buildings in Windsor in order to lend them to
Pastor X to use as a temple and a rectory. The
official opening of the Evangelical BCW, as an
independent corporation, occcured on July 6,
1978. Despite its coming into existence with the
aid of the Evangelical Baptist Church of
Lennoxville, the new church formed no formal
ties to any religious group or association. The
Evangelical BCW’s success was rapid and,
within 2 years, the church boasted 70 adult
members, of whom 40 had been newly
converted. Its only officer was Pastor X, who
was assisted by four board members.
The First Years
In terms of doctrine, Pastor X subscribed to a
conservative Protestantism in which man is seen,
by divine right, to be the head of the household
and, as such, his wife and children owe him
absolute obedience. Pastor X encouraged
couples to have children and to raise them in
keeping with conservative biblical principles. In
his sermons, he instructed his congregation to
use corporal punishment to discipline their
children and often referred to the necessity of
spanking children, whether with the hand or an
instrument. There were no rules, however,
during the first years of the congregation, and
each family was free to decide which behaviors
were deemed punishable and to what extent
corporal punishment would be used.
The Split
Despite the Evangelical BCW’s success with
recruitment, several disputes arose in 1980
between the pastor and certain church members.
According to sources, Pastor X revealed himself
to be quite rigid as to his interpretation of the
Bible, not allowing any discussion of his word,
nor of his decision to interpret the Bible as
literally as possible, notably about the corporal
punishment of children. A split finally arose in
the late 1980s when the Pastor insisted on
personally training young men to become
pastors. Close to half the congregation left,
including most of those who originally were
from the Evangelical Baptist Church of
Lennoxville. Several Baptist congregations in
the region chose to sever their links to the
Evangelical BCW as a result of the split. Pastor
X was seen as being much too rigid and
intransigent in his biblical interpretations. The
Evangelical BCW thus became alienated
spiritually and socially from other churches in
the region. The influence of Pastor X on his
congregation henceforth was absolute, and all
those who had known him as a fellow member
of the Evangelical Baptist Church of
Lennoxville were now either gone or had been
subdued.
The split with the Evangelical Baptist Church of
Lennoxville left the management of the BCW in
the hands of Pastor X, his brother, an assistant
pastor, and four board members. Maybe because
of the loss of so many members of his church
and of the rift with other Baptist communities in
the region, Pastor X engaged his congregation in
an active campaign of proselytizing, which
energized the BCW, bringing them from a mere
40 members to some 120 to 150 followers in the
course of 2 years. Having so many new
members, however, made it necessary for the
pastor to transform unofficial rules into much
more explicit ones, a process that rendered
regulations and practices much more rigid
within the BCW. Many behaviors and attitudes
that had previously been merely discouraged by
the pastor became clearly prohibited and new
behaviors, such as watching television, buying
decorative or superfluous objects, and eating
sweets, for example were added to the list of
prohibitions. This change had a huge impact on
everyday life, not only by changing peoples’
habits, but also and most importantly by making
members more available for affairs of the
church. Although the pastor did not yet prohibit
members from having contact with people
outside the church, the practice was looked upon
with disapproval except when the contact was
for purposes of proselytizing.
As the congregation grew and the number of
rules multiplied, mechanisms of surveillance
were put in place. The pastor, aided by a small
circle of lieutenants, namely his brother and the
board members, kept a close watch on the
conduct and attitude of the congregation. The
pastor encouraged an atmosphere of distrust and
of denunciation of breaches amongst members.
He diligently followed up on information and
acted upon it, reacting with rage to those who
deviated from his norms, menacing them with
86 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 6, 2015

expulsion or eternal damnation. Pastor X
progressively became fearful of moral
contamination through contact with outsiders,
whom he scornfully described as “pagans” or
“swine.” He forbade BCW members from
having any contact whatsoever with the outside
world, except for proselytizing activities. The
social isolation of the church grew, members
were nearly always amongst themselves, and,
apart from their work, they were involved only
in church activities. Although each family still
resided in the larger community, the pastor
forbade all contact with nonchurch members,
including neighbors, friends, and family. At that
point in their lives, Pastor X played a decisive
role in the way church members led their lives,
worked, parented, and educated their children.
No aspect of their existence escaped the vigilant
scrutiny of their pastor, who seemed to exercise
much control over them.
During this period, the pastor’s fundamentalism
became stricter. Rules of conduct became
harsher, making them all the more difficult to
respect, especially for the children who, as a
result, were treated with more severity and
received much more frequent corporal
punishments, according to our analysis of the
data. Amongst the new rules, the pastor decreed
that spanking had to be administered with an
object. Showing slides to illustrate the correct
way of administering corporal punishment, he
advised that five lashes to the bared buttocks
with a wooden stick should henceforth constitute
the basic punishment for any deviant behavior or
attitude.
BCW School and Day-Care Facility
In 1981, the pastor decided to remove the
children from their regular schools, which he
described as being integral parts of the
corrupting influence of the outside world. He
then instituted both a mandatory school and a
day-care facility in accordance with his views.
He explained to BCW members that these new
institutions were necessary to protect the
children from contaminating influences. Pastor
X decreed that all the BCW children, even the
newborns, should attend either the day-care
facility or the school. He appointed the teachers
and the day-care staff from amongst members of
the congregation. The institutionalization of a
school and of a day-care facility appears as a
turning point in the trajectories of the pastor and
of the BCW—first, because it imposed a definite
break from the social environment and second,
because it created a coercive environment
wherein both the children and the parents were
entirely subjected to his views on corporal
punishment.
Behaviors and attitudes typical of children,
which would have been deemed normal in other
environments, became the object of much
scrutiny by the pastor and his lieutenants.
Moreover, the breaches observed in the context
of these two new institutions offered him much
sought-for “evidence” of the presence of evil in
the soul of the group’s children. Corporal
punishment became the means recommended to
free a child’s soul of the presence of Satan, who
was deemed responsible for negativity,
disobedience, or defiance in children. Normal
developmental phases and basic psychological
principles were ignored or overruled when it
came to church leaders and parishoners
understanding what caused a child to act as a
child. Indeed, behaviors such as crying
experiencing difficulty mastering toilet training
showing autonomy—“I can do it myself!” or
acting according to normal developmental
phases, such as a 2-year-old child saying, “No!,”
were deemed punishable offenses. Corporal
punishment was administered more and more
frequently, since the constant surveillance of the
children led to misinterpretation of their
behaviors and attitudes as willful defiance and
disobedience.
The pastor was clear in his wish to make the
children into models of perfection however, this
expectation stripped them of many of their
childlike features. He repeated, in a great many
of his sermons, his view concerning the perfect
child—that is, one who had renounced his
perverse nature. He pressed the congregation to
pursue that very aim in their dealings with all of
the BCW’s children, being explicit about the
need to use corporal punishment. Thus any
failure on the part of a child, be it academic,
attitudinal, or behavioral, was perceived as a
sign of impurity and of perversity. This meant
that Satan had a hold over the child’s soul,
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