So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part II - How Do Cults Recruit?

"Sincerity is the key, if you can fake that, you can achieve anything"  ~ Attributed to various people

Cults appeal to that part of ourselves that is searching. Sometimes what's being searched for is love, or a sense of belonging. Sometimes what's being searched for is answers, knowledge of the world: the mundane  or the spiritual. Sometimes people are attracted to "secret knowledge". Cult recruiters have to be sincere - not appear as con men and women. 

Contrary to widespread belief you don't have to be stupid, or a broken person to get caught up in a cult. Shortly after I left The Way I was friends with a woman with whom I had many religious and philosophical discussions. When I revealed that I had been in a cult, her attitude toward me changed; she couldn't believe that someone whom she viewed as intelligent and discerning would be foolish enough get involved in a cult. She didn't realize that part of what made me discerning was that I had gotten out of a cult and knew their tricks. 

The recruiting tool that I am most familiar with, having been on the receiving end as well as employing it on others, was the search for answers, the search for knowledge. Love bombing, or overwhelming a potential recruit with attention and offers of friendship was something that I had heard about, and saw rarely, with hardly any success. Someone who is just looking for a friend, or who has a crush on one of the cult recruiters has, in my opinion, a shallow attraction to the cult itself. If there isn't enough commonality to maintain a friendship, or the crush proves to be not interested, that usually ends the involvement. I saw this with the family member who first introduced me to The Way. When her friendship with the local Way leader soured, her involvement ended. Seekers after knowledge, once hooked, tended to stick around, ignoring potential red flags. 

A cult recruiter who is offering answers though, is relying on the recruitee having just enough information to see the plausibility of the cult's doctrine, but not enough to be able to see through the subterfuge. They have to be able to undermine faith in the reliability of mainstream sources of information in order to strengthen the cult's position as the arbiter of truth. My initial exposure to The Way indicated that they at least thought that they had all the answers, and as I stuck around and enrolled in their classes, what they were teaching seemed to make sense and fit together. Of course, if I had any background in studying the Bible I may have spotted the weakness and contradiction in many of their positions. Unfortunately no one in my circle of family and friends had the knowledge to contradict what I was being taught. Once I was hooked, I became invested in their doctrines and was willing to overlook red flags because they were providing something I craved - knowledge of the Bible. Having access to that knowledge outweighed the problems that I encountered along the road, even in the early days. And it made me feel special - I enjoyed the feeling of possessing secret knowledge, that I was among the spiritual elite. 

And that's an important key to cult recruitment and retention: providing people with something that they want, and making them feel like they are part of something greater than themselves. Whether or not any of it is true. 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part I - What IS a Cult?

There's no universally agreed upon definition of for cults. But there are some common features: 

1. Shared unquestioning commitment to a charismatic leader or ideology
2. Belief that the group has all the answers
3. System of behavioral control, including isolation
4. Dissent is not tolerated

Google "cults" and you'll likely find more characteristics, but the four I have listed a the main overarching categories. Note that I haven't mentioned unorthodox beliefs. Mainstream Christians often categorize groups such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (The Mormons) and Jehovah's Witnesses as cults based solely on their beliefs which deviate from the majority of Christian denominations. I won't argue with an ex-Mormon or former Jehovah's Witness if they tell me that they left a cult, but a Catholic or Protestant who accuses those groups of being cults is likely doing so based on what they heard about their beliefs. 

Sure, a belief that Joseph Smith received his revelation by translating the divine message that was inscribed on gold plates, or that the "Lost Tribes of Israel" moved to North America or that in the afterlife there's the possibility that we get to be gods of our own planets, just like God was once a mortal before his becoming God - sounds crazy. But does a virgin birth, a man ascending bodily into the heavens after being raised from the dead, talking donkeys and one family with a boat full of animals repopulated the world after a year-long flood make sense? No religion makes sense to those outside that religion. 

Of the four main indicators of cultishness that I cite, there is definitely a continuum. Many groups believe that they have all the answers, systems of control vary in seriousness and differ among different cultures, and how much dissent is tolerated can be situational. I grew up a Catholic, in my opinion there is some mild cultishness involved in being a Catholic. Most Catholics that I know would never even consider being anything but a Catholic, and if they think about it at all, consider that as far as religion goes, "The Church" has all the answers, but as long as one isn't too overt or obnoxious about it individual Catholics pick and choose what aspects of Catholic doctrine to adhere to. The dominant behavioral control is peer or family pressure. 

A cult does not have to have a religious focus. A contemporary example of non-religious cult behavior is the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) followers of former president Trump. There's an inarguable unquestioning commitment to a leader who is followed no matter what; they believe that in the realm of politics and governance, Trump has all the answers and dissent is most assuredly not tolerated. Even the behavioral control and isolation applies. Although they still have whatever jobs they had before becoming a Trump supporters, and are often involved in their communities, they have willingly isolated themselves from anyone who isn't 100% on board with their views. Anyone who differs is branded a socialist, anti-American, a traitor or even a pedophile. Not that different that a religious cultist claiming their opponents are devil-possessed. 

Cults come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but it's a cults actions, their behavior, that defines their cultishness, not necessarily their beliefs. 

God

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that God exists. What do I mean by "God"? For now, let's just say I mean what the average American means when they refer to "God". We'll circle back to that eventually. In the article I will be referring to the Abrahamic God with an upper "G" and other deities with lower cases "g's". 

In the United States the predominant religion is Christianity in its many forms. Christians, as well as Muslims, claim to worship the same God as do Jews, who worshipped him first. Even people who aren't officially part of any of those three religions, who can in no way be considered religious, would default to the Abrahamic God when talking about "God". (We're specifically talking about the United States here, and even within the U.S. exceptions would include people who follow non-Abrahamic religions). Where did belief in the Abrahamic God originate? Is there anything to suggest that he really is the supreme creator of the universe? Or did he just have better press agents than all the other gods?

I doubt that there is any serious argument against the idea that every little tribe, every kingdom, every group of nomadic clansman had a god. I'm not going to argue about the probability that any of these gods existed in any real sense, but certainly people believed that they did. The people we know as the Hebrews and later the Israelites had a god as well. It's also certain that the Hebrews believed that there were other gods in addition to their God - just that their God was the best. Eventually the company line became that there was only one god...God...all the other "gods" were just demons, or were people worshipping Satan in a different guise, but it's indisputable that early on (it's in the Bible, people) worshippers of God acknowledged that there were other gods. If we acknowledge that early followers of God believed that the gods of other nations were just as real, it follows that if we believe that God is real, then those other gods must be real as well. 

But what about the first few chapters of Genesis? Doesn't that say that God created the heavens and the Earth? Doesn't it say that he created the first man and woman and communicated with them? Yes, it certainly does. But every other tribe had a creation myth as well. Every other tribe had a story about how humans came to be. We still know what some of those were, and there are still people following the religions from whence those creation myths originated. 

We've already, for the sake of discussion assumed that God is real. We're further assuming that other gods are likewise real. Let's extend that assumption and assume that God talked to someone and told them what how creation came about which eventually got written down in the Bible. Wouldn't it make sense that other gods talked to their worshippers and told them their version of the creation story? From an objective viewpoint we don't know which of these deities is really the creator. Or maybe the various creation myths aren't meant to be historical records, and were written down by people who liked to tell a good story. It's pretty well established that no creation story is physically possible. So, at best what's written down in the Bible about creation is God bragging about how great he is and other sacred traditions are other gods doing the same. We can extend this to the other early parts of the Bible as well. The "Law"? Sure, God setting down rules and regulations. Fine, other gods had their own rules, why not God? The books of "history"? Why not? Later writers assembling a legendary history of a people. Doesn't even need God to be involved. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon? Some good poetry and lots of talk about how different human beings viewed God. The Prophets? People trying to make sense of current events. Again, not the only people who wrote books about legendary times or wrote down their opinions about what the gods thought about various issues. 

Let's stop and take a breath here. We're still assuming that God exists. What we're not assuming is that anything that is written down about God is necessarily true. It might be, but it also might be just the opinion of one of God's followers. Or it might be the self-aggrandizing opinion of one god among many gods. 

Around 2000 years ago a new sect of the followers of God sprung up. There had always been factions within the followers of God, who mostly were confined within the ranks of the people who were by that time known as Judeans (aka Jews). There were Pharisees and Sadducees, factions we know about from the Gospels, but also Essenes, Hellenists, and probably, like today, people who just got on with their lives and didn't give God much thought. This new faction centered around the figure that we know as Jesus of Nazareth. After Jesus' death and alleged resurrection, this faction, unlike previous iterations of Judean religion, aggressively proselytized, spreading their beliefs about God outside the bounds of their nation. At this time the various peoples within the Roman Empire still had their own national or tribal pantheons. But it was also a time when for various reasons people began to experiment with new and exotic religions from outside the borders of the Empire. 

Let's stop and take another breath. Remember, we're still assuming that God exists, but we're not assuming that he is the only God around, or that the book purporting to describe his will for mankind is in any way superior to the many other "holy" books or mythologies. There's a running argument about whether Jesus existed. I tend to follow the logic espoused by Bart Ehrman, a professor of Biblical studies and author of many books on the subject. He views the four Gospels as historical documents. Not in the sense of "true", but in the sense that they claim to describe events that happened once upon a time. I've been listening to a podcast about the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. One of the subjects that continually comes up is the reliability of the sources. Sometimes there is only one source for a period of time. That source is then analyzed for biases, compared with what is known from other writers as well as internal consistency. Sometimes the only source was written decades or even centuries after the events it purports to describe. The Gospels in this respect are similar. The earliest one was written around 30 years after Jesus lived. Historians can examine each of the Gospels and study them in the same way that a historian would study an account of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, looking for inconsistencies, points of agreement and many other points that I won't get into here. My point is that in addition to assuming that God exists, when it comes to Jesus, I'm reasonably sure that he existed as well, but with a lot more certainty.

So, we're now assuming that God exists, but only to the extent that he was one deity among many, but now we have Jesus, which we can assume with a lot more certainty existed. What does that tell us? Not as much as you might think. While we have historical documents attesting to Jesus' existence, and can reasonably conclude that a lot of what is recorded therein are things he actually said and did, we don't have any evidence that he was who he said he was or that his teachings really came from God. Which brings us to another issue. There are numerous contradictions within the Gospels regarding what Jesus taught and who he said he was. Each of the Gospel writers, not to mention Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, seemed to have different opinions about who Jesus was, what he taught and what the purpose of his death and resurrection was. Like the writers of the Old Testament, we can't be sure that the Gospels and Epistles weren't anything more than men's opinions about God. 

As the years and decades and centuries ran on, a lot of arguments were made and even blood spilled attempting to determine precisely what the Bible actually said. The doctrine of the Trinity was the result of an attempt to reconcile the various Biblical views of who Jesus was, with opinions regarding why it had to be a certain way were tacked on every few years. Factions multiplied in Christianity's early days, shrunk as power was centralized and multiplied again at regular intervals. Today there are thousands of Christian sects and denominations, some differing from others in barely noticeable ways, others hardly recognizable to each other as having sprung from the same roots. In addition to the myriad institutional variations of Christianity, there are even more personal variations on who God and Jesus are, what prayer is, and what a Christian is; people whose image of God conforms to nothing in any creed or holy book. 

And why should it? We act as if the Bible is an unassailable source of truth and that God's existence and his basic attributes are beyond argument. But if you're worshipping God, you're worshipping a tribal god who had a very good press agent and whose followers eventually pushed their beliefs outside the insular tribal ethno-state and out into the world. There's, of course, a lot of good in some versions of Christianity, and I believe that people who follow the more "love thy neighbor" strains of the faith are generally good people. But for myself I see no reason to ascribe to Christianity over that of any other religion, at least not on the basis that any of them have a lock on "The Truth"...or even "truth". I can be a bad person all on my own without justifying it with Bible verses and I can also "love my neighbor" without worshipping a Middle Eastern tribal deity. 

We're responsible for our own actions. 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XLI - The End

 When it was announced in a special adult-only meeting that Way President Craig Martindale had admitted to an extra-marital affair that he claimed  was consensual the reaction was varied. One couple left immediately. They later told me that when it was announced that I was being put on probation I was described as "traitorous", among other things. This couple was incredulous that I was treated so badly while during the same time period our supposed leader was engaged in behavior that was arguably much worse. Others made excuses for him. I kept my mouth shut. Pat was one of those who made excuses. In order to further my attempt to salvage our marriage I stayed away from subjects where we would argue. Inside, I was furious. Martindale had recently taught a whole new series of classes, The Way of Abundance and Power, Foundational, Intermediate and Advanced, that would replace the Power for Abundant Living series taught originally by Wierwille, The Way's founder. A lot of what was in the class deviated from what we had been taught previously about several subjects. Some of it was just Scientology-level insanity. I couldn't believe that a man who didn't even understand that adultery was wrong should be trusted to present what was billed as new revelation from God. 

I soon found a like-minded group of people in a message board called GreaseSpot Café. The name came from Martindale's frequent rant that people who left The Way would be "a grease spot by midnight". One of the first things I noticed from the stories that people posted was that things that I thought were minor, or outliers, were in fact common throughout The Way. Things that I had brushed off as one-time personality quirks were in fact official policy. From people's testimonies I learned that Martindale's "affair" was not unusual, but that sexual harassment and abuse had been going on for years, for decades. I participated in discussion about various Way doctrines and saw how shaky they were. At one point I put together a ten page review of Martindale's Way of Abundance and Power (WayAP) class and sent it to a member of the Board of Trustees who I felt was open to what I had to say. The review was an in-depth examination of WayAP, pointing out the numerous inconsistencies with previous Way teaching and with the Bible itself. This Trustee called me at home one night and told me that he was going to have our regional coordinator, who was going to be in Lincoln to teach the WayAP class live, address my concerns. Which he did, unconvincingly hitting some of the high points of my ten pages as we took a walk around the block, closing with "So, we've covered everything". This was the point where I knew that I needed to leave The Way. 

Looking at things in a 20 year rear-view mirror, it seems like such a minor thing to become the straw that broke the cale's back, especially after decades of red flags. But, to use another metaphor - it was that last pebble that started the avalanche. 

Yet I was still unwilling to make a clean break, as I knew that my ex-wife did not see things my way. The decision was made for me in August 2001. I had been posting on GreaseSpot Café (GSC) pretty regularly. The Way had loyal members reading through GSC, trying to identify "innies" who were posting there. They figured out who I was and confronted me about it. Although I never admitted to my role I was informed by phone several days later that I was no longer welcome at any Way functions. I'm not sure if they were putting me on probation again, or whether I was M&A, but as the leader on the phone attempted to give me some instructions I informed him that he had just abdicated any authority that he had over me. I was finally out of The Way for good.

Unfortunately, this put the nail in my unrealistic dream that I could somehow salvage my marriage. Things had not gotten any better when my probation was up in 1999, Pat was still convinced that I was entertaining devil spirits and frequently "confronted" me on various issues, large and small, usually having the children sit in as witnesses, eventually preventing me from interacting with the children even though I still lived there. But being ejected from The Way gave her the excuse to finally sever ties with me and in early November 2001 I was asked to leave. 

Rebuilding relationships with my children is another long, but ultimately successful story. I stayed involved with GSC for many years afterward, contributing to the record of cultishness that it embodied. I made many friends and met over 30 of GSC participants in person over the years. One never sets out to join a cult, but people end up in them every day. They're not always religious based, but many are. It's been over 20 years since I left The Way. My involvement shaped who I am, good and bad. It made me more aware of what cults are, and it made me much less likely to get involved in shady enterprises and much more likely to do my homework and not get sucked into conspiracy theories.  

The Way was part of my life from the ages of 19 to 43. It's still part of my memories. I hope my experiences can help others steer clear of cults of all kinds.

Start at 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 40 - The Purges Catch Up

[There will be things in this installment that are just me making bad decisions that have little to do with being in a cult - I'm also leaving out details regarding my ex-wife's actions that I think have nothing to do with cultishness. It's the response of our so-called spiritual leaders that's cultish. I do not want to leave the impression that I'm blaming my own foolishness on my ex-wife or The Way- I take responsibility for my actions]

The purges caught up with me in early 1999. Our finances were in bad shape. Any attempt that I made to take a hard look at our budget, or cut back in area was met by a stubborn refusal by my ex-wife. As I mentioned in an earlier installment she, as well as several other women had interpreted the verse that said a women was to be a "keeper at home" to mean that the wife would make all the decisions, but that the husband, as "head" would be responsible. Way leadership supported this interpretation. As I said, our finances were a mess, we were under pressure to, not only give 10%+ of our income to The Way, but spend money on classes and out-of-town events. At home, I was under pressure to make purchases that we couldn't afford. The answer both from Pat and from Way leaders was to "believe for financial prosperity". My solution to this impossible situation was to run up an unsustainable amount of credit card debt - and hide it from her. As you could imagine, eventually I would be found out. It was a house of cards.

Eventually Pat found out about the mountain of credit card debt. Rather than confront me personally Pat went to the local leadership. I came home from a work conference to an empty house which was soon filled with several Way leaders who confronted me on my "sin" of being in debt. I was rather relieved to be found out, and looked forward to putting all the lying behind and moving forward. For some reason I was not, as I had suspected, marked and avoided and thrown out of The Way. The Way had instituted an intermediate punishment that they called Spiritual Probation. This involved a six month period where the probationer would be banned from attending any Way functions, prohibited from contact with any active Way people and required to write a letter to the Way state leader outlining how he was "getting back in fellowship". Oh yeah - still required to keep tithing 10%+. I guess they figured that if expulsions continued at the rate that they were, soon there would be no one left. Probation was just another method of control. 

To back up a step or two: Little by little over the previous several years Pat had been redirecting her habitual finding of fault with Way leadership towards other Way people in the area. She was the originator of many accusations which resulted in people being confronted and marked and avoided (M&A'd). After running out of targets she focused on my shortcomings. Of course every marriage has its bumpy spots. One of the spouses drinks too much, or spends to much time with buddies, or is rude to the other. Sometimes it's just minor things like the toilet seat gets left up. But in The Way, everything was spiritual. Everything. And my ex-wife was more willing than most to find a spiritual explanation for any behavior that she didn't like. What do I mean by a spiritual explanation? Devil spirit possession. That's right, things as simple as paying a bill late or allowing the kids to stay up late to watch 'Seinfeld' were evidence of being possessed by Devil spirits. Pat became convinced that I was possessed and that somehow if I was out of the picture, things would be alright. On two occasions she disappeared for several days at a time, once leaving a note that said "It has been a disgrace to be unequally yoked with you" which one of the children found before I did. The children were convinced that she had abandoned us. Local leadership allowed her to come to them and complain without bringing me into the conversation.  As for me, I was frustrated by her behavior and the response of the Way leaders. Eventually my credit card debt was discovered and the six month of probation started.

At the time we had two sons who were legal adults and lived in an apartment across the street from us. They were allowed to participate in Way functions - an arrangement which contributed to more division within my family. My eldest son, who among other things had serious anger issues, would go to Way leaders whenever he and I had a disagreement. At one point Roger, the local fellowship leader, informed me that he was stepping in as a father for my son, implying that I was incompetent to do so, further dividing the family. Pat thought that by going to leadership with evidence of my sins The Way would kick me out and she would be able to live her life without my "Satanic" influence. But The Way had other ideas. They decided that she would also be banned for six months, although not required to write a monthly letter. This angered her even more. The six months dragged on. I took a second job in order to pay down the debt without affecting the family finances and faithfully wrote my letter every month. (And sent in my tithe) After the six months were up I was let back in to The Way, the leaders convinced I had mended my ways. Pat was not convinced. She was convinced that I had pulled the wool over leadership's eyes and was bound and determined to show them that I was evil. And I'm not being metaphorical - she was 100% convinced that I was evil. I'm not pointing at Pat's words and actions to suggest any kind of delusion, but that her position was in line with what Way believers had been primed to believe. It was exacerbated by her "it's always someone else's fault" personality, but the conclusions she reached were incubated by her several decades in The Way. 

I was readmitted to The Way in August 1999. In January 2000 it was announced that Craig Martindale, president and supposed spiritual leader of The Way was being sued by former Way members as the result of an extramarital affair that he claimed was consensual but the ex-members claimed was coerced. He resigned a few weeks later. We were told to not start searching the internet for information about the lawsuit, which of course I did.  I soon found several message boards run by ex-Way members and I began living a double life.

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XLI - The End

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xli-end.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIX - More Purges

In the previous installment I brought up the purge of gays (derided as "homos") as well as anyone who was suspected of having gay fantasies or even sympathies for gay people. But this was only one of a series of purges of the ranks of Way "believers". 

Predating the "homo purge" was the "no debt" purge. Despite common sense and even a cursory knowledge of modern economics indicating that reasonable debt could be a good thing, Martindale banned all debt based on a verse that read "Owe no man any thing, only to love". Obviously unsecured credit card debt should be avoided, but how many people could afford to pay cash for a house? Or even a new-ish car? Understanding the future value of money might cause one to finance a purchase of a home appliance rather than pay cash up front. But Martindale was insistent. No debt. Period. No exceptions. If you were in debt you couldn't be a fellowship coordinator, you couldn't enter or remain in The Way Corps, you couldn't attend the Advanced Class. But people were in debt. People owned homes, had car loans, student loans, home improvement loans. All things that no one thought would be "off the Word" as recently as the previous year. People who owned homes were counseled to sell their homes and start renting. There was utter chaos. Once this new edict filtered down to the rank and file the "confrontations" started. In our area there was a man who appeared to be developmentally disabled. He usually dressed very shabbily, and leadership talked to him about buying some new clothes. Which he obediently did - with a credit card. Bam! Debt! Confronted. Marked and avoided. My eldest son, who at the time was living with Fred Brown, the aforementioned local leader, worked several part time and temporary jobs throughout the year. As anyone who has ever been in that position knows, none of the part time employers withhold enough taxes - the withholding formula assumes that there isn't any other income - so when it comes time to file there is a tax liability due rather than a refund. Fred told him that he was in debt and therefore "off the Word". When asked to explain his reasoning about how paying taxes was debt, all Fred could come up with was "Tell me how it isn't". Of course some leaders managed to work around the new rules. Some lived in homes that were in their parents' names; one local man had concocted an elaborate workaround to convince himself that his debt wasn't really debt. 

There was also a series of new classes that Martindale recorded, all of which were mandatory. Advanced Class graduates who had not taken the old class were no longer considered Advanced Class grads...for all that was worth. Anything from before this time period was called "old wineskins" Anyone speaking nostalgically about "the old days" was suspect - and confronted and M&A'd. The little blue pin that WOW Ambassadors received and which they had always worn proudly as a reminder of their service was no longer approved. An old nametag indicating an old class, the same. Anyone who had been around for a long time was derided as an "old grad" whose opinions and input were disrespected or ignored. Men and women who were not in The Way Corps themselves but were married to Way Corps grads had always been given the courtesy designation of "spouse Corps" and were treated as Way Corps, but no more. Any Corps married to non-Corps were no longer considered Corps grads and were relieved of any leadership responsibilities unless they submitted themselves to four years of Way Corps training. Some of these couples had served faithfully in leadership positions for 20 years or more. More thinning of the ranks. 

For years the top leadership had been extremely stingy with funds, requiring reams of red tape for the smallest expenditures, so it came as a surprise in the mid nineties when Martindale decreed that all active Way Corps would be receiving a salary as full time employees of The Way. As part of the "benefit" of not having to work a secular job (Fred had been a drywaller) the Way Corps had to submit to a ratcheted up level of control, including prohibitions on smoking and other habits and having to ask permission before starting a family. In order to justify having Way Corps with small numbers of people to "oversee", Martindale changed the definition of a branch from seven twig fellowships to two, basing this on a misunderstanding of a Hebrew phrase in Exodus. Like most excrement, it all flowed downhill. Free from working a "9-5", Way leaders had all the time in the world  to snoop into the affairs of their flock. Fred and his new wife Elaine started scheduling "witnessing" excursions mid-day and popping over for inspections and meetings. I worked at home and we home-schooled our children, so these visits were quite disruptive. We had to keep track of who we talked to about God, the Bible etc, who we invited to twig fellowship, who attended and reasons for being turned down. The 10% tithe wasn't enough - we were now pushed to increase our "abundant sharing" to higher percentages. It went on and on. Along with this, the confrontations increased and people were thrown out. 

A weird addition to the Way Corps becoming full-time employees was "no gift" policy. Way protocol for many years had been for the "believers" to present their leaders with some kind of gift at the completion of classes or at major events. Martindale at this time became convinced that gifts to leaders constituted bribes and were banned. Once, my five-year old son wanted to give Fred a little trinket - I think it was an animal-shaped pencil eraser - but Fred turned it down, reiterating to us the "no bribe" policy. 

Despite Martindale's claim that he got the idea to make all Corps full-time employees from God, the idea soon hit the brick wall of reality. The Way International was hemorrhaging money. In addition to the salaries, they had to remit payroll taxes on all of it, and none of these people, who had previously been gainfully employed, were tithing or "abundantly sharing", reducing The Way's gross income while expenditures had multiplied. 

Remember that every one of these changes begat grounds for more suspicion, more confrontation, more people humiliated and kicked out of active involvement in The Way. As this state of affairs progressed (or regressed) the air of suspicion and accusations of devil spirit possession reached into every corner, not exempting marriages, including mine.

Start at the beginning:

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

Part 40

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-40-purges.html

So, You Want to Join a Cult -Part XXXVIII - Purges

Deprived of their usual targets of alleged spiritual impurity, the wives of the Women's Cabal turned on their husbands. Couldn't afford whatever your wife thought was a necessary purchase? You could forget about a reasonable conversation reviewing the household budget and the state of the bank account - you "weren't believing" for prosperity. Cold or flu making the rounds at your house? Obviously the "head of the household" wasn't believing for health. What this had become was a dictatorship by the women, who made all the decisions, but all blame was put on the men when things went wrong. This was by no means a universal phenomena. Some Way men emphasized the "man as head" model and made all the decisions, relegating the wife to the role of silent enabler, and in charge of nothing more than cook and baby-maker. In Lincoln, the tendency of local Way woman to challenge leaders that they didn't agree with was strengthened by that one word in Titus: oikôdespotês. In practice, Way leaders took advantage of this dichotomy, the confusion about who was in charge (as if anyone needed to "be in charge") to exercise control, pointing out marital discord as evidence of devilish influence.

But this was all just a sideshow to the purges.

Most cults take pride in growth, pointing to it as "evidence" of God's favor. For most of its history The Way did as well. Much was made about the large number of people who attended the annual "Rock of Ages" gathering every August; the thousands of new Way believers in Zaire was celebrated as were record numbers entering the Way Corps or "going WOW". But after losing around 80% of its membership and leaders in the late 80's, some rationale had to be constructed to make sense of it all. That rationale was the teaching of "the faithful remnant". This was the doctrine that stated that God wasn't about quantity, but was more concerned with quality. The smaller number of active Way people was celebrated as being more pure, more godly, more "on the Word" than what had been around before. And not only were we supposed to view the shrinking numbers as somehow positive, but leadership began to actively reduce the numbers by imposing strict standards of behavior and obedience to leaders that had never been seen before. The most intense was what we profanely referred to as the "homo purge". (I'm using term and placing it in quotes because that's what it was called in The Way, I do not endorse describing gay people simply as "homos")

For most of my early years in The Way, homosexuality wasn't addressed, at least that I noticed. I didn't know of any "out" gay people and I can't recall a single sermon on the subject until the mid nineties. The times were not friendly to gay people outside The Way, and in retrospect Way people were probably as homophobic as the typical straight people of the time, but it just wasn't a focus. In 1995 it became a focus. Way President Martindale began making homosexuality THE sin to be on guard against. You know the verse about the love of money being the root of all evil? Well for Martindale homosexuality was the root of all evil. Everything that would or could go wrong was blamed on closeted gays in our midst. In 1995 he cancelled the WOW Ambassador program with no notice in the midst of the Rock of Ages. His "reasoning" was his belief (that God supposedly told him) that 10% of the outgoing WOWs were homosexuals. He encouraged people to point the finger at suspected homosexuals, as long as you had "a genuine spiritual suspicion" - whatever that is. Martindale wasn't slowed down by the inconvenient fact that few if any actual gay people were found to be hiding out among the believers. That deterred him not in the slightest. He came up with the terms "Homo fantasizers" and "homo sympathizers" and they became were corollary targets, based on that ephemeral "genuine spiritual suspicion". 

I'm not proud of my behavior during this time. Growing up I had taken a laissez faire attitude about gays. If I knew any, I didn't know that they were gay. I probably made ignorant jokes...because I was ignorant. When I moved to Nebraska and got involved in KZUM, however, I came in contact with a lot of gay people and became friends with many of them. This was during the time when my ex-wife and I were not actively involved in The Way, 1983-1990. Even after getting back involved with The Way in 1990, homophobia and gay bashing hadn't taken hold yet, but once the organization which I viewed as having a handle on God's Truth started preaching against gays, I'm ashamed to say that I jumped on board. I probably wasn't as vicious about it as some, but I was vocal. I'm sure there are family members who haven't forgotten my homophobic remarks made in those days. 

Fred Brown, our local Way Corps leader discovered that I had a talent for accurate note-taking. Why was this a valuable skill to have in a cult? Because the manner in which purges were conducted was a "confrontation". The local leader, along with a subordinate leader if there was one, and several witnesses would "confront" the person suspected of homosexuality (or some other sin - there were multiple, overlapping purges that I will get into in the next installment). This was supposedly the "Biblical" way to address "evil". The leader would grill the confronted one, aiming to pin some sin on him or her with the inevitable result that they were kicked out of Way involvement. My job was to take notes and read statements back to the leader when asked to, with emphasis on finding contradictions and lies to pin on the person being confronted. The term we used for kicking a person out was "mark and avoid" based on a verse which said "...mark them which causes divisions and offenses...and avoid them". Not only was a person who was marked and avoided kicked out of the fellowship, but none of the active members were allowed to have anything to do with them. Someone who was marked and avoided (M&A'd) was cut off, not only from any friends that they had, but often from their family as well. This went on for several years and I was involved in dozens of M&A confrontation sessions. 

Along with the other purges, this was my Way lifestyle for around five years, always looking my shoulder, watching what I said and to whom, and all the while I was complicit in the evil. 

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXIX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxix.html

Goober

When I first moved to Lincoln Nebraska in 1981 I was still a fan of some of my favorite teams. I had been a New York Mets fan virtually from Day One, and since I played a lot of hockey, I was also a big New York Rangers fan. I never really got excited about basketball or football - I don't know why - maybe because I never played football and was really, really, bad at basketball. I was unprepared for the single-minded, fanatical fandom of Nebraska Cornhusker football fans. 

Growing up in one of the top sports markets in the country, there were plenty of teams to root for. Two NFL teams, two major league baseball teams and by the time I'd move away two basketball and two hockey teams. The enthusiasm was spread around a bit. Nebraska had no major league professional teams in any sport, with a AAA baseball team in Omaha and the nearest major league franchise 3 hours south in Kansas City. UNL fielded several sports, but the football team, which had a couple of national titles only a decade in the past, and still very competitive, was the big dog in town. I would probably have jumped on the bandwagon and become at least a casual fan...if the majority of fans that I came in contact with weren't such assholes.

A feature of sports fans everywhere, but especially in places where there's only one viable game in town is the expectation that one will always be a fan of the home team, even if you move away from home. Nebraskans who move out of state will always find a way to watch their team play no matter what corner of the country they move to. They remain as devoted to their team as when they were able to attend every home game in person. I'm sure this is true everywhere else. The paradoxical side of this tendency is the belief that if someone moves into your state or city, they must automatically and immediately become fans of your home team. So while Husker fans expect to remain Husker fans wherever they make their homes, they also expect those who move here from elsewhere to shed their previous allegiance and become Husker fans. (Again - you can undoubtedly find this phenomenon everywhere in the country). 

Early in my residency in Lincoln, friends and coworkers were amazed that I simply was indifferent to the Huskers' game day performance and usually had no idea what bowl they were going to or who the quarterback was. Oftentimes the reaction was even hostile. In one of my mid-eighties management positions, I had the nerve to turn off the game because my employees were standing around listening to the game rather than working. Shortly thereafter I received an angry phone call from an alleged customer who told me "I wasn't in New York any more" and threatened to take his business elsewhere if I wasn't going to have the game blasting over the store intercom system. He finished up with some nasty things to say about New Yorkers in general. 

At another job some years later another co-worker and I would place a friendly bet on the game, early in the season it might be a doughnut or a candy bar, but for more important games it became what we referred to as "public humiliation". Most of the time, since the Cornhuskers regularly posted winning seasons, I lost most of the bets. One year, when the Huskers won their bowl game, I had to wear a string of red and white beads, a Husker jersey and a button that played the fight song to the company Christmas party - all in good fun. But one year, when Colorado beat Nebraska, my betting opponent had to wear a Colorado Buffaloes sweatshirt for one whole shift. She accepted her loss in good humor, but some of our co-workers were aghast and were outraged at someone wearing the "enemy" colors and at me for "cruelly" requiring it. 

For many years I managed businesses where the busiest day of the week was Saturday. Although business usually slacked off during game time, it required a full staff before and after. The number of people who wanted every home game off was always too many to honor, eventually I had to refuse to schedule anyone off on a game day, but allowed anyone who could find a substitute to take the day off. And of course I was considered the asshole, as a New Yorker not understanding true Husker fandom. 

The seriousness with which so many fans seemed to take the game always befuddled me. Harsh words against the players and coaches when they lost and an almost pathological tendency to blame bad officiating for every loss was background noise that I just wasn't interested in hearing. While it still goes on, the fall from college football's pinnacle in recent years has tempered the expectations of many (though not all) fans. More and more people seem to be able to simply enjoy the game and rejoice in the wins, even when they're few and far between. 

Over the last decade or so I have become indifferent, not only to Nebraska sports, but to sports in general, so my lack of enthusiasm, or even interest in, college football, is not ever remarked upon. Most of the people whom I associate with or am in regular contact with are on a pretty even keel when it comes to their fandom and I haven't had anyone be rude to me about my own non-fandom in years. 

Although I still pronounce GBR in my head as "goober". 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXVII - Pointing Fingers

The "Woman's Cabal", which included my ex-wife Pat, mainly concerned themselves with criticizing local Way leadership, being part of the informal power as known as "Old Grads" they felt that they had the knowledge and standing to question anyone that they thought was "off The Word". Fred Brown, the newly appointed leader, freshly graduated from the Way Corps and exposed to Way President Craig Martindale's paranoid ravings for four years was not having it. He began cracking down on any dissension,  and in line with what Martindale was preaching every week, directed any dissension among the "believers" away from leadership and toward each other.

This was a big change. The power struggle among leadership during the second half of the eighties had caused the rank and file to question the leadership. Any problems - sickness, financial issues, even divorce was traced back to leaders being "off The Word", or - and this was an accusation that was thrown around more and more - devil spirit possession

. Now the same issues, when they arose, were being laid at the feet of ordinary Way followers to the point where if Martindale caught a cold it was blamed on "lack of believing" by the Way "household" (i.e. the whole body of active Way participants). I was even present when a thunderstorm that caused the campground at a Way event to be flooded was blamed on the lack of "community believing", rather than the poor planning of leaders who designated low ground as a campground during the rainy season in Ohio. 

This change in focus of spiritual responsibility had the effect of making people paranoid that their own "negative believing" could cause harm in the household of believers and also intent on pointing the finger at others. The women of the cabal struck out in multiple directions.  

One of the many classes that The Way created was called "Defeating the Adversary" (i.e The Devil). The Way, despite having a fair number of women in leadership positions, (usually single women) was extremely patriarchal and fundamentalist in its interpretation of verses that related to marriage. They very much believed that the husband was the head of his wife (although not that any random man was the head of any women) although what that meant was left unclear. In the Defeating the Adversary (DTA) class Martindale made reference to Titus 2:3-5 where, in English, women are described as "keepers at home". He claimed that this was a translation of the Greek word oikôdespotês. (I recently looked this up and that's not the Greek word). Oikôs means "house", or "home". As for the second part of the Greek word, I think we all know what a "despot" is. Deprived of the traditional targets of incompetent leadership and armed with supposed Biblical justification for being a dictator over their households, they began refusing to discuss household decisions with their husbands, and if the husbands wouldn't cooperate, accusing them to leadership as "off The Word" or even possessed. Fred was happy to entertain these accusations and fostered an environment where married couples were fighting with each other, justifying their intransigence as "keeping the household pure".  This bubbled beneath the surface for several years. It started to affect me in my marriage, but there were so many other accusations going around, with kangaroo courts and "confrontations" the issues in my own marriage flew under the radar for a while. 

Purges were on the horizon.

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXVIII: 

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/12/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxviii.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXVII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxvii.html

Columbus Day

Look, I'm not going to quibble about whether we can call Columbus stumbling across the Americas a "discovery" or not. The Europeans didn't know it was there, so from their point of view, they discovered something that they didn't already know about. Whatever the previous landings by Vikings or the Irish accomplished, it didn't dawn on Europeans, especially not seagoing explorers and traders, that there were two huge continents in between Europe's western shores and the east of Asia. Of course, initially he had no idea what he had found, and didn't actually find the mainland (Central America) until his fourth voyage. 

The history of humankind is one long slog of the weak being conquered by he strong, or at least those with superior war-making technology subduing those with inferior defensive capabilities. This isn't a new development by Europeans in the 1600s, but describes the expansion of the Roman Empire, the spread of the Caliphate, the dominance of the Huns and Mongols, China's imperial footprint, not to mention thousands of smaller polities taking jumping on any advantage, no matter how insignificant to swallow up their neighbors. Even among the peoples that the Europeans colonized, wars of conquest, retribution or plunder were not unheard of, and in certain regions were a way of life. This is why I'm not comfortable with the term "stolen" when describing the European (and later American) nations taking over native lands. It's no more accurate than labelling the Saxons defeating the Britons, the Normans in turn defeating the Saxons, the Franks absorbing the Gauls and all the other displacements  as stolen land, when it's just another in a long line of the powerful conquering the weaker groups. 

The key difference is that in the fifteenth century the various European kingdoms looked at each other somewhat as peers. There were still wars of expansion, and the wars of religion were just around the corner, but a king who looked with lust upon his neighbor's natural resources still viewed the subjects of the neighboring kingdom as people. All of the various nations, kingdoms and empires were on par technologically, were all the same religion and were broadly similar culturally. Upon encountering people who were not as advanced technologically, and whom had never even heard of Christianity, the Europeans looked down on these nations, tribes and peoples in the Americas and Africa as savages, not even worthy of consideration. Europeans might steal produce from a native tribe, or kill someone, or rape a woman, or even encroach on land that belonged to the tribe, but would be absolutely flabbergasted that the natives would retaliate, and act as if they were the aggrieved party. Even with the millions of people already living in the Americas, there was undoubtedly still plenty of land on which the Europeans could settle, if they only respected the rights of those who were here first. But the Europeans wanted it all. 

I'm not even sure that it was a racial animus as we understand the term today. The history of "whiteness" is long and complicated and calls for a whole 'nother blog post, but as a concept and identifier, no one would think of themselves as "white" for another 150-200 years. Europeans were certainly aware of people whose skin was darker than theirs, contact with south-of-Sahara Africa went back to Roman times, as well as with what we now Eurocentrically call the Middle East. Even within Europe the pale blond far northern Scandinavians and the darker Italians and Spaniards around the Mediterranean are opposite ends of a continuum of skin tone. No, the reason Europeans looked own upon the people they encountered in the Americas was their perceived level of civilization. To the Europeans they lacked any of the technological "advancements" that were common in Europe (such as gunpowder & steel swords), they didn't have cities (at least they didn't encounter any early on), their culture didn't seem to acknowledge individual ownership of land, and they weren't Christians...fair game!

Spreading Christianity was a major pretext for the European invasion. Conversion of the "heathens" to Christianity had been a goal of since the early days of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Now they had a whole new continent (two!) in which to "spread the Gospel". 

Eventually, the concept of "whiteness" took hold. The Europeans were "White", the American natives were Red, the Africans were Black. They were "other", and "other" meant inferior. Of course they were viewed as inferior, no high technology, and more importantly, no Jesus. Why were they so technologically and spiritually inferior? They weren't white, and white equaled superior in their minds; everything else was inferior. Everything that followed: land grabs, forced conversions and assimilation, sequestration on reservations, breaking treaties - it all went back to the belief in the racial inferiority of the natives. 

What if Columbus hadn't made it to the islands off North America? What would have changed? Probably little. Someone was going to eventually bump into the large landmass in between Europe and Asia. From all accounts Columbus was a horrible person, but he was a man of his time and very little would have changed if another captain had found America first. The kingdoms in Europe would have still been run by the same people who would look down on the inhabitants. Whiteness would have still emerged as a construct that resulted in White Supremacy and racism. 

No matter. From the point of view of the descendants of the people that Columbus and other early colonizers encountered, the coming of Columbus was a horrible tragedy, the beginning of centuries of genocide and the wiping out of culture. Not a day to celebrate. 

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

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

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

Convenient. 

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

The real purges hadn't started yet. 

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXVI

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/11/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxvi.html

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

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

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

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

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

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXV

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxv-fred.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know I started off by saying how this post would be about the nineties, but as I wrote I thought that it would be helpful to outline what kind of people we were going into the nineties. In some ways we were primed for the increased cultishness of The Way in the nineties, in others we were ticking bombs of rebellion, waiting for our moment to explode.

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXIV

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxiv.html

Prayer

There is more than one definition, or type, of prayer. One website lists seven different categories, but for the purpose of this blog post I will narrow it down to two: (1) Prayer thanking, worshipping or praising a god or (2) Asking for something, either for yourself or on behalf of others. I'm going to  address #2 exclusively in this blog post.

People ask God for things all the time. Sometimes it's fairly petty, like finding a parking spot, or praying that the new recipe for Chicken Bonfiglio came out all right. Other times the stakes are bigger, like petitioning God for that promotion at work or that you submitted a successful bid for that house you so wanted. And then there's the really big items: that the line of tornadoes miraculously misses your town, or at least, your house, or begging God for that pesky cancer to go away. But does all this praying do any good? By "any good" I mean does the thing that is prayed for actually come to pass? 

I think that the honest answer is a resounding "NO".

Sure, you can find people who will tell you that they prayed for a specific outcome that subsequently came to pass. I have no doubt that they're right. After all, tornadoes don't hit every town, or every house in a town that they hit. Cancer often does go into remission, never to return. (And we sometimes get the parking spot, the Chicken Bonfiglio is a success, and we get the promotion). But the ugly truth is that there are myriad examples where houses are destroyed by tornadoes and cancer patient die painful, drawn-out deaths. It stretches the bounds of credulity to suppose that none of those who suffered various catastrophes prayed, that they were all atheists, or God-deniers of one type or another. And I'm sure that we can all think of examples of God-believing, religious people, who led exemplary lives, whose prayers were for naught. 

Believers address this in different ways. For those who have avoided the more horrible of circumstances, they can smugly assert that their continued health, safety and prosperity is due to their godliness and the frequent utilization of prayer. The more realistically-minded (including theologians) devise explanations to explain why prayer obviously doesn't "work" 100% of the time. One explanation I'll broadly call the "mysterious ways" or the inshalla explanation. This umbrella category includes the belief that God, no matter what the situation looks like, has a plan, and that the disaster that you are experiencing is part of a greater plan that you just don't understand - you not being God after all. A subset of this belief is the theory that there is a benefit to suffering, and that you will be a better person in some undefined way by enduring. A different theology holds that it's not God's decision at all. Since it says in the Bible that "whatever you ask in prayer, believing you will receive", then it's the fault of the individual, not God, when bad things happen. This theory insists that there are numerous "promises" in the Bible that are guaranteed as long as you believe them, and when you don't receive these promises, then obviously you didn't believe. Points to you if you recognized the circular reasoning of the latter theology. 

If you don't recognize the frustration inherent in both of these theologies, then you have a high tolerance for frustration indeed. If you accept the "God has a plan" view, you're going to be praying for things, with no assurance that God is going to comply. In fact, the God being described here is capricious and arbitrary. You have no way of knowing what actions are going to keep you healthy and safe, because God ain't gonna tell you! Why bother praying? If God is going to do whatever his mysterious plan entails, prayer has no affect! The other way isn't any better. God, at least, isn't described as the black hole that the former theory describes him, but it's a blame the victim theology. And, just like "God has a plan", there's no way determine what works and what doesn't. I was part of a group that subscribed to the "law of believing". Many times we thought we were believing God's promises but were convinced that some tiny sliver of doubt had crept in...it must have, or else we would have received, right?

Something I told a family member some years ago was "Maybe God isn't who (or what) you think he is". This was in response to her telling me about prayer fervently in a situation and the polar opposite coming to pass. Evaluating why you think prayer works, or why God is obliged to do what you think he should do, is as something I recommend that believers do. Despite there being a books written that allegedly describe God's attributes, most people create God in their own image, ignoring inconvenient parts of their holy books. Why do you believe God is an entity who is required to answer your prayers, rather than the God of the Deists who created the world, but then headed off to a warm, sunny beach with a good book and a cocktail with an umbrella in it. 

The other thing that I heartily recommend to anyone who is convinced that God answers prayers (in the affirmative) and believes that their prayers are answered without exception, or at least consistently) is to keep a log. Write down everything that they pray for, in detail no matter how insignificant or petty. Then, log the results. Honestly. Without editorializing on why it didn't come to pass or rationalizing why a non-result could be actually be a positive result, or how you got what you needed rather than what you asked for. I predict that the statistics will be disappointing. 

However, if anyone can honestly document a year of 90% or greater positive prayer results, I just may change my mind about the efficacy of prayer.

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

So, we had our meeting with Gary & Mary, the Limb (state) Coordinators for The Way of Nebraska. Back in the seventies, pretty much anyone who was interested could show up unannounced to a Way meeting, and unless you were disruptive or overly  argumentative you could keep coming back for as long as you liked, although you weren't really considered "in" until you took the PFAL class. Things were different in 1990. Part XXX - From the Frying Pan outlined what was going on in The Way during our absence, the splintering of the organization that accompanied a rebellion among top leaders. Trust wasn't as easy to come by as it had been. While from our point of view the meeting was simply to touch base with the Way leaders and find out where fellowships were being held and when a PFAL class was going to run. That meeting looked a lot different from the other side. Gary and Mary were checking us out to make sure we weren't trying to infiltrate The Way from one of the splinter groups - to make sure that we, in short, would be good little cult members and not rock the boat. 

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

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

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

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

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

Game changer.

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

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

Start at the beginning:

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

Part XXXIII

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxxiii.html