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Anzu-taketwo224 karma

Not OP, (sorry if I'm overstepping)but I was in the IFB for 20 years. Most churches do what OP said. one church I attended was an exception. Fairhaven Baptist Church taught shunning. If your kid left the church you were expected to cut contact completely. The only exception to that was if you were inviting them to church or otherwise trying to bring them back in. Siblings wouldn't speak to each other. I was there to attend their "college" and if a student left we couldn't speak to them anymore. If we got caught emailing or texting them, we risked being expelled ourselves.

The pastor at the time actually preached several times while I was there that the reason the former church members weren't coming back was because the family members hadn't cut contact. As in, if they would follow his teachings teachings not speak to them, they'd come back. So, he placed the blame for them staying away from church on the family for not shunning them hard enough.

Anzu-taketwo130 karma

I student taught in 2011ish at an IFB academy. Due to having friends outside the cult, I had a vague knowledge of general pop culture, even if I wasn't actively consuming it.

The science class I student taught in had two pet snakes. The teacher told me on my first day that the kids had picked the names Edward and Jacob for the snakes. I caught the reference immediately. I was so torn on whether I should tell the teacher or not, since she obviously had no clue it was a twilight reference. I ultimately decided not to, out of a fear that they would wonder how I knew it was a reference to a banned book. 😅

I had a roommate in college who told me she used to read Nancy Drew books until they started using swear words like "d-a-r-n and c-r-a-p" she actually spelled them out. As a 20 yr old person she would not say darn or crap. I've always had a bit of a snarky attitude and made it a point after that to say darn and crap at every opportunity around her.

Anzu-taketwo34 karma

Roger Voegtlin is definitely in his own "camp" of the IFB.

Anzu-taketwo16 karma

Not OP, but I was IFB and I witnessed this more than once.

A family in my church had several kids. The oldest boy moved out at 17. He got his girlfriend pregnant (a girl from another ifb church) they had both stopped attending church. They got married shortly after. The ceremony was just my pastor, his wife, and the two immediate families (just their parents and siblings. No friends or extended family) a month or so after this hush hush ceremony the parents announced their sons wife was pregnant. I only knew it happened before because I followed the girls Instagram. (2 years later the exact same scenario happened with their next oldest.)

When I was still a teen two different girls in my youth group got pregnant. (Several years apart.) They were both instructed to ask forgiveness from the church for having sinned. One didn't and left the church. The other went through with asking for forgiveness and stuck around for a few months after giving birth before eventually leaving also.

The third example isn't really a "teen" pregnancy, but when I was in Bible college there was a couple who snuck off campus one day, went to a courthouse and got married. A month later she announced she was pregnant. A lot of the college kids started gossiping that they anticipated the baby being born "full term a month early" they were allowed to stay enrolled in the college because no one could prove they'd broken any rules.

Tl;Dr - in my experience, they either got married or dealt with insane amounts of guilt and usually left.

Anzu-taketwo14 karma

Ive been to this church! I had a few friends there who all had huge families. My IFB church wasn't quiverfull, so seeing families with 8+ kids wasn't the norm. This makes so much more sense now.