So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXVI - The Pyramid

 There was a lot going on from the mid to late nineties, so I may be jumping back and forth regarding the years and events. It was around this time that the escalation in cultishness began to have an affect on my marriage. I mentioned in earlier installments that (1) My wife Pat and some of the other women constituted an informal cabal, where they picked apart the actions of local leadership and gossiped about their fellow "believers" and (2) A new leader was appointed for Lincoln who was trained from Day One in Martindale's post-"Fog Years" paranoia and iron-fist style of leadership. These two facts would come together to make my home life miserable. 

[Pat & I got divorced as the 00's began, and there were many reasons for it, some which had nothing to do with The Way, but others that very much did; I will try to only address the actual cult behaviors and avoid reliving a years long plunge toward divorce]

One of the first things that Fred did upon settling in to his new responsibilities as Way Branch Coordinator in Lincoln was to take on what I have referred to as The Women's Cabal. One thing that many people don't realize about cults is the existence of competing bases of power. Theoretically there's a leader at the top of the cult pyramid who calls all the shots and all the cult members fall into line, obeying the cult leader's demands. That's certainly true, but what that picture misses is the parellel levels on the pyramid. 

The Way referred to their organizational structure as The Way Tree, which when you looked at it, was just an upside-down pyramid with the power and authority working its way up from the roots, rather than down from the apex of the pyramid. The cult leader's title was the President, he and two other members of a Board of Trustees ran the organization from the root, the New Knoxville Ohio headquarters. Springing up from the root was the trunk, which represented the entire United States. (In theory, other countries could be categorized as trunks if they were large enough, I believe the country coordinator of the United Kingdom at one time was considered the Trunk Coordinator of Europe). The trunk was divided up into limbs, each state was its own limb. (There was an intermediate un-tree-like step, the region, which was made up of several states, and in later years as The Way shrunk, several states would be combined into one limb). Each limb was divided into branches. A branch was composed of multiple home fellowships, usually in the same city. Originally a branch was envisioned as having seven home fellowships, in the 00's Martindale, based on a poor understanding of grammar and an over-reliance on the Old Testament, decided that a "branch" was actually two or more home fellowships. The home fellowships were called twigs, with the individual members as leaves. (There were also intermediate levels between a limb and a branch during The Way's membership heyday — four branches were an area, four areas, or large geographic areas within a state were territories.) 

That was the official Way Tree, but circles of influence existed and functioned outside the official hierarchy. The Way membership was based at the lower levels on a series of classes. Foundational, Intermediate and Advanced Power For Abundant Living. Graduates of the Advanced Class were considered to have achieved a level of knowledge whereupon they could be looked upon as potential future leaders. Advanced Class grads were often called upon to teach at fellowship meetings and could have some influence on what went on in an area. WOWvets were another outside-the hierarchy caste. Veterans of the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program were looked at with awe by those who never participated. Sometimes alternate sources of influence derived from people who just had natural leadership ability but for some reason weren't officially sanctioned leaders. Then there's the amorphous group informally known as "Old Grads". Old Grads weren't necessarily old in years, certainly not senior citizens, but they were Way members who had been around for as long as anyone could remember, having taken the PFAL class in the seventies or early eighties. They were usually Advanced Class grads and were often WOWvets as well. An Old Grad may have come to an area as a WOW and "opened it up", i.e. started the first Twig Fellowship that eventually grew into a branch or a limb. Several members of the Women's Cabal, including my ex-wife Pat, were "Old Grads". Several of them had come to Lincoln in 1972 or '73 as Wows and started the first fellowships. Some had left and come back, some had been here all along. 

One reason that power bases outside the hierarchy flourished during this time was what then-President of The Way Martindale called "The Fog Years", a time of internal divisions. Various leaders spent several years accusing each other of deviating from "The Word of God" as defined by founder Wierwille. When the dust had settled Martindale remained as the de jure head of The Way while other leaders started their own offshoot ministries. This emboldened Way believers at all levels of The Way Tree to question, not necessarily Way doctrine, but individual leaders' fealty to it. This is what the Women's Cabal saw as their mission, and what Martindale, through his newly appointed field leaders such as Fred Brown, was determined to quash.

Start from the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXV - Fred Brown

After the so-called Fog Years, Craig Martindale was determined that the rebellion by his senior leaders would not happen again. In his secondary role as Director of The Way Corps he made sure that anyone who made it through the four year program was not only doctrinally toeing the line, but was also personally loyal to him. Previous Nebraska state leaders had graduated from the program before the shit had hit the fan. Gary had been appointed state leader simply because he was the only Way Corps person in the state to remain when the rest of them had left to join splinter groups or start their own. Fred Brown was different. His entire time in The Way Corps was under Martindale's bullying paranoia and refusal to accept any disloyalty, which he defined rather broadly. Fred was a True Believer and was fully on board with Martindale's mission to purge The Way of any dissent. 

Of course dissent was framed as devil spirit possession and loyalty reflected being "on the Word". 

Convenient. 

At the time each home fellowship met twice weekly. Once mid-week and again on Sunday morning. At this period in Way history, at least in Nebraska, most of the active participants were married couples with children, so oftentimes family commitments such as sports, or sick kids too precedence over Way fellowship meetings. It was now mandatory — and attendance was taken. "Witnessing", or organized attempts to recruit, were, pre-Fred, casual affairs and consisted of "believers" talking to people in social situations. I personally recruited a guy named Donnie at O'Rourke's tavern one night. In the new administration witnessing nights took place at regular times, also mandatory. We were to keep track of how many contacts we made each week and how many of those ending up attending a Way fellowship meeting. Little by little, all aspects of our lives were tracked by Way leadership. But it still hadn't gotten as bad as it was going to get. 

The real purges hadn't started yet. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXVI

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIV - The Nineties (for real)

Like any organization, how precisely theory and practice coincide depends on the people who are tasked with executing the rules and regulations. We've all worked for companies where everything changed when a new manager was brought in. The Way's leaders were no different. The chaos that followed Wierwille's death and the proliferation of splinter groups led by former Way leaders resulted in a culture where non-leaders would push back against leaders that they didn't like, convinced that they held the true and accurate interpretation of how things should be. 

When we reestablished our relationship with The Way the state leaders were Way Corps graduates Gary and Mary Ehman. For the most part Gary was an easy-going guy. Oddly, for an organization that put so much emphasis on reading and researching the Bible, Gary was functionally illiterate. This made it difficult for him teach the finer points of the definitions of Greek and Hebrew words, which The Way put much stock in, when he could barely read English. In contrast to Gary's friendly and non-dogmatic approach to leadership, the President of The Way, Craig Martindale, was continually teaching his version of fire and brimstone, which included no room for those who didn't toe the party line. It wasn't as if Martindale's polemics were only heard by the top tier of leadership as Wierwille's were — his weekly Sunday rantings were sent out in cassette tape form to anyone who wanted them. Often an area would be "dialed in" directly to hear the teachings live. Several women in our area, inspired by Martindale's clear direction on what was "on" and what was "off" informally anointed themselves as the arbiters of what was "off The Word" in the lives of the local Way "believers". My then-wife Pat was one of them, Gina, the wife of a Lincoln fellowship overseer, was another. 

Even though the actual local leader was not pushing the extremism of the head man, the women's circle was doing the work of evangelizing behind the scenes. Fingers were pointed, people were being accused of being "possessed" by devil spirits, even Gary was the recipient of these accusations. It was a bubbling cauldron of suspicion and judgement. And since Gary wasn't getting involved, neither taking their side or condemning their actions, there was no outlet. The pressure was building. 

Each year, around summertime, the Board of Trustees and other top leaders would work on Way Corps assignments. New graduates would be given their new jobs, veterans would find out if they were staying in their positions or being moved around. That year, Gary and Mary would be reassigned and our new state leader would be a single guy — Ed Wentworth. Ed was also pretty easy going, so nothing changed. Ed lasted a year. His replacement would be a newly minted Way Corps graduate named Fred Brown. With Fred's arrival everything would change — things were going full cult!

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIII - The Nineties (prelude)

A lot was going into the nineties. My first wife, Pat, and I completed our family — Steven, our youngest of six children, was born in December 1990; another child became deathly ill due to mold and bacteria after our rental home was flooded; there were continual changes and challenges at my job in circulation at the Omaha World-Herald newspaper; we started home schooling; and we were adapting to the changes that re-involvement in The Way was causing. 

In late 1990, when we got back involved with The Way, Pat and I had been married for nine years. We had developed a routine that had nothing to do with organized religion, including The Way, although we still believed broadly in the doctrines taught by The Way. It wasn't really obvious back then, but Pat and I had two divergent world views. Pat would have fit right in with today's right-wing Christian Nationalist types. She had a down-in-the-bone conviction that there was a literal spiritual battle going on in the world, literally believed that the Devil and his minions were actively working against Christians. As we had isolated ourselves from, not only The Way, but from any type of organized religion, she didn't have the vocabulary to articulate those beliefs. I, on the other hand, wasn't as literal-minded in my beliefs. I still had some residual thoughts about devil spirits, prayer, etc., but didn't really make it part of my daily life. The other characteristic in which we were opposites was that I was usually willing to compromise, or reach a consensus, whether it was in my marriage, work life, or personal relationships, while Pat was more of a black-and-white thinker — no grey areas whatsoever. Most of the time this didn't present any problems — areas that she was uncompromising on, were often areas here I could go either way; when it did present problems, I acquiesced to her wishes in order to maintain peace. This difference in personality would become important as our nineties in The Way progressed. 

The main divergence in opinion came about when our two oldest were in fifth and third grades respectively. Ben, our oldest, got bullied a lot at school. Chris, two years younger, didn't have that problem, but was habitually behind in his schoolwork and had continual struggles with reading and understanding. Pat thought that the solution to these problems would be home schooling. 

I'm not saying that home schooling is always a good choice, or always a bad choice. I certainly don't accept the criticism that home schoolers are socially awkward and have no friends, or never leave the house. My kids were involved in sports (and in fact were outstanding in track), 4-H and several of them achieved the rank of Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. The younger children were involved in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. But home schooling, if done right, takes a lot of time and effort. Initially, Pat put in that time and effort. She had gone to college to be a teacher, although she did not graduate. She was organized and for the first several years did put in the time and effort. My role was more peripheral. I had a full time job that took me out of town several days a week, so Pat did most of the work. Maybe the fact that the bulk of the work of home schooling would fall upon Pat made it easy for me to give in. I also didn't have any strong arguments against home schooling. 

Although the initial impetus for considering home schooling was Chris' need for more one-on-one attention, and Ben's being bullied, the rationale changed to more of an emphasis on spiritual warfare. The local home schooling support group was dominated by evangelical-fundamentalist Christians, who believed that the public school system was the Devil's playground and that public school students were being actively taught to turn against God. Pat absorbed this mindset; it meshed perfectly with The Way's position on the so-called spiritual battle, even though The Way did not encourage home schooling. 

As we transitioned into Way life, we (at least one of us) was primed to see everything as a God vs. The Devil struggle, yet not at all prepared for the increasing level of control that being involved in The Way necessitated. Yet we both had retained a belief that Wierwille, the original leader of The Way, had hit upon an interpretation and application of The Bible that was, not only correct, but not to be found anywhere outside The Way. Problems that we had encountered in The Way we chalked up to people, leaders who had strayed from the path set by Wierwille, not to The Way itself. 

In some ways we were primed for the increased cultishness of The Way in the nineties, in others we were ticking bombs of rebellion, waiting for our moment to explode.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXIV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXII - The Man of God for Our Time

Back in the seventies and early eighties, pretty much anyone who was interested could show up unannounced to a Way meeting, and unless you were disruptive or argumentative you could keep coming back for as long as you liked, although you weren't really considered "in" until you took the PFAL class. Things were different in 1990. Part XXX - From The Frying Pan outlined what was going on in The Way during our absence, the splintering of the organization that accompanied a rebellion among top leaders. Trust wasn't as easy to come by as it had been. 

So, we had our meeting with Gary & Mary, the Limb (state) Coordinators for The Way of Nebraska. While from our point of view the meeting was simply to touch base with the Way leaders and find out where fellowships were being held and when a PFAL class was going to run. That meeting looked a lot different from the other side. Gary and Mary were checking us out to make sure we weren't trying to infiltrate The Way from one of the splinter groups — to make sure that we would be good little cult members and not rock the boat. 

The first thing that we were asked to do after we were contingently invited to be part of The Way was to attend a weekend presentation of what was euphemistically called "The Leadership Tapes". As I referred to in Part XXX - From The Frying Pan, Way President Martindale at some point decided that he was going to assert his de jure authority and demand that Way Corps leaders at all levels decide whether they would stand with him, the one anointed by Founder Wierwille, or to the instigator of the rebellion, Chris Geer. This resulted in an exodus of roughly 80% of Way leaders and membership. In order to regain control of the narrative he taught a series of seminars, first to the remaining leaders and later to non-leaders, explaining his understanding of what had happened to The Way and to him during what he began to refer to as "The Fog Years". These seminars were taped and were initially called "The Galatians Tapes", after Galatians 3:1 — "Oh foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?", but later were renamed "The Leadership Tapes". A group of us gathered at the home of Gary and Mary outside Syracuse (a small town a half hour east of our home in Lincoln) We spent the whole weekend listening to Martindale's rationale for allowing the organization he was entrusted with to explode and his plans for moving forward.

Martindale's long and rambling explanation was predicated on the belief that 

1. The Way was more than just an organization. It was literally all that was left of God's "household"
2. V.P. Wierwille was ordained by God to bring new light to this generation 
3. L. Craig Martindale was anointed by Wierwille to be his successor and to lead this "faithful remnant"

This put anyone who opposed him in the position of opposing God. 

While the belief in Wierwille and The Way being on a special mission to reestablish First Century truths was widely accepted and taken for granted, in the past it had been viewed as Wierwille accepting a divine commission to study and teach, rather than some pseudo-infallibility. Sure, there was an expectation that Wierwille's word was law and his interpretation of The Bible was not to be gainsaid, but it was more due to his skill at Biblical research rather than an intrinsic inability to be wrong. Now we were being encouraged to believe that there was some kind of magical-spiritual something that was conferred by God on Wierwille and passed on to Martindale that made any argument an argument against God.

Game changer.

The tapes broke down in minute detail, according to Martindale's point of view, the steps that his main antagonist, Wierwille's former bodyguard Chris Geer, took to undermine his authority and plunge The Way into chaos. Geer was portrayed not merely as power hungry, or a trouble maker, but almost wizardly in his abilities and demonic in his inspiration. Throughout the seminar, Martindale identified what he said were specific "devil spirits" (some Christians refer to these simply as "demons") operating within, not only Geer, but virtually every other person who opposed Martindale. This was not something being discussed as theoretical, or behind closed doors, or as a fringe idea; this was now the out-in-the-open, officially sanctioned policy and position of The Way. Martindale is "The Man of God for Our Time" (later jokingly turned into the acrostic MOGFOT) and anyone who opposes him, in any way, is possessed by devil spirits. 

Why didn't we run away as fast as we could after this? Mainly because we still harbored the thinking that the teaching found in The Way was as close to truth and Biblical accuracy as you could get, and we had missed the years of internal conflict, therefore missing out on hearing the other side's version of the conflict. At any rate, we were in the thick of it now.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXIII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXI - Getting Back In

The Way did not consider you one of them until after you had taken what they called the foundational class, Power for Abundant Living (PFAL). You could show up to their meetings, even contribute time and money, but without graduating from PFAL, you were just another "unbeliever". Even though my wife and I were not involved throughout most of the eighties, we still considered ourselves believers, and still viewed PFAL as the way to gain a basic knowledge of the Bible, even though we were not at the time involved with The Way. The usual minimum age that children were allowed to take PFAL was twelve (with parental permission). Toward the end of the eighties our two oldest children were approaching that age, so we tried systematically teaching them from the PFAL syllabus and collateral material. It was somewhat less than successful. 

Those of us who got involved in The Way in the seventies were generally high school or college students. We were also enthusiastically looking for answers. Part of the appeal of what The Way provided was that it was different from the religion that we were brought up with, different from our parents' religion. It was a way to rebel. We were unsophisticated enough in scriptural study to be unaware how shoddy Wierwille's "Biblical research" actually was, but curious enough to care about the minutia of things like "four crucified" or whether Jesus was or wasn't God. Those of who got involved when we were teenagers were now raising teenagers of our own, and PFAL was just "Mom's & Dad's religion" to them. However I didn't realize at the time that the lack of enthusiasm that I was seeing in my own sons was pretty common among second generation Way kids. Wanting to give our children the foundation in "Biblical truth" that I had, we decided that we would seek out the local Way leaders and get our oldest son enrolled in a PFAL class. 

At the time I don't think we wanted to get wholeheartedly back involved in The Way, but just get our kids through PFAL. We knew a few people who were still active in The Way and asked them to set up a meeting with the local Way leaders — Gary & Mary, Way Corps graduates who were the Limb (aka state) Leaders of Nebraska, who also ran a home fellowship. That meeting was to affect the next ten years of our lives. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXII

Workin' Man - Part XXXIII - Remote Work

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 Remote work on a large scale was approved in April 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic. I was given equipment and remote access to Department of Revenue computer systems and worked from my home. In late 2021 the Tax Commissioner directed that, while remote work was still permitted, all employees would have to work in the office on a regular basis some of the time. My group was only required to come in once per month. Department-wide, productivity did not suffer, and many of us were in fact more efficient. If we wanted to work from home we had to sign a remote work agreement which stipulated that remote work was a privilege, not a right, which was somewhat insulting given that there were mutual advantages to the arrangement, but there was no getting around it. When I was promoted to Senior Agent in the Refund Claims Group I was told that the standard was one day in the office (Monday) where the whole team was in the office together and one additional day at our own discretion. If I was actively training a new person the requirement increased to four days each week. I thought this was fair, since a new hire definitely benefitted from face-to-face contact with their trainer. One of the up sides to remote work, was if you were feeling under the weather, rather than taking a sick day, you could still be productive by working at home and sparing your coworkers from catching whatever bug you had. 

One huge change was paperwork reduction. Even though we all had computers, and the claims we were working often came to us online, we still printed everything out. Multiple copies of forms had to be signed and distributed to various stakeholders. Once most of us decamped to our domiciles however, this couldn't be maintained. At first a handful of people would come in and print out everything and walk it over to its destination, but after a few months we had successfully transitioned to doing all of our work online. The savings on thousands of reams of paper every quarter should have been a legitimate reason to continue the remote work option. But...

In December 2023 the Governor announced that remote work was ending as of January 2024. For a big change like this I would have expected to receive the information via an all-department email from the Tax Commissioner, however we found out from media coverage of the governor's announcement. No follow-up from department leadership was forthcoming. The only communication that we received was an email from Human Resources during the last week of December "reminding" us that remote work was ending in a few days. The union immediately protested the change and a judge put the governor's change on hold. The following day the Tax Commissioner announced that he was ending remote work, stating that this was completely separate from the governor's order. The court ended that as well. These holds were temporary until the union could goth rough the process of protesting the change. 

The governor chose this time to visit various state agencies, including the Department of Revenue. We were treated to a speech from the governor telling us how he wasn't a politician and how much he loved Nebraska and then asked if there were any questions. I had one: "When you make decisions like this that affect thousands of people, do you look at the evidence, do you talk to experts, or do you just make decisions based on feelings?" He rambled on for a few minutes without really answering the question. My manager was horrified, but dozens of people stopped by my desk to thank me for speaking out. After around six months of back and forth the union lost their protest and remote work was ended for good. 

This change resulted in an exodus of experienced personnel. People had gotten used to working from home, and there were many people who were hired with the understanding that remote work was an option. In the Incentives Group three experienced auditors left to take jobs outside the department. Several more quit within a few months. This was taking place throughout the department and positions were remaining vacant for months at a time. 

I immediately brought back all the state-owned equipment from my home. If I wasn't permitted to work at home, I certainly wasn't going to be responsible for storing their equipment there. I was already working three to four days a week at the office due to my training responsibilities, so it wasn't that much of a change. However one day the power went out and we were told that we should work remotely by taking our laptops home. My manager's manager told me that I should be taking my laptop home every day. Previously the state was required to pay us for a full day if our work site was inaccessible. (This had happened only once since I started)  I refused to do this, since there was no remote work agreement in force. Later, an update to the remote work policy gave us the option to work remotely if Lincoln Public Schools closed due to weather. I took advantage of this once. 

In addition to remote work, one of the advantages to working for the Department of Revenue had been scheduling flexibility. If you needed to adjust your schedule due to an appointment or other personal reasons, you just did it, you didn't need to ask permission. This worked very well for me if I had a wedding or wanted to see a show at The Zoo Bar. But a few months before I retired, this flexibility was taken away. Any deviation that resulted in more or less than eight hours per day had to be approved by Human Resources or the Front Office. Permission was often not granted. (This was a violation of the union agreement, but I wasn't a union member, nor did I want to make too many waves this close to retirement, so I let it slide)

I didn't know what direction the micromanaging was taking, or which informal benefits would go next, but with the difficulty everywhere in staying fully staffed, I can't say that these are good ideas. But I was retiring soon, as I said...

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXIV