than dying. I was told you’re going to miss meeting Jesus in the air, you’re going to spend eternity separated from God, and I believed them. And that that moment, as I said, it crushed me. Something began that day in me.
B: What was that.
T: Fear of hell. Fear of hell and of being separated from God, fear of being in the wrong. And when you think about eternity, which is possibly our next episode, that’s a long time to suffer.
B: Yeah, the longest time.
T: It is, and being 17 and not having anywhere to process that. So as I said I rang this other guy who had left who was a few years old than me, and he was like come along with me to Great Big AOG and let’s solve all your problems. So I went along with him, and at that point – this was as early as 1988 – but the reason why I went along there was just to try and hedge my bets. I wasn’t ready to rejoin the church, that didn’t happen for another three to four years, but man the fear. It was later that they made it public, even into the 90s that the Revival Centre came out and said this is our new doctrine. So now when you joined the Revival Centre, they do the altar call, they want you to speak in tongues and you get baptised, all in one hit. So you don’t just do the altar call, you put your hand up then you go get baptised and they pray for you to speak in tongues, then they pull out a document of some sort that says oh by the way, here’s all the things that you can’t do, one of them being this, otherwise you’re out forever. They hit you with that after the commitment. It’s like post sales.
B: It’s not bad marketing, really. You’re trapped. So what did it do for you? How did that fear play out in your life?
T: Oh mate, what a question. Well, ongoing. I think that was one of the things that drove me back eventually to join Great Big AOG, to try and secure my salvation again. We’ve talked about the pastor from Great Big AOG that took me for a drive and asked me about my sex life and all that kind of stuff – knowing this story now, you can see why that freaked me out so much. Like, why do you want to know where I put my thing? You’re going to tell me off? So for me, I think it’s impacted me in terms of trust in authority, all that kind of thing, but it also fucked with me (excuse the pun) sexually. Because it made sex this dirty thing. It made sex this thing God hates, and it makes sex this thing that can be used to your detriment that people can have control over you and that kind of thing. And I notice as I’m telling this story I keep saying and that kind of thing – I think that’s my way of saying and a whole lot more.
B: What is some of that more? What are the other things that it’s really kicked you in the guts and affected you as you’ve gone forward? What happened in those three years? Like, you’re saying there was an intervening three years, you’ve left the Revival Centre, you haven’t quite connected to Great Big AOG, you’re in a space that’s sitting in the middle, how did that play out?
T: Well I think the PTSD thing was real. Like I said, I was having dreams about nuclear war and God coming back, and Jesus coming back, and there was Revival Centre people in the dreams often.
B: I trust they weren’t wet because you know what that would do to your soul.
T: No, they were sweaty but not wet.
B: Okay.
T: So that was going on. I don’t want to elaborate on this because as we said part of the reason why we keep ourselves anonymous is because we want to distance ourselves from our professional reputations and all that kind of thing, but I’m not going to say whether they were legal or illegal, but there was a lot of substance abuse in that time. A lot. Just trying to numb the pain. And a lot of my experiences in that time – there was a lot of confusion and I don’t want to say self abuse, but there was a lot of maladaptive coping strategies trying to numb that pain. I remember sitting a club one night and this guy says to me hey T, why are you here? And I said what do you mean? And he said everybody here’s running from something, what are you running from? And I was just like dude, I know exactly what I’m running from. I’m running from this Revival Centre thing and what it’s done to me as a 17 year old kid.
B: Did you by any chance see that as a bit of a spiritual message from this guy going I know? Or no?
T: No, not that day. There were other times where things got a bit spiritual, or I interpreted it that way, but I think having that sort of control and power over a 17 year old kid – now as a 50 something, looking back – it makes me angry. To do that to someone, to destroy someone’s life in that way. I was in Year 12, and I barely passed my year 12 that year and I’m a bright guy. I was a bright kid, so that shouldn’t have happened, and my parents didn’t know how to handle it. They could see I was depressed, but this was the 80s, there was no depression. Depression was just Frances Farmer and Sanitoriums. It wasn’t something that we experienced. So it had a massive impact, and I think it set me on a trajectory. PTSD, especially undiagnosed and untreated, doesn’t go away. So I’ve carried it. I’ve carried it for a long time.
B: Does it play out now, do you think, in some sort of way?
T: Ohh, look anxiety and depression have come and gone in my life, usually things trigger that to come on, but yeah I trace it back to that, and I do think the Revival Centres have a lot to answer for. Because my story, whilst people listening to this podcast are wow that’s extreme, but if you come out of the Revival Centres you know that this happens all the time. I went to visit a friend of mine who was still in the Revival Centre, not long after I’d been kicked out. I went to visit her at her work place – she and I were very close, very good friends. I went to her workplace, asked to see her, she came downstairs and looked at me – nobody else was around, and I remember she looked at me and said what are you doing here? And I said I just came to say hi. And she said – and I quote, you know how this works. I can never see you again. Don’t come here, don’t have anything to do with me. All my friends did that. I told you the story about driving up to people and going what religion are you? I was dropped, all of a sudden it was my turn to burn in hell. Dropped like a hot potato. All those friendships, all that security, everything I had was gone. When H was trying to take me to Great Big AOG, part of me was wanting to reconnect quickly, but another part of me was going never again. Fuck that.
B: It’s interesting, in Australia over the past few years we’ve had a Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse, and that has been around sexual and physical child abuse for those involved in institutions run by the state, but also churches, but I think this is just as harmful. That emotional and psychological abuse. You’ve spoken about some of the harms caused to you.
T: It’s spiritual abuse people – call it. And psychological abuse, definitely. I’m not going to say it’s worse than sexual or physical abuse, but it’s certainly bad. And what it did to me. Imagine if there was an aspect of that enquiry that actually explored what are these churches doing in terms of the psychological wellbeing of these people that haven’t been sexually or physical abused, but have been controlled, manipulated, exposed to PTSD, for God’s sake.
B: I think there’s been a slight recognition of that. In Australia, in the state of Victoria the parliament has passed a law there that gay conversion therapy is now illegal. So you cannot spiritually abuse somebody by forced prayer and exorcism to try and change their sexual bent.
T: Or even tell them that if they don’t change they’re going to burn for an eternity in hell.
B: Yes. Absolutely. So Victoria has moved ahead in leaps and bounds, that state has quite a progressive government. It’s interesting, it’s the only state in Australia that has done that. I know others overseas have, but I’m not sure if it’s enshrined in law like it is there. So I think there is some recognition of the harm done.
T: I’ve had Christian friends comment on that – they’re still fundamentalist, and they’re upset by what you’re talking about and that sort of intervention, oh we can’t pray for people and stuff like that, because they don’t see the flip side. They don’t see the suffering and the turmoil these kinds of experiences have impacted.
B: Oh most certainly. The things you’ve spoken about – it’s a real harm. That stuff damages you for life. You may say that it doesn’t affect you as much now or whatever, but the fact is it does still affect you.
T: Of course. Telling the story now, if this was a video you’d see my face was red and I don’t know if you notice, but I could certainly feel I was trembling as I was telling the story, because it was a signpost in my life. A point in my life, I want to say it again, something in me was crushed that day. Something in me died. And when you and I talk about our different experiences in Great Big AOG, we’re going to have different experiences because of where we’ve come from. Obviously this is why mine was so much more fucked than yours.
B: Yeah, it set a foundation for that really. As we’ve said many times, we talk about being primed – you were certainly primed.
T: I was certainly primed. But think about someone that’s come from an abusive family where maybe the male dominant patriarchal authority figure is violent etc, they’re going to have a very different experience in Great Big AOG where it’s very authoritarian and mostly male and all that. They’re going to have a kind of experience different from you and I. So many of us are primed in different ways – what I want to make sure isn’t happening here is oh it’s not that Great Big AOG was so bad, it’s that T came from this experience. No, it’s both. It’s that T came from this experience, AND Great Big AOG was toxic.
B: That’s right. You’re meant to be in an environment that’s going to nurture you, going to love and care for you. The talk of grace is constant, but the display of grace, which we’ve talked about many times now, doesn’t always marry up with what’s actually happening, unfortunately.
T: I know that this episode – I say this for the listeners as well as you, B, I know this episode was heavy and we’ve tried really hard to keep everything positive and light, but I felt this was a story that needed to be told, and I wanted it to be out there. There are websites if you have been involved in the Revival Centre, or you are involved in the Revival Centre and you want some support, Google search Revival Centre Cult, Revival Centre AIMOO. I’ll put the links in the show notes as well, but there is quite a lot of support out there for ex members, put out by other members – some Christian, some non-Christian, some other religions as well, so I’ll make sure that’s available, but there is help.
B: Yeah that’s important to know. Obviously you can reach out, and T has some first hand experience in this space. It might not be Revival Centre, there might be another cult you’re involved with and you want to get some tips around moving forward and dealing with it.
T: We can one day unpack some of the counter cult stuff that I explored, I read a lot of books and websites and we can explore that another day, because that helped me with my Great Big AOG experience as well. And I know it’s helped other people too, they’ve reached out and said have you heard of this book and that book, so definitely.
B: Well thank you, T. I think it’s been a topic that did need to be explored, and I know that this will probably continue to bring stuff up for you now that you’ve spoken about it. I’m sorry that will happen, but unfortunately this is what happens when you lay your soul bear.
T: To a thousand people listening to the download.
B: Yeah, absolutely. So listen away people, but also be encouraged that you can come out the other side of really shit things that happen in your life, and things get better.
T: You can come out the other side, thirty years later, and make a podcast.
B: You too can aspire!
T: I was a teenage fundamentalist, and now I’m a 50 something in therapy. Anyway, good mate. That was really good.
B: Thank you, and we shall see you next week.