There was never any doubt that Mercy Ministries was going to be anything other than a disaster factory. Its very framework relies on fundamentalist principles which necessarily oppress women, and distance themselves from secular education. This time however, the Christian fundamentalists weren’t just dealing with a church congregation, they were targeting vulnerable members of the outside community.
When the horror stories came pouring in, they were worse than I could have imagined. Consistently the stories had the same plot. The AoG (Assemblies of God) fundamentalism that was imposed on them was the version I hadn’t heard of since the early 80′s, with the exception of the southern states of America. Long exorcisms, constant talk of spirits and demons, good and evil, paranoia about cleanliness and the filth of sin. Real 80′s Jimmy Swaggart stuff. Kinda took me back… to the Dark Ages.
How had we, in Australia managed to get such a great program so horribly wrong? I decided to have a look at all the Mercy Ministries sites around the world to see how much better they were doing. The Headquarters site is an absolute stunner. Stunning like, I don’t know if Candid Camera were in the room.
The photo has a blackened border with a circle in the centre like a lens shot. Standing in an alleyway are eleven young women looking, almost all staring at me. I don’t know if these are the before or after shots but I’m clutching my wallet here on the couch. Seven of them are wearing denim jeans, very common of them – nice girls wear skirts.
Front and centre is a well-dressed aggressively-posed African American woman who definitely has a beef with me, and she has her posse with her. Two of the gang are black and I suspect two are Latino. There are no Asian girls, and whether that’s due to supply or demand, is not clear from the photo.
There are a variety of other white girls posing off down the alley and there’s no where for me to run. I don’t know if they’re going to break out in song, suddenly, a la West Side Story, or beat me senseless like they did to girls like me back in juvie.
And I have to say they’re kind of hot. It’s got all the makings of a b-grade lesbian girls detention centre movie, except they’re all standing the mercy ministries mandatory two feet away from each other, lest they sin. It’s a little confusing. They don’t look all screwed up. They look vacant and brainwashed but not unwell. But this is only the international site.
Mercy Ministries is everywhere.
Mercy Ministries, according to the international site with the "Breakdance/Prisoner " photo, is in Australia(which we learned the hard way), the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand the United States and Peru.
Some of the alley girls have found their way on to the Mercy Ministries of America web site, racially proportionate again, if not to the general population then perhaps in line with evangelical wishful thinking. They have lovely smiles and an array of haircuts, but none so short as to arouse uncertainty. Two of them are quite thin, which means there is a plastic smile opportunity for those with eating disorders, and even a token not size 10 girl, to show just how open minded and accepting MM are – or is she the pregnant one?
The Australian girls are a bit tougher, more like the Veronicas than the Dixie Chicks. They look sadder, thinner. More "emo". The Australian site used to have a virtual tour of the Sydney house. Now it appears to be mainly about ways and places to donate money to MM.
The UK girls aren’t on the front of the website. No alley, no homegirls. Just an old "Colour Your World" picture and a chance to Donate. The Canadian girls are more wistful, but more wholesome than the rest, more down to earth. The New Zealand girl is pictured somewhere on a farm. I don’t know if she’s had pimples, much less life and death issues. Someone’s done a lot of work with the boys from marketing.
These girls all have something in common though, apart from being exploited on tacky web sites. These girls are the cannon fodder of Nancy Alcorn. They are her nameless faceless victims. They exist to sell her books, her t-shirts, her cds, her merchandising.
They are there to lay the bricks of the Alcorn Empire.
Any health or welfare organsation can name the theoretical framework they base their practice on and the policies they follow. On every MM web site, enormous promises are made for hope, change, healing and love. The benefits are eternal and infinite. They can be achieved by following the MM program and going to MM classes while there.
What is never outlined is what will be taught and how change will take place.
Mercy Ministries can’t answer these questions either because there is only one way. Nancy’s way. The expertise taught at Mercy Ministries comes only from Nancy Alcorn. No other expert, Christian or otherwise gets a look in. The solution to any of life’s problems at MM is Nancy Alcorn.
In professional rehabilitation centres doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists and counsellors and occupational therapists case manage a client. Each of them have learned from squillions of others that went before them, studied, researched, concluded. Not from one doctor. Not from one psychologist. The client receives a holistic approach to many areas of care, not just what Nancy says.
Mercy Ministries may once have had some genuine foundations and may well have been inspired by good intentions. Those days are long gone – Mercy Ministries exists to promote Nancy Alcorn.
It will not change or improve until Nancy does, and Nancy has no intention of changing what works so well, if for no one else but her. It is a cult, but it uses rehabs not church halls to gain power and money. Mercy Ministries doesn’t exist to save lives any more than Hillsong exists to save souls.
Young women ‘in desperate need’ are merely the krill in Nancy Alcorn’s food chain. She is a shark with no end of prey in site.
[Ed. Note: Nancy Alcorn is the founder of Mercy Ministries. She spent time working with Teen challenge before opening Mercy Ministries. She was tired of not being aloud to preach to her charges. So she founded Mercy Ministries to get around government regulations preventing such. Despite a comprehensive search I can find no evidence of any qualifications in psychology, social work or even a high school diploma]
Any questions for Tanya Levin can be directed through Sean at sbwright [at] gmail.com or in the comments section.
What’s all this Mercy Ministries hullabaloo? See here
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I get the impression that Mark Zschech and Peter Irvine were merely doing Nancy’s bidding at Mercy Ministries Australia.
She says that they have Mercy Ministries facilities all over the world including Australia (indicating that control of Mercy Ministries Australia remains in the US.
Alcorn also says she’s been to Australia 22 times, so it looks like she’s pretty hands-on.
There’s an interesting backgrounder on her here http://www.charismamag.com/display.php?id=9752
It shows that some of her statements have been a little misleading. Yes, she did have a background in working with girls at a Texas correctional facility (explaining Mercy Ministries’ jail-like conditions) but Nancy wasn’t a social worker as such..but the girls athletics coach.
“A native Tennessean and huge sports fan, Alcorn has reached out to troubled young women since college. A serious knee injury kept her from playing sports on a collegiate level; however, for five years she coached young women in the “game of life” as an athletic director for Tennessee’s correctional facility for juvenile delinquent girls.
As time passed, Alcorn became frustrated with the system. She wasn’t seeing changes and thought she might see more results if she worked with younger children, so she asked for and received a transfer into the State Department of Human Services. She supervised foster-care placements in the Nashville area and then began to work with the Emergency Child Protective Services Unit, investigating charges of abuse and neglect.
Alcorn heard about Teen Challenge while working at Child Protective Services and began to do volunteer work for the organization. She saw how God’s Word transformed people and renewed their minds, and the positive results gave her a sense of hope that she hadn’t felt in a long time. In 1980, Alcorn accepted a full-time position to serve as the director of women for Nashville Teen Challenge.
In 1982, some close friends of hers moved to Monroe, Louisiana. Alcorn went to visit them and discovered that the area had a huge need for a place like Teen Challenge. When she went back to Nashville, she couldn’t stop thinking about the need.
Finally, she took her vision to the board of Teen Challenge. They liked the idea of establishing a home in Monroe and including an outreach to pregnant teens–but it wasn’t part of their plan.
With Teen Challenge’s blessing and a $1,000 contribution from the organization, she left Tennessee on January 15, 1983, to launch a home in Monroe on her own.”
You also might be interested in an interview with Alcorn from April on the far-right fundamentalist American Family Radio.
http://www.afr.net/audio/040908.mp3
Interview begins 15 minutes into the audio.
Nice to see Tanya writing again BTW.
Lance
ex-Signposts2/Signposts
Lance,
Thanks for dropping by and for passing on the info. I find it very interesting that she had contact with Teen Challenge considering their appalling record in the states.
Indeed it would seem that their mindset has influenced the structure of Mercy.
hey david, here is that site i was talking about where i made the extra cash this summer, it’s pretty cool… anyway,
check it out ..