I'm Sadie Carpenter. I was raised in an IFB pastor's home, mostly in the Midwest.

My dad was a very compassionate man. He was a lot kinder than many of the pastors that we speak about on this show.

But he also took the IFB and the rules of the IFB very seriously. And no amount of parental compassion could save me from the toxicity of the

IFB environment and the teachings that continue to affect me, even though I've been out of the

IFB myself for about 10 years. The IFB or independent Fundamental Baptist group is a fundamentalist

and biblical literalist group of loosely connected churches

with no formal head or headquarters. Each church is fully autonomous in theory, although they're

often highly influenced by social pressures from other IFB churches or influenced by famous fundamentalist preachers that they follow.

The IFB believes in using the King James version of the Bible only, and in taking the words of scripture very literally, and turning scripture into kind of a rulebook for life.

They believe in abstaining from alcohol,

movies, popular music, psychiatry, and a lot of other things. And instead, they believe that

most of a person's free time should be used to support the church and its ministries. They believe

in strict child discipline. Often they believe that birth control is a sin.

They believe that wives are to be submissive to their husbands.

And many IFB, though not all, believe that it's sinful for a woman to work a job as opposed to being a stay-at-home mom or housewife.

They believe in a highly confrontational evangelism style in which they try to convert others, and they believe

in giving at least 10% of one's income to the church. Because the IFB doesn't have a denominational

head or any kind of oversight, there is a huge spectrum of what IFB is. There are independent Baptist churches that do not align themselves with the

IFB movement that are baptistic in their theology, but LGBTQ affirming, believe in women's

rights, don't abuse children. There are also churches that do align with the IFB and consider

themselves IFB and have IFB on their website, but are the mildest possible version of it.

They might believe in doctrines that I think are harmful, but they are making a good faith effort to mitigate that harm.

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