Blog on the Lillypad

Saturday, October 25, 2003

The Timeline of The Rise and Fall of the Hyles Dynasty
Ralph, the longsuffering Christian guy at work who listens to all my updates before I write them here, is totally confused by all the names and events that I throw at him. So I am giving my readers a timeline to help them get it straight:

Jack Hyles become pastor of First Baptist of Hammond in 1959. It was an American Baptist church at first, I believe. Over time, he broke down the many committees that made all the decisions about church operations, and he centralized power to himself. He also made the church Independent Baptist. He was always likeable and approachable, and he spent a lot of his time in the early years boosting and backing his young people. He pitched some of the church softball games, attended and/or ran functions for the youth, and won over his church by being a person who worked with everybody. Somewhere in there, Hyles tightened the ropes of legalism a little further to include rules against slacks on women and all kinds of other fine points that have nothing whatsoever to do with godliness. He also pushed "soulwinning" as the supreme Christian virtue. Soon, that would change to soulwinning being the only Christian virtue.

The first Pastor's School took place in about 1964. (The last one was in 2000.) Pastor's School was the Mecca of IFB pastors and church workers, and that week was their Ramadan. As a diligent bus worker in my teens, I attended three or four Pastors Schools in the 1970's. It was by means of Pastors School (which ran for a week in March of each year) that Hyles kept First Baptist of Hammond (FBCH) central to the IFB movement, and he used Pastor's School to take the pulse on what was going on.

In about 1972 or 1973, Jack Hyles founded Hyles-Anderson college, an unaccredited college designed to teach young men how to be "preacher boys." They spent hours each week soul winning, but they also attended classes,and most worked to put themselves through school. Percentage-wise, my guess is that Hyles-Anderson college has released more child sexual predators than any other college or university in America, ever. Most graduates are not perverts, but the astonishing account of how many of their male graduates are now in jail or have faced charges for sexual crimes against children is dumbfounding. Meanwhile, divorce is rampant among graduates, a testament to the fact that these poor deceived young people have no clue about the grace of God or the power of Jesus Christ. All they know is that they must work, work, work to do good and "stay right with God."

When he was not quite 20, Dave Hyles was given a prominent position in Youth Ministry at FBCH and eventually took it over. His rise to power occurred in 1973-1974 According to many people who left the movement, Dave was already engaging in sex, including sex with minors. He also regularly rebuked and insulted the people who tried to please him. I never went to a Youth Conference (week long meetings held in the summers), but I've heard tapes from them, and I've heard Dave telling kids that 15 minutes of prayer each day is nothing, the result of a carnal, fleshly heart. His sermons, which he preferred to call "Challenges" were nothing but harangue with humor thrown in now and then. Dave also married Paula P-------. Meanwhile, his sexual exploits continued, until pressure on Jack Hyles prompted him to recommend Dave for the pastorate down at Miller Road Baptist Church in Garland, Texas.

Dave left for Garland Texas with his wife, Paula, and their family. Paula was already suspecting him of infidelity, but she was a naive young woman who had been raised in the IFB movement. She had no idea how bad it was or what he was getting into. I don't know the year that Dave assumed the pastorate at Miller Road: sometime between 1979 and 1983.

A church member discovered a briefcase in dumpster behind the church at Miler Road Baptist church. It contained numerous photographs and pornography magazines. In the porn magazines were advertisements for group sex that featured Dave Hyles and Brenda Stevens, a member of the church. Some members tried to hush up the matter, but it was finally brought before the church. Around a dozen women came forward as having had affairs with Dave. Each one had been told that she was his one and only. Paula left Dave, more or less for good, taking the children with her. Dave and Brenda (whose first marriage also broke up), left for Illinois with her two children. This occurred in 1984/85.

Brent Stevens, Brenda's youngest child from her first marriage, was discovered to have eight or nine bones in his body that had been broken at different times and never treated. He was removed from the family for child abuse and given medical treatment. Paul Ciolino was a detective who handled the case. Brent was briefly put into his father's custody in Texas, but was returned to Brenda and Dave later (against Ciolino's advice and in spite of his express warning that Brent's life was in danger). In November 1985, Brent was found dead in his crib at the age of 17 months. A bottle of actifed for which a prescription has been filled only the previous day, was found empty in the house. Ciolino was livid when Dave and Brenda had the body immediately embalmed, thus ending any chance of successful forensic work to determine cause of death. At the inquest for Brent, Brenda did not appear at all. Dave appeared and claimed the fifth amendment. Paul Ciolino refused to close the case and identified Dave Hyles as the prime suspect.

Meanwhile, in Hammond, Vic Nischik had suffered the alienation of the affections of his wife (whose office at the church adjoined Jack Hyle's office by means of a door covered by a curtain) until they went to the edge of divorce. To keep his children, Nischik refused to give her a divorce and produced love letters between her and Jack Hyles to as a weapon to save himself from being forced by his wife and Hyles to accept divorce and leave the state. An incredibly tense truce lasted for years as Nischik slowly came out of the spell of bad doctrine, awe, and intimidation that had kept him captive. In about 1987 he made his claim before the deacon board and was ejected from the meeting. The children were grown by then, so when Jenny next threatened divorce he told her to do it. He wrote his memoir of the entire sad story, called WIZARD OF GOD: My Life with Jack Hyles, which was published in 1990.

Another member of the church who had spent several years in the PATHFINDERS ministry, working with mentally handicapped children, was also gradually coming out from under the spell. A lawyer by profession, Voyle Glover began to hear rumors of both Dave Hyles and Jack Hyles, the men to whom he believed his total allegiance was owed, He began to investigate the situation and the increasing scandals that he heard about. Glover took the situation from several angles: Biblical doctrine, which he re-examined independently of Hyles' spin on doctrine, and events. He made a case and offered proof and argument as only a lawyer came. The result was his book, FUNDAMENTAL SEDUCTION, published in 1990.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's a new series of scandals was brought to public attention as five different churches with ties to Hyles-Anderson and First Baptist Church had graduates or former members of those places charged with child molesting and/or sodomy. Included in the number was a deacon from First Baptist of Hammond itself, AV Ballenger, who was found guilty. Hyles bought Ballenger a new suit and had the congregation give him a standing ovation. Jack Schaap, now the current pastor at FBCH, publicly explained that the little girl hugged men too much. A Detroit television station investigated and created the 5-night series called PREYING FROM THE PULPIT, which--as far as I know---aired in June, 1993. If you look to the right of this screen, you will see links to the audio files of PREYING FROM THE PULPIT in MP3 format. Each file is 5-6 minutes long.

After several years working outside of church ministry, Dave Hyles claimed to have repented of his sins. He was accepted as a member on paid church staff at Pinellas Park Baptist Temple in Pinellas Park Florida in 1994.

In the year 2000, I began to be re-acquainted with this whole mess. I had become Presbyterian during my time at Bob Jones University. I suppose I was looking at my own history and wondering what had happened to this person and that person. I'd already learn years before that Dave Hyles had been caught in several scandals. On the advice of others, I read both WIZARD OF GOD and PREYING FROM THE PULPIT. I was amazed to learn that Dave Hyles was on a church staff and was speaking at church conferences. The more I investigated, the more I hit the towering wall of ignorance that has taken over so many IFB churches, including the KJVO nonsense. I also noticed as I tracked cases of scandal in the IFB movement that it is the KJVO churches that see the vast majority of the existing instances of sodomy and child molesting. The Joe Combs case added fuel to the fire of my anger. Joe COmbs is an IFB-KJVO preacher who forced his adopted daughter to have sex with him. His and his wife's abuse of her left hundreds of scars on her. First Baptist sent a squad of administrators to the trial to speak on behalf of Combs (who was a fomer Bible techer at Hyles-Anderson College). Several good people from First Baptist were pressured not to side against Combs, and one woman had at least one argument about her testimony that was going to be used by the prosecution against Combs. This gross corruption and appalling ignorance, I realized, was not going to go away.

In about April or May of 2001, after trying to get an investigative reporter in Florida to look into the situation, I realized that Dave Hyles represented a danger to his community. Part of this was realization was ignited by the report I read that Dave and Brenda's son Jack David had been killed because, according to Brenda, he had been in the back seat of the car, and he must have fallen out the door, and she backed over him and killed him. I simply did not believe this story, and I do not believe it now. I assembled a packet of documentation about Dave Hyles and mailed it to the Pinellas Park Police Department, and I called them. A few weeks later, I was told that Dave had inexplicably left Pinellas Park Baptist Temple. I learned that he had gone to Berean Baptist Church, pastored by Tom Neal, and had been accepted into membership. I assembled another packet of information and phoned the Orange Country Sheriff's department and mailed them the packet. The sheriff I spoke to was very keen to get Dave out of there, ad we spoke several times. I kept this matter quiet from the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum because I was afraid of reprisals.

At first, I had found Dave Hyles to be an annoying little oyk that ought to be punched out, and I had even prayed about punching him. But then I'd read that Dave Hyles had put a gun to his first wife's head, and I was also aware of the IFB propensity to like guns and object very little to violence against women. A great many IFB men: pastors, elders, and deacons, will speak with incredible vileness towards women, and their overall assessment of violence against women seems to blame it on the women for dressing immodestly or behaving in a brazen fashion. I realized that nobody would protect a woman from Dave Hyles or his slavish followers. So I bought a gun, and I lived in fear that somehow Dave would find out what I had done, or some of his worshipers would find out. A few weeks ago, I came forward with what I had done on the FFF. Most of the anger (and there was not all that much from the regular posters, though a few were quite surprised, and one or two commended my actions) has come from the Pinellas Park people, who apparently believe that their pastor had some sort of right to decide if I should go to the police or not regarding Dave. They think I should have gone to Everett Farris first. I think that's crap.

¶ 9:29 AM