So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XI

In August 1979, I was on the cusp of a major change in my life. I was about to ratchet up my Way involvement by moving into a Way Home, but what was going on in the wider Way World?

In an earlier installment I laid out why, in my view, people stayed in cults:

1. What the cult is telling you, on some level, seems to make sense
2. You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself
3. Outside pressure serves only to confirm the "us against them" narrative the cult has been promoting
4. The perceived benefits outweigh any problems
5. People don't like to admit that they're wrong

The second item listed, "You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself", can be looked at in two ways. One view is that you feel that you're on a mission, that you're actually accomplishing something, the other aspect is a veneer of legitimacy. One way to look like you're legitimate is to build up an organization. 

In the early days of of The Way, Wierwille ran a shoestring operation. Starting in 1953 he taught his Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) classes, ran Sunday services at his home and had a loose network of people who were interested in what he had to say. He left the church where he was pastor and incorporated as "The Way" in 1957 *. Through the late fifties and most of the sixties The Way continued as a purely local phenomenon in Northwest Ohio. Few would have ever heard of Wierwille and The Way if things had continued on this path. In Part IV I discussed some of the steps in The Way's expansion. 

 * The Way hagiography later retconned the founding of The Way as October 1942, when Wierwille started a local radio program

In the late sixties there was an explosion of new religious groups, as well as many young people who, dissatisfied with the status quo, gathered together in informal groups, teaching each other the gospel and attempting to live communally as they imagined the early Christians did. One of these groups, running an ad hoc Christian charitable organization and group home in San Francisco, attracted Wierwille's attention. He travelled to San Francisco and met with them. Eventually they formed a partnership: they provided the youth and energy, he provided the organized theology. It was at this point that things took off. The people from the San Francisco group home started spreading Wierwille's take on Christianity with an enthusiasm that had not been present when PFAL was just another self-improvement class, albeit Bible-based. Two organizations sprung up, The Way West in California and The Way East in Upstate New York, which coordinated the running of PFAL classes in their areas and served as a loose connection to Wierwille. Drawing upon the pool of enthusiastic PFAL graduates, Wierwille established an outreach program, the World Over the World (WOW) Ambassadors and a leadership training program, The Way Corps, the formation of the latter could be considered the foundation of cultishness in The Way. 

The first Way Corps group came together in 1969, but was disbanded after some unspecified failure. A second group came to Ohio in 1970 and became the core of Wierwille's committed followers. Early in the seventies, Wierwille, backed by some of his Way Corps, staged a takeover of both The Way West and The Way East, folding their organizations into the framework of The Way Inc, now styled The Way International. Initially graduates of The Way Corps either worked in various capacities at "International Headquarters", or went out "in the field" to oversee areas that were seeing a lot of new PFAL grads. Occasionally Way Corps graduates engaged in secular pursuits in addition to their Way responsibilities. The Bible fellowships, later known as "twigs" largely operated independently. Each year, the number of people entering Way Corps training grew, from a dozen in each of the first two groups, to around 600 in the sixth group. Property was purchased in Emporia Kansas and Rome City Indiana to facilitate the growing number of Corps trainees. 

The growing number of new people, and the increasing scope of the Way Corps training required a business structure. Money was pouring in from tithes, and class fees, and expenses for their properties, publications and the framework required for training hundreds of people increased as well. The number of staff members increased. Parallel to the business side, a hierarchy on the spiritual side sprung up. Twig leaders reported to Branch leaders, who in turn reported to Area or Limb (state) leaders, who answered to a regional overseer and ultimately to the Trunk (national) leader. 

Numerical growth of Way Corps grads meant that more local fellowships were being run by Way Corps rather than local people with leadership skills. In the early seventies, the increase in the number of PFAL grads and the spread of local fellowships resulted in things being pretty independent on the local level. There might be a Corps grad as a state or regional coordinator, but regular folks were for the most part rising up to coordinate fellowships and branches without any formal training. As Way Corps grads began to filter down to area and branch levels, and finally to twig (local) fellowship levels, the level of centralized control changed the nature of the local Bible fellowships. The nature of that control I will address in a later installment, but suffice it to say that the framework for control was steadily building and was largely in place by the late seventies.

The Way, in around ten years, had accomplished two things: they had built their little operation into a truly international, worldwide, organization and had extended their influence and control directly into people's lives through the Way Corps. The former gave it the patina of respectability, and the latter gave it a lever to influence the everyday life of its adherents. The Way had hit this dual pinnacle right around the time I got involved. It's organization and hierarchy indicated to me that it wasn't a fly-by-night assemblage of do-gooders, but a structured group that had put down roots. I felt safe getting involved in it. 

By this time I had been drawn in by several factors. What I was being told made sense, at least to me;  the outside pressure served to confirm the "us against them" narrative; and I felt like I belonged to something greater than myself, both in a sense of accomplishment and belonging to an established organization. In later years I would come to believe that the perceived benefits outweigh any problems, but in the upcoming year I would become one of the people who don't like to admit that they're wrong.

 And that pattern of ignoring red flags would continue for a long, long time. 

Start from the beginning: Part I