So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIV

In early 1980 I moved the few miles from Queens Village to Richmond Hill to a new Way Home. There were four other residents: Nicole, a native of Haiti, Rafael, a bassist in several bands, Eric, who was from Iowa and spoke five or six different languages and Eddie, who was designated as the leader/coordinator of the local Twig fellowship, the Spanish language fellowship that met in our home, as well as the branch coordinator of one of the Queens branches. There was an established fellowship centered on our home and there seemed to be a camaraderie that I found lacking at my last place. We ate our meals together, did things together and things seemed like they were going well and that the antics at the previous Way Home were an aberration.  At least it seemed that way.

Shortly after I moved in the area leadership decided to make some changes. First, they decided to consolidate the three Queens branches into two. The branch coordinator that was "demoted" was our Way Home Coordinator, Eddie. At the same time they asked me to take over coordination of the Twig fellowship that met in our home. This was ostensibly to allow Eddie to devote more time to the Spanish language twig and to assist with the other two Spanish twigs in Queens. Eddie did not see things this way. Previous to these changes he was very proud of rattling off his titles: Way Home Coordinator, Twig Coordinator of two twigs, Spanish language Twig Area Coordinator, North Queens Branch Coordinator. He was especially proud that he had achieved this level of responsibility without being a Way Corps grad, or even an Advanced Class grad. Let's take a minute to look at the Advanced Class and the perceived hierarchy in The Way. 

The Power for Abundant Living Class (PFAL) was in reality a series of classes. The Foundational Class, contained, as it name implies, the foundational teachings and principles taught in The Way. No one stuck around for long without taking the Foundational PFAL Class. The Intermediate Class focused on three of what was called "manifestations of the spirit". Chapter 12 of I Corinthians states that "the manifestation (singular) of the spirit"...consisted of: speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophesy, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, faith, miracles, gifts of healing. Wierwille had a take on "the manifestations" (plural) that weren't necessarily supported by scripture. Speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophesy were covered in the Intermediate Class. In order to be viewed as having moved past the newbie stage and to participate actively in Way International Twig Fellowship meetings, it was essential that one be able to speak in tongue, interpret and prophecy. There were what were called "advanced study classes" - "Witnessing and Undershepherding", "Dealing With the Adversary", "Christian Family and Sex" and a few others, but the Advanced Class was considered the pinnacle of learning for anyone not in the Way Corps. The Advanced Class was advertised as focusing on the remaining six manifestations: word of knowledge, word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, faith, miracles, gifts of healing. In reality it talked a lot about devil spirits (demons) and devil possession. A graduate of the Advanced Class supposedly had been fully instructed on how to receive revelation from God, including detecting the presence of malign spirits. 

In theory, someone who was an Advanced Class graduate was better qualified to lead than a non-grad, and a Way Corps grad, someone who had been through the Way's multi-year leadership training program, was most qualified of all. Practically, The Way had grown so quickly throughout the mid-seventies that it was not always possible for these requirements to be met. In the Way's early days, leaders rose up and those with charisma or other natural leadership ability took on responsibility without any outside input. Eventually Twig Leaders were appointed by the next higher level of leadership - they were usually someone who at least seemed to have some ability. This was both good and bad. Good, in that there was no constraint requiring certain benchmarks be reached before leading, bad in that totally unqualified people were put in charge. During this time in Queens, Brooklyn and the areas of Long island outside New York City, very few Twig Coordinators were Advanced Class grads and no Branch Coordinators were Way Corps grads. The Area Leader, who oversaw all the branches on Long Island, was only about halfway through his Way Corps training. 

Eddie was someone who, likely because he was in the right place at the right time, had risen quickly through the ranks despite a lack of the accepted leadership signifiers. Just as quickly he had been stripped of most of his titles. Eddie was a proud man, every ounce a "macho" man with strong opinions. His anger and disappointment and losing his status within the organization would ripple through the rest of the year. Despite not having any "official" teaching regarding "discerning of spirits", Eddie fancied himself an expert on devil spirits. In fact he was obsessed with the subject and acted as if he saw them everywhere. I sometimes talk in my sleep. Shortly after I moved in, Eddie, from his bedroom down the hall from mine, heard some talking and came into the room to find me talking while apparently asleep. The next morning he told me and the other roommates about this, describing how he "just started to cast out devil sprits". 

I think you can imagine how this would lead to problems.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XV

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so proud of his titles and the associated ability to lord it over people. But now, he had been stripped of almost all of his titles. He still held the position of Way Home Coordinator, which was supposed to mean that he was the leader of the little group who lived in our house on Metropolitan Avenue, yet this was in tension with my position as the Twig Fellowship Coordinator based at the same house. There was no way that there wouldn't be fireworks. 

There were two parallel paths that I would take through the rest of the Way year. One was paved with red flags that in hindsight I should have heeded and got the hell out, the other path was crowded with what at the time looked like what the Bible calls signs, miracles and wonders. The problem was that I didn't see the red flags as red flags. We had been indoctrinated with the view that when bad things happened it was "the Adversary" (i.e. The Devil) was attacking us due to our "stand on The Word of God". So both side-by-side paths were convincing me that I was on the right path. 

When I was still living at the first Way Home I had re-enrolled in college. I had dropped out during my sophomore year, and, due to some bad grades I had been put on academic probation. When I re-enrolled I was still on probation, which meant that I could not fail any classes and had to maintain at least a "C" average. I had also taken a job in Manhattan working for the stock brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. I worked at Hutton during the day and attended classes at night. This meant that it was difficult for me to spend much time on Way activities. Way leadership suggested that, although I was living in a Queens Way Home, it might be better if I attended Twig Fellowship in Manhattan, where I worked and went to college. If this situation had continued, things might have turned out differently, but two things happened to change the course of my life. The first was that I failed a math class. It may have been advanced algebra, or maybe calculus. Even though I had aced every other class, I was still on academic probation, and this one failure meant that I was dismissed from Bernard M. Baruch College. Around the same time I was offered the position of Twig Fellowship Coordinator. I was virtually locked in to a Way trajectory. 

I mentioned the two parallel paths - I want to address the one that was festooned with red flags first. As far as I knew, Eddie wasn't removed from his positions because higher leadership thought he didn't have leadership qualities. His branch responsibilities ended simply because three branches were consolidated into two and the other two branch coordinators had more of the accepted credentials. His twig coordinator position wasn't taken away due to incompetence or ungodliness or lack of leadership, but to allow him to concentrate on the various Spanish language fellowships. But with the 20/20 vision that comes from being 40 years in the future, I can tell you with conviction that Eddie was a sociopathic abuser.

I'm not going to get specific about all of the insanity that Eddie engaged in. I mentioned in Part XIV that he believed that "casting out devil spirits" was the appropriate response to a roommate talking in his sleep. He constantly belittled the people around him, especially women. He drank to excess. We sublet a basement apartment to a woman who he coerced into sex. Several of us complained about him to upper leadership to no avail. The fact that Eddie was put in a position of leadership where he was supposed to care for other Christian believers and lead by example, should have suggested to me that upper leadership didn't know what the heck they were doing. But I somehow rationalized the situation. The "obey leadership" habit was hard to break. There must be some kind of plan that I was unaware of. Part of me thought that I just needed to up my spiritual game and commit myself more fully. More on that after I take you on a stroll down the other parallel path.

When I took over the fellowship on Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, there were four or five of us. By the time I left New York that August, there were easily thirty people crammed into our living room on Twig Fellowship nights. The main method of increasing membership was to "witness". Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, the Way engaged in door-to-door witnessing. Since we started out with just a handful, we would have a short meeting and then hit the streets, the bowling alleys, the bars and knocked on doors. We also started seeing people who had been inactive in Way events start showing up. Maybe they didn't like what was going on when Eddie was in charge and wanted to give us a shot. Maybe it was just coincidence, but these formerly inactive people started bringing friends. And the friends started bringing friends.  The house started filling up. 

One of the measures of success of a Way Twig or Branch was running a class. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class was for people who wanted to stick around, it was the first level of commitment in Way-World. You needed seven new people to be able to run a PFAL class and typically several Twigs combined their new people into one class. We were able to run one all by ourselves. Then we were able to run another one. And a third - which was unheard of. Way fellowship meetings were beginning to tend toward formal at that time. We went in the opposite direction which seemed to draw in even more people. For some reason that I can't recall I started running meetings and teaching barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the couch. We were told to start running a 10:30 fellowship on Sundays - because Way HQ did. No one told us that it was to be 10:30AM, so, rebels that we were, we met at 10:30PM on Sunday and the living room was as full as any other time.  The biggest thing was that we started to get known as the place to go for miraculous healing.

As an agnostic who these days casts a skeptical eye on the miraculous, I really don't know what to think about this aspect of my time in The Way. We would pray for people and it sure seemed like they were healed of various maladies. There wasn't any eyesight to the blind or healing the lepers, but what we were all sure convinced that healing was taking place. And it wasn't just the hardcore Wayfers, but people who would show up at our house for the first time and swear that their illness, or limp or whatever was gone. To me, this was some bona fide Book of Acts stuff...signs, miracles and wonders. 

It was no wonder that, after the bad example of Eddie caused me to question my own commitment paired with what I was convinced was God working in astounding ways that I made a twofold decision: to enroll in the Advanced Class that was taking place that summer in Rome City, Indiana and after that to sign up for the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. A decision that would take me from my home of New York City and deposit me in a town of 5000 in the Nebraska Panhandle. 

 Start from the beginning: Part I