Bible fellowship battling cult label<\/strong><\/p>\nIs it a cult or a cultural misunderstanding?<\/p>\n
Some educators say the University Bible Fellowship lures impressionable students into a mind-controlling cult and is not welcome on campus.<\/p>\n
But the fellowship\u2014which has many missionaries of Korean descent \u2013 blames its troubles on cultural misunderstandings and conflicting religious beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a Christian group, we are Presbyterian in background, and we believe the Bible is the word of God,\u201d fellowship co-founder Sarah Barry said in a recent interview from her office in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been called fundamentalists because of that but we don\u2019t have any strange doctrines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last September, Winnipeg\u2019s Red River Community College warned students that members of organization were attending classes for the purpose of recruitment.<\/p>\n
The University of Winnipeg banned the group in 1986, three years after it first moved to Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t banned them from here, but it\u2019s something the students should be aware of,\u201d Red River president Ray Newman said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes students are vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The University of Manitoba escorted some group members off campus after an incident last fall but Newman said he hasn\u2019t received a complaint about the group yet and plans no action unless he does.<\/p>\n
Gord Gillespie of the Manitoba Cult Awareness Centre says students are generally approached by two people, who ask if they are missing something in their lives. They are then invited to join a Bible study group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey deal with the orthodox Bible but they twist it,\u201d he told the Winnipeg Sun, which ran the stories of some former members of the fellowship earlier this spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to control. They try to rule out TV, reading newspapers. They want them reject family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry insists the allegations are untrue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watch television and read newspapers and I have my mother here living with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf somebody is a couch potato and sits and watches television all day, we certainly discourage that,\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry said she and Korean missionary Samuel Lee founded the fellowship after she went to Korea in 1955 to open a small student centre for the Presbyterian mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve found that working as foreign missionaries\u2026 with cultural differences\u2026all of us find that sometimes we don\u2019t maybe understand people as well as we should. Anybody can say \u2018no\u2019,\u201d<\/p>\n
The fellowship moved to Canada through Winnipeg but has also expanded to Toronto and Hamilton, although Barry said she didn\u2019t know how many members of her fellowship operate in Canada.<\/p>\n
Theresa, a former member and a second-year student at Red River, told the Winnipeg Sun she was 20 when she joined in 1986. She said Bible study and prayer took up all her free time, leaving her exhausted.<\/p>\n
She left two years later when the group tried to arrange a marriage for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re pushy when they approach you. They won\u2019t accept no,\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry said the fellowship doesn\u2019t use pressure tactics or arrange marriages but they do stress morality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this very promiscuous society we encourage people to live moral lives. We don\u2019t encourage pointless dating.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone indicated they would like to be introduced to someone to be married, we\u2019d introduce them. They don\u2019t have to marry them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maxine, another former member, told the newspaper she left the organization because it tried to control her every aspect of her life, including the way she dressed and wore her hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce they get you and you\u2019ve been there a while, you become so committed it\u2019s hard to get out,\u201d she said, adding that the fellowship became like a family to her\/<\/p>\n
Barry acknowledges the group has had a lot of bad press.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are criticized because we try to live a Christian lifestyle in an un-Christian society, then so be it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,1,147,141,138,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-article","category-evidence","category-info","category-injustice","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubfriends.org\/ubfriends2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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