I was not invited to speak in front of the congregation in Weston, Florida or from where I sit in Albuquerque writing this. Even though we could communicate and share our stories via technology such as Zoom, I doubt that Frederick Drummond will invite me into his sanctum, on screen or in person. Therefore, I invite myself.
Hello,
I watched, ‘Personal Testimonies: How I was saved and God added me to my church’, your YouTube video recently added by The Church of The New Creation. I watched the video because I know you. Except for Heidi Drummond, about the age of my older daughters, we were among Drummond’s devotees who left Springfield, Missouri in a caravan of cars and UHaul trucks in late winter of 1976 to start anew in Concordville, Pennsylvania. What started out as a Galilean Baptist Church congregation became First Baptist Church of Concordville, then Church of Our Saviour. Since moving to Florida to escape the scandals of corruption and church splits, you now call yourselves The Church of The New Creation. Doesn’t this nomenclature follow the one started in about 2005, Destiny Ministries? Others could help you pick a non-profit name that will stick around into the 2020s…something like ‘The Conned Christian True Believers of Florida’. Perhaps that is already taken. Florida government tilts in favor of cons and shysters. (See Mar A Lago).
But back to who we were in 1976. We were young together and passionate about serving Jesus and in awe of teachings that excited us, sounding more like hope and encouragement than the messages we heard in the Fundamentalist Baptist churches that sent us to Baptist Bible College in preparation for ministries. From New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota, Ohio and Florida, we went to Springfield to get educated (not sarcasm). But funny as hell from where I sit now at age sixty-seven! Ninety percent of us were under thirty years of age in that first group; I was twenty-three.
Connie V, you share this in the video, “I was always on the outside looking in”. Well, Jesus Christ, of course, you were outside and Invisible, as were all of we women (except for Hillary, Gillian and Grace). We were admonished to be quiet and pretty and respectfully obedient.
When Grace humiliated her husband after fleeing with our friend’s husband and abandoning her children to our care, did we not accept Grace back unconditionally because Fred Drummond told us to? When one of us was raped one night in her home, did not we after a short time take Mrs. Drummond’s advice to “stop indulging” our friend’s pain and fear? When Fred Drummond publicly humiliated one of us who sat in the choir loft during his sermon by joking about her weight and body shape, did not we laugh along with the men, although we burned too as she turned a bright shade of red?
We followed and enabled. When any one of us became Visible in a way that threatened the Fred Drummond circle, we were privately and publicly admonished. I became one of Hillary’s friends because I wanted to be involved in the children’s education. One time in a private conversation, after Hillary expressed her feeling that many in the church questioned the Drummond’s need to have a vacation yacht and drive a Jaguar, I expressed my feeling (I remember forty years later how my chest hurt saying it aloud) that I was weary of our daily defensive posturing for Fred’s actions. Days later, Fred sat me alone in front of his office desk and berated me. “A good preacher’s wife should be a lady” was part of the scolding. I did not remain quiet; hence, the public church shaming in 1982 the preceded our leaving the church forever. Many years passed before I could acknowledge my part in enabling the rise of a corrupt, cruel religious cult.
We who lived Outside the special circle of power and influence were complicit. We cannot claim “looking in” as innocent or passive detachment in the same way that our parents viewed the church from a thousand miles away. Taking ownership of our complicity is the first of many steps toward Freedom and Peace.
Fred Drummond and his closest allies were then, and remain to this day, loyal only to themselves. They used power for profit. They used us. We women, dedicated to our husbands and to our faith, protected corrupt men. The least among Fred’s many abuses of his power was the persistent demand that we in his congregation contribute to his business start-ups, often pyramid schemes, and borrow money from banks and other credit lenders to fund his insatiable desire for opulence and wider publicity. Many families like your own, Connie, have lived with heavy debt for decades, and now into your senior years, so that Fred Drummond and his extended family can live and do as they please.
The women covered up the corruption and cruelty, enabling its repetition and its spiraling depth. Connie, being on the outside of the privileged Drummond circle does not excuse you for the meanness you have enabled, for the humiliations your own family suffered all these years. Your silence from the outside was resounding approval. I left this church in 1982, rescuing my daughters from harm and cult mindset. If many more women had done the same, this religious cult that thrives on one selfish family’s indulgences, delusions, and criminality would have fallen apart decades ago. Lives would have been saved. But women like you, Connie, say they repent only of “from the outside looking in”. They repent only of their silence, not of their support. This is a tragedy.
Women must never approve the corruption and cruelty that dishonest men like Fred Drummond exact upon vulnerable people. Children were hurt. Young men were hurt. Families lost their independence and stability. Lives were ruined. Women must be the protectors. We must not exist in silence “from the outside looking in” when others are hurting. Women can no longer be the Bystanders that our mothers’ generations often accepted and use that place in the background as our defense. A defense against what? Were you afraid of Fred Drummond or of my brother or of offending Jesus? Perhaps you were afraid only of the attention you’d receive after becoming Visible.
Connie, I know what excessive introspection and introversion are like. Some of us just hate the bright lights of attention. I would rather be alone in a house than be at a party or on the sidelines in a large gathering. Again, you and I might share a predisposition and preference for solitude but, we do not share this attitude of protecting predators so long as they leave us alone. Although I shun power and cringe at attention, I speak up for victims.
You were a victim. Now you are on the Inside. You were a sweet, obedient, good-hearted useful idiot; now you are an executor.