Guest Post: Losing a Family Member to the Bethel Cult

This is a story about losing a family member to the Bethel Church cult in Redding, California. Its about someone who works in the medical profession who is skeptical about COVID because Bethel was first. This story in the view of this blog is about a strained relationship and how Bethel causes harm not only to the community of Redding but also to families as well.

“My family is my strength and my weakness.”

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

I love you, Lord, my strength.

2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield[b] and the horn[c] of my salvation, my stronghold.

Psalm 18:1-2 NIV

Bill and Beni Johnson

This blog is going to write about the issues with Bethel in Redding, California. There have been a number of issues that this blog has looked at in regards to Bethel, and you can access them in the blog directory under Bethel. Today you are going to read of a story, or how a family lost someone to the Bethel organization. This deals with a person who got involved in the controversial Redding church who works in medicine; and is a COVID skeptic. The church no doubt in the view of this blog contributed to this view. With that I will turn the rest of the post over to “Nancy.”

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The Background:

So my sister (42) has always been very religious. We grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I (40f) even participated with her up through high school, we even founded a club where kids prayed at school. Well, I grew up an became agnostic/atheist and she leaned HARD into religion. She was pre-med and didn’t do well enough in school because she was spending all her time with church. She kind of drifted in life and the churches she joined, which were increasingly conservative. A lot of the reason she stayed was that she hoped to meet a religious man. You might not know that singles groups always have way fewer men than women and she never met anyone. She ended up going to grad school in a science and getting a healthcare-related job. She now works with a vulnerable population. She moved to Northern California to join the Bethel Church.

Bethel Church is a cult. They believe in all sorts of VERY WEIRD things, like they tried to pray a 2-year old girl back to life when she died in her sleep. They are Christian dominionists who believe in something wacky called the “seven mountain mandate” that indicates the church should control all aspects of society including1) Education 2) Religion 3) Family 4) Business 5) Government/Military 6) Arts/Entertainment 7) Media. The church basically owns that town in a lot of ways. Even if you are an evangelical Christian, you will likely identify their beliefs as heretical or just plain nonsense. And they’re also extreme Trump supporters. They believe he was mandated by god, etc. They do not believe in wearing masks (their main pastor’s wife even had a video where she mocked mask-wearers), they do not believe in lockdowns. Their “school of supernatural ministry” has had the major outbreak in their small county.

I usually avoid any political or coronavirus talk around my sister. We talk about every two weeks on the phone. I am high risk and nearly died this year due to a still undiagnosed autoimmune disorder and she kept telling me weird stuff like I should just “live my life” and that she wasn’t going to stop seeing friends and having parties. She HAD A PARTY AT HER HOUSE during lockdown. She works with an all high-risk population!

Blowup with Sister

Finally, it blew up because she was so stressed out by work and having to wear PPE at work and she started a HUGE fight by repeatedly insulting me for being “like a hermit” and “stupid.” She was upset because my other family said she shouldn’t visit for Thanksgiving during a pandemic. She was furious, actually and said we were all being hysterical and we weren’t high risk and we should just “live our lives.” This is factually untrue as two of the four people involved have serious health issues. I said that was really weird and anti-science, which disappointed me because we both have science degrees, we have a family member who literally worked in disaster management and epidemiology, and she knows better. She finally told me she didn’t believe that coronavirus was that serious, that it was radically over-diagnosed, and nowhere near 200k people had died from it.

I even conceded she might be right, maybe some of those diagnoses were false positives. But that it is still extremely serious and that ICUs are getting maxxed out again, so I asked her if the people in them faking or are the doctors lying? She was dead silent for a really long time and then we jumped into a REALLY WEIRD downward spiral.

She got mad, started crying, and said there was no way for her to answer without sounding like a monster. I said I was sorry she felt that way, but that it was really weird to me that my sister was saying stuff that was just so blatantly anti-science and I just really wanted to understand what she thought…so she got hysterical and started screaming at me that she’s not some ‘liberal democrat’ (lol neither am I), and that she’ll never agree to lockdowns and no one will enforce them in NorCal. I told her I was really disappointed and that people like her are the reason why the fucking corona is still surging and life sucks so bad for everyone, including me. I told her if she was the one responsible for bringing the virus to her work because she was being irresponsible and not following recommendations, I would be so, so heartbroken and embarrassed and angry.

Her next argument was that we can’t contain the virus so we should just “live our lives” and I asked her how she thought other countries were containing it or keeping deaths to a minimum. She said none had, which again, I pointed out was factually untrue (I used to live in one of the countries where they basically have no cases now and are living life freely, and I asked her if the entire government of that country was hiding infections or all my friends were lying…and the cycle continued).

Repeatedly, she would say she didn’t want to talk about it and wouldn’t change her mind, and I’d agree to change the subject, but every single time, she would then cry and insult me and then move back into the disagreement. She was screaming and yelling that I should just accept she won’t change and then I said that was fine, then she shouldn’t expect to see or stay with any of us until post-pandemic. And then she hung up on me.

Now:

I told the rest of the family what’s going on and basically they are taking an Enlightened Centrist approach. That she was probably being hyperbolic about not following guidelines because she was mad. That she was going to say whatever she could to get a reaction out of me (?!?!), and that she’s probably being a lot safer than she says she is.

So the conclusion I’m left with is that my sister is either an asshole or a liar. I don’t feel like there’s a ton of middle ground here. So I’m done with her. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to interact with her until she changes her behavior and apologizes to me. I feel like that’s a minimum requirement to move forward with her. But it’s got me absolutely haunted because that means our family (small as it is) will never be together again and that’s hurting the other two or three people involved and I feel really guilty about that.

So what should I do? Just ignore her until post-pandemic and then never speak about it again? I don’t know if I can even be in the same room with her. I also love her and have known her my whole life. She helped me out when I nearly died earlier this year, even if it was very hard for her to do so. She has a hard time not controlling things and basically kept me up all night in the hospital by telling me that I was responsible for my illness (it’s likely genetic).

How to move forward?

The irony is that I work in child safety and have even been involved with families who were deprogramming after leaving cults. I’ve worked alongside deradicalization programs. But now it’s in my house and I can’t think straight about it.