All Posts Tagged "The Experts Speak"

The Experts Speak contains the testimony of six expert witnesses who studied the local churches and the teaching of Witness Lee. Five of them testified in court in the Lee v. Duddy; the sixth was not asked to testify at the trial but wrote a statement titled “Libel and the First Amendment.”

November 30, 1994 index, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

An index to the testimony in The Experts Speak with links to relevant portions on specific topics.

November 30, 1994 Edwin S. Gaustad, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, H. Newton Malony, index, J. Gordon Melton, John A. Saliba, Neil Duddy, Rodney Stark, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

This Preface to the printed volume of The Experts Speak describes the contents of the book and how it is structured.

November 30, 1994 Die Sonderlehre, Edwin S. Gaustad, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, H. Newton Malony, J. Gordon Melton, John A. Saliba, Neil Duddy, Rodney Stark, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

The “Meet the Experts” section of The Experts Speak gives basic profiles of the six experts who studied the local churches and the teachings of Witness Lee for the Lee et al v. Duddy et al case concerning The God-Men.

November 30, 1994 Edwin S. Gaustad, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, H. Newton Malony, J. Gordon Melton, John A. Saliba, Rodney Stark, scholars, The Experts Speak

The “Introduction” to The Experts Speak presents the historical background of Lee et al v. Duddy et al and describes the role of the expert witnesses in the case.

November 30, 1994 Die Sonderlehre, Edwin S. Gaustad, Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, H. Newton Malony, J. Gordon Melton, John A. Saliba, Neil Duddy, Rodney Stark, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and author of the standard work Encyclopedia of American Religions, testified that SCP had completely misrepresented Witness Lee and the local churches and had made many false and damaging accusations in its book The God-Men. [Note: Dr. Melton is currently Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at the Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University.]

November 30, 1994 J. Gordon Melton, mingling, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. John A. Saliba, a Jesuit priest and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Detroit-Mercy, testified that SCP adhered to a principle of attacking and destroying anyone with whom they did not agree and that the accusations of cultic behaviors made in The God-Men were false as regards the local churches and the teachings of Witness Lee.

November 30, 1994 John A. Saliba, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, formerly Professor of Biblical Languages in both the Episcopal Theological School and Philadelphia Divinity School, testified that The God-Men intentionally misrepresented Witness Lee’s teachings on the authority of the Bible and morality and that the members of the local churches were “extremely family-oriented.”

November 30, 1994 Eugene Van Ness Goetchius, mingling, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. Rodney Stark, Professor of Sociology and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington and co-author of the model of conversion that Neil Duddy claimed to have used to perform a sociological evaluation of the local churches, testified that Duddy had missed the model’s entire point and had altered it maliciously. [Note: Dr. Stark is currently Co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion and Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University.]

November 30, 1994 Neil Duddy, Rodney Stark, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. H. Newton Malony, Senior Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, conducted a study of local church members to assess the claims of sociological deviance made in The God-Men. He found those claims to be without basis. [Note: Dr. Malony retired from Fuller in 2009.]

November 30, 1994 H. Newton Malony, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

Dr. Edwin S. Gaustad, formerly Emeritus Professor of History at University of California, Riverside, wrote a statement criticizing self-appointed vigilante groups such as SCP and the damage they cause to the reforming impetus inherent in Christianity.

November 30, 1994 Edwin S. Gaustad, First Amendment, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak, The God-Men

A brief history of the background of The God-Men by Neil Duddy and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP); of the landmark case, Lee et al v. Duddy et al, in which it was ruled to be “in all major respects false, defamatory and unprivileged, and, therefore, libelous”; and of the aftermath of that decision.

November 30, 1980 Brooks Alexander, Christian World Liberation Front, CWLF, Die Sonderlehre, index, J. Gordon Melton, judgment, Neil Duddy, SCP, Spiritual Counterfeits Project, The Experts Speak