Somebody asked me this very question, via email, and I kept my answer so I wouldn't have to type it all out again. It's long, though, so you public school educated people will prolly just wannna' skip it.
Some time ago you told me that you had seen Linda Hyles youtube video attacking her father, and that it bothered you very much. You wrote to me and asked me my opinion. I told you I would get back to you about it. I knew that I needed to give this answer some detail, and that this would take some time and attention, and I appreciate your patience with me while I did so. I’m actually going to go into more depth than your question implies because I want you to understand the background of why I’m going to say what I’m going to say. I also, frankly, need to write down my thoughts so I have them gathered in one place, and so that I can refer back to them as necessary.
I first heard of Bro. Hyles as an older boy. A struggling local church called an HAC graduate as its pastor in the early 1980’s, and as his church prospered my Dad (who was the pastor of our church, but a TTU graduate) and he became good friends. My Dad and this local pastor began to regularly attend Pastors’ School together. My oldest sister enrolled in TTU in 1980, but gradually, as my three other sisters finished school, they all chose to enroll in HAC during the 80’s. I began attending Pastors’ School with my Dad about ’85 or so, and continued all through my teen years, in fact for about 23 consecutive years, I think. I also attended Youth Conference twice in high school, although I didn’t like that near as much. Our family also routinely drove to hear Bro. Hyles preach at area churches when he was in our region of the state of Ohio. For a while, my Dad got his weekly preaching tapes as well, and I listened to them also.
At first, I was well and truly enamored. He was clearly a tremendous preacher. He was humorous. He had a great compassion. He had built the greatest church I had ever seen. He had depth. His beliefs largely lined up with ours, and it was so much fun to hear a guy with such a large church say what we believed. It gave us such a feeling of encouragement. As my teenage years progressed my sisters really enjoyed their college days, and so you can see how Bro. Hyles and HAC became a very large part of my life.
I was 16 when the first serious salvo was launched at Bro. Hyles ministry by Robert Sumner in 1989. I heard some vague references from my sisters to ‘criticism’ and ‘attacks’ but paid it no mind. One day that summer, in our home, I somehow stumbled across that Sumner article. I can remember reading it while riding in the car to attend a graduation open house of a friend. I can also remember one of my sisters getting mad at me, and telling me it was all a pack of lies. I told her these were serious charges, and that they shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. A few weeks later Bro. Hyles answer/defense to the Sumner article showed up in the mail (I think you can find both of these on the internet, if you look). I had taken the Sumner charges seriously, but I found Bro. Hyles defense compelling. Granted, I probably wanted to, but bear in mind I hadn’t dismissed Sumner out of hand. In that defense by Bro. Hyles he furnished some documentary proof showing that Sumner was wrong in several of his main attacks, namely the financial ones. He could not prove himself innocent of the charge of adultery (as such is impossible), but, by and large, I came down on the side of the Bro. Hyles in that particular tangle. Back then I found Sumner borderline bitter, and careless with the facts in his attack, and both of those were a huge turn off to me. At the same time, I also had my eyes opened a bit regarding the Camelot of HAC, hearing of the Dave Hyles disaster for the first time, seeing the horrific truth of it, and realizing how awful that was. I still have, 23 years later, the same basic view of Sumner, his motives, and his Biblical Evangelist attack article as I did that summer. My father also made arrangements for us, even though we didn’t own a TV, to watch the Hyles piece on ‘A Current Affair’ that aired around 1990 or so. I didn’t find the attacks in it compelling, and I found Bro. Hyles’ defense credible.
Two years later I was faced with the decision of where to go to college. It was just sort of expected that I would follow my sisters and enroll in HAC. To tell the truth, I fought it a bit, at least in my mind. I wanted to be a trailblazer, not just go to school where I would always be so-and-so’s brother. I also had a bit of concern in my mind for the ever-increasingly shrill calls for ‘loyalty’, ‘100% support’, and the assumption that the critics were simply out to tear down God’s work. Even back then I didn’t want to check my brain at the door for anybody. I vividly recall, after finally choosing to attend HAC b/c I didn’t see any viable alternative, I arrived and was even more appalled than I expected by the circle-the-wagons mentality. A month after I got there in the fall of ’91 I sat down and wrote my high school principal a long letter about this. We had already had extended conversations about it, and would have many more. He was also a graduate of HAC, but was increasingly concerned with some of the behavior of certain staff and graduates, and had basically distanced himself from them. I wrote him that I greatly valued his continued friendship b/c I didn’t want to turn into one of the mindless drones I saw around me, parroting the party line, and thinking HAC was perfect and everybody else was awful.
I mention this because it reveals my inner attitude even back then. I had chosen my college as carefully as I could, knowing its leader wasn’t perfect, no longer enamored, but certainly not embittered either. I didn’t believe Bro. Hyles was a fraud, nor did I believe he was the fourth member of the Trinity. I believed he was a tremendous preacher and pastor, and that he, and the church and college he had built, were the best place for me to go as an IFB preacherboy to learn how to be a pastor. At the same time, I didn’t want to turn into a koolaid drinking hacker either.
A couple of years into my college time I heard some whispers and allusion to two particular individuals, ex-members of the church, who had written whole books against Bro. Hyles. I certainly didn’t have any easy access to them, but even back then I was a book hound. I eventually found them in the non-circulating portion of the Lake County Library, and over the course of several off-work days spent entirely at the library I read them both, cover to cover.
One was The Wizard of God by Victor Nischik. I had first seen his name in Sumner’s 1989 piece, and then seen him interviewed in the 1990 ‘A Current Affair’ program. I knew he was the husband of the lady, Jennie Nischik, accused of being basically Bro. Hyles’ mistress. My reaction to his book was incredulity. It was filled to the brim with veiled allusions, opinion obviously motivated by bitterness, puzzling claims, and personal insults. What I didn’t find in it was any substantial evidence or persuasive reasoning supporting his positions. It didn’t help his cause any that I found the track record of his life to be totally inconsistent with his claims. If he really thought Bro. Hyles and his wife were committing adultery for 20 years why would he stay on as a deacon in the church, and a song leader in the pastor’s Sunday School class? That made no sense to me then, and doesn’t now. He says he stayed for the sake of his children, but that is the reason someone stays in a marriage, not on the deacon board of the pastor who is supposedly making his wife a kept woman! It boggles the reasoned mind to think that Vic could sit there for 20 years, listen to that man preach three times a week, help him in his Sunday School class, attend deacons’ meetings, and all that time know the pastor was sleeping with his wife.
About 10 years later, after I was in the pastorate and the internet had been invented, I began to spend time on the Fighting Fundamentalist Forums. I stayed on them for 10 years, across various websites, and had a back and forth with everybody under the sun about every possible issue. Hundreds of times I have seen the Hyles story discussed on there. Much to my surprise, I discovered one of the other posters was Vic Nischik himself. So for years I got to read his conversations, and read his verbatim positions offered from his own mouth, on the Jack Hyles situation. Over a period of about three years I found Vic to be a total and complete liar, a rude insensitive jerk, and an occasionally foul-mouthed sparring partner. If Vic told me today that the grass in my front yard was green I would go out front to check to make sure. I wouldn’t trust him even as far as I could throw him. Consequently, after reading his entire book, and then having extended conversations with him, and watching his conversations with others, I give him zero, and I mean zero, credibility.
The other book, Fundamental Seduction, by Voyle Glover, was not so easily dismissed by me, then or now. Voyle Glover is an attorney who spent many years at First Baptist of Hammond and then gradually became disenchanted for a variety of reasons. Those reasons became so compelling to him, especially in light of the continued popularity of Bro. Hyles around the country, that he felt he had to write about it. Voyle, being an attorney and a careful one, wrote a much better book than Vic Nischik. I don't mean by that it was more readable, but that it was more credible. He furnished witness testimony to a variety of things, police reports, etc. It was that book that largely convinced me that Dave Hyles was a total and complete fraud, and had been for years, and I kept that in mind during all of Dave's various attempts at a comeback. But in that book Voyle, for all that he hurled at Bro. Hyles, never actually accused him of adultery. Borderline cult status as a leader? Yes. Adultery? No. The reason Voyle didn't go there was because he knew he didn't have any evidence.
A moment ago I referenced the Fundamental Forums. Just as I was surprised to discover Vic Nischik posted there, so I was surprised to discover Voyle Glover did as well. As with Vic, I've had many internet conversations with Voyle, and watched his interactions for years with others, including in many discussions about Bro. Hyles. My estimation of Voyle is the complete opposite of my estimation for Vic. Vic is a total and complete liar. Voyle I found to be compassionate, graceful, firm, fact-oriented, and completely credible. In fact, because of this I began to peel back my own internal estimation of Bro. Hyles, though I never for one moment believed Bro. Hyles to be an adulterer, keeping a deacon's wife as his mistress.
Along the way, in those forums, I interacted with a number of different people who pointed me in the direction of other information. For instance, Paula Hyles, Dave Hyles' first wife, was recorded over the phone in a discussion with a pastor who was trying to establish the facts of the situation. Paula handled herself well, and she clearly confirmed Dave's serial adultery, but she herself wouldn't accuse Bro. Hyles of adultery either. At the same time, she, along with Voyle's book, Fundamental Seduction, painted a picture of a Hyles home life that was basically dysfunctional for at least a decade, if not more.
I also spoke with several people who confirmed to me that they had personally told Bro. Hyles about Dave Hyles' adultery in private conversations long before Dave Hyles was caught at Miller Road in 1984. This is important b/c I heard Bro. Hyles, with my own ears, repeatedly state that he had no prior knowledge of his son's sins prior to Dave being caught in 1984. Because these people told me privately the same thing again and again, independently corroborating each other, I now believe Bro. Hyles openly and repeatedly lied about what he knew about Dave Hyles and when he knew it. I also know Bro. Hyles lied about the door in his office that linked up to Jennie Nischik's office b/c I've talked to a number of people who, again independently, confirmed its existence during those years.
Most of this stuff gradually settled to the bottom of the proverbial internet pond until the recent Jack Schaap disaster. That brought people out of the woodwork, asserting all manner of abuse and coverup at First Baptist of Hammond going back decades. In the past few months I have spent probably dozens of hours reading the various internet boards, and talking to people inside and outside of First Baptist. I've done that b/c I have still have many friends there, of course, and b/c I love Bro. Hyles and reference him frequently. I also, of course, am interested in the direction of the largest independent Baptist church in the country, and in the direction of my alma mater. I have found almost all of the chatter is simply the old attacks being recycled second-hand, or difficult personal experiences under various faculty members now being labeled as abusive. I give most of them very little to no credibility in my mind.
Of course, Linda Murphrey's situation is completely different. Her TED talk forces everybody who has a position on Bro. Hyles to sit up and take notice. It is the first time she, to my knowledge, has publicly stated her opinion. It is the first time, to my knowledge, that she has publicly acknowledged her past and commented on it.
So what did I think of Linda's talk? Not much, to be brutally honest. She played fast and loose with a large number of facts, either to impress her audience, or to gain sympathy for herself. This is an extremely critical point with me. As with Vic Nischik, when someone issues an attack the way they handle the truth is the biggest single window I have into their credibility. Linda, in short, butchered the truths I know to be true. Why then, would I grant her a hearing on the thinks I don't know to be true? I can't. As the months have rolled on (we are now in mid 2013) I have come to the conclusion that Linda is motivated by money. She long ago turned her back on the faith, embracing new age mysticism. Now I think she is milking her past, taking full advantage of the public spotlight trained on her brother-in-law, Jack Schaap, in order to make as much money off her story as possible. That is my opinion, certainly, but one I think is an educated one, and one I hold for a variety of what I think are good reasons.
…so, in the end, where am I at? I've read almost every word published, written, blogged, forumed, recorded, or offered by all of the various critics, including some I haven't mentioned in this lengthy reply. I have read what the Hyles defenders, especially those who knew him very well, have said in reponse. I have not kept my head in the sand. I have compared what I have heard/read with the lives of those saying it, and what I saw firsthand in my six years at First Baptist Church under Bro. Hyles ministry.
I believe Bro. Hyles was a highly gifted and talented man, who was largely real and genuine, but was also almost fatally flawed. I believe, as time went on, he crossed over from being a tremendous asset to the cause of Christ to being a net minus, especially when his legacy is taken into account. I do not believe he was an adulterer. I do not believe he was a fraud. I do believe that pride, hubris, and wrong-headed concepts of loyalty and justice and truth basically ruined what he spent a lifetime building. I believe he was, on balance, a bad father, a good pastor (for most of his years in the pastorate), and a good then bad then good husband. I still reference him in preaching, but in context I have also told my people all of these things, or at least all of my conclusions about him. His picture still hangs in our church foyer, along with other great Chicago preachers such as Billy Sunday and D. L. Moody, who were both almost certainly as flawed and as great as he was.
I still value many, many things he taught me. At the same time, I have weighed others and found them wanting. But, in my (what I think is) educated opinion, he was not a fraud. He was real and genuine. He loved the Lord. He gave his life to serve God. And that life helped me very much, and is still helping me. At the same time, I realize he conducted himself in the latter half of his life in such a way as to almost completely ruin any legacy he could leave to succeeding generations. And that is probably, on balance, both a good and a just thing.
The rest? Well, The Day will determine it…
