So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part XI

August 1979, I was on the cusp of a major change in my life. I was about to ratchet up my Way involvement, 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:

* What the cult is telling you, on some level, makes sense

* You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself

* Outside pressure serves only to confirm the "us against them" narrative the cult has been feeding you

* The perceived benefits outweigh any problems

* People don't like to admit that they're wrong about anything

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. He taught his PFAL classes, ran Sunday services at his home and had a loose network of people who were interested in what he had to say. From 1953, when he started teaching PFAL classes, to 1957 when he left his church and incorporated as "The Way", (The Way hagiography later retconned the founding of The Way as October 1942, when Wierwille started a radio program) through the late fifties and most of the sixties, The Way continued as a purely local phenomenon. No one would have ever heard of Wierwille and The Way if things had continued on this path. In Part IV I discuss some of the steps in The Way's expansion. 

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, 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 and The Way East, which coordinated the running of PFAL classes 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 (or simply "Corps") graduates engaged in secular pursuits. The Bible fellowships, later known as "twigs" largely operated independently, with the "true believers" concentrated among Corps grads. Each year, the number of people entering Way Corps training grew, from a dozen in 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.  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, multiplication of PFAL grads and 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 (grouping of fellowships in an area) 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 perfect time for me. 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 about anything. And that pattern of ignoring red flags would continue for a long, long time. 

Start from the beginning

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

Part XII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2021/02/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xii.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part X

My parents, years after I left The Way, claimed that I had, in some vague way, changed after I had become involved. In some respects they were correct. I was no longer devoted to Catholicism, but not because I had rejected God and the Bible, but because I believed that Catholicism didn't represent God and the Bible as closely as The Way did. For years I had been searching for deeper meaning and for "proof" that Christianity was "The Truth". The signs were all there - my visitations to local churches, my curiosity about non-Christian religions, my questioning that wasn't satisfied with vague appeals to authority. The truth is, most religious people have only a surface understanding of the doctrinal details of  their religion and are ill-prepared to counter specific and enthusiastic challenges to their beliefs. Looking back from the vantage point of 40 years in the future, I realize that the "research" presented by The Way was, for the most part, pretty shoddy and its conclusions were often based on tenuous connections and misunderstandings of Greek and Hebrew grammar, as well as the works of theologians of the past. But at the time, the only people that I knew who were even attempting to make sense of Biblical contradictions were the people of The Way. 

As my third "ministry year" in The Way began in August 1979 (Way year went from August to August) several influences flowed together to cause me to become more involved, more committed, to The Way. My parents were becoming more hostile to my involvement in The Way, especially since I had stopped attending church. The community had become overtly hostile to any group that they considered a cult in the wake of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana. Deprogrammers were more open about their practices and often had the cooperation of local police departments. Outside attacks generate, in general, one of two responses. One is to to disassociate oneself from the group that is attacked. Persecution has the effect of weeding out those who aren't committed. It also has the effect of strengthening the resolve of those who choose to stay. That's the effect that it had on me. The leadership of The Way encouraged that mindset. People who left "tripped out", they were weak. Those of us who stood strong were in the same league as the apostles who persevered in the face of opposition. Being the focus of persecution made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something for God. 

A second influence was the example of some of the "believers" around me. During Way year 1978-79 several of the people that I knew set up "Way Homes" that were the focus of outreach in their neighborhoods. Groups of Way folks were travelling to Ohio, Kansas or Indiana (Way headquarters and the locations of Way Corps training) to take "The Advanced Class". During the previous year I had "witnessed" to my childhood friend Joe. Joe took the PFAL class and at Rock of Ages in 1979 was sent to Fremont Nebraska as a WOW Ambassador. Others whom I knew entered Way Corps training. There was a lot of peer pressure to step up and "do something for God". What I decided to do was move into a Way Home. 

The Way Home was an interesting concept. You were part of an organized program, but weren't locked in for a set period of time, like the WOW Ambassador program or the Way Corps training. One person was designated by area leadership as the Way Home Coordinator. The household members decided among themselves how to handle their finances, how to divide up chores and when to schedule Twig Fellowships or witness in the neighborhood. Most Way Home members worked whatever jobs they chose, or attended school. The expectation was that the Way Home would be a hub of Way activity in the neighborhood and the members would focus much of their free time on bringing in new people and running PFAL classes, along with weekly fellowships. 

The Queens Village Way Home, where I went to live in late August 1979 had four of us living there. Bernie, an electrician in his forties who was in the same PFAL class as I was in March 1978 was the designated leader, Wanda & Beverly were newly minted PFAL grads and me. I was still attending Baruch College in the evenings and working at EF Hutton, the stock broker, as a clerk during the day. It was my first experience living somewhere other than under my parents' roof, but since I hadn't changed jobs and was still in school, there was some continuity with my previous life. 

But before long, there would be some major disruptions. 

Start from the beginning

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

Part XI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xi.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part IX

"Brainwashing" is a term that gets brought up a lot when it comes to cults. Although there is room for disagreement about whether those of us in The Way, or any other cults for that matter, were brainwashed or not, let me define the term as I understand it. 

Brainwashing is not a scientific term, and actually has no widely accepted meaning. But the way I understand it, it would involve the forcible conversion of an individual from one set of beliefs to another set that they would not have changed to without physical, chemical or mental coercion. Brainwashing could involve torture, it could involve sensory or sleep deprivation, it could involve threats to family members. None of this, not even a hint of it, was present during my time in The Way. On the contrary, conversion to The Way's point of view was slow and methodical and involved eyes-wide-open decisions at every step. Which does not negate the abuse inflicted upon Way members, nor it's cultishness. 

One of the counter arguments against brainwashing is the ease with which people were able to leave The Way at all stages. The person who introduced me to The Way was my own cousin, who ended her involvement several months after completing the PFAL class. Why did she leave when I didn't? I can't really say. In conversations with my parents after the fact she claimed that I was brainwashed, but could not account for her own resistance to the supposed mind control. Perhaps she wasn't as eager for answers as I was, perhaps she didn't have the need to stand out from the crowd as I did, maybe she was uncomfortable with speaking in tongues or just didn't like the people. The person who got her involved was soon out of the picture. The point is, nobody stopped her from leaving nor was she subject to any pressure to remain. Over the years I saw many people walk away for various reasons, and other remain for their own reasons. I'll be getting to the reasons why people stay, but not just yet. 

The Jonestown Massacre at The People's Temple in Guyana in November 1978 was a turning point. It was the point at which family members of people who were involved in alternative religious movements began using the epithet "cult". It was the point where the assumption was, not just that someone's kids had converted, but that they were involved in something dangerous. It was the point where people were considering forcibly removing their loved ones. People calling themselves "deprogrammers" sprung up, promising, for a fee, to extract cult members and deconvert them back to their old beliefs. In general these deprogrammers used tactics that looked suspiciously like the brainwashing that they were ostensibly saving cultists from. My own parents, according to what a sibling told me years later, consulted with a deprogrammer. Fortunately this man was honest enough to tell them that if it didn't work, I would likely be estranged from them for the rest of my life and they abandoned the plan. To my parents' credit, they made an effort to understand and accept me from that point on. They visited me in Sidney Nebraska when I was a WOW there in 1980, and regularly came out to Nebraska after I was married, even attending a few Way meetings. Even though the perceived familial opposition had softened, now there was the cultural opposition, and in many ways, actual persecution that accompanied the anti-cult scare that followed the events in Guyana. 

Start from the beginning

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

Part X

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-x.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part VIII

So far I have addressed  briefly how the perception that something "makes sense" influences people to get involved in cults and touched upon how participants are made to feel that they are involved in something greater than themselves. Now we're going to look at how outside pressure, perceived as persecution, serves to cement someone's decision to remain in a cult. 

Throughout most of 1978 few people had heard of the term cult, especially as it applied to Christian groups. Certainly there were fringe groups, notably the Unification Church, colloquially known as "The Moonies", and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), which most of us knew as "The Hare Krishnas", but it wasn't until the mass murder-suicide at The People's Temple outpost in Guyana in November 1978 that there was an awareness of "cults", that not only were they different, but that they were dangerous. A cottage industry of "cult experts" sprung up, with numerous books about cults, as well as those billing themselves as "deprogrammers", who, for a fee, would un-brainwash a loved one and "free" them from the cult. More on that later, but first my own experience with pushback from my own family. 

As I related in a previous post, I was raised Catholic. The neighborhood where I grew up was predominantly Catholic, and Catholicism was, even for the non-religious, part of the background noise of life. All through high school all of my friends were Catholic, and if I knew any Protestants, I can't remember any of them. (I did date a girl for a few years who had a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, but other than that...). Catholicism was assumed. So, when I began to move beyond casual attendance at Bible studies and toward replacing my Catholicism with membership in The Way, my parents began to get concerned. Not, I emphasize, because they thought I was in a cult, that term had yet to become popularized to describe fringe religious movements, but because I was involved in something not-Catholic. 

When you're excited about something new, whether it's a new love in your life, a fun hobby, that alternative band that no one has ever heard of, or really anything that's new and fresh and exciting in your life, you want to share it with others, you want to talk about it. You're excited about it. And I was without a doubt excited about what I was learning in the PFAL class. Understand that at this stage I wasn't considering leaving the Catholic Church, but was pretty psyched about seeing details of the Bible that I hadn't known about before. Most Catholics don't bother overmuch with the theological details and couldn't care less about the minutiae of the nature of Christ or what happens to you after you die, or how apostolic succession works. I certainly never thought about it, but once I was presented with these details I was won over. After the initial few sessions of PFAL that hammered home the premise that the Bible was the Word of God and inerrant, the second week of class started throwing out information that was new. I'd come home from class bubbling with enthusiasm about what I was learning. My mom, more often than not, would be in the living room watching television or reading a book and I'd be excited about telling her what I was learning "Did you know...?" I'd gush about some obscure bit of Biblical lore that had been presented that night. Mom's reaction was disappointing at best. Rather than sharing in my excitement, or at least exhibiting polite interest, her reaction was one of barely disguised discomfort at what I was saying. This may not seem like much, but I had always been able to talk to my mother, and was closer to her than to my dad, who seemed to have more in common with my younger, more sports-oriented brother. Tight lipped indifference from mom was as bad, in my mind, as overt condemnation. Of course, this parental disapproval was hardly persecution. But The Way played on this, pointing out verses where Jesus said that true followers would have to leave their old lives behind, leaving their parents and siblings for the gospel and portraying disapproval by family as proof that we were on a godly path. 

As I moved into my second "Way year" (Way years went from August to August, I took the PFAL class in Way Year 1977-78) in the Autumn of 1978 I started to become more active. A few months previously I stopped attending church, seeing enough of a disconnect between what I was being taught in The Way and the positions of the Catholic Church. This caused a confrontation with my father, who, when he deigned to express his opinion, did not leave any room for doubt about his position. Where my mother would express her disagreement with uncomfortable silences my father was more volcanic in his disagreement and let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought. He did not approve. Even though I became aware at the 1978 Rock of Ages that The Way was The Way International, and not just some local Bible study groups, it was still possible at that time to be involved only peripherally. The local Twig Fellowship that had met at Tom & Joe's apartment in our Rosedale neighborhood had dissolved. Tom had left to serve as a WOW and Joe had moved to a Way Home (several Way roommates dedicated to running fellowships and classes, similar to the WOW program with fewer rules) in the Queens Village neighborhood. While at the Rock of Ages I stayed in a hotel room with two guys, John Lalor and Joe Meehan, who had been WOW Ambassadors the previous year and were returning to their home neighborhood. Joe, John and I, as well as a handful of other Rosedale "believers" would occasionally drive up to Queens Village or to Bayside to attend Way fellowships, but mainly we would meet in a public park or mall (we all lived with our parents) and "witness".  

During this time I was still living a "normal" life. I was attending college, going out to see local bands on weekends, dating, and drinking too much at times. We managed to convince a few people to take the PFAL class including my girlfriend Lori, my childhood friend Joe, and a couple of musicians - Mike and Billy. I was living in some respects in two worlds. I still had my old friends, my old bad habits, was attending college, living at home. My friends thought I was weird, my parents disapproved...mildly, but I was, on the side, engaged in an enterprise that I viewed as important: speaking what I believed was "The Word of God" and bringing others into that knowledge. It was, in many ways, the perfect balance.

Of course it couldn't last. 

Four months into this phase of life 918 people died at a remote settlement near Georgetown, Guyana and things were never the same. 

Start from the beginning

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

Part IX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-ix.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part VII

In Part VI I discussed the "It made sense to me" aspect of joining a cult. Even almost 20 years after leaving The Way, I don't define a cult by their beliefs. Some people look at the science fiction aspects of Scientology, or the ahistorical Mormon records of what they say went on in North America, or Muhammad's ascent to heaven on a horse that Muslims believe and laugh at the silliness of it all. They seldom examine their own beliefs in a man being raised from the dead, a virgin birth, a talking donkey and walls being brought down by trumpets and see how ridiculous they might seem to an outsider. Any religious belief is going to look bizarre to someone from outside that religion. For this reason I don't look at non-mainstream beliefs, in and of themselves, as evidence of cultishness, but at the actions of those in the alleged cult. 

One of the ways that a cult draws people in is for whatever their teachings are to make some kind of sense, at least the things that new people are being exposed to. A second method is to cultivate a sense of community, a sense of belonging, that you are engaged in something greater than yourself. 

I completed the Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class on March 31, 1978. During the class I became aware that the Bible study at Tom and Joe's apartment was not the only one in the area, but was still unaware of the extent of The Way, or even that The Way was an organization. From April through July of 1978 I attended Bible studies, "twigs" in Way parlance, sporadically. However, in August of that year I ended up going to rural Ohio to attend the "Rock of Ages" annual festival. 

In 1969, fresh from expanding his reach by recording his PFAL class and co-opting groups of "Jesus People" hippies on both coasts, Way founder Victor Paul (VP) Wierwille formed what he called "The Way Corps", ostensibly a leadership training program. After a false start, what eventually became the First Way Corps group was assembled in August of 1970 for a two year stint at Wierwille's farm, grandiosely dubbed "International Headquarters". Around this time, a group of PFAL graduates, led by Donnie Fugit, a charismatic evangelistic type, participated in what later became the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. Up until this point expansion was more or less organic. People who had taken the PFAL class told their friends and family, and if enough were interested, then "International Headquarters" would mail out some cassette tapes (or videotapes if the potential group was large enough). Young "believers" often recruited for PFAL classes at their college campuses and several colleges became Way hotspots. The pilot WOW program would take this beyond "witnessing" in one's everyday life to a targeted missionary-like program where the primary purpose of the "WOWs" would be to "witness" and run PFAL classes. 

Previous to this, The Way had been conducting "summer schools", where interested people could come to attend workshops and classes. At the end of the summer, usually in early August, before the "kids" had to return to school, there would be a weekend music festival send-off. In August 1971, at this music festival, called "The Return of the Rock of Ages", Wierwille announced the formation of the Word Over the World Ambassador program and invited anyone interested to come back in a month or so in order to receive their assignments. The first wave of WOWs would return to Ohio in one year and a second wave sent out in August 1972. Hence the Way "ministry year" would begin and end in August at the "Rock of Ages". Every August, at subsequent "Rock of Ages" festivals, a new group of WOW Ambassadors would be sent out, the previous year's group would be welcomed "home" and a new batch of Way Corps would start their training. Each year there would be more WOWs commissioned, there would be more Way Corps starting their training, and more attendees at "The Rock" until until in 1978, my first year, there were around 20,000 people from all over the world. 

When I first agreed to attend The Rock in 1978, I had no idea what I was getting into. I just thought a road trip would be a cool thing to do. I was living with my parents and was between jobs, so a week in Ohio didn't really interfere with anything. I was recruited to drive a woman and her three children from New York to Ohio. She and her husband (who was already in Ohio for something called The Advanced Class) and kids were going to be WOWs that year. Joe (of Joe and Tom, whose apartment I originally attended Bible studies at) would be providing a hotel room for me to stay in during the week. We left New York in the late morning and after driving all day and into the night, arrived at a huge parking lot in the midst of Ohio farmland. I slept in the car. When I woke in the morning I was surrounded by thousands of Way people, greeting each other with variations of "God bless you". There were people pitching tents, families in RVs and believers driving in every day from area hotels. People were polite, people cared for each other, there was a distinct lack of chaos, trash was picked up, food was abundant and it was like it was one, big, happy family. While tiny compared to the half-a-million-strong Woodstock almost a decade earlier, you got the feeling that this group would be just as loving, just as organized, if there was half a million people. 

The six days that I spent there got me one giant step toward getting entangled in a cult.  

Start from the beginning

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

Part VIII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-viii.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part VI

Why would someone stay in a cult? Aren't the mind control aspects of a cult obvious enough to drive off all but the stupidest among us? The involvement in all details of your life? The crazy teachings? Why would anyone continue to involve themselves in something so harmful? There are several reasons:

* What the cult is telling you, on some level, makes sense

* You feel like you belong to something greater than yourself

* Outside pressure serves only to confirm the "us against them" narrative the cult has been feeding you

* The perceived benefits outweigh any problems

* People don't like to admit that they're wrong about anything

One of things that people who have never been in a cult point to is how "outlandish" cult doctrine seems. One of the main deviations from mainstream Christianity in The Way was the belief that Jesus was not God, but was "merely" a man. Many Christian denominations point to this doctrinal aberration as prima facie evidence that a group is a cult. Some will include established denominations like the Mormons in their definition of "cult"  due to this deviation from the norm. While it is true that the vast majority of Christians believe that Jesus was both God and man, there have always been outliers. Having a different doctrinal position no more makes a group a cult than a preference for white shirts and ties instead of clerical collars does. What most people fail to do when it comes to religion, is to apply the "outsider test" to their own faith. Would your own beliefs, if examined by someone outside your religion, make sense? Or would they be considered outlandish, or even ridiculous? 

Most people underestimate the influence of their culture on what they believe. In the United States, it's not only their family's specific religious tradition in which they were raised, but the common belief that there is a God who created all that there is, that you could pray to him, and that there was an afterlife consisting of heaven and hell. Even people who don't belong to any religion or denomination generally acknowledge these things, even if they reject the specifics of religious doctrine. For these people it's not a matter of rejecting God, but rejecting organized religion. For the "nones", all it takes to get involved in a church is for something to make sense for them. 

My own cult experience is limited to one cult, although I have dabbled in other religious traditions without actually joining anything. The Way's method of indoctrination wasn't designed to convince anyone who was an atheist, agnostic or a skeptic. You already had to have a grounding, however shallow, in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Their PFAL class was built upon the premise that the Bible was the Word of God and the only "proofs" that were offered used the Bible itself to solidify that claim. I was brought up, as I stated in an earlier installment, in the Catholic Church. For the most part, Catholics don't think about the Bible too much. They believe it, without knowing much about the details. I was no exception. I wanted it all to make sense, but wasn't equipped to make sense of it all on my own, and neither was anyone in my immediate circle. 

As I related in Part IV I didn't actively seek out The Way, nor did they actively seek me out. My cousin Kathy was attending their Bible studies and my Aunt Peggy, Kathy's mother, asked that I go with her to make sure she wasn't getting into anything harmful. But once I had experienced a Way fellowship I was immediately impressed at the way these people, not a theologian among them, were able to intelligently discuss the Bible, and were able to point to specific scriptures to back up what they believed. No one that I knew was able to do this, or even thought it was important. One exception would have been my father's brother, a Catholic priest, who presumably was educated in Biblical doctrine, but the finer points of Catholic theology was never an after dinner topic of discussion at family gatherings. I mentioned in Part III how I had approached my parish priest about the discrepancies between what the Catholic Church and The Way taught and got the brush off. In later years I realized that the "Biblical research" presented by The Way was pretty weak and rested on shaky assumptions and ignorance of the basics of Biblical languages and even simple English grammar. At the time, however, they were the only ones that I was aware of who even made the attempt to reconcile various contradictions in the Bible and to provide any kind of proof that the Bible was true. 

It made sense to me. 

Start from the beginning

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

Part VII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-vii.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part V

When I first agreed to take the Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class I was unaware that the fellowship that I had been attending was part of a larger organization. Up until that point I had not attended "branch" meetings, or met any Way people outside of the group that met at Tom & Joe's apartment. The class would be taught in approximately three hour increments on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday over four weeks at a home in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. As I have mentioned in earlier installments, the PFAL class had been taped in the late sixties, but at the time I did not realize I would be watching a recording. Wierwille was talked about as the "teacher" of the class. I had also heard about someone named Jerry, who was mentioned as the class instructor. Unaware that The Way called someone who coordinated and oversaw the running of a PFAL class an instructor, I conflated "instructor" and "teacher" and thought a guy named Jerry Wierwille from Ohio would be teaching the class in Flushing. What was actually happening was that Jerry McSherry (his real name) would be in charge of running the class for me, my cousin Kathy and seven other students. He would be assisted by several other graduates of PFAL who had responsibilities such as parking, refreshments, and audio-visual (actually just audio). We would be listening to cassette tapes of Wierwille. A video version, on Betamax of all things, was only run if there were 12 or more students. Charts and illustrations that would ordinarily be part of the video, would be shown to us by a class crew member who sat up front with a flip chart.

As I mentioned, each class session was approximately three hours. Two hours of teaching, a break, and a third hour. The first few sessions were pretty hard to get through. Imagine trying to sit through that much talking without even anything to look at other than some cheap flip charts. But part of what kept us going through those first few sessions was that we had paid for it. $100 was a lot of money for a barely employed college student in those days. We lost one student halfway through, but the rest of us stuck it out. The first three or four nights were variations of the theme of "the Bible is true", he really hammered into us the premise that what the Bible said was the standard for everything else. I sort of already believed that, despite not knowing much about the Bible. Toward the end of the first week, two things got my attention and piqued my interest. One was that the Bible interpreted itself. You didn't need someone to interpret it for you, because if you just read what was written, in context, the meaning would be crystal clear. The other was that by the end of the class, Wierwille would provide undeniable proof that Jesus Christ not only existed, but rose from the dead. After that I was all in.

In retrospect, the approach was brilliant. Even if you didn't believe that the Bible was divinely inspired before you took the class, twelve hours of verses on the subject was bound to wear you down. Looking back, it was pure circular reasoning, but he wasn't trying to convince the skeptical. His oratory wasn't going to convert an atheist, but if you had any tendency toward a Bible-based mindset, his teaching was going to sweep away any doubts about the heavenly origins of the Bible, and therefore it's veracity. And that set the stage for the second week, were things really got serious.

Now that we "knew that we knew that we knew" that the Bible was true, we were ready for some crazy stuff. In the midst of all the "The Bible is the Word of God" stuff, we were admonished to read what was written, not only right in the verse, but in the context, how words were used before, how words were used when the King James was written, and be aware of customs in Biblical times. Wierwille then started showing us parts of the Bible where what we had always been taught was wrong. He started out by simply pointing to a plain reading of the text where it contradicted what "everyone knew" about the Bible. Again, this was brilliant. He started off with some fairly innocuous things, where the "accurate" reading didn't make much difference in how we lived our lives, or even touched on contentious doctrinal issues. Eventually, however, the stakes got higher. After several sessions of having much of what we always thought we knew shown, by reading the actual Bible, to be false, any confidence in what our priests or ministers had been telling us had been undermined. Ostensibly, this was to show us that we had to read the Bible as written and allow it to interpret itself. The real reason, as I saw much later, was to set up Wierwille as the authority, despite the encouragement to read and study ourselves.

The final week of the class was devoted to what Wierwille called "the manifestations of the spirit", which most denominations called "the gifts of the spirit". The most well-known of these was speaking in tongues, although other "manifestations" were included. Wierwille billed speaking in tongues as proof of the truth of the Bible. For most of the third week we were regaled with instances of speaking in tongues in the Bible culminating with a group speaking in tongues session right at the end of the final session. In contrast to the dry pseudo-intellectual tone of most of the class, this final session was emphatically emotional. Wierwille asked the class rhetorically, just before we were "led into" speaking in tongues, "don't you want to speak 'the wonderful works of God'?" before having us stand and, in unison, and backed by the crew and other graduates of the class loudly speaking in tongues themselves, speaking in tongues as Wierwille's recorded voice encouraging us. 

For many people, including me, it sealed the deal. Not only had I been led, step by step, through an intellectual shedding of previous beliefs and acquisition of a new perspective, but it all came together with an emotional capstone. 

The Way had successfully got me to change what I believed about God and the Bible, but I still wasn't committed to regular involvement. I wasn't in a cult...yet.

Start from the beginning

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

Part VI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2020/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-vi.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part IV

By 1970, Wierwille no longer had a loose association of Bible Fellowships and Sunday night meetings at his farm, he had an organization. The "hippies" as some labelled them, provided the raw material, the enthusiasm and the field leadership that he needed to expand his influence. Once he gained legal control of the associated entities of The Way East and The Way West he continued to consolidate his control. Even though he had legal control over his Power for Abundant Living class and its distribution, the organizational chart was still quite loose in the early to mid-seventies. Local fellowships tended to grow organically as people started taking the class and continuing to meet in regular Bible Studies. Leaders of the home fellowships tended to be appointed by local consensus, as well as availability. Two things changed that dynamic: the WOW Program and The Way Corps.

The WOW (Word Over the World) Program was basically a missionary program. People would commit a year of their lives to spreading "the Word", setting up fellowships and running  Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) classes. The idea was that a group of four WOWs would be sent to an area that did not have an existing Way presence. The WOWs would take a part-time job, but would spend the bulk of their time "witnessing". The goal would be that at the end of the year a local fellowship would be established, or an already existing one would be strengthened. The WOW program was wildly successful. By the end of the decade there was a strong Way presence in all 50 states as well as a number of other countries. The annual gathering at Wierwille's farm, called The Rock of Ages, was when the new WOWs were "commissioned" each year, and the previous year's group "welcomed home". By 1980, several thousand were going out as WOWs each year.

The Way Corps was a multi-year program where people were groomed to be the leadership in The Way. It was initially a two-year program spent at the Way headquarters, but eventually an apprentice, or preparatory, year spent in the candidate's home city, was added, as well as a year "in the field" to practice what was learned before graduation. As the number of Way Corps graduates increased from a dozen or so the first few years, to 500 or more by the sixth year of the program, the practice of fellowship leaders developing naturally was supplanted by Way Corps leadership at most levels of the organization. When I became involved in 1978, there were nine "branches" of 7-10 fellowships each on Long Island. Neither the leaders of the branches, nor the "Area Leader" who oversaw all of Long Island, were Way Corps graduates. Within a few years this would be reversed, and even some local fellowship leaders were replaced by Way Corps graduates. This changed the makeup of The Way from a loose confederation of home Bible Studies to a rigid hierarchy with branch leaders leading 7-10 "twigs" (what home fellowship were called, based on a "Way Tree" analogy), Area Leaders overseeing multiple branches and "Limb Leaders" overseeing an entire state.

A bureaucracy was also developing at The Way headquarters as well, with leaders over the "Trunk" (all of the United States), International Outreach, a Way Corps Director and multiple departments responsible for everything from publications to vehicle maintenance. The Way Corps was slowly morphing from a program of voluntary service to a lifetime commitment to go wherever The Way sent you and do whatever they told you to do. The WOW program, even though it was only a one-year commitment, was a program with a lot of rules and expectations, its rigidity solidified the expectation that leaders were to be obeyed unquestioningly, rather than altruistically serving. In a short 10 years, the structure of The Way changed from people freely attending local fellowships without many, if any, demands placed upon them, to a rigid hierarchy and more onerous rules and requirements to attend meetings and classes, including those in far away cities and at The Way's headquarters in Ohio.

It was around this time that the epithet "cult" began to be attached to newer religious groups, and The Way was included. The tragedy of Jonestown occurred just as The Way was peaking in membership and influence. Family members of Way followers started getting concerned. "Deprogramming" became, if not common, then at least not unheard-of. Books on cults often included The Way, and occasionally Way members would be kidnapped by "deprogrammers" hired by the family. Some left The Way after this experience, while others escaped and returned. The presence of deprogrammers in conjunction with hostility toward The Way by families of Way members and by many churches helped to foster and "us vs. them" mindset among the Way rank and file. Wierwille stoked the fires by teaching that opposition to "the ministry" was opposition to God and that Satan was stirring people up in order to attack God's people. For many Way people, this was a vicious cycle: outside opposition encouraged defensiveness and an isolationist mindset while that very attitude fueled opposition. Parents could not understand why their children, who had been faithful members of the local church, were now preaching that The Way was the only place where God's truth was being told, not seeing how their opposition was a catalyst, feeding the stridency of Way rhetoric.

The Way never retreated to an isolated "compound", cutting themselves off from the world, even though they had several "root" (there's that tree symbolism) locations that were self-contained communities. The majority of Way members lived and worked among non-Way people, held regular jobs and met in private homes for their weekly meetings. They seemed normal. But something very different was going on beneath the surface.

Start from the beginning

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

Part V

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-v.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part III

At age six, my parents moved us from the Astoria neighborhood to Rosedale,, on the Queens-Nassau border. We lived in a semi-detached, two family home, with my four siblings and me on the first floor, my six cousins and aunt and uncle on the second floor, and two other families on the other side. It was Christmas 1977 and I was upstairs at a holiday party in my cousins' home. My Aunt Peggy showed me a Christmas card that my cousin Kathy had received from a co-worker. Underneath the holiday cliches were the words "I love you and God does too". Kathy's co-worker Tom was running a Bible Study in his duplex apartment in the neighborhood with his roommate Joe. Aunt Peggy asked that I accompany my cousin to one of these Bible Studies. As Catholics, we were suspicious of any other religions, and Aunt Peggy (wrongly as it turned out) thought that I would be able to sniff out any trouble. They seemed harmless enough. When I first attended one of their meetings, the small living room was packed with people, mostly high school or college aged, with a few adults our parents' age. There was some songs, some prayers and a teaching from the bible. There was also speaking in tongues. I'll get in detail about speaking in tongues in later installments, but it really intrigued me. But what intrigued me more was the absolute confidence that these people had in what they were teaching. I was a bit skeptical, but I found it interesting that these people claimed to have answers, were giving out that it was possible to be able to make sense out of the Bible and that there was proof that it was true!

I soon became a regular attendee of these fellowships, as they called them. I was by no means a Bible scholar, but I was aware of the basics of Christian doctrine that any church-goer knew. As the weeks went by I realized that there were some subtle and not-so-subtle differences between what my church (and the Protestant churches that I attended) taught and what this little Bible study was teaching. One of the main things was that they believed that Jesus was not, as most Christians believed, God. There were many others, but the details are not really that important. What was relevant to me was that it was different than the way I was brought up to believe, but at the same time they claimed to have evidence to back up their confidence. Pretty soon I started hearing about a class that was being offered. All the regulars at the Bible Study had taken this class; Tom and Joe insisted that all of my questions would be answered in this class and that it would logically lay out everything that I needed to be able to read and understand the Bible for myself. I was interested, but also somewhat apprehensive.

Disturbed as I was by the long list of differences between what this Bible Study was teaching and what my church was teaching, I made an appointment to talk with my parish priest. I asked him if he could reconcile these differences. His response was that the Catholic Church had 2000 years of tradition behind it. That's it. No appeal to logic, or Church teaching, or even an attempt to open the Bible. Tradition? Blind, mindless tradition was what I saw as the problem. Believing something  just because "that's the way it's always been" was why I started searching for answers in the first place. I walked out of the parish rectory that night upset that I received no real answer from my priest and had made up my mind that I would at least give this class a chance. I found Joe, paid my $100 and signed up for a month of Bible classes.

I'm a big fan of alternate history fiction. That genre is based on how things would be different if one variable changed. How different would my life had been if that priest had even made an attempt to convince me that the Catholic Church was built on a solid foundation and not just tradition. If he had taken seriously my longing for truth and my search for answers. Instead he was dismissive. Much of who I am today was molded by what came next, the influences from this Bible Study and this class, my reactions to the disapproval of my family and my own change in outlook.

At this point there was no indication that I was joining anything, let alone a cult. All that I was doing at this point was committing $100 and around 33 hours of class time over a one month period. I didn't imagine that anything other than my level of knowledge was going to change. But I was wrong.

Part IV

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-iv.html

Start from the beginning

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

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part II

In the early 1940's another young man was searching for answers. Unlike me, this young man was born in a rural area, far from any big cities, to a farming family and part of a Protestant denomination in the Reformed tradition. He was the youngest child in a large family and religion was a part of daily life. In order to get answers, or perhaps because it was perceived to be easier than farming, this young man entered a seminary and was in due course ordained as a minister in 1941 and given a small church to oversee. By 1942 he was already disenchanted and disappointed that the answers he sought had not materialized. Years later he claimed that God had spoken to him audibly and promised to teach him if he would teach others. Obviously, there is no way that this could be independently verified, and in all likelihood was completely made up. 

In October 1942 our young minister started hosting a program on a local radio station in conjunction with his pastoral duties. He brought in guest speakers for his radio program and to his church, ostensibly to learn more about the Bible so that he continue to teach it. After a few years, he once again was starting to feel that he really wasn't getting the answers that he sought. Around 1951 or '52 he became aware of a class called The Gifts of the Spirit that was being taught by a minister in Calgary. He traveled to Calgary and became entranced with what was taught in the class, especially with speaking in tongues. By 1953 he was teaching a version of this class, without permission from the originator, initially called Receiving the Holy Spirit Today, later changed to Power for Abundant Living, as if he had originated it. He taught this class, mainly around his area of the country, gaining a small number of followers, all the while maintaining his position as a minister in the local church. In 1955 he incorporated separately from his church and in 1957 either was removed or resigned from his position as pastor. For the next few years he taught his classes, mostly within a one day's drive from his home, setting up his headquarters at the family farm that he and his brothers had inherited upon the death of their parents.

Once again, in 1968, our not-so-young-anymore former pastor was unsatisfied with how things were progressing. (It seems like this was a recurring feature of his life) Some graduates of his classes attended services on Sunday nights at his home, while many remained active in their home churches. He had recorded his class so that it could be distributed outside his home area. No longer a cog in the wheel of his original denomination, he had his own organization, was publishing pamphlets and books, and had a modest following. 

Around this time young Christians around the country became involved in what was popularly called "The Jesus Movement". They were by and large unhappy with the traditions of the churches in which the were raised and sought greater spirituality in new Christian groups. Our former pastor, now 52 years old, traveled to San Francisco with a copy of his taped class and made contact with a group of young people (referred in retrospect as "the hippies") who he introduced to his novel approach to Christian doctrine. They hit it off immediately. His structured approach, combined with the enthusiasm and love of the young people, made for a perfect storm of outreach. Small Bible study groups, made up of graduates of the class started to spring up all over the Bay Area. A similar situation occurred in the northern suburbs of New York City. Graduates who moved to other areas brought copies of the class with them and started local fellowships in their new homes. Locals went off to college and started classes and study groups there. Soon there were followers of our once searching pastor all over the country.

At this time I should probably introduce our your seeker by name. Victor Wierwille. The group that he founded was eventually called The Way Incorporated. The San Francisco and New York groups incorporated under the names The Way West and The Way East. The new influx of followers gave Wierwille, if not answers, at least followers, as well as prestige and power, which may be what he was really after all along. In short order he managed to gain control of The Way West and The Way East and folded them into The Way International. He started a program for potential leaders which he called The Way Corps in 1970, and in 1971 he initiated The Word Over the World Ambassadors (WOW), basically a missionary program. In just a few short years there were followers of The Way in all 50 states as well as numerous other countries, sending in their tithes of 10% of their income and gathering every August in Ohio at the Rock of Ages festival.

In the New York City area, by 1978 there were 2 branches of 7-10 home fellowships each in all New York City boroughs, as well as in Nassau & Suffolk on Long Island. Most of these were led by college age men and women who had graduated from The Way's Power for Abundant Living class.

This is where I came in.

Part III

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

Start from the beginning

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

So, You Want To Join a Cult - Part I

No one wakes up in the morning, and after a shower and that first cup of coffee, decides that they’re going to join a cult. No one approached by someone with an engaging smile and an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible thinks “Cool! A cult! Just what I’ve been looking for!” Yet, every day in America, people join up with groups that are labelled cults. Sometimes the labeling is by former members of the alleged cult. The problem with the term “cult” is that there is no consensus on what a cult is. Sure, you can find lists that include things like “Has a charismatic leader” or “encourages an ‘us versus them’ mindset” while others go straight to brainwashing and sleep deprivation. Others, notably among fundamentalist denominations, label any group that deviates from their particular definition of orthodox Christianity as a cult.

I’m going to take you through my journey, before, during, and after, back in and kicked out, of a group that I have labeled in retrospect a cult. You can make up your own mind whether or not it really was a cult. I’ll tell you from the outset that no one asked me to drink any poisoned Kool-Aid, or commit any illegal acts. I didn’t live in a “cult compound”. During most of the time that I was involved I looked and acted “normal”. I worked a regular job, I got married and raised children. I did not wear any distinguishing clothing. The difference was in my mind, in my beliefs, in who and what I allowed to control and influence my actions.

My family was (and still are, mostly) Catholics. Our neighborhood of Rosedale in Queens, New York City was predominantly Catholic, mostly ethnic Irish and Italian with two Catholic parishes. One of the defining features of Catholicism is that you don’t stop “being Catholic”. If you’re unhappy with how things are, you don’t find another denomination that better fits your views, you either tough it out, or move into one of the categories of Catholics who aren’t regular churchgoers: “Ashes & Palms” Catholics, those who show up only for the major holy days and “Lapsed Catholics” – still Catholic, but not participating. You rarely hear about “ex-Catholics”, at least not back then. I was a fairly religious kid. I was an altar boy, I prayed (in private, as well as at church), I regularly went to Confession and attended mass every Sunday. Even during my late teen years, when sex, drugs and rock & roll began to exert their influence, I still prayed and went to church and got ash on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, but I wondered. I wondered why, if we were the spiritual descendants of the apostles, were there many denominations, I wondered how we knew if any of it were true.

My first foray into scratching that itch occurred in my mid-teens. There were several Protestant churches in our neighborhood, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopalian. I had no idea what a small slice of Christendom this represented. I attended services at all these churches and was struck by how similar they were to a Catholic mass. It didn’t really seem to make a difference where you went to church, none of them were excited about providing any solid answers. During my first year of college I took a comparative religion course. I did a lot of reading about the major world religions and was quite impressed with Buddhism, but it was still just people talking, without any actual evidence.

One of the things that cult scholars point out is that cults are always on the lookout for people like me, people who are unsatisfied with the status quo, who are not getting anything out of whatever religion they were raised in and are looking for answers, looking for meaning. They also point out the cults are also looking for people who meet other criteria, those who have hit rock bottom in some part of their lives, people who are lonely, who are outsiders. This latter category wasn’t me by any means. I had good parents, a stable family, decent middle-class opportunities, and access to a good education. I wasn’t down and out and at the end of my rope, but I was, inside, desperately seeking meaning and validation and I thought that religion was where I would find it.

Unlike the Protestant mainstream which emphasizes the Bible as the standard upon which to base belief, Catholicism emphasizes Church teaching embodied in apostolic succession, a chain of bishops stretching back to the original twelve apostles. The Protestant Reformation was in large part a rejection of this reliance on the opinion of Church leaders and a reversion, or so they thought, to a reliance of the text of the Bible, just like the early Church did. The problem with that was, for the early Church there was no "Bible". Of course there were the various gospels and epistles being passed around, but many of these weren't even written until many years after Jesus' ministry, and it wasn't until several hundred years later that a consensus of what precisely constituted "The Bible" was arrived at, referred to as "the canon of scripture". In Christianity's early days there was a proliferation of writings. In addition to those that we are familiar with, there were many other gospels, epistles, apocalypses and miscellaneous writings. There were contradictions among the many writings, some of which were clearly defending a particular point of view or condemning an opposing point of view. (This could also be said about the canonical writings, but that's another blog post!) A lot of stock was put in authorship. Something that was purportedly written by an apostle, or at least a close disciple of one, had a better chance of being accepted than an anonymous treatise or one written by an ordinary Christian. At some point, someone had to make the decision regarding what was legitimate and what wasn't.  The logic of the time was that the original apostles were most likely to have accurately passed on Jesus' teachings. Those who had been directly taught by those twelve also were thought to have transmitted the teachings of Jesus correctly. This was "logically" extended to anyone who was in an unbroken line of leadership from Jesus' time to the present, not allowing for human error or willful misconstruction. The leaders of the Church at the time the canon of scripture was decided believed that they, by virtue of unbroken apostolic succession, were able to determine which writings were genuine and which were not. During my time of searching for answers I knew none of this. I believed that Catholic doctrine and the Bible were identical.

I was wide open for someone who could point out the discrepancies.

Part II:

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

Killings: Of Police/By Police

I've never had the kind of job where it was possible that, as part of my job, I would be killed during my shift. I have never served in the military and I have never been a police officer. I would imagine that it would be a priority for a police officer to be diligent and aware in order to come home (alive) at the end of the day, but I really can't imagine the stress that a person is under in those circumstances. And not just the police officer, but the officer's family as well. It's really no comfort to surviving family members to hear that it was a part of the job, or "he knew what he was getting into" after a loved one is killed in the line of duty. 

But it is part of the job that a police officer signs up for. 

I know that sounds harsh, and I don't mean to make light of police being killed, but when an unarmed person, who is complying with an officer's demands, and at worst is accused of a misdemeanor or traffic offense is killed, the reflexive response by law enforcement supporters is to tell us how tough a cop's job is, how they never know when someone might pull a gun on them, or how often police are killed in the line of duty. 

All of that is objectively true, but the subtext seems to be that a police officer is completely justified in proactively killing someone who might be a threat. Does this happen all the time, or even most of the time. Probably not. But the position of most police departments seems to be that the life of the officer is the most important thing in any contact between the police and the public, and if official policy is otherwise, the saying "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six" carries the day. 

There is a fundamental difference, therefore, between a police officer being killed in the line of duty and a civilian being killed  by police. In the first instance, it is by definition being done by a criminal. If caught, the killer will be arrested (if lucky - cops really pull out all the stops for cop killers) and put on trial and likely convicted. Someone killed by the police is usually demonized - if they have ever been arrested, that's brought up - their actions prior to being killed are questioned - and rarely is a police officer tried for killing someone, and even more rarely, convicted. Innocent people have been killed because a cop claims that he "feared for his life" without having to produce any evidence, or even articulate any reasoning, why he thought his life was in danger. The "us vs. them" mindset that paints non-police as enemies is perpetuated by the courts. 

It's a tragic thing when a police officer is killed, as it is when a firefighter dies in a fire, or a soldier is killed in combat. In a perfect world, it wouldn't happen, but in each case of a police officer being killed, it was done by a "bad guy". But police are supposed to be the "good guys". They're not supposed to kill 12 year-olds with toy guns, or men reaching for their wallets according to police directive after informing the police that they were armed; they're not supposed to restrain suspects until they suffocate; they're not supposed to shoot women in their sleep; they're not supposed to shoot social workers who are on the ground with their hands raised. 

I don't want to see any dead cops. I do want to see cops refrain from killing people who aren't trying to kill them. 

Life Isn't Fair

 

Life Isn't Fair

Bad Things Happen Sometimes

But So Do Good Things

A Lot Is Beyond Our Control

Things Don't Happen "For A Reason"

Or According To A Deity's "Plan"

(Unless That Deity Is A Sadistic Jackass)

Do Your Best

With The Cards You Are Dealt

Bluff If You Have To

Straw Men and Intentional Misunderstanding: Blue Lives

In a perfect world everyone would speak and write using perfect grammar, all their statements will be perfectly consistent, and words would be used according to the accepted Merriam-Webster definitions. In that perfect world no one would ever have to ask "What did you mean by that?".

But we don't live in that best of all possible worlds.

People make imprecise statements. I noted recently how a friend, when coming across incendiary posts in social media, gives the other person a chance to explain himself. If the offending person takes the opportunity to clarify, it may be that the statement wasn't intended to be offensive, or the offended person didn't understand the context or nuance. Of course it could be that no clarification can explain it away and the initial statement really was offensive.

What seems to happen a lot is that people intentionally misunderstand, deploying the straw man fallacy to attack a position that the other person really doesn't hold, not allowing for lack of precision in the choice of words.

The recent protests against police abuses that arose following the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis engendered a lot of slogans, some of which were misunderstood by those who disagreed with the manner of protesting. One of these is related to the slogan "Blue Lives Matter" and a meme that went around that had a picture of some blue cartoon characters (Blue, from Blues Clues was one) and the caption "These Are the Only Blue Lives That Matter To Me". Cops, as well as friends and family of police officers naturally were upset, but let's look at the phrase itself and where it came from.

In 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter began trending on Twitter. It soon became a rallying cry for many people who were fed up with young Black men continually being killed by white people, usually at the hands of the police. An organization with that name also started in 2013. Note that no one was saying that only Black lives matter, or that non-Black lives don't matter, but that in the eyes of the police, as well as many White people, it didn't seem like Black lives did matter. Those using that hashtag, or the phrase in general, were trying to point out that despite the lack of seeming value of Black lives in this country, Black lives mattered.

There was an almost immediate backlash. The phrase "All Lives Matter" started to be heard and seen. It seemed innocuous. Of course all lives mattered. How could anyone argue with that? But the problem with snapping back an answer to "Black Lives Matter" was that it didn't require an answer. Attempting to answer it was a rebuttal. If all lives really did matter, then we wouldn't need to say "Black Lives Matter", would we?

Another common rejoinder was "Blue Lives Matter", obviously a response intended to defend the police, who were a frequent target of Black Lives Matter activists. Similar to "All Lives Matter", not only was this supposed to be a counterpoint to "Black Lives Matters", but was meant to point out the opinion of many police and law enforcement supporters that they were in opposition to "Black Lives Matter" protesters. Again, it's obvious that the lives of police officers matter, but the term "Blue Lives Matter" is a not-so-veiled attempt at a rebuttal of "Black Lives Matter".

Of course, there are no "blue lives".

What?

As I have recently seen pointed out, "blue" is a profession; a cop can take his uniform off at the end of the day, a Black person can't take off his skin. A police officer can retire or leave the force and take up another profession and any animosity toward the police goes away. A Black person is always Black.

When I first lived in Nebraska I experienced a lot of persecution due to my religion. I remember thinking at the time that I could move to the next town, keep my religion quiet, no one would ever know, and the discrimination would end (as it did), but that a Black person did not have that option. It was a turning point for me.

So if you are offended by memes or posts or comments speaking against the slogan "Blue Lives Matter", it doesn't mean that they think the lives of individual police offers don't matter, or that they wish harm on police officers, but that the phrase is meaningless, since there are no "blue lives". In addition, the phrase is nothing more than an attempt to minimize "Black Lives Matter".

Take the time to find out what people really mean when they say what they say. If you disagree with their actual position, then go ahead and argue, but don't rail against a position that you only think they are holding, or have assumed that they hold because that's easier than taking the time to find out.

Black Lives Matter: Disrupting the Nuclear Family?

While I do get into arguments and discussion on social media, mostly I blog in order to organize my own thoughts and to try to convince myself that my own opinions make sense. I'll often see people write things that I don't think are correct, but rather than automatically disagreeing, I'll do a little checking to see if the facts at least are correct. The opinion that people have of those facts is another matter, but you have to, at least in a sane world, start with the basic facts before you can form an opinion.

Something that I have seen a lot in the last week is an accusation that Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-religion organization that is, in reality against Black people and seeks to disrupt the nuclear family. I first became aware of this position through the Facebook posts of someone I know through a mutual taste in music. I've traced her views back through several Black Christian preachers. I believe that they have arrived at their opinions by selective quoting, often out of context.

Many years ago I was part of a group that liked to think of themselves as a Biblical Research ministry. In retrospect they were nothing of the sort, but they did outline several things that one must understand when reading the Bible. One was that words must be understood in light of their meaning when they were written. This group used the King James Version of the Bible, which was originally published in 1611, with revisions made over the next hundred years. Many words no longer had the same meaning as they did 400 years ago. Other keys were to read things in their context, and of course, almost so obvious that it didn't need to be said" read what was written (not what you want to be written). All of this should be common sense when it comes to evaluating anything that we hear or read.

One of the "quotes" that has been repeated is the Black Lives Matter organization (BLM) is out to disrupt the nuclear family. What does that mean? Well, first of all, the complete quote, from the BLM website is:

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

So what does that mean? Some Christians would have you believe that it means to "drastically alter or destroy" the nuclear family. Indeed, if you look up the definition of "disrupt" the first definition that pops up will say just that. But does the statement on their website say that they want to "disrupt the nuclear family"? No, it says that they "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement...". Although it's not entirely clear just from looking at that phrase in isolation what precisely a Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement is, we can look at the context and get a clearer idea. We can determine what they mean by noting the word "by" - this clues us in on the "how" of the disruption: "by supporting each other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another...". This doesn't sound like a negative interpretation of disruption (more on the modern positive definition of disruption in a moment), but harking back to a time when extended families and community were more the norm, even in American society, rather than what is the norm today, nuclear families that have isolated themselves from the greater community. Isn't that what churches espouse? The final clause "...especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable." This hardly sounds like what some people are claiming that they're saying.

So what about an alternative meaning of "disrupt", one that frames disruptions as a good thing? Here's a link to an article on the Merriam-Webster website that discusses the changing meaning of "disrupt" and "disruption":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-new-meaning-of-disrupt?fbclid=IwAR3zVqLmCFr_93Fx4EhPL0rpj2Ra8nZs88ImB56fOPCgIFDdnSBqSWa6R4Q

With this relevant quote:
"...his theory of 'disruptive innovation' were using disrupt and its variant parts of speech in a fairly narrow sense, describing a process in which new business entities successfully challenge established ones by initially focusing attention on those areas of service which the older companies had overlooked, and leveraging this to a long term advantage."

I suggest that, based on the context, the BLM website is using "disrupt" in this way, or at least defining the word in a non-standard way, not, as some would suggest, to destroy the nuclear family.

The other issue that has been used as a pretext to disavow Black Lives Matter is the recent unearthing of a video where one of the organization's founders says "We are trained Marxists". Christian preachers and their followers, claiming that Marxism is an "anti-Christian religion", have declared that it would be un-Christian to support Black Loves Matter, sometimes conflating the organization of that name with the wider movement. There are several things wrong with that conclusion. Yes, it is true that Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, has said, in response to a suggestion that the organization had no ideology, ""We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular, we're trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories."

Again we have to go back to context. The sentence right before the "trained Marxists" statement is "...we're trained organizers". So what, precisely is Marxist about the organization? You'd be hard put to find anything unambiguously Marxist about their public statements. If the BLM organization is attempting to do anything beyond keeping young Black men from being indiscriminately shot and killed by the police and affecting systemic change to advance the equality of Blacks and other minorities, (one preacher referred to BLM's advocacy for LBGTQ people as a reason to shun them) they are doing a poor job of articulating it. So a couple of the people who were active early on in this movement and copyrighted a name and started a non-profit and put up a website claim expertise in organizing that they learned as Marxists. At least one socialist organization looks at them as sell-outs who aren't championing any socialist ideals.

https://www.socialistalternative.org/marxism-fight-black-freedom/black-lives-matter-marxism/

It's pretty evident that whatever Marxism was part of their ideology has faded away as the organization has become a movement, a movement composed of thousands of people who have no connection to an organization, but strong fealty to an idea, the idea, that despite all evidence to the contrary, Black lives matter.

Black Lives Matter is not a threat to Christians. Black Live Matter is not a threat to White people. Black Lives Matter is not a threat to the nuclear family. Black Lives Matter is a threat to racism, misogyny, bigotry, and anything that devalues one group of people.

Any organization, any movement, is going to have people with whom you disagree, who say unfortunate things, who make decisions at variance to their public stance. Should we anathematize the whole movement because we have found a few clay feet? Should we demonize all Christians because some Christian organizations have done evil?

If your only public statements regarding the Black Lives Matter movement are to conflate the organization with the movement and to find ways to tar both, I'd take a few moments to examine your motives.