I listened with mixed feelings to the Dave Douglass interview on the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast. I attended Hyles-Anderson College in the 1989-90 school year, and Douglass was on staff then, though I didn’t interact with him. I loved my year at Hyles and mourned over leaving. So, when I saw the RFP advertisements for the Dave Douglass interview, I was intrigued. I had not heard that he resigned as President of Hyles-Anderson. I wondered what he might have to say about his reasons for leaving. Given that he was going public on the RFP, I assumed he would give an account of God’s work to show him the error of the ministry at Hyles.
It took Douglass about 38 minutes to get to his “grace awakening” (as the RFP called it), and thanks to a question from J.C. Groves, Douglass began to discuss his rejection of “legalism.” Of course, legalism is the driving focus of the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast, according to its mission statement.
We exist to help and encourage those whose lives have been negatively affected by fundamentalist legalism in the church and to challenge those who promote tradition over Scripture.
I wasn’t surprised to hear the discussion head to legalism. But overall, I found Douglass’ answers unsatisfactory on several levels. I understand that there might be some sensitivity to the discussion. But since the podcast aims to drive conversation, I want to join this one. I don’t object to the way the RFP handled the interview. They didn’t set out to debate Douglass, and they did ask him good questions. They have indicated that they are trying to be reasonable and recognize when people are taking steps in the right direction, and I appreciate that.
And let me add that I am happy to see anyone move away from Hyles-Anderson. Apart from the 7 months he spent pastoring, Douglass spent his entire ministry – since 1987, as I understand it – at Hyles. My hat is off to anyone who makes a course correction after over thirty years in the same institution. His departure from Hyles couldn’t have been easy for him or his family. But overall, his explanations left much to be desired, and I intend to focus on some key points here.
But first, a little backstory. I grew up in a deeply entrenched Hyles church. My pastor graduated from Hyles in the early 1980s. Upon graduation, he started a church in Terre Haute, Indiana, about 3 ½ hours south of the Hyles-Anderson campus. The church exploded, and within three years, it had purchased land, built a building, started a school, and regularly broke attendance records. Every Tuesday morning, my pastor would drive to Crown Point to teach a class at Hyles-Anderson on how to start a New Testament Church.
The affairs started (by my estimation) about 3-4 years after the building was built and included multiple women and a few teenage girls in the church. The church shuttered its doors within a decade of its opening. And for the next decade, I found myself on a quest to understand what happened to us. In the process, I came to realize that many Hyles graduates followed a similar trajectory to my pastor – multiple, scandalous, sexual escapades, some of them criminal. I began to search the Bible to understand how this could be.
The answer came when I studied Galatians. In Galatians 5, Paul says,
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:16-21)
In context, Paul is speaking to those who expect to be “made perfect by the flesh” (Galatians 3:3). He points out that pursuing sanctification through law-keeping empowers the flesh rather than defeating it. When sanctification is pursued this way, the flesh’s works will be manifest.
I recognized the works of the flesh in the fruit of Hyles. I won’t say attempting to honor God in clothing or entertainment empowers the flesh. But I don’t think the standards at Hyles were about honoring God. It was always about pleasing the preacher. Hyles was a performance-based system from top to bottom. Preachers constantly railed against deviation from the “orthodox” standards and shamed everyone into compliance. I rarely heard anything like a Biblical case for those standards. Conformity was the rule. Standards were imposed, not explained. And pressure was applied with a red-hot fury. From Galatians, I recognized that the frequent moral failures of graduates and staff came from the intense pressure to perform and conform.
So, yes, Hyles has a legalism problem. I agree. But that is hardly the only problem. I dare say it is hardly the main problem at Hyles. “Legalism” is low-hanging fruit if you want some street cred for leaving. But I’m not persuaded, based on this interview, that Douglass wants to turn over a new leaf in life. Here’s why.
First, Dave Douglass didn’t leave when he should have.
I’m flabbergasted that Douglass waited until John Wilkerson came along to leave. Though I have significant disagreements with Wilkerson, by all accounts, he has brought about positive change on several issues. And while I don’t deny God’s ability to work in a man’s heart, even at this late stage of his life, I have to wonder about the timing.
Dave Douglass didn’t leave Hyles when he and all the staff were required to wear a “100% for Hyles” button. He didn’t leave when Jack Hyles ran his annual “Pentecost Sunday” events, in which 5,000 souls per annum were dunked after being led in a trite prayer and told they were saved. I find it ironic that Douglass denies knowing about the bald-faced gimmicking in these Pentecost events. It would be impossible to have been at FBC Hammond on any of those Pentecost Sundays and not know that this junk was happening.
Douglass didn’t leave when the scandals broke about Dave Hyles. He didn’t leave when the Paula Hyles tapes came out. He didn’t leave with the fourteen high-level professors and administrators who resigned and left because Jack Hyles refused to answer Paula’s claims. By the way, that’s when I left – at the urging of my pastor, who (ironically) left as well. Douglass didn’t leave when details about Jennie Nischik came out. He didn’t leave when Jack Hyles denied that there was a door between his office and Jennie’s office, though Douglass (like every other staff member) knew about the door.
Douglass didn’t leave when Jack Schaap wrote his salacious marriage book, in which he suggested that taking the Lord’s Supper was like having sex with Jesus or suggested that Psalm 119:30 and 31 use sexual innuendo. He didn’t leave when Jack Schaap polished the shaft in front of hundreds of teens at a Youth Conference.
Dave Douglass didn’t protest the false gospel preached and promoted in every course on soulwinning and evangelism. He made no attempt to correct the terrible approach to preaching rampant throughout the college. He didn’t object to the many sex scandals among the staff of Hyles and the multiple cover-ups of those scandals. He didn’t object to the man-worship of Jack Hyles. When Ray Young professed that he would commit suicide if Jack Hyles asked him to, Dave Douglass stayed. Are we to think Douglass was vexing his righteous soul when these things happened?
Though I appreciate things about John Wilkerson, he has failed to repudiate the heresy preached from the pulpit at Hyles, the false gospel preached and taught there, and the rampant man-worship that has long characterized both church and college. Has the statue of Jack Hyles been removed since Wilkerson came? Does the enormous portrait of Hyles still hang in the auditorium? And when will the name “Hyles” be removed from the college?
Wilkerson didn’t fire the staff that stood by Hyles and supported him through all the perversion, corruption, scandal, heresy, false teaching, and man worship. I have long contended that Wilkerson should have fired men like Ray Young, Eddie Lapina, Roy Moffitt, and Dave Douglass.
So, I’m not all that impressed that Douglass left now. Did Wilkerson inherit a mess? Dave Douglass played a massive role in creating and sustaining that mess. It seems strange to me that Dave Douglass waited to leave until a man like Wilkerson came along, who, despite some apparent failures, has at least attempted to turn from some of the worst elements of that place.
Surely, there should be some attempt on Douglass’ part to explain why he stayed through all of this. But in the interview, all I heard was a lot of blame-shifting and excuse-making. Was Douglass a novice when he came on staff? By his testimony, he was. But at some point, you should man up and take responsibility for your failure to recognize and respond to the problem. I’m happy he left. It’s about time. But own up to the inexcusable delay.
Second, Dave Douglass didn’t own his contributions to the system.
Did I already say that? Yet, this is a legitimate criticism. It is one thing to vex your righteous soul in a toxic organization until it is evident that change is impossible and remaining is out of the question. Then, by all means, leave. But apart from the 7 months he pastored, Dave Douglas was part of the Hyles organization from 1987 to about 2021. In those 34 years, he rose to the position of college president. By his account, he had an awakening in 2010. Yet, things didn’t change in the next eleven years. In fact, people who were there have said that he made it worse.
Again, I don’t object to a guy having a “come to Jesus” moment. I’ve been in ministry long enough to know how God shows you where you are in error. But when God shows you this, you really ought to say so. It is so much easier to blame the institution as if you were an unfortunate victim. But we should all err on the side of taking responsibility. I heard none of that kind of spirit from Dave Douglass.
Third, Dave Douglass acts as if he was conflicted all along.
It would be one thing if Douglass fought for change. But by all accounts, he cranked up the pressure and doubled down. That’s why, frankly, the interview seemed like posturing to me. Had he come in with an account of how God showed him his own error and made him realize that he was wrong, I would count that as authentic. But Douglass acted as if it had troubled him for all those years, and he was the lone person standing against it. That hardly has the ring of truth.
I would have expected to hear Douglass’s defenders come forward by now, confirming that he was the one godly staff member fighting to stem the tide of false doctrine and grievous error. By now, some should be stepping up to confirm that Douglass was fighting an impossible war to hold back the flood of raunch and tripe. But by all accounts, Douglass was a leader in these things. He reminds me of the arsonist who comes back to fight the fire, hoping they catch whoever did this.
Fourth, those who know Dave Douglass don’t hold him in high regard.
This should matter. I have watched comments on Twitter and talked to people who were there when he was. Literally, without exception, they had a low view of Douglass. They aren’t coming forward to vouch for his good name or to profess their already high regard for him. So far, without exception, the feedback from those who knew him has been the opposite. And the better they knew him, the more adamantly they insist.
I am grateful that God removed me from the world of Hyles, though I readily admit that I loved it there. I now see the poison of that place. Praise God for those who survived it. I am absolutely sure it would have been my own destruction.
I don’t begrudge a guy leaving at this late stage in his life and ministry. I listened to his story because I hoped to hear how God’s grace worked in his heart to show him his own error, his own regret for staying through so many terrible, disgraceful, dishonoring-to-God events, and his own hope to make up for what he did to hurt so many. Instead, I heard a man who was willing to join the popular pile-on against a discredited institution. Not only does this stretch my plausibility meter, but it strikes me as a total lack of integrity.
That said, I want to take a minute to address the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast. I understand that you are anxious to repudiate fundamentalist legalism at every opportunity. But in your zeal to do this, jumping at any opportunity to make a splash can be tempting. The fact that a person has left a “legalistic institution” may not qualify him to carry the torch in your parade. Be wise, brothers.
I don’t blame you if you don’t understand the Hyles issue. If you haven’t been immersed in it, you wouldn’t necessarily know what to look for. You have said that your goal in this interview is to encourage a man along the way. I don’t object to that. However, the fact that Douglass was once the President of HAC adds a temptation to go for the sensational when, in fact, you may have a poser on your hand.
I would love to see Biblical fruits of repentance from Dave Douglass. If he has come to see the sin and error of Hyles, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to acknowledge his part in it. In fact, it should be on the tip of his tongue. Yet, in an hour and forty-five-minute interview, I didn’t hear Dave say even once, “I did this, and I was wrong.”
When a high-profile figure realizes the error of the institution they belong to, I don’t believe they must rip open their chest and show everyone their feebly beating heart. They can leave quietly and start a new life somewhere else. They don’t owe the world an explanation. But if they do go on a podcast somewhere, they should at least have the integrity to own their part in the problem. After more than 30 years at the same institution, with several of those years as the President, Dave Douglass has a share in the problem. He should own that.
The Village Smithy 