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