So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXI

If you were to stop in Sidney Nebraska today, you'd see a built up interstate exit dominated by the Cabela's headquarters, several restaurants, hotels and a truck stop. In August 1980 there was a couple of gas stations leading to a County Road 17J, which passed a trailer park along several lonely miles of...nothing...before meeting up with Highway 30 east of Sidney. As we drove into town and saw that trailer park I had a horrible feeling that I was seeing Sidney in its entirety. No, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't much better. 

The opposition started right away. The hardware/carpet store where I worked was owned by one of Sidney's leading families. Ken was a nice enough guy and in addition to hiring me to clean up around the place and run errands, I was being trained in the back room as a glass cutter and carpet installer. But Ken was also active in his church, the local Episcopalian congregation. Apparently there was a meeting to discuss the cult that had invaded their city and Ken was pressured to fire me. Many of the churches were having similar meetings. One of the more active churches in their crusade against cults was the Foursquare Gospel Church, led by the Rev. Jerry Skinner. 

One of the "witnessing" (aka recruiting) techniques in the bigger cities was to visit mainstream churches. In the Way's early days many new recruits came from the larger denominations where they were disillusioned with the way things were done and weren't getting any answers to their spiritual questions. Naturally we thought this would work in Sidney. We didn't consider how different small town, rural Nebraska was from New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore. The first church we visited was having a "healing service" and Gail and I decided to attend to see if we could pick off any stragglers - it was Jerry Skinner's Foursquare Gospel Church. Foursquare Gospel Churches are an offshoot of the Assemblies of God, a strict, fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal denomination. There weren't any members looking for something better. As we left the meeting Rev. Skinner greeted us - knowing exactly who we were and what organization we were with. He made it clear that Sidney Nebraska wasn't interested in being the home to any cults. He was to become our main nemesis during our time in Sidney, as host of the local radio show There's Good News Today he devoted a lot of air time whipping up the church-going citizens of Sidney in an anti-Way frenzy. 

Skipping ahead a few months, after we had moved (more on that later), one night we happened to notice a lot of people walking past our house. Considering that at the time we lived in a fairly isolated part of town, north of the railroad tracks on a street that didn't lead anywhere, we naturally thought this quite odd. It was the Foursquare Youth Group conducting what they called a "Jericho March", based on the Biblical story of the Israelites marching around the Canaanite city of Jericho seven times and causing the walls to fall down before slaughtering the inhabitants. So they were in the process of marching around our block seven times and claiming it for God. At some point during the march Steve snuck out through our backyard and joined the march and made it back to their church unnoticed in the back pew. Once inside they all closed their eyes, joined hands and spoke in tongues. When they opened their eyes Rev. Jerry spotted Steve in the back. Steve smiled, waved and headed out. 

There was a certain amount of humor in the way we handled it, but here was a group of people who seriously believed that we had no right to be in their city. All they were willing to do was pray about it, but not all opposition to us was so benign. Violence was on the menu. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XXII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxii.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XX

One thing that I want to make clear is that despite my characterization of The Way as a cult, I believe that many of the tactics that people have used to oppose cults is also wrong. 

Many people define a group as a cult based on what they believe rather than what they do. Scientology has a lot of bizarre beliefs, but are the beliefs harmful, or is it the level of control that they exert on their members what is actually harmful? And what constitutes a bizarre belief? Are the Scientologists sci-fi based doctrines really more unbelievable than an invisible god who is really his own son born from a mother who never had sex? Or this same god-who-is-really-his-own-son ascending bodily after being dead for three days? What about a boat with two (or is it seven) of every animal in it surviving a world-wide flood? The difference is that the majority of religious groups don't attempt to control every aspect of your life, and if your behavior is far enough outside their norms, you can just leave. The church that I grew up in was pretty oblivious to whether I attended services every Sunday and likely didn't notice when I left. Cults, on the other hand, engage in harmful practices. It's true that sometimes these harmful practices are based on harmful beliefs, the beliefs by themselves are not harmful. 

The opposition of the people of Sidney (which I will get into shortly), was based on ignorance. They may have heard about a few things that The Way taught that deviated from standard Christian teaching, but it is highly unlikely that they were aware of the harmful practices that went on inside The Way. Groups that received the cult label based on their beliefs (or misunderstanding of their beliefs) were lumped in with the People's Temple and in the minds of the ignorant: dangerous. This ignorance fueled a counter-belief that any opposition to a cult was justified. People were kidnapped and mentally tortured under cover of the pseudo-righteous term "deprogramming". Families were broken up over these differences. Much of what I will describe about my time in Sidney is akin to the "villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the castle" that you see in old school horror movies. My own assertion that I was involved in a cult in no way absolves them of ignorant and bigoted thinking and actions. The very acts of persecutions was in fact something that stiffened my resolve and stick with The Way despite the obvious red flags that popped up throughout my WOW year. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XXI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxi.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIX

Having driven from my home in New York City to Way headquarters in rural Ohio a few times, I was familiar with the concept of small town and farms, but living in a small town was big-time culture shock. One of the biggest shifts was the prevalence of churches. I grew up in the New York City neighborhood of Rosedale, Queens. The 2010 census put Rosedale's population at around 25,000. At the time there were six churches - two Catholic, one Presbyterian, a Lutheran and an Episcopalian, plus a small Baptist church that may have actually been in Springfield Gardens. Sidney, on the other hand, with one-fifth the population, had twenty-five churches of various denominations. Of course, there was the size. Sidney was small enough to walk across in a half hour - glancing at the map,  the populated areas look to be around 2 miles east-west and 2.5 miles north-south, excluding the area on the interstate and other areas within city limits that are not developed - and Sidney is the largest town for hours in any direction. Another feature of a small town (at least from my perspective) is the suspicion with which "outsiders" are viewed. Everyone seems to know everybody else, and families that had been in Sidney for decades were still referred to as "the new people". This may seem paradisal to many, but for four young people (we were aged 20-22) from outside the community who were representing a religious cult, this was anything but. 

We arrived in Sidney a week late, and after a night in a hotel and a dinner of chicken-fried steak (a first for me) at Dude's Steakhouse we set about finding housing and jobs. This was surprisingly easy. The next day we rented a two-bedroom duplex one block off the main drag of Illinois Avenue/Highway 30. Steve, as the interim Way Corps leader, had been sent to scout out the city a few weeks earlier and already had a job lined up detailing cars at a local dealership. Rosemarie and Gail found jobs waitressing at a Dairy Queen and at a hotel restaurant respectively. I was the last one to secure employment - an apprentice glass cutter and go-fer at carpet store just a few blocks from our new home. 

The WOW year, especially the portion spent in Sidney, (we were reassigned to Kearney, a larger college town mid-year) was another of those red flags which should have inspired me to leave the group. On one hand we were subject to non-stop persecution by the locals and on the other the supposed "spiritually aware" leadership was incompetent. But these pressures, at least in my case, paradoxically served to make me more committed. 

Steve was a member of what was called the 10th Way Corps, i.e. the tenth group to start the alleged leadership training by The Way. He had made it through his first year of training at various Way training locations and was now on what they called an interim year where he was to put his training into practice before returning for his second year "in residence". Steve was supposed to be a leader, someone who we were to look up to, someone who would keep us on a godly path  and lead us to success. Steve was also an irresponsible, immature, entitled, horny twenty year-old who was impressed with his own status as a member of the Way Corps without the slightest idea how to motivate or lead. Part of this was due to the top-down style that was ingrained in Way "leaders" who believed that they were blessed with a version of the divine right of kings (including droit du seigneur). Steve's weakness as a leader would be exacerbate the pressures that resulted from opposition of the townspeople. 

Start from the beginning

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

Part XX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xx.html