13 Comments

Dolores Schafer on December 27, 2021 at 9:27 pm

I think you have a lot of nerve! I seem to have had more issues with your attitudes (plural) toward the teenager. One issue was the way you chewed them up and spit them out once they finished high school you didn’t have a place at the church for them anymore and that really hurt them. I don’t care to talk to you ever again shame on you!
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- jamin.coller on December 28, 2021 at 8:56 pm
  
  I’m so sorry that was your experience, and I’m sorry for supporting and contributing to it. You’re right. They deserved better!
  In fact, for the past couple decades, there wasn’t even really a college group for them to join. There were virtually no college-age people in the church, and no one who was college-aged met their “standard” for leadership, so it was mostly a late-20’s to early-30’s group led by my mid-thirties brother. Some time after he got married, they disbanded the group altogether. Anyone who was actually college-aged would have graduated a decade younger than their college group leader, who, as far as I can tell, didn’t really have a college experience. I think there was only a high school group population because of the school.
  Like you’re saying, between the ages of about 10 and 18, it was a pretty rough gauntlet. No youthfulness was tolerated. Everyone was supposed to either be a kid or a grown up. These stories come up later. It sounds like you have your own stories too. I’m so sorry. Your anger and disgust are justified. You’re not crazy – it was really messed up. Thank you for reading and giving me the opportunity to validate that feeling. I hope you find – or have found – healing and belonging with other communities.
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Cara on December 27, 2021 at 9:51 pm

One person I’m curious I don’t see mentioned: the office manager/mom of triplets. She really seemed to be Mrs. Annette’s lap dog/ bestie. Curious about her.
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- jamin.coller on December 28, 2021 at 8:37 pm
  
  Yeah – I’m afraid there will be a lot of holes like that in my story because I didn’t really know much detail about her relationship with Mrs. Annette, and she and I neither deeply bonded nor butted heads. I’m sure she’s a significant part of a lot of clients’ stories, but not mine. She was largely the client interface. I only had a kindergartener and first grader while she was in the front office, and there’s always less drama in the lower grades, so drama-wise, she was only a minor player in my life for 2/39 years. She escapes my writing to the extent that she didn’t participate in the drama I experienced.
  I don’t know her that well, but my experience with her so far – both then and since – has been that she’s been gracious, open, humble, and supportive all along the way. Mrs. Annette let her get closer to her than most people (whatever that means – there’s no such thing as Mrs. Annette’s “bestie”). But much like the Cobblers did for me, I think that office manager probably doesn’t get enough credit for how much she moderated the full trinity insanity and fought for the parents behind the scenes. But from my perspective, she was often in an impossibly tough position because she was also the messenger of the final verdict that she often argued against. But I’m pretty out of my depth here. These are perceptions, not quotes. She’d have to share her own story.
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AP on March 16, 2022 at 5:06 am

All in all the shit that went down at Freedom/Open Bible was nothing more than another group of white people doing what they do best…messing shit up while trying to convince everyone that the shit they were doing was absolutely normal and getting away with it. First off [Ryan], a grown ass man, preying on little girls never got checked! Annette allowed that man (her son) to be the Youth leader knowing full and well he was on the prowl for a wife. I’m not even gonna get into how old his first wife was and how that even transpired. While y’all were demanding everyone else to be 6 inches apart, y’all let this man do whatever the fuck he wanted inappropriately with high-school girls. I was also more concerned about black people attending this cult and still am if they still attend to this day. Yes of course when I first attended in 3rd grade, little to no issues. Once I hit 6th/7th grade, everything changed for me at that damn school/church and it became toxic as hell. The level of cockiness y’all walked around having at the time knowing y’all was fucking families lives up and breaking them apart still makes me sick to this day. I have nightmares about [Ryan] to this day. That’s the level of PTSD I’m sure most still experience and I haven’t been back to that church in years. Speaks volumes. I stopped receiving support soon as I told the school I was going to attend an all black college. Annette wouldn’t write my college recommendation later because I declined coming back to work at the school/church. Y’all were my BIGGEST fucking haters as soon as I graduated high school. I had to go back to my former black church to get a college recommendation letter. The level of racism I even dealt with while there I should write a book about. [Ward Smith] was the main one telling inappropriate black jokes thinking he was permitted cuz he was a minority. That shit was not okay. He was SO comfortable saying silly shit over and over. Yet y’all got black babies with black families attending there! That shit is forever wild to me. This may have started as Annette a young troubled girl and blah blah blah, but she end up doing massive damage across the board to everyone that came through that church/school. She should still be held accountable and I don’t give a damn about her being sick and older. She violated. [Ryan] violated. They need to answer for all that bullshit they allowed and inflicted on others. Mental health is real and Annette clearly wanted everyone to have mental issues just like she did. She finessed the hell out of so many people and what’s worse is Duane sitting in the background letting the circus run a muck! He was down with all the fuckery that happened. I got plenty more to say, but I’ll def save for a different platform. God bless.
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- jamin.coller on March 16, 2022 at 10:00 am
  
  In the most un-patronizing way possible: thank you for sharing that. I can imagine that being black at the org added its own unique layer of…confusion? Trauma? Maybe we can agree on “fucked-up-ness”…? I’m really sorry I participated in that! It wasn’t okay. You deserved so much better!
  I hope my writing doesn’t come across as excusing. There is no excuse for trauma. Nothing makes it okay.
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  - angiewiththesauce on March 17, 2022 at 3:27 pm
    
    My mother said I shouldn’t have cursed so much. My apologies that is just how I express thoughts. LOL.
    Reply
    - jamin.coller on March 17, 2022 at 4:12 pm
      
      I’m not gonna argue with your mother, but maybe just don’t let her read my response then 🙂
      Reply
- Julie Huguley on April 2, 2022 at 4:32 am
  
  Good for you Angie! Good for your honesty. Your transparency.At least it wasn’t totally killed during the time you spent at “ No Freedom, Just Religion, Not a Christian School”, as we call it in our home. My heart hurts for you. As it still does for my own daughter. Angie, I beg you to tell me if I harmed you in anyway while I was a teacher there. Love you girl. Really do.
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- Anon on February 15, 2024 at 9:30 am
  
  I’m curious to know more about what Ryan did and specifics to his first wife.
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  - jamin.coller on February 15, 2024 at 10:17 am
    
    (1) My most accurate answer is, “I don’t know.” Unfortunately, the only people in their marriage were four of them, and I know each of their testimonies to be wildly inaccurate and/or dishonest.
    (2) My most complete answer is, “Keep reading.” But I know that’s time-consuming, and all you’ll get is my best, honest, flawed perspective.
    (3) My most concise answer is, “Not enough.”
    Reply
Thomas Miner on May 16, 2024 at 6:12 pm

You know, I’m 33 years old now. Soon to be 34. It was nearly a decade ago, I had an intimate discussion with a battle buddy of mine while I was in the service about my time in the church and my personal issues in the past. After a long discussion and many stories, he looked at me and said, “So you were like, in a cult?” -Since that time, I have referred to it as such.

For me personally, there was always something amiss that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Where is the money going after offering? Does God really want my family to give the last few dollars in the bank account to the church? Where did it even go? Why does he have a brand new car every couple months off a teachers salary? The military is anti-Christian? If this feeling that I have so sinful, why do I just feel it anyways? I can’t date? I can’t be interested in someone? Honestly, I spent many years of my adolescence familiar with the phrase, “This math ain’t mathin'” Even as a young man, from the outside looking in, I could tell that things were not right. It wasn’t until I was much older and subject to what the world actually had to offer that I stepped back and looked at it all through a different lens.

I graduated alone, early, and with nothing more than a handshake. I had the most prestigious award the school offered re-nigged after receiving it, for wanting to be in a relationship with a girl. I taught myself my senior year, locked in a closet on school property because I was “too dangerous of a secular influence to the students.” I didn’t participate in many of the basic senior/high school functions. I had to be escorted everywhere there were students by a faculty or parent. I got exploited for manual labor as a method of atonement. Unfortunately I am very well aware of many of these things happening to other students after I left.

I say all this, and I have so much more, not for vengeance, or retribution (albeit merited by many), but for my own personal growth and reconciliation. You screwed my life up in my early years. I spent nearly a decade, confused, brainwashed, outcast, and thinking about how much of a failure I had been. Good thing I had some decent friends and a great family (who eventually came around :P). I’m married (to a freakin’ goddess if I’m being honest), father to two beautiful young ladies. I own my acreage and house out in Kentucky. I have a successful job, a happy marriage, and a lot of friends that are there for me no matter what. Of course I am an open book for any questions and I will gladly correspond with anyone that wants too.
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- agsutter on July 29, 2024 at 5:38 pm
  
  Hey Tom, thanks for sharing this. I also started calling Freedom a cult a few years ago after having a conversation with a friend who used to go there. It’s a term that’s difficult to reconcile, though, because anyone I talk to who didn’t spend time at either the church or the school really doesn’t understand. I’ve heard, “Yeah, I went to church too,” and then I usually say, “No, there was a guy at our school who had to spend half the school year in a closet because he kissed a girl.”
  
  I think what was tough for me was constantly feeling watched. I’ve often wondered who followed us, because someone had to follow you that day, and someone had to follow me when I picked a classmate up on a side street a mile from school to drive him home. We were told our MySpaces were being watched and that they were working with the police. I was called in to rat on another student once, and I’m sure we all have stories like that. How often were our parents tricked into the coercion?
  
  I really don’t know what to say, other than I’m right there with you. It really screwed me up, too. Glad to hear you’re doing well.
  Reply

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