TRENDS
When Christian auto dealer Steve Hiatt selected a training course for employees at the firm where he worked, he did not realize he would be getting anti-Christian philosophies. Nor would he have predicted his later opposition to the training would get him fired from his job of nearly ten years.
It all began in late 1983 when Hiatt, a senior manager for Tacoma-based Walker Chevrolet, introduced the firm to training offered by Seattle’s Pacific Institute. Hiatt’s superiors bought the program, which its promoters said would help the dealership “capture $226,000 of additional profitability.”
In February 1984, Hiatt and his wife, Carol, attended a facilitators training workshop designed to help him guide the firm’s 60 workers through the program. All went well until the third evening of training when, as Hiatt says, the meetings took on a decidedly religious tone.
“The leader set a very spiritual mood and began talking about life after death and religion,” says Hiatt. “He urged us to question our concepts of truth, and to set spiritual goals using the program’s techniques and goals. He said the real reason for the training was to save the world.”
The Hiatts walked out. A day later, Hiatt sent the training materials back to the Pacific Institute, which led to his firing.
“I felt deceived and tricked,” says Hiatt. “And I definitely felt like a Lone Ranger.”
Not Alone
Hiatt took his problems to the Tacoma Human Rights Commission, which ruled he had no reasonable cause for a complaint against his former employer. Neither did the Seattle office of the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offer any help. Finally, last February, Hiatt filed a civil suit against his former employer.
He is not angry—his suit seeks no damages beyond attorney’s fees and court costs. “I just want to set a legal precedent and help stop government funding of these programs.”
And he is not alone. Other Christians are taking a stand against career training built around New Age concepts.
• William Gleaton of Albany, Georgia, was discharged as manager of human resources at a Firestone Tire and Rubber Company plant after objecting to a Pacific Institute training program. Firestone reached an out-of-court settlement with Gleaton.
• James L. Baumgaertel, an inspector at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, is pursuing a First Ammendment complaint he filed after being told to attend training using New Age techniques.
• Five employees of the DeKalb Farmers Market in Atlanta, Georgia, have filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint after being dismissed for refusing to participate in training based on est.
Richard Watring, director of personnel for Budget Rent-a-Car in Chicago, thinks the growing controversy over New Age training may be the beginning of the end for many programs.
“I think the business world is sufficiently pragmatic that it’s going to drop this stuff like a hot potato if there’s a big damage suit or a major public relations faux pas,” says Watring, who has criticized New Age training in the New York Times and on ABC’S “20/20.”
“And besides,” he says, “these programs are bogus; they don’t work, they don’t do what they purport to do, and they do more harm than good.”
But meanwhile, New Age training continues to grab a bigger share of the lucrative corporate training market.
Tarot Cards And Chanting
American business spends $30 billion a year training employees. In the past five years a growing number of New Age-related firms have been staking their claim to an increasing share of the market:
• Werner Erhard, founder of Erhard Seminars Training, founded Transformational Technologies, Inc., in 1984. Last year the firm’s more than 50 franchises generated $15 million in revenues with such clients as RCA, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, and Lockheed. Other est-related firms include Lifespring and Actualizations.
• The Church of Scientology has spun off two New Age training firms, WISE and Sterling Management.
• Krone Training, or Kroning, was developed by Charles Krone and is said to be based on the teachings of Russian mystic Georges Gurdjieff. Pacific Bell spent more than $40 million on Kroning its 67,000 employees. After employees complained about the bizarre training, the California Public Utilities Commission conducted an investigation and recommended that stockholders—not rate payers—pay $25 million of the bill.
New Age training techniques, which are based on a mixture of Eastern, cultic, pantheistic, and human-potential philosophies, include meditation, hypnosis, encounter groups, chanting, biofeedback, and isolation, as well as tarot cards, psychic healing, channeling, fire walking, flotation tubs, and the intervention of spirit guides.
Yet the Pacific Institute claims it has not intentionally promoted New Age thinking. “Our program does not have any religious content,” says Jack Fitterer, president of the Pacific Institute, which had revenues of $20 million in 1987. Their “New Age Thinking” seminars have been replaced by “Investment in Excellence” programs, although the new programs still contain sections on “self-image and belief” and “visualization.”
“ ‘New Age’ was a name our marketers picked back in 1979,” says Fitterer. “We never heard of ‘new age’ until 1981. Now excellence is the term the marketers use. We don’t teach any theology. Our program is simply a cognitive psychology curriculum, similar to the curriculum that can be found on any university campus.”
But such denials fail to convince many critics, including Ron Zemke, senior editor of Training magazine. Zemke focused on two major problems of the new training in a cover story for his magazine entitled: “What’s New in the New Age?”
“I have a right to talk to employees about their job-related behavior,” wrote Zemke, “but what goes on inside their heads is none of my business. I see the issues of intrusion and informed consent as troubling, both morally and legally.
“My second reservation is [about deception], I interviewed a graduate student [and] was appalled at her zealous excitement as she described a workshop she had attended in which she had been told how to ‘sell a New Age agenda to management without them realizing what they were signing on for.’ ”
Fleecing The Flock
Budget Rent-a-Car’s Richard Watring worries that fellow Christian workers who are asked to attend such seminars may be seduced into New Age thinking. “I’m concerned that even strong Christians will look at this training and see nothing wrong with it,” says Watring. “They may become conditioned to accept incorrect views of the nature of man and how people are to develop.
“I think it’s the church’s responsibility to assist the flock in the formation of a Christian world view so that they will be able to recognize a counterfeit belief system for what it is when it’s looking them in the face.”
By Steve Rabey.
World Scene
ECUADOR
Indians Hold Historic Crusade
Thousands of Quechua Indians from across Ecuador gathered in the Andean village of Colta recently for an unprecedented evangelism congress. During the six-day campaign, more than 1,000 persons made salvation decisions or rededicated their lives to Christ.
The congress, designed to follow up the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Amsterdam ‘86 campaign, was organized almost entirely by members of the Evangelical Indian Association of Chimborazo. And while outside groups provided some of the funds for the event, it was financed primarily by Quechua believers.
Gospel Missionary Union (GMU) started the work in 1902 in Ecuador’s Chimborazo province. The Quechua church has grown from a handful of believers to 50,000 church members nationwide in 33 years. Yet with Ecuador’s population of 2 million Quechuas, the church is still a minority. Missionaries report growing pressure from leftist political groups, cults, materialism, and division among church leaders. They believe the recent congress is a landmark event. “It produced good fruit, and showed that the Quechuas can organize a major evangelistic event,” said Tom Fulghum of Christian radio station HCJB.
NORTH KOREA
Vatican Visit A First
Six North Koreans traveled to the Vatican and participated in Holy Week liturgies, a first for North Koreans since the present Communist regime took power in 1948.
According to a report in News Network International (formerly Open Doors News Service), two members of the group were Roman Catholics and “had the chance to go to confession and communion for the first time in 38 years.” Other group members included officials from the Korean Christian Federation as well as representatives from the ministry of culture.
Churches were closed in 1948, and today, little is known about Christianity in North Korea. The Korean Christian Federation, modeled after China’s Three Self Patriotic Movement, is the only religious body in North Korea. It is alleged that the federation consists of 5,000 worshipers, meeting in 500 homes, and served by 200 deacons or pastors. Representatives of the federation have been invited to observe proceedings of the Lausanne Committee’s world congress in Singapore next year.
PHILIPPINES
Soldiers Receive Scriptures
Philippine military leaders have issued a new weapon in their fight against poor morale in the armed forces: New Testaments. In response to a request from Fidel Ramos, Philippine secretary for national defense, the International Bible Society is sending 300,000 New Testaments to soldiers.
The Philippine government under President Corazon Aquino faces continuing problems of stability, many of which come from the military. Army General Honesto Isleta told Christian leaders in the Philippines that “there are too many factions within the military. But before we can reconcile with each other, we must be reconciled with ourselves. Only God can change us.”
The New Testaments will be supplied in six languages to accommodate the areas where different dialects are spoken. They are accompanied by a special page explaining the gospel and how to receive Christ. Top military leaders have urged their soldiers to carry and read the New Testaments.
ZIMBABWE
Churches Under Pressure
A recent publication issued by Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU party has asked churches to be more supportive of Marxism. The document, “Society and the Church,” declared that “those sections of the church that are fearful of Marxism are fearful of the people.”
The publication divided the church into two camps: those that supported the new order that came with the revolution, and those that opposed it. It also indicated the party’s desire to recruit the church as a partner in implementing revolutionary goals. “The churches are well placed to perform this revolutionary task because they deal with the people at the grassroot levels,” the document stated.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Briefly Noted
Died: South African novelist and Anglican layman Alan Paton, 85, whose writings have brought his country’s racial agony to the world’s attention for the past four decades. He urged the church to fight apartheid, yet he opposed the use of economic sanctions by other nations. In an interview shortly before his death, he told a reporter, “I still believe there is hope.”
Arthur Michael Ramsey, 83, former archbishop of Canterbury of the Anglican church. Ramsey was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral in 1961 as the one-hundredth archbishop of Canterbury.
Festo Kivengere, bishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda and one of Africa’s most prominent evangelists; of leukemia in Nairobi Hospital. Kivengere fled his homeland in 1977 after registering a protest with President Idi Amin. He returned in 1979 and implemented an immunization program for children. Since 1971 he has been a leader in Africa Enterprise, a multi-racial evangelistic organization.
Detained: Mubarak Awad, Palestinian Christian activist and proponent of nonviolent civil disobedience. The Jerusalem-born Awad, who is an American citizen, has been in solitary confinement since May 6 when jailed for possessing an expired visa.
