I Fired God: My Life Inside—and Escape From—the Secret World of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult

by Jocelyn R. Zichterman

Our family sank deeper into the IFB subculture with every passing year. Our home life and the Christian school we attended, in the basement of our church, were steeped in IFB philosophy and rhetoric. The cult breeds paranoia in its members, about society, law enforcement, and the government so we became more and more isolated. The more immersed my parents became in IFB ideology, the more abnormal and confusing things got in our home. The combination of dire financial struggles with the IFB’s draconian rules and isolationist culture sometimes made me feel as if I was losing my mind. My parents fought constantly about money, and the strain of poverty stoked their belief that the U.S. government was the enemy. Most of the other IFB families we knew were as dirt poor as we were, and the church leaders exploited the emotional instability engendered by poverty. Police officers too were bad guys, according my parents—the only “good guys” were members of our own church. It was a frightening way to grow up. Instead of reassuring us that the monsters from our nightmares were figments of our imagination, our pastors seemed to assure us that the monsters were real and that they were everywhere, waiting to pounce. Our parents and our fellow IFB members were the only ones who could protect us, they preached.