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One of the nation's newest and fastest-growing Christian movements may also be among the most dangerous, say campus ministers and religion scholars.

"It's the most destructive religious group I've ever seen," says Robert Watts Thornburg, dean at Boston University's Marsh Chapel, commenting on the International Churches of Christ (ICC), based in Los Angeles.

The ICC's 10 percent-plus annual growth rate places it among the fastest-growing religious groups in North America. The church lists membership at 143,000 in 292 churches, including 34 congregations that have an average weekly attendance of at least 1,000. About 80 congregations are in the United States.

The movement is active in 115 countries, and one of its new goals is to plant a congregation in every nation with a city of at least 100,000 people by the year 2000. Hope Worldwide, the ICC relief-and-development agency, operates 100 projects in 30 countries.

Religion analysts contend that the ICC has run afoul of many Christian groups not only because of its assertive evangelism but also because it promotes the view that it is the "faithful remnant" church and because it makes a practice of rebaptizing Christians from other denominations.

ICC's discipleship practices, which some former members say are coercive and controlling, have also been held up as an example of the church's unacceptable extremism.

Yet Al Baird, an elder in the Los Angeles Church of Christ and the ICC's top spokesperson, vehemently denies that the church abuses its followers. He maintains that the group's intense focus on evangelism and discipleship is grounded in Scripture.

"As we look around us, the job of evangelizing the world is not getting done," Baird told CT. "Jesus said to go and make disciples of all nations. God's plan for accomplishing that is revealed in the Bible. We're trying to be the church that follows that plan."

The ICC's extensive site on the World Wide Web (www.intlcc.com) states, "To our knowledge, we are the only group that teaches the biblical principle of discipleship as a necessary part of the salvation process."

BU's Thornburg remembers two new religious groups arriving on campus for the first time in the fall of 1979: the Unification Church and the International Churches of Christ.

In the nearly two decades since, Thornburg knows of a total of four students who have dropped out of school upon joining the Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon. By contrast, as many as 45 students a year quit school after becoming ICC members, he reports.

Boston University banned ICC members from its campus a decade ago when they refused to stop door-to-door recruitment inside dormitories. At least 20 other schools, including Boston College, Marquette University, the University of Southern California, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, and Emory University, have barred the group or denied campus registration because of allegations involving manipulative recruitment or harassment of students. College-age students are an important constituency to the ICC. The Los Angeles ICC reports about 22 percent of 11,000 attenders are college students.

WHOLESOME EXTERIOR: Church members cultivate a clean-cut and friendly image. In fact, "love-bombing," in which potential members are smothered with praise and attention, is one of the ICC's trademark techniques.

"Nice is the word for these people," Thornburg says. "When they're recruiting, they are polite and respectful."

Theologically, the group seems orthodox in many ways. And many consider the fervor and sincerity with which ICC members attempt to follow the Bible's teachings to be admirable.

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September 1 1997, Vol. 41, No. 10