Louisiana Voice

Sometimes you just have to wonder about Jeff Landry.

On the one hand, he’s conducting alligator hunt fundraisers with the likes of Donald Trump, Jr., and FBI Director Kash Patel.

On the other, he’s scheduled to participate in a program ostensibly being held to “strengthen families” and to help children “experience safety, stability and lifelong belonging,” an event being hosted by a Baton Rouge church accused five years ago of abusing children with “fight nights,” and “boot camps” where kids were pushed to their physical limits until they vomited or soiled themselves.

Louisiana megachurch accused of abuse at former leadership program

Moreover, participants who were Black or suspected of being gay were taunted with racist and homophobic slurs and female interns were body-shamed.

Students at Baton Rouge Bethany Church’s Christian leadership training program were even blamed for the cancer death of the wife of the youth pastor in charge of the program because they didn’t pray “hard enough” for her recovery.

Let’s pause at this point and acknowledge that this post is going to infuriate some people, mostly of the evangelical stripe, but I’m willing to endure that. I’m also willing to question the wisdom of the governor of the state lending his name and office and the office of the Department of Children and Family Services to an event held by any organization found to be committing such atrocities against children in the name of all that’s holy.

It isn’t as if DCFS hasn’t enough problems of its own without the stigma of sponsoring an event at a church already tainted with past abuse problems. Louisiana DCFS agency vows overhaul after WDSU investigation – WDSU

The Louisiana legislature earlier this year averted the outright closure of the agency when State Sen. Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge) authored a bill to do just that. Barrow has long been a major critic of DCFS because injuries and deaths involving children entrusted to the agency. Louisiana lawmakers call for more oversight, but not closure of Children and Family Services • Louisiana Illuminator

A state audit released last May cited DCFS for a number of shortcomings, including issues with foster care payments and federal reporting requirements. Audit uncovers issues in Louisiana DCFS operations

Still, as the cliché goes, the show must go on, even in the aftermath of negative publicity surrounding a “boot camp”—since discontinued—built specifically to condition teenagers for the ministry by employing physically and psychologically challenging exercises.

Bethany recently posted on its website the banner headline, “Save the date: DCFS bringing Louisiana’s faith leaders together for ‘Hope Starts Here’ event.”

SAVE THE DATE: DCFS bringing Louisiana’s faith leaders together for ‘Hope Starts Here’ event – Louisiana Department of Children & Family Services

Participants listed for the event included DCFS Secretary Rebecca Harris, Landry, Focus on the Family President Jim Daly, Louisiana Family Forum’s Gene Mills, pastors, legislators and other “faith-community partners.”

The program will be held at Bethany Church’s South Baton Rouge Campus on Honore Lane on Wednesday, Oct. 7 from 10 a.m. to 1:45 p.m.

Bethany made national news in 2021 when several news agencies reported on the so-called “220i” leadership program that ran from 2005 to 2013 at a cost of $5,000 per participant, not including food, travel or living expenses, and which had as many as 7,000 participants over the life of the program.

“The name ‘220’ came from Galatians 2:20, which we all had to memorize during the boot camps,” said one former intern who attended the program in 2007 to 2008 “The emphasis of the verse was placed on ‘It is no longer I who lives.’ The verse was misinterpreted to control us and our will. In 220i, there is a lowercase ‘i’ to denote that we are not worthy of being called uppercase ‘I’, that we did not exist anymore. It was like self-flagellation. This ideology set us up for mind control.”

This church program is accused of abusing teens with extreme ‘boot camps,’ ‘fight nights’ and shame

“You only could graduate [from the internship] at 10 months if they deemed that you were submitted and loyal enough to them,” she said. “You also were required to go through an exit interview with them, during which time [220i Director and youth pastor] Joel, [wife] Amie or his youth staff pastors would tell you what God’s plans were for you upon leaving.”

The former intern, who referred to herself simply as “Claire,” said upon completing the program, the church attempted to dissuade her from enrolling in college, telling her college was “not God’s plan for you. They spoke to us as if they were God,” she said.

The interns were also made to participate in marathon prayer sessions at night, particularly in 2007 and 2008, when Amy Stockstill (Joel’s first wife) was battling cancer. Former intern Bridget Linville said they were made to take part in “24-hour prayer nights” for her recovery and when she died, they were blamed.

“’You guys didn’t have enough faith for her to be healed,’” Linville recalled having been told. “Looking back now, they were all hurting and they were taking it out on us.”

Joel Stockstill eventually remarried. His second wife, also named Amie but spelled differently, would “police our clothing, our hair, or makeup, even our weight,” a former intern identified only as Emerson, said.

“Every week, she checked our BMI, and if you were above a certain BMI, you got called out publicly and put on restricted diets. There are girls still suffering from eating disorders because of this,” she said.

Amie Stockstill would tell female interns being fat “meant that you had sin in your life,” Claire said. She also forced Black interns to “succumb to whiteness” by relaxing their hair and “conforming to white beauty standards.”

Both Joel and Amie Stockstill took a special interest in interns’ personal lives, the former interns said. “There was a scheduled ‘date night,’ and you had to go on a date or you were shamed and called in for discipline,” Claire said. “After the dates, the girls were interrogated by Amie and the boys were interrogated by Joel to assess whether or not we had ‘sinned’ or been tempted while on the dates.”

Bethany lead pastor Jonathan Stockstill, after national media published interns’ allegations, posted an apology on his Facebook page in April 2021 for what he termed “painful experiences” many of the teenagers endured. “It’s obvious to me now and to the current leadership at Bethany Church that we significantly missed the mark in that program in many ways,” he wrote.

“I see it as damage control,” said Gume Laurel, 34, a Texan who took part in the 10-month program in 2007 and 2008. “It looks like he’s trying to shift the blame and say, ‘The leadership at the time.’ He was ‘the leadership’ at the time.”

Joel Stockstill has never issued an apology and currently runs Surge Ministries which at one time was affiliated with Bethany but since has been separated into its own program. Surge Ministries describes itself as “focusing on global church planting and community development initiatives and was established to train and support indigenous pastors in establishing new churches worldwide.

Bethany Church, founded in Baker, Louisiana, in 1963, has approximately 8,000 members on four Louisiana campuses and also operates Bethany College, a non-accredited college in Baker which is affiliated with Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. Southeastern is a Christian university which is accredited and is the largest Assemblies of God educational institution in the U.S.

Bethany moved its main campus from Baker to Baton Rouge following the flood of 2016, which heavily damaged the original building. Its three giant crosses alongside I-10 in Baton Rouge, symbolic of the cruxifiction of Christ and two thieves, are a familiar landmark to residents of southeastearn Louisiana.

Critics maintain participation by Landry and DCFS in the Oct. 7 “Hope Starts Here” program blurs the lines between the Constitutionally-mandated separation of state and church.