Carol
My daughter, one of those who posted, directed me to this site. I have the qualifications, having been a bona fide member of the church (baptized in 1960), a three-year student of AC, married to a minister and long since an atheist. What appears to be different in my case is my age and/or generation. I was of the generation of the parents of most of the postees.
For those of my generation who were in “the church” the take is a bit different, and seeing it through our eyes might be of help to those of a younger generations - the children of, as it were. But I suspect I knew some of you as newborns and young children.
My parents discovered The Radio Church of God (pre-TV days name) in Ohio, where we lived in a very rural community. I vividly recall being visited by one of the teams of young men who regularly engaged in baptizing tours in the summer. I was about 15 and a church was just being formed, as I recall, in Akron, Ohio - no small drive from our home but one we made every Saturday nonetheless, poverty and all notwithstanding. This team targeted me for Ambassador College, which was the only way I could get away from my abusive and controlling father (these kinds of fathers are everywhere - the church just legitimized the abuse and control.)
I went to AC in 1960 at age 17. I came to know the Armstrongs and many others quite personally and I married a man who became very prominent in the church. In fact, he became an evangelist but not till after we were divorced and he married a woman who was more supportive of his brainwashing and the dogma of the organization not to mention the status-climbing and false empowerment, which I had forsaken in the 70’s while we were pastoring the church in Eugene, much to the embarrassment, exasperation and frustration of my husband. I just knew I couldn’t grow as a person in that crazy world, would not let anyone control my mind and knew that in good conscience I could not continue to give support. I guess I was not a “good” minister’s wife — forget that I genuinely loved the people and found the religious form quite beautiful, if quaint. And that I truly loved my husband and my children and not just because I was fulfilling some function dictated by the powers that be. I never needed “god” for authority to think or do anything.
Leaving the church was very difficult, of course. It was my everything and I had no knowledge of the “real” world outside the church. I am also by nature a truly “spiritual” person (whatever that means - I have come to dislike the word in this New Age time and place.) But when I attended church for the last time in the Ambassador Auditorium after we had returned to Pasadena and heard a doddering old fool and egomaniac (Herbert Armstrong) beat on the people with the same old boring message, I knew it was the end for me. I just ached for the people in the church and the hoops they were forced to jump. I saw how their careers and families suffered and I knew it was wrong! Some say I was never “really converted” because I saw through the hypocrisy, but I figured I was given a brain for a good reason and that it belonged to me and was my responsibility. And I always reminded them that the Bible says to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I accepted that responsibility, even when it was very scary because it was so in opposition to my rigid Lutheran mother’s teachings as a child and all that I had been taught at AC. But I could read the book for myself and I knew way too much about the personal lives of the dominant class of the church to be deceived. In the end I abandoned it (the Bible) and “God” completely and found a much better way to live and love. I did it all alone and with absolutely no outside input, but I did say that I take personal responsibility very seriously and I suspect I may be incapable of brainwashing (if my father and mother failed, everyone was bound to fail).
I want to add that I am not associated with any of the fringes, malcontents, fractions, remnants or study groups of anyone who ever was a part of all this. My path has been one of total privacy and that was facilitated by living in a very rural area and by not seeking to retain bonds with any association with that corrupt organization. I also moved far past the anger and hurt and abuse it heaped on its believers because I did not want or anyone to have any power over me whatsoever. Would my life have been different without this? Of course. But I have a motto in life, a credo by which I live: It’s not what happens to you but what you do with it that counts. And I choose to remember the good things, if I choose to remember at all.
I am 64 1/2 now, living a very full and contented simple life, far from the clutches of any “ism,” and gradually repairing the severed relations with my beautiful daughters who were so cruelly ripped from me and abused beyond anything I knew as a child, and I was terribly abused. Living well really is the best revenge, if revenge is what one seeks. I am a much more peaceful person than that but whatever it takes for one to move beyond this insanity is what one must do because life is too rich and fine to be wasted in hostage to a lesser morality than one’s own.
I welcome comments and e-mails. My address is cbr@fmtc.com. I am at a place in my life where this is not an imposition and is, in fact, a pleasure for I truly loved the people of the church and their best instincts and I know only too well how the church ripped away a certain innocence in the name of God and that is was extremely ungodly to do this. I have also learned that it is recoverable.
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October 28th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Dear Carol,
You are probably one of those Ambassador students we younger kids idolized when we saw all the wonderful things you were doing at AC (as we looked through the Envoy our parents were expected to purchase every year at the Feast with our “excess” 2nd tithe.) Imperial and AC students were the ultimate examples of what we were expected to be. I can remember the absolute wide-eyed awe I felt at SEP when I met my dorm counselor and admired from afar the Imperial kids who worked in the kitchen. They were sooooo! cool. A lot cooler than I would ever be, for sure. I knew so little of “the world” that I didn’t know all college kids have lots of fun. Nor did I realize I (and the rest of the lay members) were looking at all the HQ people the same way a 5-year-old looks at his daddy as the best daddy in the whole wide world. By the time I actually got to AC I had grown out of most of that and it was entirely gone by the time I went back home 2 years later.
When I read the comments in this website, I felt really badly. Looking back, I was apparently painfully naive about, or else awfully unaware of, what went on in other homes, or both, maybe. I didn’t have parents who beat me. They had read the child-rearing book and, yes we got spanked (my brothers more than my sister and me), mostly by mom because she was home with us and never one to say “wait til your dad gets home.” But, they didn’t agree with the need to “beat the devil” out of us and they were never physically abusive. Emotional abuse is something else, though, and with a cult you will always have it even if you don’t want it or think you have it, although I don’t think mom and dad would never have been abusive if they’d known they were doing it. But, when a little girl comes home on the schoolbus to an empty house, and none of her siblings were on the bus with her, so she hides under the dining room table, terrified and crying because she has been “left behind,” that is abuse. (Mom had picked us up at school and for some reason let her go on home on the bus alone, thinking we’d get there first, but for some reason we didn’t.) This actually happened to my sister. Since the changes, mom has read books about cults and she and daddy realize what they did and have apologized to us. We were pretty poor, also, but we lived on a farm and had animals to butcher for meat, and milk cows, and raised a big garden and canned alot of vegies, so we never went hungry, as some have said they did, we even had food to give away to the really poor and/or out of work. I can still remember the year we had $1000 Feast money, as a family. I was in high school and that Feast money included the 2nd tithe from my and my younger brothers’ summer jobs. I can also remember that my parents took out loans to pay bills during 3rd tithe years, which they just managed to get paid back before the next one, as well as loans for all those special emergency offerings HWA was always begging. And then my grandparents would have to buy our shoes or school clothes.
I was the “rebellious” child and mom has told me she often dispaired of my “making it.” There was a lot of hypocrisy and I knew it. I had had just enough church teaching before “the truth” came into our lives to have questions “the church” didn’t and couldn’t answer, which is part of the reason I left AC after 2 years. But, the sad truth is that when it came down to it — I stayed — because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. All my friends and family were in “the” church. I didn’t know anyone “outside” or how to live out there on my own. My kids were born into it and had their share of “cultly” abuse before I did finally leave and began to work on undoing the damage. Fortunately, I had grown up to become a “rebellious” adult who did not use the child rearing booklet as my guide and managed to teach my kids an inner strength I hadn’t had, so it didn’t sink in so deep and didn’t do nearly as much damage. We still have discussions about what they went through and what I went through and how could we ever have stood for it and wasn’t it stupid of us to let them do that to us. Someone mentioned in these pages still wanting to meet up with some of the “leaders” and give them “what-for” or maybe just stomp their faces and after all these years that yearning comes over me occasionally, too, especially when I think about what I did to my kids that shouldn’t have been done and certainly didn’t need to be.
When I left I tried going other churches. The problem was, that in finding my way out of WGC, I had learned to think for myself and figure out what I believed in and there just wasn’t anything out there that matched. Nor was I ever again going to allow anyone or any entity tell me what to think. (Such as, I eliminated any church that believes in an ever-burning hell, because I don’t.) Then I figured that if somebody like HWA, and the dozens or hundreds just like him, could found religions based on what they wanted to proclaim as “truth” and they weren’t any smarter or better than I, then I can believe whatever I think is right for me (the religion of Sue!). My dad (a local elder who was given a church after the changes) retired from the ministry and he and mom go to a local Christian church in their home town with my brothers and their families. My sister and I are non-church-goers, as are our kids, except for one of mine who goes occasionally with his wife. We’ve been lucky, apparently. We were an exceptionally close family while in “the church” and have managed to maintain it. Our kids, “the cousins,” are best friends. We try to remember the good things. The Feast could be and was usually a lot of fun. Our kids have great memories of Feasts together. None of us would be married to the spouses we have and have the kids we have without it. Maybe we would have more money in the bank, but then again maybe not. There is still some occasional bitterness about what we didn’t have or get to do, but it gets less all the time.
I guess what I’m saying is I am who I am and what I am today as much because of “the church” as in spite of it. Pulling away at a time when none of my family and friends were doing so taught me I had an inner strength I would never have believed I had. Knowing what to look for taught me not to get caught up in the same thing again. I learned how to teach my kids what to look for, how to be strong, and how to think for themselves and know what they believe. I know what I believe. I know what makes me spiritual. I know I will never try to make anyone think or believe the same way I do. I know I am at peace.
November 4th, 2007 at 7:00 am
For those who’ve read my post - this is my Mom, who bought me a plane ticket from Pasadena to Boise in 1987 so I could get the hell out. I will never forget hiding with the phone in the closet under the stairwell in Mayfair plotting my escape from AC and the WCG forever. Thanks Mom!
December 4th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Sue, thank you for your wonderful story. I am so proud of you, and of your family! I am so glad you found your inner strength and that you can model that for your children. Also glad too that you do not allow bitterness to contaminate your life - a waste of time and energy, if tempting at times. All the best to you and your loved ones. You are clearly wonderful people!
And Melissa, what a journey we have had and how proud I am of you and us. Best plane ticket I ever bought!