So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXIX - Sex, Cults and Rock & Roll

Before I was branded as a failure by Way leadership, I was being groomed for bigger and better things. At the time, Nebraska has a fairly healthy Way presence. Not as numerically entrenched as New York, but a branch of seven twig fellowships was well established. I was given the position of Assistant Twig Coordinator for the group that met at our home, mentored directly by Carol D., a Way Corps graduate. Within a short period of time we had gathered enough people to run our own Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) Class. I was appointed co-coordinator of the class with Mary H, a Way Corps student who was on Leave of Absence (LOA) Status due to missing tuition payments. (This was fairly common; most people who were released from the Way Corps were kicked out for financial reasons; it was rare indeed for someone to be separated or even have their application rejected, for any other reason). It was a heady time. My performance as Class Coordinator was a success, and I was (I thought) on the fast track to leadership. After a few months, Ronnie S, our state coordinator, had the brilliant idea that we should split most twigs into two. This was supposedly because our numbers had grown so fast and the added centers would cause our numbers to grow exponentially. I found out much later, that this was merely a ploy to exaggerate Ronnie's success at outreach. He spun off a portion of the branch into a "twig area" (basically a mini-branch) led by Carol D, the Way Corps grad, when new leadership came in the following year, it quickly became apparent that most of these fellowship exited only on paper. One of the splits was my own fellowship. Four of us, me, my roommate Tim, Pat N, a single mother of two boys and Beth, and brand-new PFAL grad, were to form the new twig, meeting in Pat N's home in a trailer court on the west side of Lincoln. I was terrified of the new responsibility. I had been a Twig Coordinator before, in New York, but then I had inherited a large, vibrant, functioning group, here I was put in charge of three other people and expected to shepherd the growth myself. At first it went pretty well. Next door to Pat there was another single mom with two teenage boys, living with her mother. We signed all four up for the next PFAL class, basically doubling our group size. Carol's twig provided another four people and we ran our second PFAL class, again with me running the show. 

Here's where I'm going to divert a bit from my own personal story and talk about The Way's attitude toward sex. At the very least, it was confusing. They didn't frown on pre-marital sex. Weirdly though, they did frown on unmarried couples living together. To clarify, people who were strictly roommates, like in WOW or Way Home situations, was okay, but if you were "a couple" and presumably having sex, that was referred to as "shacking up" or "playing house" and was strongly discouraged. I am aware of several instances where a couple was living together, but in order to get married in a Way ceremony, they had to make separate living arrangements until the wedding. This is something that I will get into in more depth in later installments, but in the higher echelons of Way leadership, infidelity was rampant and quietly encouraged, and sexual abuse was not unheard of. Although how much this filtered down to the lower levels depended a lot on the personality of the local leadership, their own views of sex and how much control they could hold over you using sex. Ronnie S, our local head honcho appeared somewhat morally conservative; although there was a lot of extramarital sex going on among the younger Way adherents he either didn't know it was going on, or only chose to address it if he could use it to exert influence over you. 

There hadn't been many opportunities for sex while I was a WOW. I personally steered away from romantic or sexual relationships with roommates for the same reasons that workplace romances are often a bad idea - once they end, that person is still right there, every day. And there just weren't that many other options, especially since we were being actively persecuted in Sidney! When I arrived in Lincoln, with many choices for pairing off with young, attractive and most important to a cult member, like minded women, I was, to put it politely, rarin' to go. But, back to the leadership arc. 

Not long after I was given the responsibility of running a new twig fellowship, I was moved from one Way Home to another across town, and made Way Home Coordinator. This was a bit odd, since there was a twig fellowship running out of the new Way Home and I wasn't going to run it - I was still the coordinator of the group at Pat's house. My new residence was definitely not within walking distance of the location of the fellowship I was coordinating, and I didn't have a car. I borrowed my new roommate's motorcycle on occasion, but due to the distance, I spent more time over at Pat's house than at my own home. Mike and Rosemarie (the same Rosemarie from Sidney and Kearney) and their twig coordinator Mary did their thing and I did mine. This move took place in February. It was around late April or May when I was informed that due to my not meeting financial obligations I would not be entering the Way Corps. Also around this time, the four people that we had signed up for and graduated from PFAL decided that they no longer wanted to be involved in The Way. Leadership, as I had stated in the previous chapter, had decided that I was a failure. My fellowship was dissolved, and I no longer had any leadership position. Around this time, it came to the attention of Ronnie S that I had been involved in a relationship with Pat N. Everything that had gone "wrong" was blamed on this relationship, and things going "wrong" was presented as evidence that the relationship was the cause. The last thing that was important to me in Wayworld, an assignment to do a teaching on American history at a Way July Fourth celebration, was taken away from me. 

Seeing that my future as an up and coming Way leader wasn't going to happen, Pat and I decided that we should get married. Ronnie refused to officiate the ceremony and we got married by a judge at the County-City Building. We were still part of The Way, and still participated, but we were "tainted" and were really only tolerated. The owner of the Way Home I lived in was a Way person who lived out of state. I got her permission to continue living there after Pat and I got married, which Ronnie was furious about, since he had already assigned a new bunch of Way Home people there. But Ronnie was reassigned that August and a new state leader came in. 

Then I got fired from my job and ended up four months behind on my rent. 

You would think that a Christian community would support one of their own when bad times hit. But the way The Way viewed things was that bad things happened due to your lack of "believing" - so it was my fault, evidence of some spiritual malady that was causing my problems. Instead of help, I received lectures until one day I lost my temper at the new leader's wife and we didn't attend another Way function for seven years. We moved out of the home that we rented from a Way person and moved on with our lives.

Except we didn't. 

Despite not being actively involved in The Way, Waybrain was still very strong with us. We had internalized many of the cultish assumptions and ended up back in their arms in 1990, finding a Way that, if possible, had become even more cultish.

Start from the beginning

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

Part XXX

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2022/06/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-xxx-from.html