2.1. Where Other Literature Failed
Obviously, the literature I had read, trying to grasp "the other side" of the Worldwide Church of God, failed to identify the essential problem with this church -- and failed badly. Some things written by Christians of other communions merely attacked the doctrines of the church; this misguided approach actually encouraged me to join the WWCOG, since I did not find it difficult to believe that the mainstream might be in error.
Other articles, written by people who had attended WWCOG services for a short time, wrote more about the church service itself, or became overly preoccupied with matters like tithing and food laws. These articles, too, badly missed the mark.
It is difficult, and unnecessary, to go into all the subtleties of belief, practice, and psychology of the Worldwide Church of God in this article, particularly since these things have been extremely sensitive to time: this article would have been very different if it had been written about the 1950's rather than the 1980's--and in the 1970's it would not have been written at all. The basic Worldwide Church of God doctrines are Judaic, like the interpretation of the Ten Commandments, including the ban on images of God and the continuing obligation to observe the Sabbath, the annual Holy Days, and the food laws (although the British-Israelite and "man becoming God" doctrines are hardly Jewish.)
These precepts alone are enough to alienate Gentiles from their community, family, and native culture, making it difficult to eat with those outside their church, or to keep a job when certain days must be observed. It makes this religion as difficult as it needs to be, especially when you remember all this is added to the generally-accepted Judeo-Christian moral and spiritual standards. It is tragic that the difficulty of keeping Jewish precepts in a non-Jewish world is not counterbalanced, in the Worldwide Church of God, by the freedoms of a Jewish culture: freedom to debate and to question, freedom to pursue scholarly or creative occupations, and freedom to express passionate emotion.
Whether or not Judaic religious practices like those of the early Christian Church are a legitimate expression of modern Christian belief is moot. Some Messianic Jews, among others, do find this acceptable--but this is really only half the question.
Only the most obvious practices of the Worldwide Church of God are reminiscent of Judaism: in its philosophy, culture, and politics, this church is highly conservative and fundamentalist--though other conservative fundamentalists would find them strange bedfellows. Like other fundamentalist groups, though, they are extremist and often do considerable spiritual damage to those under their authority.
I have experienced the shock of recognition, seeing interviews of members of Fundamentalists Anonymous, and hearing their accounts of living within, and the emotional shock of leaving, such a rigid, all-consuming faith. In the same way, while this article is about one abusive church, I hope to say something about how people can be cruelly manipulated through their desire for God; however, it is the details of a faith that first attract a person: the particularities of the Worldwide Church of God cannot be ignored.
It is painful to recall the various methods the Worldwide Church of God uses to wean an individual from a relationship with God and addict him to the organization. It is no accident that it has taken me six years to be able to discuss the matter in print, although I have been trying to do so ever since I left the church. In order to write this, I have had to relive the various spiritual wounds I have seen inflicted on others, as well as those I have suffered myself. These wounds do not heal quickly, if they ever completely do.
Of necessity, writing this article has plunged me back into that time and those feelings, and makes me even more determined to tell the plain truth about the Worldwide Church of God.
2.2. The Church's Appeal
Members are first attracted by the church's World Tomorrow radio or TV programs, or The Plain Truth magazine; they are interested further by the booklets offered by these sources, since these booklets answer basic religious questions that often perplex the average churchgoer with no theological background.
At some point, the person may become interested in receiving the free Bible correspondence course, offered through the church's Ambassador College. Someone who has gone this far will, by church estimates, usually go on to church membership. Before this, the interested person has very likely begun sending in money, or perhaps (if he has read the booklet on tithing) he is already tithing to the organization. If so, he will receive a monthly letter containing church updates, frantic warnings on the state of the world (and the imminence of Christ's return) and pleas for offerings. He now has official status in the church as a "Co-Worker," and is firmly tied to an organization he has had no first-hand contact with.
Unlike mainstream churches' appeal to a sense of community, evangelical churches' appeal to a sense of sin and guilt, or charismatic groups' appeal to a desire for religious experience, the Worldwide Church of God's appeal is to the intellect. This attracts the person who has had logical difficulties with the many accepted Christian doctrines that are more the result of historical forces, syncretism, and church councils than of direct biblical exegesis. The organization encourages a person to look things up in the Bible, research things in the library, and generally demonstrate each doctrine to his own intellectual satisfaction.
This would be admirable, if the new member were not being set up for the cruel joke to follow. Once he has been baptized, he will be told not to question anything taught by the church, and that it is a grave sin to disobey anything he is told (even if it appears to fly in the face of a biblical precept). To those who are too concerned with truth to abandon the inquiring method of the early period, it comes as a severe betrayal. Only those who have researched Worldwide Church of God teachings out of a desire to take revenge on their childhood faith make this transition easily, and seem relieved to be able to trust what the ministers say, comfortable that they have finally "arrived," and can cast aside having to verify everything they are told.
The next step is one that many students of WWCOG literature are reluctant to take: most people, by church estimates, will have studied the doctrines for a minimum of three years before approaching a minister about attending church services. This is not simply because it takes time to become convinced of the validity of various Worldwide Church of God doctrines, but because, despite what I have said about the church appealing to the intellect, this is not the whole story. The visible approach taken by the organization may be an appeal to reason, but, covertly, it appeals to those who feel alienated from their own culture.
In this sense, joining the Worldwide Church of God is much like signing up with the French Foreign Legion: the new recruit may feel the call of adventure, but just as likely he wants to escape an impossible situation--usually involving some very intense personal failure or severe emotional trauma that has left him feeling crushed and helpless. People are most likely to take the next step and commit themselves to this church if they have gone through some personal nightmare, have failed in business, torpedoed their career, ruined their marriage, or alienated their family--in short, if they feel they have lost so much that they have nothing left to lose.
This also explains the hold the church has on its members from the very beginning: to leave the church, a member must be willing to face feeling helpless or like a failure again, the very thing he has taken refuge in the church to avoid. This is more than many can bear, since this church is their "last chance."
The Worldwide Church of God then appeals to that ancient and deadly sin of Pride, whereby the erstwhile victim or failure can suddenly feel "superior" to those who scorn him, because he knows something they don't know, and has been singled out for greatness. That this is a very bad way to begin a religious pilgrimage is obvious: it is the recipe for Instant Pharisee, and it is easy to see why the new member's family, friends, employers, bankers, and neighbours may find this sudden turnaround a bit hard to stomach.
2.3. The First Church Services
The early contact with the Worldwide Church of God culture also takes some adjustment. Since the would-be member has studied in an extremely controlled environment, free from contact with any congregation, it comes as a surprise to find what he experiences week by week in the church has little to do with what he has studied so diligently.
In order to attend church services, a person must contact an office listed in The Plain Truth, and ask for counselling. Then, a pair of local ministers will visit his home to screen him before allowing him to attend. The church is not listed in the phone book, and uses only rented buildings, so it is effectively a secret society. The prospective member often will not know if he works with a church member, as members are forbidden to discuss religion unless asked.
2.4. Applied Ugliness
After a person speaks with the ministry and is questioned, and, eventually, allowed to attend services, he has to overcome the inevitable disappointment over the lack of anything approaching beauty, mystery, sublimity--even simple dignity--in the building and the service, and the puzzling and disturbing reluctance of the others to discuss religious matters.
Once the would-be convert grows used to ignoring the squalid details of the rented hall or school gymnasium, looking past the dusty picture frames and the basketball hoop over the minister's head, ignoring the coloured lines on the gym floor, enduring the tuneless and unappealing hymns (psalms put into bad common measure by the founder's brother), and once his initial shock and numbness wears off, he moves on to the next step: he is baptized, and the minister lays hands on his head in order to impart the Holy Spirit (the "consummation" of the baptism). This is also very often done in unsightly circumstances: my own baptism took place in a horse trough in a member's basement.
This is just the beginning of the assaults to come. It appears, at first, a small thing--too small to be worthy of notice or discussion, but the inescapable and persistent press of ugliness has its effect, after all. I have yet to speak with a member, past or present, who does not recall being deeply disturbed by it.
I believe this constant barrage of ugliness is the beginning of the process of desensitizing the member to his own reactions and feelings. Get him in the habit of looking away when he sees the basketball hoop over the minister's head; make him learn not to notice the coloured lines on the floor when he reaches for his Bible; make him ignore the incongruity of the silver communion service glinting in the ghoulish fluorescent light on that one night of the year he will partake of the bread and the wine--and make him observe that most solemn occasion in a place filled with slogans for school athletic teams--and in time, ignoring the evidence of his senses will become second nature to him: it is not long before he will begin to feel that gratuitously violating his God-given sense of fitness and beauty is somehow spiritual.
Totalitarian states have always intimidated and dehumanized its populations with ugliness -- itself a form of violence, and very effective at demeaning its intended victims. Members of the Worldwide Church of God thus learn to hate their own senses, and become oblivious to their own experience, as they are already oblivious to their own disappointment, and the pain and despair of their families.
The ęsthetic impulse underlies more of our moral impulses than we care to admit: most of us shrink from evil first because of its ugliness, not because we are all expert ethicists. It is easier to make people believe something or do something that would normally be against their better judgement when you have first trained them to ignore their own instinctive sense of revulsion. To follow the example of Paul (Acts 17:28), and quote from the wisdom of one of our own poets:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
(An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope)
This blunting of the senses would be in character if the Worldwide Church of God taught asceticism, but it doesn't; St. Paul too loudly denounces it as a "doctrine of devils" (I Tim. 4:1-5) for them to dare. At this point, members are no doubt ready to boast of the supreme loveliness of the church's headquarters, with its magnificent architecture and beautiful grounds, and the endless words from the pen of its founder, Herbert Armstrong, on excellence and beauty.
All this is far away, and has nothing to do with the faithful tithe-paying member who must worship his whole life amongst ugliness, with perhaps some relief once a year. This is how little the congregation is worth, that its members can be relegated to enormous gymnasiums containing more members than a large university's lecture theatre: this is good enough as the setting in which the "Bride of Christ" is to be brought up and nurtured for her whole religious life.
