Anita
Free at last!
It’s fascinating to read experiences of individual people in the US and how the WCG has affected them and see similarities of what went on over here in England especially in the early days of the church.
Britain was a pretty grim place in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I grew up, an only child, on a sprawling post war housing estate in the Midlands. Money was tight and we had few luxuries but my parents seemed happy enough to my eight year old eyes. They were active in their local community church, surrounded by family and friends. Then one night in early 1960 they tuned into Radio Luxemburg and heard the wild rantings of Herbert Armstrong denouncing Christmas, among other things, and our lives were changed forever.
Why did my parents fall under his spell? I can only surmise that war had left most people feeling fearful and unsettled. Perhaps my dad felt burdened with guilt being from German extraction?
All I knew was that suddenly my parents became deadly serious, fun and frivolity became a distant memory, family visits dwindled— we were always too busy anyway travelling to campaign meetings in the big city which involved endless train journeys we could ill afford. My dad was out of work— no one wanted a hairdresser who wouldn’t work on Saturdays. We mostly lived on a diet of corned beef and potatoes.
For me, life became more strained and frightening. I’ll never forget our first non-Christmas. My parents had always made a huge effort at this time of year. Now there was nothing, unless you counted copying out the bible in neat handwriting, in between reading the latest revealed knowledge in booklet form, all inter-dispersed with travelling to hear 3-4 hour long sermons.
Slowly my parents personalities changed, dad became irritable and bad tempered, my mum, tired and lethargic. Eventually we ended up at Bricket Wood in the early days of Ambassador College in England. Dad eventually became college hairdresser.
At age thirteen I entered a newly opened Imperial School, and looked forward to being with my friends in a small family environment. American “teachers” were shipped over and we Brits began to be systematically indoctrinated under a relentless regime. You didn’t obey? You either took the punishment or left. The sensible ones left.
As the years passed I filtered out things that made me feel uncomfortable such as ignoring the queue of little kids down the corridor, lining up for beatings in the stock cupboard. To me this had become a normal environment. You didn’t question authority—– after all, “they” knew best, God was leading them wasn’t he? Obedience was everything. How frightening when I think back.
Moved onto A.C. because after all where else was there to go when the end of the world was imminent? I have to say I fell for it all, believed passionately, and all the difficult questions were hidden away in a place I never visited. I saw sick people die, families break up, individuals destroyed, all needlessly. I observed domineering men systematically destroy their cowering wives, heard fathers brag about their child abuse and everyone smiled and looked happy.
When the changes came in the 80’s I embraced them all immediately, joyfully— too much so for some who looked upon me as fickle and shallow. Knowing at last that I could leave the church without being sent to hell, I took the plunge and broke away, unfortunately leaving many friends behind. I just couldn’t wait endlessly for them to see the light. I walked away with my mum and ten year old daughter. My husband has never left but thankfully we have both learned to live with this.
It took a while for me to understand I had been in a cult. The realisation left me devastated and shamed. I had often wrestled with things I didn’t agree with as I had grown older. How could I have been so stupid. Also, about some things, such as make-up and doctors, I’d been right all along!
For a few years, especially while the children were still forming their own opinions, I tried one or two churches but never felt comfortable. Gradually as I began to read more widely and seriously study church doctrine the weaknesses and cracks began to show. Once my kids had made their own decisions I felt free to wholeheartedly follow my own path.
Evolution makes beautiful logical sense to me. It answers questions, unlike religion which only poses them. I feel far more comfortable in an atheist universe and am having one hell of a time discovering how the world really works. And finally I can really begin to find the person I should have been. It’s never too late!
[Ed. Note: Anita, I assume by “one hell of a time,” you mean “a wonderful time.” On this side of the pond the phrase could mean, “a hard time.” 
Best wishes.]
August 13th, 2006 at 5:31 am
Your story is heartbreaking and uplifting! You should be proud to have raised your children as free-thinkers, enabling them to find their way without all the baggage that we carry.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Anita
I read your story and I feel sad that you were caught up in this cult Christianity. I’m an ex nonbeliever, now I’m believer, have been for 10years. I was involved in a cult, not Christian, but Hindu, for 20years, so I know what controlled thinking is all about and how hard it is to follow someone who conciders themselves God on earth. My husband started to receive teachings in the form of booklets ect, from the WWG, and tried to bring it’s teaching into our home, I rejected it , my husband had been bought up a Catholic, and rejected the Catholic church when he turned 21 and went his own way searching for the Truth we met during his coming back to God stage, I was committed to my Gurus teaching at the time eventhough I was full of confussion over it. So between the two of us we went on the search together, I became a Christian because I hadn’t tried it yet, I’d been into all the new age offered, looked into the Dali Lama’s teaching along with many others who spoke about Life and the meaning of it and still I didn’t feel satisfied so one day 4 years into our marriage, I made the decision to give the God of the Bible a go, my husband was already Christian he came back to God before I even found Him . Anyway getting back to you, it was the last comment from Cathy that makes me ask, If your children decided to follow Jesus and reject your freethinking teachings would you be supportive of their choice?
October 1st, 2006 at 7:56 am
In answer to What if… That’s an interesting question. I hope I wouldn’t actively try to argue them out of their belief, however, at present, I am experiencing a lot of anger and disgust concerning religion; if it were to happen now I would have a hard time accepting it quietly and objectively. Maybe in the future I’ll mellow again and be able to accept the decisions they may make for themselves and their families.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Hello Anita –
I wonder if you remember the name Charles Hunting from your Bricket Wood days? He lives in Florida. I talk with him occasionally. If you would have any interest in contacting him, I could tell you (privately) how to do so.
Congratulations on your escape from Herbie’s House of Horrors, in particular, and religion, in general. Take a look at http://www.richarddawkins.net .
December 29th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
I am not sure what to make of Anita’s comments because they do not provide an accurate portrayal of Herbert W. Armstrong as he was heard over Radio Luxembourg (208) in the 1950s and in the 1960s on ‘208′ and a fleet of offshore broadcasting stations that also featured his son Garner Ted Armstrong.
To quote Anita: “Then one night in early 1960 they tuned into Radio Luxemburg and heard the wild rantings of Herbert Armstrong denouncing Christmas, among other things, and our lives were changed forever.”
The problem with this comment is that it lays the foundation for her other comments. Since I was born in England, grew up in England and listened to ‘208′ which turned me on to Little Richard, Buddy Holly and even the late great Alan Freed’s transcribed show, I also listened to most of the religious broadcasters and they included Herbert on Mondays and Tuesdays at 11:30 PM.
The reason that I listened to Herbert is because he made sense. He did not rant as Anita implies but came across as a great uncle who would often go off subject to relay stories about people like Elbert Hubbard and Henry Ford. In England the year 1956 was the year of Suez and it had as much impact on a British teenager growing up then as the Bay of Pigs did for American teenagers at the dawn of the 1960s. While my mother looked on with alarm as Russia told Britain to get out of Egypt or get nuked while the USA disowed Britain (anti-Americanism flared to an all time high!), Herbert was telling the Luxy audience that Russia would not attack America or Britain! Very reassuring news for a British teenager!
Secondly, Herbert did indeed debunk Christmas, but surely Anita is not trying to imply that what Herbert said was untrue, because what he said was true and he urged his audience to check upon what he was saying.
Herbert also had a lot to say about Europe and some in Europe, while it is now much bigger than ten nations, are indeed kicking around the idea of a United States of Europe, while others want a Europe tied to the USA.
I got in and I later got out of the WCG. What I could not understand was why anyone woud have joined the WCG after 1972. Clearly Herbert changed and it is my belieg today that while Garner Ted was always a playboy who was only in it for access to the money, Herbert morphed into two people after 1972 (although the process began a few years before when his first wife died.
Siding up to Herbert from the mid 1950s onwards was a bright young man named Stanley Rader. A member of the Jewish faith oiginally trained in the selling of media time, Stan became an accountant, lawyer and mastermind of the post-1972 WCG.
Now I have read Charles Hunting’s interview with Clive Thomas on the radio (Clive, not Clyde, appears to have lost his radio and TV job when he announced that he was gay.) Charles either does not understand Herbert and Stanley or Charles at the time of that interview was still wrapped up with the absurd ideas of core Christianity which resulted in the production of a book with former Bricket Wood staffer Anthony Buzzard.
I believe that Herbert needed to keep the WCG alive and that he began to play the same game as his son Garner Ted, but he had to make a choice between Garner Ted and Stan Rader. He picked Stan.
Charles Hunting implied that all of Herbert’s jaunts to see world leaders were merely photos of opportunity or payment by gifts for photos. However, there is ample evidence to show that this is bunk. One example is in the video that shows Herbert talking to Peres and another of him talking to the mayor of Jerusalem - who had been attached to the CIA since the 1950s and had warned his colleagues that Philby was a double agent - without success. All of this is well documented elsewhere.
So what is my point? Well Charles should have known better because he was older than me and Charles, while being a nice guy on the one hand was an idiot on the other hand. An idiot? Yes an idiot. Charles had the opportunity to blow the lid off the very professional shell game that was the WCG of which he was a part. Without saying how I know, I remember Charles having a fit when he heard that England’s Bonzo Dog Band had recorded a Bolero type of song in which Garner Ted was the vocalist. Charles was a true believer who dropped the WCG only to hook up with Tony Buzzard.
My point is that we are all equal, all human, all dropped here by the same method and we will all die. We also know zilch about death and any afterlife. I don’t know, Charles doesn’t know and Herbert came to understand that he did not know. So when Herb died he told Stan’s man to pull he plug and let the WCG gradually die, that is what he and his son did, except that the son figured that religion was the ultimate con game for a sure fire income for life. So it lingers on. (Hey, everyone has a mortgage and car payments - typical crock excuses by WCG employees who drifted off to the WCG breakaways. Sincerity does not run through their doctrines!)
Now what I find interesting is the middle bit of the life of the WCG, there is the very strong possibility that Stan was working for or with US political interests. Possibly the CIA. That is the reason for my current research with Dr. Eric Gilder who currently teaches in Romania (a country Herbert knew well and whose sex clinic knew him!)
Anita, one thing Herbert was not: he was not a ranter. He was a father figure who seemed to know everything and when anyone checked up on what he was saying (ie Christmas), they went away thinking “He’s right of course!”
Herbert could have taught Donald Trump a thing or two and Stan most certainly would have been able to.
Don’t confuse your personal anger at your parents for whatever reason with the reality of life itself. You might watch the “Life of Brian” one more time and see how some get “it” early on, and some of us mugs have to go through the wringer first!
John
(Check out our research project at http://www.hwa-research.com )
January 12th, 2007 at 5:10 am
John, The reason my portrayal does not appear accurate, is because I was 8 years old - a child - listening to the unfamiliar voice of an authoritarian american with a mission - to warn individuals to obey god or otherwise suffer the consequences. According to my parents he did get excited and his voice would rise. How do you think that would affect an 8 year olds ears? Especially when as a direct result your life changed dramatically.
You are proving my whole point about the wcg by your seeming obsession with it - how much of your precious time on this planet do you intend to give to such pointless conspiracy theories. Which is why I won’t be contacting anyone. This is the only thing I’ve bothered to do over the last 10 years and it was only to leave some kind of tangible record of my experience. As to your presumptive accusation of my feelings toward my parents, you have no idea how I feel about them and I certainly am not going to discuss it with you.
Maybe you’d like to take my advice and seek reality by getting out more.
January 26th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hi Anita
I remember you and your family well, especially dad Heinz. Can remember him re-painting his car (or van) by hand. Do you remember the american girl who turned up at AC with pink hair! (shock horror!!) She ended up working with your dad as apparently she had some experience of ladies hairdressing. Because she was a bit glamoourous she ended up serving in the faculty dining room for the dirty old men like HWA and Raymond McNair (I worked with Eddie Canvin in Catering). Nice to read your story and the survived Imperial - I had 2 kids there and didn’t find out about the abuse until recently.
January 29th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Anita, if a person performs research for academic projects, does that make the person “obsessed”? If by your standard that is true, then any person who researches anything is obsessed.
I now direct you to your own admission in which you stated that what you had previously written did not appear accurate, and you are correct: it was not accurate. By your standard the sound of any unfamiliar American voice upon the ear of a British child of 8 would be threatening. I do believe that this is somewhat of an irrational line of reasoning.
As to how the voice of Herbert W. compared to any other British lecturing voice, I suggest that you listen once again to the old broadcast recordings from that period that are still available on the Internet and compare them with any related British authoritarian voice from that same period. Herbert comes across as an authoritarian “uncle”, he most certainly was not a “ranter” or tub thumper in the manner of Pentecosalist or preachers of a similar ilk. That is why the man was successful. For that matter you should read John Reith’s 1924 autobiography “Broadcast Over Britain”.
Reith was a Calvinist who believed that God is a dictator and he wrote his book about two years after he became the first managing director of the original BBC. He also became the first Chairman of the BBC. If you want an idiotic and dictatorial comparison read John Reith’s own words. He stated that the average Briton did not know what they wanted and that it was his job to tell them! The BBC “Reith Lecture” series is named after him.
As for conspiracy theories it would seem that you are in the habit of writing without first reading - because the site that I directed you to specifically and emphatically states that the author is not interested in either theological arguments or conspiracy theories!
Much of what happened within the WCG was the work of a lot of lessor people - some of them were even British!
But the thing that is most interesting in our research is the fact that from about 1956 onwards the WCG came under the control of a lawyer of the Jewish faith that Herbert sided with in disowning his own son. From there the duo came to represent two faces in the 70s and 80s. To the WCG members they seemed to believe in the WCG doctrines, but as Charles Hunting and others have revealed Herbert did not believe in the garbage that the WCG was teaching - while to the people he met overseas he appeared to have adopted a form of Buddhism with his god having a name that came from a US news magazine and his message reduced to that of getting vs. giving.
How a supposedly Christian sect could be managed from the top by a practicing Jew and represented by a practicing neo-Buddhist is, to quote Herbert, the true “mystery of the ages.”
I would suggest that instead living in anger and fear that you actually try to understand what you experienced. Putting all of that into context will be a great therapy for you, because you will then be at peace with yourself.
You might want to begin by actually reading what I previously wrote.
January 31st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Bob
How can I get in contact with Charles Hunting? I was at AC in Bricket Wood with his son Chris and his other son Paul worked for me. CH was my ultimate boss.
February 1st, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Anita:
In the course of my research with Dr. Gilder I have collected many articles and one of them helps to explain your own background: It is The Worldwide News of Monday, February 4, 1974, page 4: “Former Nazi now campus barber, recounts active and colorful life” by Thaila Martin. A picture of your father Heinz is shown above the article cutting hair. Although the caption says that Heinz had been the college barber since 1971, if I am not mistaken he had been cutting hair at Bricket Wood for many years before that.
After reading your father’s brief biography of how he joined the Hitler Youth in 1934 at the age of 9, and after many years of service to the Third Reich as a young adult he was then stationed on the Channel Islands (which were the only part of the United Kingdom captured by the Germans during WWII.) After the War Heinz spent three years in a British Prisoner of War camp and upon release in 1950, your father married your English mother Margerete and you “arrived not long afterwards”.
The article recounts that: “The little family began listening to “The World Tomorrow” on Radio Luxembourg in 1959. Two years later Hoffman began working at the Ambassador College Press. ‘It was a glorified duplicator at this time,’ he commented. In 1962 he was transfered to the Transport Department. Since 1971 Hoffman has been employed as the barber on the Bricket Wood campus of Ambassador College.”
A picture of a young Heinz in Hitler Youth uniform is shown below the article.
The point of this message is that Heinz indeed had a rough life, but before he became a full time barber he was a part time barber and I remember Heinz as a happy and pleasant man who cut my own hair on more than one occaision. My recollection is a little difficult to reconcile with your own brief description which also tends to distort life as it really was on the beautiful grounds of a millionaire British colonialist named Sir David Yule who is buried on what was once the Bricket Wood campus of Bricket Wood.
It wasn’t the surroundings that trapped people, it was their own fears from their own past that they had brought with them to a landscape that Herbert pretended was the idealistic future of the world tomorrow. It was an island of tranquility that required supression of individualism to maintain. That is why I left. But for your father, what could your father have to look back to? His entire life from a little boy onwards had literally (according to his own words), been subjected to Nazi jackboot mentality and the closest I saw in that kind of thinking were in the converts from England who had come to Bricket Wood.
As I originally wrote, Herbert came across as a “Uncle” who seemed to know what he was talking about, while most of Britain was calling Prime Minister Harold MacMillian a liar for telling them that they had “Never had it so good.” British life for the average person of the 1950s was nothing like the glamorous life that Americans seemed to be living on American TV programs and in American magazine articles and advertising.
Bricket Wood invited a few Britons into an oasis of tranquilty that had been created by its Upper Class Society, but which was at that time was operated by those same Americans from the land of plenty across the Atlantic.
In many ways it is a pity that it was all a dream.
At any rate, it was much better than the way that most British people lived and it was a whole lot better than being in service of Adolph Hitler.
But as I said, it was only a dream and the promised world tomorrow of today is sadly nothing like the tranquilty that was Bricket Wood and it now appears that Herbert was not the man that he pretended to be, or that many people think that he was.