 Web
Editor’s Note: |
| PeaceMakers,
International, |
| of
Wheaton, Illinois is not |
| related
in any way to |
| Peacemaker
Ministries of |
| Billings,
Montana. |
|
|
Back in the late 1980s, Joy and
I were discussing a personal issue and felt the need to get some solid
spiritual advice. We thought the input of a godly Christian professional
would be helpful, so we asked our senior pastor for the name of a good
Christian counselor outside the church. He referred us to Bill Fields,
president of a small parachurch ministry called PeaceMakers, International.
A few years earlier, Fields had co-hosted a local Christian radio program
to which I had occasionally listened, and since our pastor now recommended
him, I assumed he was trustworthy.
We arrived at Fields’ office and
explained why we were there. In short order, he declared himself a “prophet”
and spoke and acted as though he had special knowledge far superior to
the insights of average Christians like us. Joy is intelligent (but she
married me anyway) — smart enough to resist people who force their opinions
on her — and doesn’t have much patience with prophet “wannabes.” Fields
was clearly irritated when she questioned his confident “insights.”
Perplexed and dissatisfied with
Fields’ so-called “services,” we obviously never went back, and thought
that was the end of that.
It wasn’t.
Soon afterward, Fields spoke with
our pastor and shared specifics of our confidential “counseling” session
with him. Fields said we were “very dangerous” people who needed to be
watched. (Those who discourage independent thinking often say that about
independent thinkers.) Our pastor didn’t know what to make of this. He
knew us quite well. We’d attended his church for four years, were very
involved, and were part of the lay leadership.
So, we met to discuss the matter,
and I expressed concern about Fields’ integrity as a counselor. He not
only deliberately violated our confidence, but also broke state of Illinois
confidentiality laws regulating counselors. I pointed this out to our pastor,
and asked, “Is this the kind of person to whom you want to refer people
in your church for counseling?”
He was obviously concerned, but
he had no immediate answer.
Over time, we learned he’d referred
others in the church to Fields, and we observed a pattern emerging. Vibrant
Christians who’d been active in the church gradually became increasingly
withdrawn as Fields “counseled” them. They resigned from responsible positions
where they’d exercised their gifts and often disappeared altogether. Wonderful
believers, once so happy, were now mired deep in depression, wallowing
in guilt, and gradually fading out of our congregation after linking up
with Fields.
Vibrant Christians
who’d been
active in the church
gradually
became increasingly
withdrawn
as Fields “counseled”
them.
Eventually Fields’ relationship
with the pastor soured, and he stopped referring people to Fields for counseling.
We were relieved about this and assumed we’d heard the last of Bill Fields.
We were wrong.
Back to the Future
In 1994, cult researcher Dave Moore
was surfing through an electronic Bulletin Board Service (BBS) run by the
Jesus People USA (JPUSA) and moderated by Eric Pement. The World Wide Web
was so new that few people used it. For those with computer telephone modems,
BBSs like JPUSA’s were a popular way to communicate with others around
the world on a variety of topics.
Moore noticed an ad on the BBS for
Aaron Communications (which he knew was Fields’ side business). He also
knew about with PeaceMakers, International (PMI). Friends of Moore had
a daughter who had joined PMI and subsequently cut off family ties for
years before finally leaving the group. Moore sent Pement an e-mail charging
that Fields was a cult leader. Pement wrote back requesting evidence.
Since Moore’s conducted internal
investigations for the U.S. Post Office, this was right up his alley. He
contacted the Fewell family in southern Indiana who put him in touch with
their daughter Missy. She was still so traumatized from her years in PMI,
she wouldn’t talk to Moore, but she gave him the number of another former
member, Ron Henzel (now a senior researcher at MCO).
Henzel hesitated cooperating with
the investigation, so I called him to reiterate what Moore told him: JPUSA
would probably refer people to Fields for counseling if he remained silent.
Understandably, Henzel wanted to put PMI behind him and get on with his
life; but he knew, if he didn’t help us, more people would suffer what
he had.
Tip of an Iceberg
Henzel relented and put us in contact
with other ex-PMI members and relatives of then-current members. Their
tragic stories followed a typical pattern: someone would go to Fields for
“counseling,” join PMI, and eventually cut off all family ties. When relatives
pursued the new member, he or she would refer them to Fields saying all
communication had to pass through him, and/or the only way to re-establish
contact would be to arrange a “family counseling” session with Fields in
charge.
When relatives contacted Fields
to get their loved ones back, Fields harangued them with charges of “abuse,”
sometimes implying parents had sexually molested their now-adult children.
Families who went the extra mile and met with Fields and their estranged
relatives found the endeavor totally futile.
Reconciliation through Fields is
always elusive. There’s always something else that must be done, something
“wrong” with the families, something keeping their children, grandchildren,
and siblings in PMI and just out of arm’s reach.
Separation from truly abusive families
is appropriate. However, it’s odd that nearly all Field’s clients require
separation. Does he have some special talent that causes only abused people
to seek his “care,” or is he just good at persuading people they’ve been
abused?
We presented our evidence to Eric
Pement and waited.
Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Fields teaches that Christians shouldn’t
take other Christians to court. Therefore, you can imagine my surprise
when I answered my telephone and heard a booming voice declaring, “I should
sue you!”
It was Fields. Pement informed him
of our investigation.
From that promising start, we launched
into a conversation about the proper way for Christians to handle grievances
with each other.
“No one has ever taken me through
the Matthew 18 process,” said Fields, speaking of the Gospel passage about
how to pursue reconciliation.
“Are you saying no one ever tried
to take you through it?” I asked him.
Fields paused. “I’m not saying that,”
he finally admitted.
We eventually discussed the meeting
Joy and I had with him years earlier. I confronted him with his breach
of confidentiality, and he retorted, “You signed all the same agreements
giving me permission to talk to your pastor I had everyone else sign!”
“No I did not!” I replied. “Neither
of us signed anything.”
Silence.
Henzel later informed me that Fields
didn’t begin asking people to sign such documents until at least a year
or two after we met him. Even if we had signed them, under Illinois law
it’s impossible to relinquish one’s right to counselor-client confidentiality.
The statute is extraordinarily specific. Before counselors can divulge
private information, it must be put in writing with the identity of the
person to whom it will be sent, and the client must give written permission
to send it. The law also provides for damages, and has no statute of limitations.
While it’s humorously ironic that
someone who threatened me with litigation was more legally vulnerable to
me than I was to him, ex-PMI members find little to laugh about when they
recall Fields’ intimidation tactics. But, I had an advantage they didn’t:
I never confessed any of my deep, dark secrets to him.
Fields requires members to confess
their sins in his group, no matter how personal, including those already
confessed to God years earlier. He even solicits explicit details. In one
case, he asked the women in the group what they fantasized about when they
masturbated. Although embarrassed, many of them told him. He also told
one of the women that he thought of her when he masturbated.
“I recall the whole episode,” remembers
Henzel, “but I certainly don’t recall him asking this question of us men.
I hid my shock, but in the end, I did what we all did in PeaceMakers: I
assumed Bill was so spiritually advanced that I shouldn’t question him.”
In Henzel’s case, Fields demonstrated
his willingness to use the information he’d collected on him as a weapon
before Moore contacted him.
“Bill takes the same approach to
sins we confessed to him that Harry Truman took to the atomic bomb: what
good is just having it if you don’t show you’re willing to use it?” says
Henzel. “While in PeaceMakers, I confessed things I thought I’d take to
my grave because I thought I could trust Bill, and he convinced me it was
a beneficial thing to do.”
Then Fields divulged one of Henzel’s
most embarrassing confessions in a railing letter that he copied to someone
in Ron’s new church.
Henzel recalls, “I requested a meeting
with Bill and someone he called his ‘spiritual authority’ to address some
issues, and he sent this humiliating letter. I tried to follow biblical
procedure, only to see my extremely personal information copied to a third
party — someone I saw every Sunday. It was devastating.”
“Bill takes the
same approach to sins we
confessed to him that
Harry Truman
took to the atomic
bomb: what good is
just having it if
you don’t show
you’re willing to
use it?” says Henzel.
It was also a fresh memory when
Moore called Henzel asking about PMI. Henzel knew sharing with us meant
risking further betrayals, but didn’t want this to happen to others.
Unfortunately, his cooperation wasn’t
immediately rewarded. After conducting its own follow-up investigation
on Fields, not only did JPUSA leave his personal ad on their BBS, they
gave him his own “PeaceMakers” sub-BBS!
While disappointing, certain factors
made this understandable. First, Fields claimed to espouse a brand of practical
theology similar to JPUSA’s, which made him seem trustworthy to them. Second,
through his business sideline, Fields got JPUSA a deal on computer equipment,
and they were appropriately grateful. Third, because Fields was convincing
enough during JPUSA’s investigation, they decided to give him the benefit
of the doubt.
Before long, Fields used his sub-BBS
to violate the confidences of other people and generate ill-will among
Chicago-area Christians. No discernible “peacemaking” took place, and things
eventually got so out of hand that Pement posted a message rebuking Fields.
Finally, in early ’95, JPUSA received a letter it couldn’t ignore from
a PMI member’s brother. JPUSA’s leadership met in a lengthy session. Within
hours, they removed Fields’ sub-BBS and replaced it with a terse statement
indicating the removal was by mutual agreement.
Peace At Last?
At that point, we couldn’t see much
reason to take further action regarding Fields. His group was tiny, and
he’d alienated so many people in his Wheaton, Illinois area, it seemed
unlikely to attract new members.
Fields also thrived on controversy,
displaying a high aptitude for manipulating it to his own advantage. We
thought writing about him could give him a platform for recruiting new
members, and so we decided against it.
By the mid-’90s, Fields’ group was
so small it no longer could support him financially. He had to get a regular
job. He interpreted his increasing isolation as evidence of his “prophet”
status, although his concept of prophet-hood was closer to the crude, in-your-face
style of trash-TV Host Morton Downey, Jr. than to Scripture. Using 20/20
hindsight, it seemed obvious he’d been heading toward self-imposed exile
from Christianity for decades.
Fields, (now age 55), claims he
worked for Bill Gothard during his early 20s, until he was fired after
confessing to adultery. Neither Gothard nor anyone else with whom we checked
among current and former staff at IBLP remembers him.
In the early ’80s, some breathed
a sigh of relief at Youth For Christ’s (YFC’s) national office when Fields
left and took his confrontational relationship style with him. While there,
however, he’d earned a reputation for successful fund raising. This attracted
the attention of the executive director of Metro Chicago YFC (MCYFC), where
Fields relocated until he was fired during a dispute with the leadership.
He portrays the executive director — who later was forced to resign — as
the villain in the conflict, but MCYFC was experiencing a great deal of
turmoil back then, and assessment of blame varies greatly depending on
who offers it.
Gary L. Gulbranson was chairman
of the MCYFC board. He now pastors Westminster Chapel in Bellevue, Washington.
“We had staffers who were dissatisfied with the executive director, and
this created a void in the leadership which Bill [Fields] tried to fill,”
says Gulbranson.
Fields’ attempt to exploit the situation
led to his termination. The way he explains it, he was the scapegoat until
the board later realized the executive director was the real culprit, and
they then forced him out.
“No,” says Gulbranson. “Those were
two completely separate issues.”
However, Fields claims the following
on his web site:
| Within weeks the Chairman
of the Board, other board member(s) and several staff representatives came
to my home and before me and my wife, repented of their firing of me, cleared
my name and gave me a check for my continued caring services to staff at
Metro Chicago Youth For Christ and told me they had fired/forced the resignation
of [...] the Executive Director.1 |
“No,” says Gulbranson, “If that
actually happened, I’d remember it.”
He noted that if the board he chaired
had “repented” of firing Fields, they would have hired him back. Just to
be sure, Gulbranson asked us to check with another long-time board member,
Bob DeJong, who was a board officer when Fields was terminated.
“Absolutely not!” said DeJong of
the meeting Fields described, “It never happened.”
Regardless of who’s right about
his termination, Fields’ authoritarian style was clearly headed for more
trouble. Stan Lambert, a Judson College student from 1978 to 1982, worked
part-time at MCYFC. “Bill helped me work through some very difficult issues,”
said Stan. “Back then, he was a powerful and positive influence in my life.”
Over the years, Lambert occasionally
contacted Fields for advice or to offer support. “Not until we met in 1999
did I detect trouble,” said Stan. “I wanted to renew our friendship and
offer significant financial support, but got more than I expected.”
Throughout the meeting, he sensed
Fields trying to manipulate him into self-doubt. Afterward, Lambert e-mailed
him expressing concerns and offered to work together to address them. Fields’
answer was a curt, “No thank you.”
“Based on all he taught me years
ago, I knew what he wanted,” said Lambert. “He used to say, ‘The first
person to respond in a challenge loses.’ I’m sure he wanted me to pursue
the conversation, but that would have played into his game. He also said,
‘Once I find a person’s vulnerability, I control the relationship.’ That’s
what he was looking for, and I didn’t want to help him.”
Lambert adds, “Bill ‘wins’ arguments
through exceptional cleverness, and claims it’s a biblical victory. For
years, I wouldn’t believe it, but the abundant evidence and my own experience
leave no alternative. It saddens me deeply. Bill’s preeminent ability to
manipulate conversations and relationships makes him his own worst enemy.
He ‘wins’ battles but loses the proverbial war. He dismisses those who
can help him as insincere, incompetent, or ungodly. If he can’t dominate,
he won’t participate.”
Lambert adds,
“Bill ‘wins’ arguments through exceptional cleverness, and claims it’s
a biblical victory. ... He dismisses those who can help him as insincere,
incompetent, or ungodly. If he can’t dominate, he won’t participate.”
After MCYFC, he used his fund-raising
abilities to support his new PeaceMakers, International organization (incorporated
December 10, 1984). He’d attracted a devoted following at MCYFC and brought
some of them over to PMI.
Fields played football in college
and his large frame and distinctive speaking voice give him a commanding
presence in any room. Some find him exceptionally charismatic, which he
encourages by allowing his followers to praise his “great discernment”
and do much of the work of promoting him.
Even after the Wheaton Evangelical
Free Church excommunicated him in 1986, he retained loyal supporters. The
church ejected Fields in a congregational meeting after he renounced the
elders as spiritual authorities because he was dissatisfied with their
response to yet another dispute he was having — this time with the pastor.
A staff member recalls that at one point, Fields proposed the pastor and
elders resign and the church come under his “authority.”
Some close to the situation believe
the church badly mishandled it — that it became a turning point in Fields’
life and marked the beginning of his descent into cultism. Others believe
it simply made obvious the path he’d already chosen.
Giving PeaceMakers A Chance
In the late-’80s while he did not
attend church, Fields lured Christians into one of several “counseling
groups” he operated. As his alienation from the evangelical community increased,
his groups shrunk, eventually merging into one. He still had contacts from
his days in mainstream evangelicalism who served as an informal referral
network. When people they knew needed counseling, they unwittingly referred
them to Fields.
Ron Henzel was referred to Fields
the same way I (Don) was: through my pastor. In mid-’87, he left a church
ministry position and looked for counseling help for some friends. He and
his wife met with Fields, and within an hour Fields persuaded Henzel he
was in need of counseling.
“It was a depressing time for me,
and Bill has a remarkable ability to read people,” says Henzel. “My ministry
job ended badly, I had some heavy spiritual struggles, and now I realize
this made me a prime target for cult recruiting. To Bill, I was a ‘bird
in the hand’ — easier to get than my friends. Soon I was attending my first
group meeting.”
Under Fields’ direction, Henzel
and other group members cut off ties with their friends. Fields told one
woman to drop out of a volleyball league where she had supportive friends.
When a local pastor disagreed with Fields’ advice to a couple from his
church, Fields got them to leave the church and treat his group as their
“church.”
“It wasn’t a church in any biblical
sense,” recalls Henzel. “We sat in a group therapy-style circle, read books
on co-dependency that were popular then, and were supposed to bring our
‘issues.’ In the beginning, this meant stories of how we’d been ‘abused’
in our families.”
Sowing Discord Among Brothers
On weekdays, Fields “counseled”
church members, deacons, elders, and pastors. Some were struggling with
serious sins. While Fields usually didn’t name them, he didn’t hesitate
to share their stories in evening group sessions, portraying the people
in the most negative light.
“Bill constantly gave the impression
that the church was so corrupt there was nowhere for us to go,” says Henzel.
“He used the word ‘evangelical’ in a disparaging sense — as though it signified
something evil. It took time, but eventually we all started thinking like
him.”2
Fields was prone to angry outbursts,
and the accompanying cuss-words also took some getting used to. If “evangelical”
was a bad word to him, four-letter words weren’t. One pastor referred parishioners
to him, and one-and-all were outraged by his use of “the f-word.” PMI members
jokingly referred to the extended middle finger as “the PeaceMakers salute.”
All this further contributed to a sense of isolation from the rest of evangelicalism.
Soon Henzel noticed that others
in the group were cutting off ties with their families. In a one-on-one
session in mid-’88, Fields used the “salute” to indicate to Henzel that
he should do likewise.
“I was one of the last people to
go along with this,” says Henzel. “Bill called our families ‘dysfunctional’
and ‘abusive,’ but in most cases, he’d never met them.”
During one group meeting, Fields
wrote “Heaven” on one side of a dry-erase board and “Hell” on the other.
He then drew an arrow going from “Hell” and toward “Heaven.”
Pointing to Henzel, he said, “Until
recently, you were moving in this direction.”
Then he put a U-turn in the arrow,
pointing it back toward “Hell,” and said, “But lately you’ve been moving
in this direction.”
“It upset me to hear that,” admits
Henzel, “but I sat there quietly, waiting for him to explain. He finally
did.”
In slow, measured words, he confronted
Henzel: “You have not said one negative thing about your family!”
“This confused me at first,” said
Henzel, “but deep down I knew what he meant. It seemed everyone in group
was following his example in this area except me.”
In January 1989, Henzel yielded
to the pressure and wrote a letter to his mother (who lived only a few
miles away) that informed her he would no longer attend family gatherings,
call, or write.
“Not Peace, But a Sword”
“It’s one of the worst things I
ever did,” Henzel now says. “Bill justifies family separations by appealing
to Matthew 10:34-37, as if those verses were about turning your back on
family to follow Christ. That’s an absurd interpretation. Verse 21 shows
it’s really about non-believing family members turning their backs on believers
— not the other way around.”
Henzel was fortunate: he was only
separated from his family for about three years. As of this writing, there
are some in PMI who’ve been separated for nearly 15 years!
“Bill justifies
family separations by appealing to Matthew 10:34-37, as if those verses
were about turning your back on family to follow Christ. That’s an absurd
interpretation.
Verse 21 shows it’s
really about non-believing family members turning their backs on believers
— not the other way around.”
At that time, members went through
a process of increasing isolation that paralleled the one in Fields’ life.
While they were cutting off their family ties, Fields was alienating his
last shred of true accountability: his board.
Until 1989, his functioning board
consisted of four people who struggled to hold him accountable on various
issues. Fields practiced marital counseling, but his own marriage was in
shambles. He taught that people with eating disorders had “undealt-with
issues,” but he was dangerously overweight. They were concerned about his
involvement in a dispute between Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and
his former co-host Gil Alexander-Moegerle. In addition, they had a lot
of questions about what was going on in his groups, but found him very
stingy with answers. When one board member expressed his fear that the
groups were becoming a cult, Fields exploded in rage.
During this tumultuous period, Fields
added two of his MCYFC cronies, Russ Knight and Pete Sjoblom, to the PeaceMakers
board. They met with the other board members only once, for introductions,
but discussed no official business. Knight and Sjoblom say Fields shared
nothing with them about the problems the rest of the board had with him.
Finally, the other four board members
resigned in frustration on the same evening, after Fields accused them
of harboring sin in their lives. Fields persuaded one of them to remain
so he could satisfy Illinois requirements for non-profit corporations;
but a year later, he was gone, too. So were Knight and Sjoblom.
Fields re-staffed his once-legitimate
board with group members he controlled. He told the group little about
the resignations. What he did share cast the departing board in a poor
light. When Knight and Sjoblom finally left, he informed the group “they
weren’t really my friends” because “they didn’t want a real relationship.”
Of course, Fields’ definition of a relationship involved them confessing
their sins to him.
Before they left, the Dobson versus
Alexander-Moegerle dispute attracted the Christian media’s attention. It
appeared resolution was possible until Fields wormed his way in as the
Alexander-Moegerles’ advocate. Since then, Fields has milked the dispute
on the Internet, denouncing Dobson for refusing binding arbitration. That’s
ironic since Fields now denounces arbitration.3
Sam Ericsson was with the Christian Legal Society at that time and worked
hard to get both sides to the table.
“Both sides insisted on their way
or no way,” says Ericsson.
Ericsson cautioned everyone involved
against legal action, but Fields supported the Alexander-Moegerles when
they sued Dobson. A writer for The Door magazine interviewed Fields,
Knight, and Sjoblom about it.
“I sat through the entire interview,”
says Henzel. “A lot happened that didn’t make it into print, including
instances when Bill dug into the interviewer’s personal life. I won’t say
the man compromised his journalistic integrity, but if I was him I’d have
thought twice about writing anything critical after Bill’s interrogation,
considering what Bill could later use against him.”
Henzel notes the irony in what Fields
told The Door.
“Everything he condemned in the
interview, he did in PeaceMakers,” he says. “He complained that his YFC
director controlled people by keeping them divided, which he did with his
own board! He charged Dobson with violating the Alexander-Moegerles’ confidentiality,
which he did to us in the group! He complained about Christians who sacrifice
people on the altar of ministry, but he’d publicly rip the heart out of
anyone who questioned his ministry.”
At the time, however, it all sounded
so good. Fields knew how to say things that appealed to Christians who
felt something missing in their Christian lives. Nevertheless, it turned
out to be a classic bait-and-switch with horrific results.
“I sat by and watched Bill drive
people into nervous breakdowns,” says Henzel. “Then it was my turn.”
I’m
Okay — You’re
Not
Chris G. now has his own computer
business, but at one time doctors told him he’d probably never work again.
That’s a serious diagnosis for a man in his early 30s.
“I can’t blame Bill for my breakdown,”
says Chris, who quickly adds, “but he certainly didn’t help.”
Chris’s roommate introduced him
to the group. As soon as Fields saw him, he knew Chris was in trouble.
He hadn’t slept for days and was experiencing anxiety attacks. Fields arranged
for Chris to visit a local doctor who prescribed tranquilizers for him.
“If there’s one gift Bill has,”
says Henzel, “it’s crisis counseling. Some say he’s one of the best they’ve
ever seen. The problem is, that’s the only way he knows how to relate to
people. He always kept us in some sort of crisis — a family crisis, guilt
crisis, a crisis of self-doubt, or what-have-you-so we’d always need him.”
After the typical honeymoon period
for newcomers, Fields tightened the screws on Chris.
“My psychiatrist prescribed medication,
I saw a psychologist for therapy, and I also attended the group,” Chris
says. “After a while, I was overwhelmed by a flood of emotions I didn’t
know what to do with and became increasingly frightened and paranoid, so
I pulled back from sharing thoughts and feelings with others to the extent
I had been. To my psychologist, this was a normal reaction to the stress
overload, but Bill treated it like some kind of sin. He gave me an ultimatum:
either stop seeing the psychologist or leave the group.”
It wasn’t a good time to lose any
of his personal support system, but Fields forced Chris to choose, and
he chose his psychologist.
“Then Bill told my roommate not
to talk to me,” said Chris. “I’d come home, and he’d be totally silent.
This just confirmed in my mind that I was terrible and made me go downhill
even faster.”
Chris soon found himself out of
the group, out of a job, and homeless. After an excruciating ordeal spanning
several years, he’s now doing fine. It’s a good thing he got out before
it really got bad.
|
|
“The Beatings Will Stop When the Morale
Improves”
Missy is glad she got out of PMI
and restored her relationship with her family, especially because both
of her parents have died since then. But, her departure came at a terrible
price.
“Toward the end, I was like a zombie,”
says Missy. “I had two children to take care of, including a blind son,
and I could hardly take care of myself.”
“When Missy finally left group —
or should I say, crawled out? — Bill came unglued,” says Ron. “Here we’d
all watched him accuse and browbeat her for months on end about something
for which he never gave a shred of evidence, and now he acts like he can’t
figure out why she left!”
Once Missy was actually a leader
in the group. Fields had put her in charge of group meetings in the rare
event of his absence. However, when the winds of his caprice shifted, so
did his treatment of Missy. He verbally pummeled her until she was a shell
of her former self, dropped out of the group, and moved to southern Indiana
to be near her parents after separating from them for years.
“Bill whined endlessly in the group,
saying ‘I spent thousands of hours with her on the phone, and this
is how she treats me!’” Henzel says. “Recently I asked Missy, ‘Was Bill
exaggerating about that? Did he really spend thousands of hours
on the telephone with you?’”
“I didn’t have to think about my
answer,” volunteered Missy, “‘Sure!’ I told Ron, ‘It could easily have
been thousands of hours.’ He was astounded.”
Little wonder. Henzel pointed out
that just one-thousand hours spread out over a year is nearly 20 hours
per week.
“I think some weeks it probably
did come to about 20 hours,” says Missy.
“I asked Missy, ‘Doesn’t that seem
a little inappropriate?’” Ron continued, “‘I mean, you’re single, he’s
married. His marriage is miserable. You live only a few blocks from him
…’”
“Of course, now I clearly
see how it’s wrong,” clarifies Missy, “but everyone in group trusted Bill
implicitly. He convinced us we were all messed up, but he was this
model of righteousness.”
Then one summer day, Missy made
a mistake — although she still can’t figure out how. She sat her blind
son, Tyler, in a red wagon, pulled him along the sidewalks over the few
blocks separating her house from Fields’, and rang his doorbell. Fields
answered, but he told her he was busy. In the next group meeting, however,
he accused her of trying to sexually seduce him during the visit.
“Over the years I’ve gone over it
so many times,” says Missy, “I have no idea how he read that into it. It
was the farthest thing from my mind!”
Yet, one thing all members know:
when Fields charges you with a sinful motive and you deny it — well, that’s
just evidence you’re “in denial.” So no one came to her defense, but watched
passively over the following months as she roasted under the hot light
of Fields’ accusation. The pressure mounted until one day images came to
her mind — images of a family member raping her as a child — and she shared
them in the group.
... one thing
all [PMI] members know:
when Fields charges
you with a sinful motive
and you deny it —
well, that’s just
evidence you’re “in
denial.”
Fields welcomed this. He, too, claimed
to have “recovered memories” of being sexually molested in childhood. He
said Missy’s “recovered memory” explained her sin, though such a notion
is more consistent with the Pelagian heresy that we sin because of others’
sins than with the biblical teaching that we sin because we’re sinners
by nature (cf. Rom. 3:23). Eventually, Missy started questioning these
“memories.”
“Now I realize they were caused
by Bill’s intense pressure,” confides Missy.
When she expressed her doubts to
the group Fields went ballistic, intensifying his pressure on Missy. The
only person to stick up for her was a woman named Beth.
“I just don’t see how Missy did
anything wrong,” Beth told Fields and the group one night after Missy left.
At which point another woman lashed
out at her, faithful to Fields’ training: “That’s because you’re
guilty of the same thing!”
Beth never returned.
Fields harassed Missy by telephone
until she’d no longer talk to him. He reminded her of troubles he’d helped
her through. He listed favors he’d done for her. He shoved her nose in
sins she’d confessed.
“You’re nothing without me!” Fields
bullied Missy. For a long time after she left, she wondered if it was true.
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Healing the Wounds
“When I finally contacted Missy
in early 1994, she, my wife, and I were still basket-cases,” says Henzel.
“When Missy answered the phone, I was afraid she’d hang up — so I quickly
assured her I was no longer in group, and I was terribly sorry for watching
silently as Bill abused her. She broke down and wept for a while. So did
I.”
Henzel told her how Fields turned
his guns on him. After Missy left, Fields accused him of harboring “anger
against women.” He later accused him of “adultery” after Henzel discussed
a real estate transaction over the telephone with another woman in the
group.
“I don’t want to be mean or anything,”
clarifies Henzel, “but I wasn’t even remotely attracted to her.”
It was an impossible situation.
Fields was the “prophet” with “great discernment,” and it was up to Henzel
to figure out how his accusations were true. Fields wouldn’t help — that
would only “encourage hypocrisy.” If Henzel didn’t “repent,” Fields would
suggest he probably wasn’t really a Christian, per his usual pattern.
“I got really sick,” remembers Henzel.
“I lost 20 pounds in six weeks. My wife Wendy’s non-Christian co-workers
expressed concern for my health, but the group didn’t. Sweat poured down
my back in my air-conditioned office as I cried out to God to let me ‘see
my sin.’ My biggest fear was that I’d make a false confession.”
Fields placed Henzel “under discipline.”
He could only stay for the first 15 minutes of group meetings, and then
he had to leave so the rest of the group could “enjoy real fellowship,”
as Fields put it. He repeatedly showed up to be repeatedly sent away. This
humiliation lasted several weeks until Henzel found a way to “see” his
sin. Only then did Fields lift the “discipline.”
“But I still felt I was on a spiritual
treadmill,” recollects Henzel. “So I asked Bill to let me take a ‘time-out’
from group, something I and others had done before. He gave permission
on a Monday but withdrew it that Friday without explanation. I’d already
made up my mind: I needed a break!”
Wendy stayed in the group, and Fields
tried to drive a wedge between her and Ron. He told her she had “a marriage
problem” and sent a letter to Ron’s new pastor accusing Ron of spouse abuse
and fleeing from “church discipline.”
“It was surreally absurd-like a
Kafka novel,” recalls Ron. “He really believed he could put me ‘under discipline’
just for leaving his little kingdom, and that somehow, God took it seriously!”
Wendy finally left in March 1993.
She still struggles with the spiritual scars Fields inflicted on her.
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A Tangled Web
For years, Fields and his followers
receded into the black hole PMI had become. Members’ relatives received
little news about their withdrawn loved ones, who also shunned ex-members,
thus sealing their isolation.
Moreover, just as celestial black
holes emit violent blasts of radiation although no light escapes from them,
so also Fields hurls ferocious streams of denunciation over his web site
(www.peacemakers.net). From this
virtual soapbox, he continues his quixotic crusade against Dobson, occasionally
charging at other evangelical windmills along the way.
Fields was one of the first to jump
onto the Web, causing no small amount of confusion among people looking
for the excellent and widely respected Peacemaker Ministries, of Billings,
Montana (www.HisPeace.org). Fields’
web site also proved an effective replacement for his informal referral
network. In the mid-’90s, it didn’t seem PMI would grow, but the Web changed
that.
Fortunately, some have learned that
a web site with Christian literature on it is no substitute for good personal
references. In one recent case, a man suffering emotional problems discovered
the PMI site and eventually met with Fields. His family had reservations
about Fields’ methods but thought he might be able to help their relative.
After “counseling” with Fields, the man cut off ties with his family. A
short time later, he signed over his family inheritance to PMI. Fields
then sent a taunting e-mail about it to the man’s family.
Eventually, the man rescinded the
gift, but the tragedy continues. As Isaiah wrote concerning the PMIs of
his day: “The way of peace they do not know …” (Isa. 59:8a, NIV).
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ENDNOTES:
1
As I’m writing this, this is located at http://www.peacemakers.net/answers.htm,
under “Answer: #2.” [Back
to article.]
2
At http://www.peacemakers.net/unity/caution.htm,
Fields writes, “Since 1983 when both the professing Church and Para-church
organizations were so filled with corruption Bill Fields founded PeaceMakers
International ...” [Back to article.]
3
“Biblical Rebuke,” http://www.peacemakers.net/peace/peacemakerministries.htm,
under “A Brief Summary of PeaceMakers International’s practices ...,” point
4. [Back to article.]
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