World Evangelical Body Cuts Ties with David Jang's Embattled Olivet Sect

ALEX J. ROUHANDEH AND NAVEED JAMALI

Newsweek

July 19, 2023


The World Evangelical Alliance has severed ties with David Jang's Olivet Assembly, the Christian sect affiliated with Olivet University which is under federal criminal investigation and faces other legal challenges in the United States.

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), a 175 year old group, represents 600 million Christians around the world, the organization says. Jang's association with the alliance offered it a badge of credibility with mainstream American Christians.

Over the past two decades, Jang has expanded his Olivet University into more than half a dozen U.S. states and turned his church, the World Olivet Assembly, into a global denomination with members in more than 160 countries. For much of that time, Jang has faced allegations from critics that he was running a messianic cult. Olivet rejects such allegations.

"There are no other ties to his organization," the WEA said in a statement, confirming that it removed references to the World Olivet Assembly and Olivet University from its website in June, and that it was no longer using office space at Olivet University's former campus in Dover, New York.

WEA declined to comment on why Chief Communications Officer Timothy Goropevsek, a Jang disciple and Olivet University alum, had left in June after nearly 12 years, saying the matter was a "private career decision."

Newsweek is owned by two former members of the Olivet sect. The two say they have resolved their differences but some of the legal disputes resulting from their break with Jang continue to play out in court.

Olivet University and the World Olivet Assembly did not respond to requests for comment on the WEA's decision.

Jang joined WEA's North American Council in 2007 and the alliance helped the Korean American pastor fend off allegations that he was a heretic who taught his followers to see him as a messianic figure known as the "second coming Christ." In August 2012, Christianity Today, a publication founded by prominent evangelist Billy Graham, published an investigation saying it had found evidence of the "second coming Christ" controversy. A few days later WEA issued a statement dismissing the concerns.

WEA told Newsweek its affiliation with Olivet ended as a result of changes to membership rules agreed to in 2019. Olivet University and World Olivet Assembly as well as other Jang affiliated organizations declined to apply for a new category of membership, the new statement said.

"We have now just have cleared and amended our membership lists," the statement read, explaining why Olivet was removed from the WEA website in June.

It was not clear how the timeline, based on a change of rules in 2019, fit with WEA's statement to Newsweek on July 11, 2022, when it said: "Olivet University is a member in good standing with WEA". The alliance did not respond to a request to explain the discrepancy.

A few days before that July 2022 statement, the New York State education regulator had shut down New York operations of Olivet University, saying the school had failed to institute necessary changes after pleading guilty to charges brought in a money laundering investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney.

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2. California moves to shut down David Jang's Olivet University as feds circle

3. Olivet University faces accreditor ultimatum as probes, violations pile up



The California attorney general has filed an administrative action looking to close Olivet University in the state, where its main campus is located. That campus in Anza, California was raided by agents from the Homeland Security Department in 2021 as part of a separate investigation into money laundering, visa fraud and labor trafficking, Newsweek reported.

Jang's legal troubles have started to hurt his sect's ties to mainstream Christian groups.

The National Association of Evangelicals in America suspended Olivet last year, and the church left the group in May. Olivet University's sole accreditor, the Association for Biblical Higher Education, put its status on review last year until it demonstrated compliance with financial rules, ethics and regulations.



https://www.newsweek.com/world-evangelical-body-cuts-ties-david-jangs-embattled-olivet-sect-1814127

Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center

Atlas Obscura

WINGDALE, NEW YORK
Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center An abandoned asylum, once on the cutting edge of lobotomies, is now the property of an unusual religious sect.

 

An ornate door

The small hamlet of Wingdale, within the town of Dover, New York, is home to the ruins of the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center.

Despite its proximity to New York State Route 22, the stunningly beautiful property has been shrouded in mystery for decades. In 1924, The Harlem Valley State Hospital opened its doors to the public. Later to be renamed the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, the hospital was chartered “for the care and treatment of the insane” and included infrastructure that had previously constituted the Wingdale Prison.

Over the course of 70 years of operation, the facility treated thousands of patients who had been deemed mentally ill. Sprawling across almost 900 acres and encompassing more than 80 buildings, the hospital had its own golf course, bowling alley, baseball field, bakery, and a massive dairy farm that supported an in-house ice-cream parlor. At its peak, the facility housed 5,000 patients and 5,000 employees.

Over the years, the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center adopted numerous experimental methods of treatment of the mentally ill. In the 1930s, the facility joined several other institutions on the vanguard of a new insulin shock therapy for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia and other compulsive disorders. Later, when the method of electro-shock therapy was created, the hospital was again a pioneer in implementing the method as a treatment for its patients in 1941. When neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman developed a new method for treating a wide range of psychological conditions that became known as a lobotomy, the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center was the preeminent institution for frontal lobotomy in the state of New York.

As with most mental health institutions in New York and across the country, the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center saw a gradual decline in enrollment upon the introduction of psychotropic drugs such as thorazine. When the hospital closed its doors in 1994, it had been on a trajectory of decline for a number of years. For the better part of 20 years, the once-busy campus slowly deteriorated. Visited only by night-watchmen and would-be vandals, the buildings sat unused and the grounds slowly grew unkempt. Ghost stories and whispers grew alongside the weeds of the property.

In 2013, however, a new chapter in the strange history of the Wingdale property began. A company called Olivet Management. L.L.C., representing Olivet University, a tiny evangelical Christian college in California, acquired 503 acres of the property for $20 million — with an option to purchase the rest of the property at a later date. Olivet University, led by a Korean pastor named David Jang, is a member of the Evangelical Assembly of Presbyterian Churches of America, a small conservative religious offshoot that is not affiliated with the main U.S. Presbyterian Church. Jang has been linked with a religious leader named Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who has been widely criticized as a cult leader.

Upon acquiring the property, Olivet immediately began pruning back the unruly growth on the property, creating a new soccer field, and removing asbestos from inside of the buildings. Representatives of the school say they plan on repurposing the existing buildings to create dining halls, dormitories, and classrooms.

The accelerated pace of renovation, however, attracted suspicion from regulatory agencies, and late in 2013 the Occupational Health and Safety Administration of the Department of Labor imposed $2,359,000 of fines on Olivet for exposing workers to unsafe quantities of asbestos and lead. The reason for the frantic pace of renovation remains unknown.

Until plans for creating this new school come to fruition, the remarkable structures that formerly composed the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center will remain objects of intrigue for travelers along the eastern border of New York State.

#INSANE ASYLUMS#ABANDONED INSANE ASYLUMS#CULTS#ABANDONED

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/harlem-valley-psychiatric-center