Friday, October 15, 2021

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

Part XXII

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