Non-Believer Former Members of the Worldwide Church of God

This hits too close to home...

via AtheistCartoons.com

Philadelphia, PA
zleon@comcast.net

My name when I was in the Church was Zada Doak (now Leon). I grew up in San Diego, California and my mother joined the Worldwide Church of God when I was 5 or 6 years old. She was brought into the Church by my Uncle Jim (James Doak, her younger brother) who became a Preaching Elder in the Church. My mother raised us using her maiden name after her divorce from my father when I was 2 (hence my having the same last name as my Uncle Jim).

Growing up in the Church was miserable for us as young children. Not only because we couldn’t celebrate birthdays (and my mother sent back any gifts we got from family for our birthdays or Christmas until they just stopped sending us anything at all or even talking to us), but because at school my brother and I had to sit in the Principals office whenever our classes were doing things like making Valentine’s decorations, Halloween decorations, etc. We were made fun of and laughed at all the time because of these differences. Whenever we had to take off the 2 weeks for the Feast of Tabernacles, we had to take tons of school books and homework with us to complete during the days of the Feast so we wouldn’t fail in our classes. Christmas was the worst. When other kids came back from Christmas vacation and talked about what they got, we always just hung our heads and said our family didn’t celebrate Christmas. It made us freaks at school. We were not allowed to have any friends that were outside the Church. If we tried, my mother broke the friendships up. The only school dance I ever went to was my Senior Prom, after getting permission from the minister in our Church and after assuring him that the boy was just a friend and I had no romantic interest in him (which was true anyway). I had to be home by midnight, so we left the prom at 11pm in order to be on time. I’m still surprised they allowed me to go. I’m more surprised that the boy I went with put up with it all.

I was accepted to Ambassador College in Bricket Wood in 1974 as my first year of college. I actually knew Ronald Weinland, he was a Sophomore when I was a Freshman there. My mouth feel open earlier this evening when I found a blog about him and his book of predictations. I never saw this in him during that time, he seemed like a nice, normal enough guy. I just now got out my 1974 Envoy to look at his picture. I’m still in shock about what I’ve read about him tonight. Anyway, I transferred to the Pasadena campus for my Sophomore year because my mother had had a small heart attack and I wanted to be closer to home.

I had been baptized in the Church when I was 17. I had asked to be baptized mostly because it would make my Mom and my Uncle Jim proud of me, not because I really felt like I was truly spiritual. My Uncle Jim was a fairly high ranking minister of the Church, so it was important to my Mom that my brother and I were a “real” part of the Church. She couldn’t wait to get to church that first Saturday after I got baptized to brag about it to her friends.

We used to attend Church in Craftman’s Hall in San Diego. I can still see the place in my mind. I grew to hate that place. Just a year or so before I left for Bricket Wood, the Sabbath services were changed to a place that was closer to my home, a meeting room in a hotel or a club (I honestly can’t recall).

I hated how the ministers told us what we could wear, how long our skirts had to be, that we couldn’t wear makeup (HARLOT!) then later changed it to we could, then they changed it again. We were told what soap we could use, what food we could eat, not to see doctors, the control was overwhelming. You cannot believe the extent of control they exerted over the members. In fact, when I had to get a booster shot for smallpox to get my visa to attend Bricket Wood (and I had to or I couldn’t have gone), the minister anointed me with oil and prayed over me, asking that the shot not take affect and for God to cleanse the medicine out of my body. I kid you not.

The Holy Days, especially the Day of Atonement were days I grew to loathe. I couldn’t see the sense in making people light headed and so hungry and miserable that after enduring those long services, all we did was go home and lay like limpets on the couch or on the floor, watching the sky outside the window, hoping the sun would just hurry up and set so we could eat. It really was torture.

During my Sophomore year at Ambassador College, my Uncle Jim left the church, and a lot of the members in his congregation followed him. He later told me that he just couldn’t stomach the things that Garner Ted was doing (sleeping with the other ministers wives and other women in the church) and the other things that were going on that he decided not to tell me about (but we all heard the rumors anyway. And when you’re Uncle is a high ranking minister in the Church, you get to hear it all). To the best of my knowledge, my mother never spoke to him again after he left. After he died, she said she wished she had, but of course it was too late.

I got married on the Ambassador College Pasadena campus to a “non-believer”, and the ministers refused to marry us (I’m now divorced). I’m surprised we were allowed to use one of the musical recital halls to get married in. We just called for a minister out of the yellow pages, who came and conducted the wedding. My cousin Susan Doak (Uncle Jim’s daughter) was still in the Church and was a student at Pasadena…she was one of my bridesmaids (she later left the Church, of course). I was also surprised that I wasn’t tossed out of the church for doing that, but by this stage, I was rarely going to Church anymore, although I hadn’t let my mother know that yet. I think it was another 2 years of pretending I was going before I finally told her I had quit. I was scared to tell her, and with good reason. She talked to the minister in her Church, and to my shock, she was allowed to continue talking to me and seeing me. ; She told me that if the minister had told her to cut me out of her life like she had her brother, she would have. Nothing that the Church had done up to this point hurt me as much as hearing my mother say that to me.

My mother stayed in the Church until she died. It had splintered by then into other churches, and I’m not sure which one she was in. She was in a nursing home by then and didn’t go to Church anymore anyway because of being in the home, but she remained faithful to the day she died. We just agreed to not discuss religion. I was always so angry at the Church because of what it did to my mother. She had been divorced when she joined, and because of that, she was told she could never remarry. She never did. She spent the last 30 years of her life alone once my brother and I left home, when she should have been able to find someone to love her and share her life with.

For that alone, I will never forgive The Worldwide Church of God, Herbert W. Armstrong or any of them that ruined my family. It took me years to realize that the stubbornness and rebellion I feel towards any authority is because of the total control of this Church and its ministers. To this day, I do not handle being told what to do very well. It has caused a lot of damage.

I will admit this: I was happy when I heard that Herbert W. Armstrong had died, and even MORE happy when I heard Garner Ted had died. It’s terrible to say, but that’s how I honestly feel. What’s interesting, is that I have both of their signatures in an old autograph book I used to carry around to get people at church to sign. I’ve kept it because it helps remind me how far I’ve come.

I recently connected with quite a few people I grew up with in the Church. None are in it anymore, but it’s good to be able to talk about all this with people who truly understand what it was like. It’s hard for people who haven’t experienced something like this to understand. If you’ve never endured that brainwashing and control like we did, you can’t possibly “get it”. I’m always asked “why didn’t you or your family just leave”? Because we all felt we couldn’t, it was all we knew. How sad is that, I ask you?

Thank you for allowing me to say all this.

Sincerely,

Zada Doak Leon

Hello,

My name is Mike. I was born in 1977 in Elizabeth NJ. At less than six weeks old, I was removed from my parents care by the State of New Jersey, Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) because I was mysteriously injured and they suspected child abuse. I was severely burned on my right leg and nobody had any logical explanation as to the cause of the injury. My father was at work when this happened, and my mother changed her story numerous times. Upon the conclusion of the State investigation, they found deplorable conditions and placed me in foster care.

I lived with a foster family until the age of 5, and then I was returned to my parents care. I was really too young to understand all of this at the time, but I was a fairly intelligent child, and understood it perhaps better than the average 5 year old, eventually realizing that my foster parents weren’t my parents and I had to return to my real parents.

My parents were members of the WCG. I don’t believe they were members at the time of my injury, but became members after the incident. I remember attending the Union, NJ congregation at first. It was quite a significant change in my life to no longer celebrate my birthday, Christmas and Easter. I was told that my foster parents were worldly and were going to go to hell, and that we were God’s people and this was the proper way to live.

Less than a year later, we moved and started attending a congregation in Bethlehem, PA, closer to our new home. It was here where I had spent most of my time as a WCG child and have my most memories. At first, I recall hating going to church every Saturday at this young age. It seemed like the two hour services lasted forever and they were totally boring. However as time went on, I like everyone else who was brainwashed and manipulated by this corrupted cult, started to buy into the teachings somewhat and believed what I was being told.

My father was extremely physically abusive. His excuses for his excessive beatings were always covered with church related answers. It was well known by the congregation that he was excessively abusive. A lot of the members were actually good people and would sometimes comment to him about it. The minister, however, did nothing about it and even seemed to support it.

My parents eventually separated and divorced. My mother stopped attending immediately upon separating. I lived with my father, and we still attended the WCG. He was abusive the whole time, and continued to claim it was acceptable and righteous to beat your children. I once went to school with my ass so sore that it hurt to even sit down. A teacher reported this to their superiors, who in turn investigated the incident. My father’s reply was, “spare the rod and spoil the child, it says it right in the Bible,” (if that makes any sense), and that it was his religious practice and belief to spank his child. He even asked for and received a letter from the minister of the congregation stating spanking your child is appropriate and godly. This was right around the time HWA was replaced by Tkach.

I eventually went back into foster care because of my father’s excessive abuse, and therefore no longer had to attend the WCG. I was glad I could stop attending and welcomed the change and new found freedom I had. My overall impression of the WCG to this very day is of an organization that my father hid behind to get away with his abuse for as long as he possibly could. He was also quite cheap and thrifty, so not celebrating holidays fit perfectly into his budgeting. I didn’t receive gifts during our Feast of Tabernacles, so I totally dreaded this annual celebration of daily sermons. Once a week was more than enough for me as it was.

I didn’t speak to my father very often after my second and final time being removed from his care, but I recall him once telling me during a mandatory visitation that the Tkach regime had become possessed by the devil, and that God’s real people now attend the PCG. I didn’t understand or care what it was all about, and payed no further mind to it. He eventually stopped attending completely. I later in my life figured out that he gave up on the church during all the post HWA dividing and splintering.

Although my WCG experience wasn’t as long as others, it was still an integral part of my childhood for nearly 5 years. I can only imagine what it must of been like to experience an entire childhood of it, and for others even to carry it into their adult lives. I will say that I found most members to be good people, and upon looking back, it saddens me that so many of them were influenced and controlled by this organization.

Over the years, I never thought about or cared anything for the WCG. I totally distanced it and religion in general from my life. I became and still am to this day an atheist, because of my childhood experience with the WCG and it leaving such a bitter scar on me. If this was how church was, I didn’t want anything to do with it or any other religion at all.

I only recently discovered all the events that happened to the WCG after the Tkach era started implementing changes in the doctrine. As I became increasingly curious, I started to read more about the changes implemented and all the splinter groups and dividing that would occur. I was so shocked to learn of this, considering the WCG I had knew of and what a difference it had become. Wow, I would have never imagined! I’m still totally dumbfounded by it all weeks later. Looking at the situation from the perspective or a former insider turned outsider, it is blatantly obvious that Tkach is a corrupt thief who imposed whatever he deemed profitable. It also became obvious that the whole church in general was comprised of evil, money hungry crooks making a lavish living in the name of God.

I also learned that a larger spin off named UCG eventually formed after the Tkach administration deemed it acceptable to observe the Sabbath on Sunday (the sabbath on Sunday…what?!…how could this be? This wasn’t the WCG I knew.) This group comprised of a board of elders, one of whom would eventually be in charge of the whole operation (Pastor General or something like that.) He was the minister of the Bethlehem, PA congregation that I attended as a child. This was also the man who approved of my fathers abuse, and wrote letters defending it. Upon reading this, it burned me up to think that this same man eventually was the leader of a global organization claiming to be God’s true people. What a shame.

I am now 31 years old. I lead a happy life for myself despite the odds against me from my non-traditional upbringing. I became a successful person without any form of god in my life. I am gainfully employed and happy. I am still single and would like to meet a nice woman soon and start a family.

In closing, it was great for me to see stories of others who endured WCG childhood experiences and emotionally healthy for me to share mine. I also wanted to express the shock I strangely felt upon recently learning of all the post HWA changes that occurred to the WCG. Thank you all for listening and I wish all of you the best.

Mike, Linden NJ

Today I found your blog. I grew up in Atlanta, GA and in the “Church” from birth–1969 and rebelled at around 16 years of age and refused to attend and later left home at age 17yrs. I do remember “fun” times in the church with the YOU youth group between the ages of 11–15 yrs, but also remember the fear of stepping out of line (father) and how you were taught you were inherently “evil,” essentially born “bad.” After spending a good portion of my life searching for some kind “truth” to life (”why are we here” question) I finally came to the “realization” there was no such thing as God— and it was all made up; in fact all religions are made up in order to control people and societies. I recently came across the new world order/secret government/white supremacist/fear tactics agenda (David Icke) and something clicked inside of me: “Oh my god, this sounds eerily familiar to the ‘doctrine’ I grew up in…” and it works out about the right time-wise 1930’s with HWA. And I wondered if he (HWA) got his “separatist/control” agenda from the same people. Anyway, I went searching to try and connect the dots and I found your website. I remember as a child/teen listening to countless sermons about “nimrod” and the pagan Babylonians, the worldly pagan holidays, the tribulation, and how one world government would be created and and Jesus would come back and the world would fight against him…

Anyway, I am still searching for answers. But after joining the military, a college education in behavioral science, researching every religion/philosphy/political science under the sun, a career in DoD, and most recently coming back from the middle east (Kuwait); today I’m only confident of 2 things: there is no God, or at least not the God I was taught as a child; and purposeful tactics of controlling the global “masses” is still alive and well today.

I would love to hear from anyone who can relate to what I’m saying, or just wants to comment.

Thank you… Melissa –Denver, CO

Thank you for opening this forum for former WCG members. I am Walter from Durban, South Africa. i was not raised in the church but had interest in it from 1986. I was 19 years old then and now 41, single (still) like many former friends in the church, who “put the church first before their lives.” Whenever i think about this, tears just pour all over my face. I left the church in 2002 after those final “changes” you know about. My heart is still with those friends in that cage. I know they moved on, but I have lost them. They were my only people and friends I could relate to in the world. I am still struggling to form lasting friendships even now. After leaving the church I decided to read many non-religious books as much as I could until I could tell my self that I am no longer a Christian anymore “after so much disappointment” in my life.

walfix at gmail dot com

Howdy All

My name is Lesa and I am a recovering cult member.

I grew up in the World Wide Church Of God “The Church” and I think is many ways it stopped me from being the person I was supposed to be .. I will read all your stories and then write some of mine and why I feel the way I do .. I was born into “the church” in 1965 .. I attended until the late 80s .. I never got baptized because a minister pissed me off about not being baptized (I will tell more later.) After I left “the church” I still loved God with all my heart .. but as time went on a new person was born in me that questioned everything we were not supposed to .. and now I feel I have two people living in side of me when I look at everything in life: One side of me looks at it with “the Church” or God in mind and the other side the new side looks at it as if there is no God .. or maybe a different God than the one that I was raised to believe in .. maybe even a God that writes NO BOOKS.

Anyway .. when I get inspired to spill I will here after I read some of your stories .. a large part of my family still goes to “the church.” My mom is one of them .. she is just recently able to hear my non-believing side talk without telling me it’s the DEVIL .. I told her the devil gets way to much credit for evil people doing bad things .. maybe we should just blame the people that do these deeds and not “the devil.”

More later.

Your sister in a new way,
Lesa From Houston

Hi, I just saw your blog… I grew up in “the church” from birth (I was even born during the feast of tabernacles) its nice to know I’m not the only one jaded by the twisted logic they drilled in. I was born in 1985 and attended till I was about 10 or 12 years old, When it got more and more obvious that it wasn’t a good place to be… I had to fake sick every saturday till my parents got the hint. The rest of my family stopped going shortly after, except my grandmother, who actually still goes now. I consider myself agnostic now, and although I understand that organized religion can help some people, I know it is not for me.

I am studying as a psychologist, and I guess I can attribute my ability to understand and handle peoples life problems to the very odd, secluded upbringing of WCG.

Just wanted to say hi, you can post this if you want, just please leave my email out since I am usually too swamped with school work to respond =)

-Kathy, Southern California

Hi,

I have just read your blog, and like you I grew up in the WCG (UK) with my sister and brothers. At one time I believed everything that I was told by my parents and the church. Had some good times as a teen going of to S.E.P camp in Scotland 5 times, and at F.O.T. Things changed after the death of Mr. Armstrong. It was like he had a hold of me but I did not see it for 5 years. My mum and dad, sister and brothers stayed until the split, then moved to UGC. For some reason they kept the news of the split from me for 4 years. Out of us 4 kids it is just my sister, her husband, and 2 boys still attending UCG with mum and dad. January 8 dad was ordained to elder. I do get on with my family better now that I’m out of it.

And I would not found my wife of 3 years if I stayed.

Many thanks,

R. Johnson

Due to the steadily rising traffic coming to my personal blog (in particular to discuss the ex-WCG false prophet Ronald Weinland), and the wide variety of topics being discussed in the ill-suited blog comments format, I’ve recently added a community forum to host open-ended discussion, and a Flash-based chat room, for live conversation of breaking topics. And today I’ve started a sub-board on the forum specifically for conversation among Ex-WCG non-believers. Please bookmark, join, and participate!

• Click here to visit the Ironwolf Forum.

• Click here to visit the just-opened Ex-WCG Non-Believers board.

• Click here to visit the board dealing specifically with Ronald Weinland.

Hi all! I was laying in bed last night, unable to sleep. For some reason I started thinking about the “Church” and how much I missed the childhood friends that I had. I missed the feeling of the childhood excitement of going to the feast. These feelings started leading to anger, deep sadness, and pain brought on by other memories. I have been out of the WCG for 12 years now, but the feelings still lie just beneath the surface.

My parents started attending WCG in 1969 when I was 2 years old. I don’t remember much of these early years. I do remember my parents sending back birthday and Christmas presents from my relatives, and the corresponding confusion on their part. My grade school years were filled with awkward moments when it came to birthdays and any “worldly” holidays. Eventually my class mates stopped even trying to include me in any of these events. By 6th grade I became what the WCG would call “separate” from the world. My only friends were in the church, I became a recluse, and nearly an outcast but for the tentative links to the other people on the fringes.

My teenage years were not much better. My only friends were in the church. I was excluded and teased by my school mates about my strange beliefs. I went to SEP two times. The first time I went, I remember being accused of having a bad attitude while playing basketball by an AC student counselor. I was actually enjoying myself up to that point in time, it was baffling to me. The second time I went to SEP I got stuck in the Measles quarantine. (I think it was 1984). I guess that is what you get when very few are immunized. I had to stay an extra 4 days after we were supposed to go home before I was “released”. At the end we were lucky to get 2 meals a day. Most of the time we only got one meal. It seems that after camp was supposed to be over, they didn’t feel like they had to feed us consistently. I had thoughts of “borrowing” a canoe in the middle of the night and paddling into town to call my parents to come and get me. A year later I saw one of my dorm mates from camp at the ministerial hospitality room at the feast in the Wisconsin Dells. I was “serving” at the time. I was severely chastised by my minister for saying “Hi” to him. I was told that the ministers and their families and friends were “special” and I could not speak to them unless spoken to. I remember feeling very angry about this and the logical side of me saying this is just wrong!

I met my wife in the church (one of the very good things I got from being in WCG). We dated for several years at which point the WCG forced us not to see each other, due to the fact that my wife was baptized, and I was not. I was amazed an angered at this. I spent the next seven months studying to be baptized so we could see each other again. We should have left then, but our families would have disowned us. My first son was born a year after we were married. Fortunately for us we had similar feelings and beliefs about things. We were in our third tithe year on my entry level mechanics salary. We had to use a charge card to buy food and diapers for our son. We lived in a series of really awful apartments over the years due to the financial drain of the church. I believe we still feel the shadow of the financial impact even today - 12 years post departure. We finally were forced to talk to the minister about our financial situation. There was no way we could continue to tithe and still survive. He told us to keep tithing, and he would give us financial assistance if we couldn’t make it work (accented with a bit of guilt for good measure.). We finally took a bit of a stand. We discontinued tithing - because there was NO way we could make it. We didn’t tell our parents for fear of the impending “Lake of fire” discussion. This was around the time when the church started to change. Joe Tkach Sr. was preaching the more mainstream path, my wife and I were somewhat interested. My parents and our present Minister were completely against it. Instead of leaving directly - our minister stayed around for several months until he was able to secure a JOB with one of the “splinter” groups. During this job hunting time we were graced with the pleasure of the minister sulking in the back hallway whenever a guest minister was preaching the new path, or enduring comments like “I don’t agree with this - but I was told I had to speak about it” during the service. We watched families splinter around us, (including my own for a brief time), long time friends that would not even talk to each other, and my father said he was worried I would burn in the lake of fire.

We got a new minister who spent most of his sermons complaining about how the church moved him around so much, and that he can’t even gain any equity in his house. Also he said that if our membership dropped any more there would no longer be a church in our area, we would have to go it on our own. (I assume he would be transferred again or lose his job.) In light of all this we were more and more frequently missing church, and I started to feel as though there were blinders being lifted from my eyes.

Our last feast of tabernacles was in Hot Springs Arkansas. (It seems I was struggling to let this tradition go as yet). We arrived to find a virtual ghost town. No one rolling out the red carpet for good old WCG any more. We quickly decided not to attend the services (not many people there). We played with the kids (now 2 sons) in the hotel room for a couple of days after finding nothing else to do. Then we packed up and went home - never to return to WCG (or any other religious organization) again.

I feel that organized religion has nothing to do with spirituality or god for that matter. I am still most certainly impacted by my experiences in the church. I have trouble making friends, I have trouble partaking in social events with my co-workers. I find that I still “separate” myself subconsciously. I have trouble celebrating Christmas with my own children, but want them to have good childhood memories. On the other hand, I feel lucky to have been able to “See the light”, and understand what I was once part of. It was a freeing experience after spending my entire life up to that point in a cult.

I truly appreciate all of my childhood friends, and wish all of you who had similar experiences in WCG much freedom, health, and healing. Thank you Robert, for creating this forum.

My name is Greg Resler. Feel free to email me: shadowyak@canoemail.com