The local churches and the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have been the subject of controversy in two major areas over the past fifty years. To a large extent these controversies stem from the rapid increase and spread of the local churches in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s they became a target of opposition of fledgling countercult ministries. Unsupported criticisms of anti-social behaviors led to three libel litigations. In addition, some criticized the teaching of Witness Lee on the nature of God, God's full salvation, and the church.
History
Interaction with countercult ministries By the 1960s the writings of Watchman Nee had become popular among evangelicals,... including many in Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). In 1968 Campus Crusade's national field director Jon Braun, who had read Watchman Nee's ,. and all of the regional directors under him left Campus Crusade seeking the New Testament church.. A short time later Braun joined a group led by Gene Edwards, a former Southern Baptist evangelist. Edwards had met with the local churches briefly before leaving to carry out his own interpretation of what the church should be.
In 1969 Campus Crusade launched what became Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF). at UC-Berkeley as an attempt to reach the young people in the counterculture... Jack Sparks, a former statistics professor at Penn State and Crusade staff member, soon became the dominant figure in CWLF... Throughout the early 1970s Sparks and Braun, who knew each other through CCC, gave talks at CWLF gatherings against Witness Lee and the local churches to stem the loss of members to the (local) church in Berkeley..... Braun, who had a bitter split with Gene Edwards and left his group, joined with Sparks and five other former Crusade leaders to establish the New Covenant Apostolic Order (NCAO) with themselves as apostles. In 1979 six of the original seven NCAO apostles appointed themselves bishops of the newly formed Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC)..Peter Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, 3rd ed. (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 1989), 27–40.Ruth L. Stiling, “An Examination of the Evangelical Orthodox Church” (M.A. thesis: Dallas Theological Seminary, 1980).
In 1974 three CWLF members founded a subsidiary countercult ministry, Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP).“Spiritual Counterfeits Project,” undated flyer.“David Fetcho’s Story: Last Meditation/Lotus Adept,” Radix 9:5, March 1, 1978:6. In early 1975 Sparks asked a young CWLF staff member, Alan Wallerstedt, to prepare a manuscript critiquing the teaching and practices of the local churches.Deposition of Brooks Alexander, Lee et al v. Duddy et al, August 4, 1982:285. Later that year Sparks tried to convert CWLF into a church and bring it under the authority of the NCAO.Jack Sparks, “The Christian Ecclesia: A Community Governed by God,” June 1975.Jack Sparks, “Where We Are Going,” June 1975.Jack Sparks and Arnold Bernstein, “A letter from the elders to the people of the church which includes CWLF,” undated, [approximately July 1975], 3. The large majority of members would not go along and CWLF split.Jean Garvin, “Dear Jack and Arnie,” August 4, 1975.Jill Shook, “To people in CWLF from Jill Shook,” n.d.Bernie and Fran Adeney, “Why we must leave the church which Jack and Arnie are caring for: an explanation,” July 29, 1975. Wallerstedt followed Sparks but completed the manuscript he had been commissioned to write for SCP. Thus, both the NCAO and SCP had copies of Wallerstedt's manuscript.Deposition of Jack Sparks, The Church in Atlanta et al v. Thomas Nelson et al, November 16, 1981:318–19.Deposition of Jon Edward Braun, The Church in Dallas et al v. Thomas Nelson et al, December 19, 1981:610.
In the summer of 1976 Peter Gillquist, the presiding NCAO apostle, became the head of the new books division at Thomas Nelson Publishers (Nelson), a respected Bible publisher. The first book Gillquist commissioned was The Mindbenders by Jack Sparks.Peter Gillquist, letter to Sam Moore (President of Thomas Nelson Publishers), April 30, 1976. Sparks was listed as the putative author but the chapter on the local churches was written by Braun, who, although he had never met with the local churches, blamed Watchman Nee and Witness Lee for his negative experience with Gene Edwards.Peter Gillquist, letter to Jack Sparks, August 13, 1976.Peter Gillquist, letter to Jack Sparks, August 25, 1976Deposition of Gordon Thomas Walker, The Church in Dallas et al v. Thomas Nelson, Inc., et al, February 3, 1981:45.Jack Sparks, The Mindbenders, 1st edition (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1977). Meanwhile, SCP was independently developing Wallerstedt's manuscript into a book titled The God-Men.Deposition of Brooks Loftin Alexander, Lee et al v. Duddy et al, August 6, 1982, 505. First editions of both The Mindbenders and The God-Men were published in 1977.Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The God-Men, 1st edition (Berkeley, CA: Spiritual Counterfeits Project, 1977).
Responding to the strong demand for countercult publications after the Jonestown tragedy of November 1978, second editions of both books were published.Jack Sparks, The Mindbenders, 2nd ed (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1979).Neil Duddy & the SCP, The God-Men, 2nd ed (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981). Before and after each edition of either book was published, members of the local churches wrote letters of protest to the authors and publishers and attempts were made to contact them both personally and by phone. Nelson alone received approximately three hundred responses.. InterVarsity Press, the publisher of the second edition of The God-Men, received a response including over five hundred pages of supporting documentation refuting the book's charges.“An Appeal to InterVarsity Concerning The God-Men” and “A Reply of the Local Churches to The God-Men,” both dated 1980.
The Mindbenders and The God-Men accused the local churches not just of theological error but of sociological deviance, including practicing authoritarianism, thought reform, isolation of members, deceptive recruiting, use of fear and humiliation to control members, and financial malfeasance.Sparks, Mindbenders, 15–17, 224–32, 252–53.Neil T. Duddy & the SCP, The God-Men: An Inquiry into Witness Lee & the Local Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 28, 39–40, 107–40. Following publication, members of the local churches became objects of harassment, physical assault, and attempted deprogrammings. In addition, members were dismissed from jobs and family relationships were damaged.. In China the Three-Self Patriotic Movement commissioned two men to write a book to provide justification for a nationwide persecution against the local churches.Jiang Ping, “Report on the Shouters: A Travelogue,” an official report to the United Front Work Department, January 1983.Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Pray for China Fellowship, December 1983.Chinese Church Research Center, China Prayer Letter 39. The authors relied on The God-Men and its accusations in their writing.“Speaking of the Shouters: An Interview with Tang Shou-lin and Ren Zhongxiang,” Bridge: Church Life in China Today 2, November 1983:16–18.. Over two thousand local church members were arrested, many were given extended sentences, and some were even executed..
Seeking relief from libel In 1980, after all attempts to communicate with the authors and publishers were rebuffed, groups of local churches and individual church members filed libel actions concerning The Mindbenders in four jurisdictions—Anaheim, Dallas, Atlanta, and Cleveland. The lawsuits named Nelson, Sparks, Braun, Dick Ballew (an EOC bishop and close associate of Braun), and Gillquist as defendants. The discovery process was subsequently consolidated to expedite the cases. A separate libel action was filed by the Church in Anaheim, Witness Lee, and William T. Freeman against Neil Duddy, the principal author of The God-Men; Spiritual Counterfeits Project; and Schwengeler-Verlag, publisher of a German translation of the same Duddy manuscript which was the basis for the second edition of The God-Men. Although the local churches strongly protested that both The Mindbenders and The God-Men misrepresented their teachings, the issues raised in the lawsuits were not theological but were based on the books' false and defamatory accusations of sociological deviance..
Discovery in The Mindbenders case revealed that Gillquist had used his position within Nelson to push for publication of the book over objections from internal staff and outside reviewers of the pre-publication proofs.Larry Stone, memo to Sam Moore, September 10, 1976.Jim Powell, letter to Sam Moore, September 24, 1976.Deposition of Craig Lampe, Church in Dallas et al v. Thomas Nelson et al, October 28, 1981. After two years of discovery, the case was settled out of court. All defendants signed an agreement that stipulated financial recompense for damages and that Nelson issue a retraction to be published in major newspapers and Christian periodicals nationwide..
Early in The God-Men case Neil Duddy and SCP had a rancorous split stemming from Duddy's claims of SCP's financial mismanagement.Neil Duddy, letter to Michael Woodruff and David Brooks, July 15, 1982. Duddy moved to Denmark to avoid entanglement in The God-Men proceedings.Eugene Gruhler and Dan Towle, interview with Neil Duddy in Aarhus, Denmark, February 28, 1983. Depositions showed that Duddy failed to document his accusations against the local churches with credible evidence and that SCP, despite having misgivings about Duddy's research, had not fact-checked his work or sought independent verification.
On the day the court was to schedule the trial, SCP's attorneys, in anticipation of a judgment against SCP, announced that their client had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.“Bankruptcy Halts Trial of Religious Group” San Francisco Chronicle, March 5, 1985 pp. 1, 10, 17. Neither Duddy nor representatives of Schwengeler-Verlag made an appearance. The court granted the plaintiffs' petition for permission to present their evidence despite the SCP bankruptcy and the other defendants' default. The local churches retained six experts to testify on their behalf.. During the proceedings Judge Leon Seyranian questioned the witnesses and experts in the absence of defense counsel. At the end of those proceedings, he stated that he was satisfied that the evidence presented was sufficient to decide the case without cross examination.. After reviewing the conduct of the court proceedings in his decision, Judge Seyranian declared:
The court awarded damages in the amount of $11.9 million, which at the time was the largest final libel award in American history.“. Only a small fraction of the judgment was ever paid. SCP later claimed that the only reason they lost the litigation was that a protracted discovery process had drained their financial resources.Bill Squires, “The Lawsuit in Perspective,” SCP Newsletter 11:4, November 1986:7–8. However, a recent publication has challenged the veracity of this claim using SCP's own financial reports..
Reaction to the decision