Mother

[picture credit: A Mother’s Love by Andy]

One of the most encouraging events during the writing of my book, Identity Snatchers, was to make contact with Dr. Reinhard Hempelmann, who is the Director of the Protestant Centre of Religious and Ideological Issues in Berlin Germany. This Berlin organization has a rather large collection of documents about UBF. Dr. Hempelmann not only gave me the following endorsement, but also gave me written permission to publish a letter from a mother of a German student who had begun one-to-one Bible study at a UBF chapter in Germany.

“This book is part of a critical examination of University Bible Fellowship. It gives insight into the structures and methods of this controversial group that’s work is focused on students.”

—Dr. Reinhard Hempelmann, Director of the Protestant Centre of Religious and Ideological Issues, Berlin Germany

Perhaps the best way to introduce outsiders to the group is by presenting letters from parents and family members. What follows is one of many such letters. This letter is from a mother in 1991 whose daughter was participating at UBF as a sheep in Germany. This letter has been translated from German and shared here without changes and with the explicit permission of the German Protestant Center (EZW). Many more such letters may be obtained by contacting the cult-watching organizations I referred to earlier.

“Our daughter, a student, had got in contact with the UBF through a meeting with a friend, and she was a supporter of the UBF group in Cologne for any length of time.

I would like to introduce our daughter briefly: Having become a believer as a child, she was active in the Christian youth ministry since then. She had contact to the Protestant City Mission at home. She went to »Campus Crusade for Christ« during her studies with friends. She became acquainted with a female student on a “Crusade” summer conference. This student told her about a Korean Christian group calling itself »University Bible Fellowship / UBF«. Our daughter accepted the invitation to join the group meeting.

According to the reports I considered these Koreans as being kind people. Our daughter was enthusiastic about the hospitality experienced there, of the personal care and of the way how the Bible was read in the group. She started with a 1:1 Bible study with her friend from UBF and later with a Korean in Cologne. She was completely fascinated by her prospect of being allowed to live her Christianity in this group.”

This mother decided to attend a UBF meeting with her daughter, to see what was going on. The mother notices something good, and at the same time immediately senses the dark side of UBFism:

“I also went to the service of the UBF group in the Sunday afternoon and noticed that besides some young Germans only young Koreans sat around next to me. The sermon of Abraham Lee and the prayers of his helpers confused me very much. The primitive word-order and the superficial train of thought touched me strangely. I felt myself as if someone wanted to pull my leg. Besides that, the service was performed with much singing. As playing a part UBF members who were introduced as “sheep”, “prayer servants” and “shepherds” participated. The way I see it the program was aligned with a special emotional experience. After the service there were after-meetings and also a kind of continuation of the service in prayer form in little circles. The individual service participants had already made notes to themselves during the sermon. After my observation this after-meeting was merely a questioning of the thoughts the listeners had and represented an attempt to achieve an additional alignment of the individual persons to orientate the thoughts of the sermon by praise and reproaches at the desired aims of this cult. I am still convinced today that the young people present didn’t see through this skillful manipulation at all.

The personal care that UBF prospects receive by 1:1 Bible study continues in my opinion in the service so that in UBF no-one stays without address. Nobody lives anonymously in this group. You know the names of each other and address one another with the trusting informal German pronoun “Du”. I can understand that this very friendly atmosphere arouses spontaneous enthusiasm with young people who often suffer from contact poverty or find themselves having few contacts at the universities. I also think that our churches could learn something from UBF in this area.

But the observations during the service, the conversation with the Koreans, the experiences in the UBF families and the changes going on in the behaviour of our daughter made me mistrustful and promoted the thought that something couldn’t be all right at UBF.”

After attending this UBF meeting, the mother does her own research, and sees a different picture surface. Thankfully, her daughter leaves the group. The mother’s words of caution match my experience:

“The dangerousness of the UBF in my opinion is an intended mutation of mind. It is achieved by a brainwashing method which is exercised by the 1:1 Bible studies, the practice of “Sogam sharing”, the writing of life testimonies and life confessions and the re-education by praise and reproaches. After my insight specific control also takes place from man to man or from woman to woman by telephone calls, letters and visits. I gather from the reports of my daughter that there are also psychologically elaborated trainings at weekends which result in an intense manipulation. This appears to me almost like an attempt to perform an intellectual and spiritual incapacitation with the participants.

I was alarmed by the in my opinion wrong assessment of UBF at many official places… I can understand that after a superficial first glance the UBF members leave a good impression of their group. But after intensive occupation with the written material which is handed out by the UBF, with the methods of this group and the reports of persons affected, a completely different picture arises.

Our daughter has found out of this group again with the help of many people (professors, doctors, boy friends, girl friends, former religion teacher, commissaries for cult problems and their documentation, city missionary, many who prayed for her and many coincidental helpers). We see God’s leadership and mercy therein. We are grateful for it.

We however see other parents, whose adult children are not finding out. These people urgently need help. It also is all about to protect other young people from the step into this group. For this reason I have written this report.”

[Translated with permission, from a letter by a mother published in the documentation service 8/1991 p. 234-237 of the German Protestant Centre for Religious and Ideological Issues (EZW)]

[Quotes from Identity Snatchers: Exposing a Korean Campus Bible Cult, pg.38-43]