Unmasking The Wilds’ Harmful Practices and Cult-like Control
Article originally published on Stop Pastoral Abuse by Andrew Pledger
Article
“Over a year ago, I released a limited podcast called Surviving Bob Jones University. I wanted to expose the toxicity and abuse of Christian fundamentalism by analyzing the high-control culture at BJU. The environment of BJU has patterns of conformity, isolation, surveillance, indoctrination, and control. I quickly learned that Bob Jones’s influence spread to connected ministries that were run by BJU grads. I realized the BJU culture was being replicated in its affiliated ministries. This led me to create the podcast, Beyond BJU: Exposing Fundamentalism, which examines the abusive behaviors in these ministries.
This is evident in The Wilds Christian Camp which is an affiliated ministry of Bob Jones University. The Wilds perpetuate a toxic and abusive culture through its authoritarian practices, indoctrination techniques, and counseling practices, necessitating urgent systemic reform and accountability to protect vulnerable individuals from trauma and exploitation. To understand these issues, we must examine the camps’ origins. The Wilds was started in 1969 in NC by former BJU professor Ken Hay and his friend Walter Fremont. Joe Henson and Carl Blythe also helped start the camp. Ken wanted to create an environment for Christian camping, pioneering the idea of a high-quality camp that grew disciples of Christ and converted those who were undecided. The camp had rough beginnings with issues like electricity problems and substandard structures. In 1987, a second Wilds camp was opened in The Rockies. Due to the success of the camp format, a global ministry called Camps Abroad was started in 2001 to train Christian leaders to start their own camps based on The Wilds. A third Wilds camp was opened in 2009 in New England with Rand Hummel as the director. Despite the improvement of the camp, the philosophy and culture of the camp would remain the same. The philosophy of the camp is based on four P’s which are philosophy, people, program, and place. The philosophy is based on biblical principles in which every activity had a biblical reason. For people, the Wilds wants staff members who are completely dedicated to the camp and desire to serve Christ. Then, a program of songs, activities, and services based on the philosophy and finally a place for the camp to glorify God. (1)
The camp’s leadership played a key role in its culture and practices, Ken Hay, the founder, was camp director at The Wilds in NC for thirty-five years and after him, Ken Collier took over his role. Most of the leadership was connected to a local Independent Fundamental Baptist church called Bethany Baptist. The church was started in 1969 in Brevard, NC. The Wilds staff would take over this church and create a harmful culture that would perpetuate for decades. Ken Collier, Matt Collier, Rand Hummel, Matt Herbster, Steve Stodola, and Tim Meals were all men who juggled positions at the camp and the church. A survivor from Bethany Baptist and The Wilds came forward to share the culture and practices at the church and the camp. Her name is Tabitha Frady, and she decided to share her story in a four-part series on my podcast, Beyond BJU: Exposing Fundamentalism.
In part one, her story begins with attending Bethany Baptist and its school. She shares details on the kindergarten teacher who expected the children to be perfectly behaved, or they would face her punishments. Punishments included public humiliation in the classroom, being grabbed by the face, which sometimes made cuts or being sent to the principal’s office to be spanked with a wooden paddle. On the podcast, Tabitha recalls hearing children screaming and crying through the walls as they were hit in the principal’s office. In addition to punishments, children faced the pressure of a rigorous curriculum that had to be learned quickly. The kindergarten teacher threatened the children to perform well, or they would regret it. Tabitha recalls at five, being forced to stand in the front of the church to recite scripture passages or face the teacher’s wrath.
Regarding the church’s culture, it was authoritarian and insular. The church enforced strict modesty codes, discouraged questioning, and prioritized submission and obedience to authority. They taught traditional gender roles and discouraged close relationships outside of the church. If anyone missed church, they were visited to reinforce attendance. After several missed Sundays, the family or member would be publicly excommunicated. Favoritism was another harmful part of the culture. The Wilds families and their kids were treated better than non-Wilds people. (2)
At the church, when the children were old enough it was expected they would volunteer and eventually work at The Wilds. Tabitha Frady started volunteering at fourteen. Her first year of volunteering consisted of work on the weekend. Her day would start with waking up at 4 am and then heading to the kitchen to help cook breakfast. She would go from cooking and serving to scrubbing and cleaning all the dishes. She would do other jobs throughout the day, and her workday would end at midnight. She describes her hands getting chapped in the winter from all the dishwashing, her hands would start bleeding from the conditions, but she was expected to put gloves on and keep working. Tabitha says she wasn’t paid at first as a volunteer, but this practice was soon changed.
After two years of volunteering, she applied to be a CIT or Camper In Training. This is a two-week program at The Wilds that trains teens to be Christian leaders with a servant’s heart. To become a CIT one had to apply and be accepted. To apply, one had to read two books: Changed Into His Image by Jim Berg and Biblical Leadership by Ken Collier. In 2014, BJU’s GRACE Report recommended that Jim Berg’s material be removed from its bookstore and any other BJU-controlled entity, but the Wilds ignored this advice. (12) CIT Applicants were also required to answer questions on topics such as God and the Trinity and submit papers on both books.
Once accepted, CITs started the program, and participants were split into three groups. The first week was spent studying Changed Into His Image. They were required to write down 100 ways they were selfish, then highlight five on which they would work during the week. They were graded on how selfless they were and how well they served other campers.
At first, CITs were supposed to be undercover. Expectations of CITs were keeping everything clean and going the extra mile for counselors and campers. They were also not allowed to socialize with other CITs. Participants who did not meet expectations were not allowed to become counselors. Tabitha met expectations and was set to become a counselor.
Counselor training consisted of learning The Tree model, which detailed how every problem or ‘sin’ was rooted in a belief or unbelief about God’s character. The counselor would use the Tree Model to identify the root sin of the camper and address the issue using the Bible. Counselors were also given a booklet that guided them on how to deal with common issues. Some of the issues listed were salvation, same-sex attraction, music, purity, abuse, and other sensitive topics. In addition to counseling, they were expected to wake up their campers at 6:30 am and put them to bed by midnight. During the day, counselors were expected to constantly interact with campers, guide them in activities and games, attend services, and enforce cabin cleanliness. They were also responsible for enforcing the dress code, overseeing meals, and leading spiritual discussions. For all this work, Tabitha was paid $250 every other week. (3)
In the podcast, Tabitha points out the schedule's insular nature and problematic aspects, creating an environment ideal for indoctrination and manipulation. Children’s phones are taken away, which cuts them off from their parents and access to information. The rigid schedule of devotions, physical activity, poor nutrition, services, and lack of sleep put the children in a vulnerable state that makes them susceptible to uncritically accepting messages preached to them.
Tom Farrell was a regular preacher at camp who was known for his fire and brimstone sermons. Tabitha talks about how nearly everyone in the room would doubt their eternal salvation after his sermons. The overarching message of the camp is that human nature is utterly depraved, and any desires they deem outside of the Bible are evil and need to be purged. A teaching in the counseling notebook talks about a “Biblical” concept which is communicated as “put-off, renew, and put-on.” This concept means to put off sinful desires and habits, renew your mind through meditating on scripture, and put on new desires and ways of thinking. The goal of the camp is that the campers will be transformed into new people. An activity that pushes this transformation is the fire service which consists of a ritual of children burning sticks that symbolize the destruction of their former selves and desires. (2)
Additionally, this goal of total transformation pushes a narrative of competition and drive to be the best, even to the detriment of physical health. Tabitha talks about the pressure to always participate in physical activities despite health issues. Justin Graves, a former CIT of the Wilds shares his experiences in a Medium blog post titled My Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Abuse Story. A section of the post shares his experiences with the camp’s demand for constant participation in physical activities. He shares an encounter with Rand Hummel and the post states,
When my knee scabbing ripped open, it oozed blood and puss. I tried to sit out a game of baseball with CIT students and staff, but Rand [Hummel] forced me to play, again, because he didn’t think I was really sick or hurt. . . When I had to use crutches, Rand tried to take them and made fun of me, again telling me I wasn’t that hurt and didn’t need them. He told me I would be sent home if I “passed out” again, and so I hid in bathrooms or side rooms whenever I felt myself going south. Counselors and campers both expressed to me that Rand was wrong for what he was doing, but no one challenged him. (6)
These accounts from Tabitha and Justin highlight a pattern at The Wilds: prioritizing conformity over the well-being of campers and staff. This approach not only risks immediate physical harm but also instills a mindset that personal safety is less important than meeting the camp's expectations.
The lack of action from staff, despite recognizing the harm of these behaviors, points to a systemic issue within The Wilds' culture. This environment of unchallenged authority and forced compliance closely resembles cult-like behavior, raising serious concerns about the camp's impact on vulnerable young people.
The Wilds believe that God is changing the lives of young people, but after interviewing Tabitha it became clear they use cult indoctrination techniques to coercively control children. Janja Lalich's book Take Back Your Life outlines behaviors contributing to cult identity formation. The list, created by Drs. West and Singer, include the following:
• Isolation of the recruit and manipulation of his immediate environment
• Control over channels of communication and information
• Debilitation through inadequate diet and fatigue
• Degradation or diminution of the self
• Induction of uncertainty, fear, and confusion, with joy and certainty through surrender to the group as the goal
• Alternation of harshness and leniency in a context of discipline
• Peer pressure, often applied through ritualized struggle sessions, generating guilt, and requiring public confessions
• Insistence by seemingly all-powerful leader and/or middle-level leaders that the recruit's survival-physical or spiritual-depends on identifying with the group
• Assignment of monotonous tasks or repetitive activities, such as chanting or copying written materials by hand
• Acts of symbolic betrayal and renunciation of self, family, and previously held values, designed to increase the psychological distance between the recruit and his previous way of life (7)
The Wilds fit this list perfectly. Campers are isolated in a controlled environment with no communication channels, given inadequate food and sleep, and taught to diminish their "sin nature." They experience emotional highs and lows through manipulative sermons, are required to confess sins to counselors, follow a repetitive rigorous schedule, memorize scripture, and renounce their previous way of life and values. These findings show the need for scrutiny and regulation of religious camps and institutions. It is important to protect children from the impact of indoctrination techniques that can harm self-esteem, reduce critical thinking, increase anxiety, and suppress individuality.
Another concerning practice at The Wilds is the handling of sexual abuse. The Wilds 2016 counseling booklet states, “Does it need to be reported? By you, yes. Gather information and talk with your lead counselor. The administration will make the decision.” (9) This is concerning because there is no guarantee that claims will be reported to the police, and the personal account is shared with the administration. Victims should know that abuse will be reported to law enforcement and that their account is confidential. Regarding counseling for sexual abuse, the book instructs counselors to provide comfort and hope to the victim. It also directs them to help victims identify any "sinful responses" to the abuse while simultaneously cautioning against victim-blaming. This approach raises concerns about the impact on the victim when asked about their responses to abuse. Asking a victim about “sinful” responses is victim-blaming and does not prioritize healing. On the podcast, Tabitha shares an account about a girl revealing she was sexually abused, and Tabitha followed the book’s instructions. She turned in the account and soon the girl was pulled aside to be counseled by a lady staff member. The girl came back from the session emotionally shut down and told Tabitha that the camp told her youth leader, and they were going to call her parents to tell them about it. After this incident, Tabitha felt guilty about the camp’s response and was conflicted about reporting any abuse claims to the camp. (4) This experience highlighted a systemic issue within The Wilds' approach to handling sensitive situations, particularly those involving abuse.
The Wilds' counseling methods reveal this systemic issue in their ‘counseling’ approach. Their approach originates in The Tree Model which teaches that every “sinful” behavior and emotion is rooted in an unbelief in God’s character. The Wilds compares three aspects of the tree with the human condition. The 2016 counseling notebook explains that first, the crown of the tree reflects the outward behaviors of a person’s words and actions, secondly the trunk of the tree is the person’s heart which holds the desires or wants, and thirdly the roots of the tree hold the person’s belief system. This assumes that a belief results in certain desires manifesting in words and actions. This belief restricts a person’s ability to reflect on complex factors affecting their life and instead directly blames the person, resulting in shame. (5,9)
In contrast, professional counseling takes a compassionate and broader approach where environmental, biological, and psychological factors are explored in safety. It focuses on what the person experienced rather than assuming something is wrong with the person. A 2019 study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress cites the harm that shame causes in trauma survivors. López-Castro (2019) states that “The toxic distress triggered by shame has been understood to foster pathological avoidance through engaging in self-destructive and aggressive behaviors, withdrawing and isolating from others, or developing internalizing disorders, such as depression.” (8, 10) This illustrates that victims recede and internalize their experiences when triggered by shame. Shame is often a tool used to silence victims because of its debilitating and isolating nature.
The Wilds Christian Camp, like many Christian fundamentalist institutions, creates a culture of silence, conformity, and control that perpetuates harm and prevents accountability. Fundamentalist culture is built on the belief that authority cannot be questioned, prioritizing obedience. This prevents anyone from questioning or pushing back against any practices or behaviors. The belief system rationalizes an array of behaviors from isolation, controlled communication, a rigorous schedule, manipulative sermons, pressure to conform, lack of sleep, and self-degradation, which is justified by a demand for transformation.
The larger issue is how religious organizations hide behind the cloak of religious freedom which prevents scrutiny and accountability. In the US, religious beliefs are protected, but not all behaviors are protected under religious freedom. These organizations have the right to their beliefs, but how they enforce beliefs is a different area. The key issue with high-control religions and cults is that they use coercive control to manipulate and abuse victims. Coercive control is a comprehensive term coined by Evan Stark and is used to describe patterns of abusive behaviors across various contexts, including cults, abusive relationships, and dysfunctional family dynamics. Members of any organization or relationship should have the freedom and autonomy to choose, but coercive control restricts and eliminates these choices. To hold The Wilds accountable, and other harmful religious organizations, there needs to be federal legislation that defines and criminalizes coercive control. Until coercive control is recognized in our laws, The Wilds and countless other organizations will remain untouched, and victims will suffer in silence.”
Sources
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https://wilds.org/about/history/
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