A Pastor Claims Dancing, Hand-Holding in Church Are Part of a ‘Move of God’

Parishioners at Seattle’s Community Chapel seek God’s love through someone else’s spouse.

Dancing is taboo among many conservative Christians. But at the 2,500-member Community Chapel in suburban Seattle, the unusual and controversial practice of “intimate dancing” during worship is part of what the church’s pastor, Donald Barnett, has called a “move of God.”

However, not everyone is convinced God is behind it. At least 200 people, including the pastor’s daughter, have left the church in the last year or so. Former members, some of whom have been formally ‘disfellowshiped,’ say it has become impossible to question any of Barnett’s teachings without being accused of demonic influence.

The Community Chapel and Bible Training Center (the official name of the organization over which Barnett presides) is a sprawling complex of buildings, including a Bible college with about 800 students.

The property is valued at more than $10 million. The church has 12 satellites in the United States and Canada—smaller, but otherwise carbon copies of Community Chapel.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the “move of God” at Community Chapel is Barnett’s teaching on “spiritual connections.” According to ex-elder Michael Sabourin, Barnett believes God is attempting to bring about the unity of the body through a new form of love relationship between believers. “This new love is said to be purely spiritual and is even stonger than the love between spouses,” said Sabourin. In order to experience it, members are encouraged to form spiritual relationships known as “connections,” usually involving men and women outside the marriage bond.

The unorthodox practices at Community Chapel are of fairly recent vintage, although the church has taught since its founding in 1967 that God is singular, not triune. Sabourin said solo “dancing before the Lord” was introduced as part of the worship experience in 1984. “At first it seemed innocent enough,” he said, “just a brother and sister in Christ expressing love for God and for each other in the dance.”

At an elders’ retreat last year, Barnett, while dancing with several “sisters,” claimed to have an overpowering experience of spiritual love as well as a mystical encounter with a dancing angel. Following the retreat, it was announced from the pulpit that special private dancing sessions would be conducted for those desiring this new level of spiritual experience. “Gradually,” Sabourin recalls, “more and more people began experiencing ‘connections’ while dancing with someone else’s mate.”

More than 1,500 flock to the modern sanctuary several times a week for meetings lasting hours. Women bring dance slippers for sessions extending late into the night. Special rooms are set aside for intimate dancing. During worship services, unmarried couples commonly hold hands, rub shoulders, stroke hair, and kiss (not on the lips).

Sabourin said the pastor is careful to emphasize the connections are to be spiritual, not carnal. But in the last year, according to former members, some two dozen couples have divorced or begun divorce proceedings. Carolyn Peterson, Barnett’s daughter, blames the teaching on connections for the breakup of her marriage. In court papers associated with her pending divorce, she stated, “Spiritual connections involve two adults, generally male and female of two separate marriages … holding hands, spending an enormous amount of time together and with some kissing, fondling one another, etc.; the bottom line is that when someone develops a spiritual connection, they usually fall in love.”

Former member Katy Kitchell used to spend hours each week dancing at the church, neglecting housework and her children. Said her husband, Ron, “I would leave church early and take the kids and she would stay at church till the early hours of the morning.” His wife received spiritual “love letters” and frequent phone calls from her connection. Explaining that he considered taking his life, Ron said, “I didn’t think there was any way out of this thing.”

He continues, “It was hard to go to church and watch all these people … with other people’s wives in their arms.” Church counselors told Ron he had a demon of jealousy, that he would have to “release his mate” to enter into “this move of God.” Eventually, Katy says, she realized what she was doing was wrong, and the Kitchells left the church with their marriage intact.

Others have not been so fortunate. Pastors and counselors throughout Seattle report serious problems as a result of Community Chapel practices. David Penner, a clinical psychologist with CRISTA Counseling Service in Seattle, states that people he has counseled sense that dancing with individuals other than their spouses is not right. “Yet, in conflict with those basic feelings,” he said, “they’re told by the church leadership that they are to be open to expressing and receiving the love of God manifested through their connections.…”

“The natural tendency,” said Penner, “is to feel possessive of one’s spouse. Yet, when they feel those things, they are accused of having a demon of jealousy.” Penner and other professionals are seeing a great deal of confusion in the lives of children whose parents have been involved in spiritual connections. “The family boundaries are broken down and there’s mass confusion about who’s responsible for what in the family and whose affections are going in what direction.”

Former member Michael Ehrlich’s 12 years at Community Chapel ended abruptly when he disagreed with Barnett over spiritual connecting. Said Ehrlich, “I flat out told him that what the church is currently involved in is sin.” Ehrlich and other former elders describe Barnett as autocratic. “He’s ousted everyone who has taken exception to his teaching. He’ll tell you that it’s his God-given duty to revise your thinking. He’s beyond confrontation.”

Many of those who have left the church say an overemphasis on experience led to a drift away from the Word of God. Said one former elder and Community Chapel Bible college teacher, “We put a premium on spiritual experience. It’s shocking to me to see what transpired. Once you’re out in the realm of experience, you can’t talk Scripture anymore because there’s no Scripture that’s relevant to something as wild and bizarre as this.”

Former member Joel Scarborough added, “It gets back to a misplaced loyalty. People at Community Chapel, thinking that they are placing their allegiance in the Word of God, are actually placing their allegiance in a man and his interpretation of the Word of God.”

Loren Krenelka, designated spokesperson for Community Chapel, refused to comment on the several Seattle media accounts of the group’s problems. “We feel it is best not to comment to the press because in the past we have been quoted out of context and misrepresented,” he said.

Meanwhile, Barnett tells his flock to prepare for certain persecution. He reminds them that Jesus was rejected by the “church world” of his day, that he was falsely accused and disclaimed. Barnett does not seem troubled by those leaving the “move of God.” “Sometimes there are blessed purgings in a church,” he says, “blessed subtractions.”

By Ronald Enroth, sociology professor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Enroth studies new religious movements and is working on a book about fringe churches.

NORTH AMERICAN SCENE

SUPREME COURT

Upholding a Sodomy Law

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia law that prohibits homosexual acts. Twenty-three other states and the District of Columbia have similar laws.

In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Court said Georgia’s sodomy law does not violate a homosexual’s right to privacy. The case resulted from the arrest of Michael Hardwick, whom police found performing a homosexual act in his home. Hardwick was charged, but not prosecuted, under Georgia’s sodomy law. He challenged the law in court, saying it violated his right to privacy.

The high court rejected Hardwick’s argument, citing a long history of laws against sodomy. The original 13 American colonies outlawed sodomy, as did all 50 states until 1961. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White rejected the view that “any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription Otherwise illegal conduct is not always immunized whenever it occurs in the home.… It would be difficult … to limit the claimed right to homosexual conduct while leaving exposed to prosecution adultery, incest, and other sexual crimes even though they are committed in the home. We are unwilling to start down that road.”

Homosexual advocacy groups criticized the ruling, saying it would slow the advancement of gay rights efforts. However, Liberty Federation leader Jerry Falwell praised the decision, saying, “the highest court has recognized the right of a state to determine its own moral guidelines, and it has issued a clear statement that perverted moral behavior is not accepted practice in this country.”

CHURCH AND STATE

Employment Practices

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the authority of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission to investigate an employment dispute involving a Christian school system in Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton Christian Schools had argued that the civil rights commission proceedings constituted a state establishment of religion and violated the school’s right to free exercise of religion. However, the high court said the state has the right to follow up on a complaint filed by a teacher who was fired by the Christian school system.

The case grew out of the dismissal in 1979 of Linda Hoskinson, a teacher in a school operated by Dayton Christian Schools. Hoskinson had told the principal of her school she was pregnant, and she later learned that her teaching contract would not be renewed for the following academic year. The school system holds to a belief that mothers of preschool-age children should not work outside the home. The school system also prohibits its employees from attempting to settle disputes by seeking assistance outside the school structure. Thus, when Hoskinson contacted an attorney, the school fired her.

Hoskinson then filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. The school system filed suit in federal district court, seeking an injunction to prevent the civil rights commission from acting on Hoskinson’s complaint. The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his opinion, Chief Justice Designate William Rehnquist wrote that “even religious schools cannot claim to be wholly free from some state regulation The [Ohio Civil Rights] commission violates no constitutional rights by merely investigating the circumstances of Hoskinson’s discharge in this case, if only to ascertain whether the ascribed religious-based reason was in fact the reason for the discharge.”

NATIONWIDE

Church Membership Grows

Major Christian denominations in the United States registered a net membership gain of nearly 1 percent in 1984, according to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 1986 (Abingdon).

Leading the list of growing denominations were the Presbyterian Church in America (7.85%); Christian Reformed Church (5.2%); Christian and Missionary Alliance (3.37%); Seventh-day Adventists (2.46%); Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.; 2.4%); Assemblies of God (2.19%); Church of God (Anderson, Ind.; 1.76%); Church of the Nazarene (1.66%); Wesleyan Church (1.36%); Southern Baptist Convention (1.16%); and Baptist General Conference (.99%).

Reporting a drop in membership were the Mennonite Church (18.09%); Friends United Meeting (3.32%); Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.;.96%); Reformed Church in America (.77%); Episcopal Church (.69%); Lutheran Church in America (.5%); United Church of Christ (.32%); Roman Catholic Church (.15%) and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (.11%).

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Appointed: David W. Gill, to succeed William A. Dyrness as president of New College Berkeley, in Berkeley, California. Gill is a founder of the college, which he has served since 1979 as dean and professor of Christian ethics. Dyrness will return to the classroom as professor of theology.

Recommended: Chicago, as the headquarters site for the proposed 5.3 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The commission overseeing the creation of the new denomination earlier recommended Milwaukee as the headquarters site.

Suspended: The sentences of eight church workers convicted of conspiring to bring illegal Central American aliens into the United States. A federal district judge put the sanctuary workers on probation for periods of three to five years.

Died: Author Joseph Bayly at age 66 following open-heart surgery in Rochester, Minnesota. Most recently he served as president of David C. Cook Publishing Company in Elgin, Illinois, CT learned of Bayly’s death at press time, and will provide additional information in its next issue.

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