As I've detailed in a recent Alternet story , Daniel Webster's intimate, over three decade long involvement with evangelist Bill Gothard appears similar to a classic guru-disciple or mentor-pupil relationship and has included speaking multiple times at Gothard's conferences, traveling with Gothard to Korea in 1996, using Bill Gothard's material to homeschool his six children, making an instructional video for Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principles , and, when Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1996*, hiring four of Gothard's IBLP employees as high-level Florida State House staffers.

Bill Gothard and "Biblical Stoning"

As I describe in my Alternet story, Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, according to the Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute, before the institute's founder, father of Christian Reconstructionism R.J. Rushdoony, died, Rushdoony nearly struck a deal with Gothard that would have allowed him to distribute Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law book, a template for implementing Biblical law in government.

Rushdoony was a virulently racist Holocaust denier who believed in Geocentrism, the proposition that the Sun, and all the heavens, rotate around the Earth, which is the center of creation.

Although the deal fell through because the two men held clashing positions about divorce (Gothard wanted to ban it altogether) they otherwise were in agreement including, apparently, on R.J. Rushdoony's vision of instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for murder, adultery, homosexuality, idolatry, apostasy, and witchcraft.

Asked about his 1996 trip to Korea with Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster told the Florida Gainesville Sin, for an August 5th, 1996 story, "I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. I wouldn't have gone [with Gothard to Korea] but he wanted me there."

Interviewed for a February 16, 1997 story from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, Webster stated, on Gothard, "I enjoy the advice he's given. I think it's been a major part of my life. I'm not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth."

image, below: diagram from workbook used in Bill Gothard's "Basic Youth Conflicts" course, with student notes, circa 1974

"Taliban Dan"

Alan Grayson has been widely pilloried in the media, from the right on over to the decidedly liberal John Stewart Show, for releasing a political attack ad that took out of context a statement Daniel Webster, a former speaker of the Florida State Legislature, made during a speech at a 2009 Nashville conference held by evangelist Bill Gothard's Advanced Training Institute.

Alan Grayson's ad clipped the isolated phrase "submit to me" from Webster's speech, which seemed to reverse the apparent meaning, because Webster was telling his male audience not to focus on Bible verses that tell wives what to do. Rather, counseled Webster, husbands should pay attention to Bible verses that tell them, as men and as husbands, how they should behave.

Except for a few better informed analysts on the margins, media consistently portrayed Grayson's characterization of Webster as wildly deceptive. But according to Hanna Rosin, Gothard does indeed promote a authoritarian doctrine of submission to authority which places women clearly below men in a divinely proscribed hierarchy.

"Submit, wives!

Rosin's book concerned Patrick Henry College, recently founded by Christian homeschooling proponent and activist Michael Farris. As Rosin describes,

"When the Patrick Henry kids were growing up, one of the most popular gurus was Bill Gothard, who ran the Advanced Training Institute out of Oak Brook, Illinois. Gothard believes in running families like a military unit. He offers specific instruction on how kids should behave and dress, down to the length of their bangs. A few times a year, families would attend seminars around the country where kids would learn "basic life principles," such as how to conquer an addiction to rock music. The bad kids would get in trouble for what the adults would call "folly," which could mean listening to your clock radio in the hotel room or talking for too long with a member of the opposite sex...." [Rosin, pages 90-91]

Women, as Hanna Rosin explains Gothard's instruction, are to wear blandly-colored, loose fitting dresses with "neck bows and big pilgrim collars." And, "[t]hey are to avoid flirting, looking bold, or staring too long, all habits of "eyes that have not been brought into proper discipline." "

Per Rosin's account, in Gothardism the central authority governing a young woman's entry into sexuality is, of course, her father and dating represents sinful capitulation to "unwholesome sexual appetites." As she describes Gothard's approach,

" "The proper way to get to know a young lady is by building a relationship with her father." Fathers and daughters sign covenants with each other: "I will protect you from unqualified men" for him, and "I will keep myself pure for my husband" for her.

Once a man is chosen, the engagement should be brief; "In courtship the young man has pulled the pin out of the 'hand grenade' of the young lady's emotions, and in a short time it will 'explode,' " he writes.... Once they are married, the husband "gives the law" and the wife "works out the proper procedure to carry it out." Equal authority in marriage is "Satan's goal." The key to a happy marriage is "the wife's submission and the husband's sacrifice." "Reject the concept of working mother," the book advises. "When the scriptural functions of the home are restored, there will not be the time or the desire for the mother to work for someone else outside the home. God designed a wife to find her fulfillment by being a helpmeet to her husband." [Rosin, pages 92-93]

Hanna Rosin is not alone in her observation that Gothard teaches female submission. The evidence is overwhelming. From 1971, when Bill Gothard's efforts came to the attention on Time Magazine and up into the late 1990's, when most of the major Florida newspapers covered Dan Webster's ties to Gothard, journalists have consistently noted that Bill Gothard teaches that wives should submit to husbands.

Lest there be even a single iota of doubt on the issue, here's what Bill Gothard had to say on the subject, in Gothard's 1982 book Rebuilder's Guide, published by Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principals. In chapter 6, When a Wife Initiates Divorce, Bill Gothard lays out the "consequences":



"

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?

1. She exposes herself to Satan's power [...] Wives are instructed to submit to their husbands. (See Ephesians 5:22, I Peter 3:1) This means they are to "get under the protection of their own husbands."

The alternative to scriptural submission is not freedom, but defeat by Satan and exploitation by others. 2. She destroys many families

By disobeying God's word and taking matters into her own hands, the wife destroys both her own family and her husband's family. She sows the seeds of destruction in her families of her children and her grandchildren "to the third of fourth generation." (See Deuteronomy 5:9.) "



"Consequence" number two is a reference to Bill Gothard's teaching that sin can cause a curse, a hereditary inclination towards the sin that gave rise to the curse which is transmitted down generational lines.

As I describe in Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, other notable teachings and practices of Bill Gothard include,

The claim that schizophrenia is merely a form of "irresponsibility."



The need for believers to submit to all forms of authority, which is put in place by God.



As charged by several conservative Christian critics, the claim that Cabbage Patch and troll dolls are evil and inhibit childbirth.



As charged by author Cora Anika Theill, the claim that rebellious wives can be 'cured' by casting out spirits of 'rebellion.'



The doctrine that rock music is demonic and can case possession by evil spirits.

*Correction - I originally listed the year Daniel Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1997. That was incorrect - it was in 1996.