“If you can control someone’s sexuality, essentially, that’s a big part of their psychology, so it is a means of manipulating someone’s psychological state. It’s very sinister, but it’s true.”

 

-A&E Cults and Extreme Belief, Season 1 Episode 9

 

Some of the most damaging consequences of the ANTM’s techniques of control are in the area of dating and romantic relationships.

 

People within the group are forbidden from marrying, and thus from dating, anyone who is not in the group. This policy is justified by a creative interpretation of the exhortation in 2 Corinthians 6:14, which in the King James translation says,

 

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”

 

Here is Norman’s exegetical elaboration, in his own words:

 

“Furthermore, this sanction against unequal marital relationships applies to every kind of situation: born-again, Spirit-filled, covenant-ground believers are not to marry those who do not have an equal experience in the Lord… A justified believer is not a born-again Christian. A believer who has not been baptized in Jesus’ name for the circumcision of heart is not on covenant ground. A believer who has not been filled with the Holy Spirit cannot be included in the above statement by Paul that ‘we are the temple of the living God.’ God hates mixtures - He always has and He always will - and this is especially true when it comes to His people...

 

...To state it clearly: Christians are not, under any circumstances, to date either unbelievers or believers of unequal spiritual experience! ...You may say that you have the faith to believe that you can influence a justified-only believer to enter the kingdom on covenant ground. Good! Get him or her into the church first, allow that one to be approved, and then date all you want! Anything else is compromise, an overt act of disobedience against the express will of God, and sin! (If you think that I am being too strict in what I am saying, or if you think I am just trying to make a point, come and see me. We can together compare your viewpoint with the Scriptures and my pastoral experience of 35 years.)”

 

-Norman H. James, Sr., God’s Pattern for Choosing a Mate

 

A keystone of ANTM doctrine as passed down by Norman is the belief that water baptism is valid only if the words of the ritual specify that it is being done in the name of Jesus (not the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), and for the circumcision of heart. Another keystone is the belief that a Christian has not received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit unless that individual has produced the “evidence” of speaking in tongues.

 

We may speculate as to the motivations, but the effect is clear: given that no other Christians known to the ANTM teach this combination of doctrines, no Christian outside those walls is fit to date or marry one of its members. “Unequally yoked” takes on a whole new meaning when you extend the reading of the text to apply to believers, and it takes on an entirely different dimension when you are taught also to believe that no other Christians are, in fact, your equal.

 

As the ANTM’s population has shrunk over the years, it has left the singles in a peculiar situation where they have, as potential mates, only a couple dozen members of the opposite sex within a few years of their age. While this would strike most people as bizarre, for those who grew up in the ANTM, this particular variety of “bounded choice” is simply what they’ve always known.

 

This of course leads to a very strange cultural dynamic. Those couple dozen options become further constrained as singles pair up and drop out of the dating pool. Sadly, it means that those singles who don’t pair up quickly are often left with an impossible choice between involuntary celibacy or, if they choose to look outside the ANTM, the risk of being shunned by all the family and friends they have ever known. Perhaps some of the most heartbreaking fruit of ANTM’s wholesale theft of its members’ basic self-determination is those older singles who dreamed of marriage and children, but live a solitary life - not because God called them to singleness, but because the ANTM limited their choice.

 

Because children growing up in the ANTM have access to only a very limited social circle and spend a great deal of time with each other, by the time they are old enough to be allowed to date many of their options feel like brothers or sisters. That spark of attraction isn’t always easy to kindle, so young ANTM singles often find themselves waiting for someone younger or older than they are. It is often indeed a wait, as the ANTM frowns upon dating relationships between singles who are at different stages of life. Many young people pine away for years waiting for a crush to become eligible, only to realize that it’s not going to work and that they have wasted years waiting.

 

Another option is to find a mate who is willing to first join the group, but this is a rigorous process. Before being allowed to date, the outsider must take nine months of indoctrination classes, be baptized (or re-baptized using ANTM-approved wording by an ANTM baptizer if previously baptized in a non-ANTM context), and learn to speak in tongues. Though it doesn’t happen often, it is actually one of the group’s primary sources of new recruits - such is love.

 

Having backed himself into a corner with the situation he created, Norman’s solution was to redefine dating. The significance of personal attraction as a precursor to romance is minimized if not wholly discounted. Following in the footsteps of his father who would proclaim from the pulpit that it didn’t really matter who you married as long as you got married, he will say, “Dating has nothing to do with whether you like someone.”

 

Guys are instructed to ask girls out on dates regardless of whether they have any interest in the girl. As a general rule, single girls are compelled to go out once with whichever guy asks them, though she is permitted to refuse a second date.

 

On a regular basis, this manufactured and unnatural situation has its natural result. Disheartened and disengaged, the single men collectively begin to lose interest in initiating the courtship process. Norman will then find it necessary to motivate them.

 

A mandatory meeting of the single men is announced, and Norman takes them aside for one of his patented lengthy haranguings to which those who have grown up in the group are quite used to being subjected. In one of the more recent iterations, he brought along a pair of bricks as a visual aid to his description of the process of castration. What is the message there? Use it or lose it?

 

Keeping in line with the group’s general practice in various areas of life, dating is characterized by an extraordinary inclination for micromanagement. The group may dictate, on an individual basis or as a general rule, which specific individuals within the approved pool someone is or is not allowed to date, how many people must be present, and what activities and locations for a date are permitted. There are many stories of couples who actually want to date being discouraged, delayed, or forbidden to do so. Marriages are never arranged, per se, but it is not at all uncommon for a married couple to trace the beginnings of their relationship to Norman’s “encouraging” of the man to ask the woman out.

 

After a member selects a desired mate from the permitted pool, the male must then ask permission from Norman before he is allowed to propose. After the proposal there is a months-long “marriage class” in which the couple is instructed in detail about how their marriage is to operate. An accompanying mandatory audio course instructs the couple how to have sex.

 

The drive to “just get them married” hastens that final lock of control that the ANTM obtains over the life of an ANTM member. After marriage, the ultimate consequence of bucking Norman’s commands would now be the loss of not just your friends and family but now also your spouse. The manipulative command of, “Don’t get married until you’re ready to have children!” ensures that children are soon added to the equation.

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