Saturday, November 5, 2022

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:

Part XXXVII

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

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