Unmasked by Joe Franklin is a companion volume to Taken Captive, The 2019 ICOC Report. This investigative analysis looks at ICOC leadership’s ongoing attempt to keep the truth about their false doctrine and works-salvation theology from reaching the ears of their church members. Specifically, the report examines leadership’s shocking confession to a third party in 2004 at the Abilene Christian University’s annual Lectureship, and their choice to omit that confession in subsequent summaries of their lectureship appearance.
What started out as four International Church of Christ representatives and their one-time confession led to a sanitized and deceptive version of events, which then spidered out into their worldwide movement in just 6 days! Shortly after this historic confession, the group’s leadership began whistling a different tune altogether. Influential leaders in the group began to modify and rework this confessed foundational sin by redefining the problem as purely one of implementation and generalized “mistakes.”
Leadership closed ranks and some began to uniformly target their followers with abusive victim-blaming and shaming—behaviors commonly associated with thought reform cults. This deflection onto their followers, says Franklin, allowed them the “cover” to continue authoritarian control of the flock in a more artful and nuanced form than the rigid discipleship practiced in the past.
Franklin highlights the backdrop to this event and the main purpose behind the ICOC attending the lectureship in the first place. Their appearance was primarily about damage control, public relations, and rebranding without actually changing theologically, evidenced by the lack of change in their core teachings since then. During this four-day event a lot of verbal promises were made, and generic apologies given. This was part of a larger strategy initiated by leadership, aimed at getting their members to trust them again, despite the fact that not a single resignation occurred as a direct result of decades of teaching quasi-Christian content as Bible truth.
History shows that authoritarian groups and quasi-Christian cults almost always go “underground” as public scrutiny increases during periodic times of upheaval. Many of the same group of men who came to power with their unorthodox biblical interpretations are the same influence peddlers in the movement today. This is a case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
When the facts are laid out and one sees the hypocrisy and cowardice of ICOC leaders, the continuing abuse, and the unbiblical system that underpins their ministry, it is likely that the reader will have a tough time grasping the magnitude of this corporate level cover-up. Life is about decisions; when considering the ICOC, one must willingly choose between the deceptive images or the ugly and sometimes uncomfortable truth that frees oneself from the group’s tangled mess of hidden sin and religious captivation.
It is the author’s conviction that despite the supposedly “new” changes and hype, the ICOC leadership are but a failed representation of the past. They are emblems of McKeanism who have failed to define their doctrine and practice outside the extra-biblical teaching, erroneous soteriology, and unethical use of systematic thought reform that defined the group in times past.
This is a story about the basics of repentance versus the legalistic thinking of the ICOC, which refuses to admit to, and take responsibility for, two core sinful practices: Their practice of discipleship, which causes psychological damage and, though Christian in appearance, their unbiblical theology. This can be seen by their sophistry, guile, group pressure, persuasive techniques (thought reform), guilt and shame manipulation, and complex system of carrots and sticks, all of which assault the believer’s self-autonomy, decision-making, and freedom in Christ.
