5. Victims become Victimizers
5.1. Worse than an Infidel
On top of these three tithes come seven annual holy-day offerings, not to mention the monthly co-worker letters asking for money. After any holy day offering is taken, the ushers total the amount, and divide by every man, woman, and child present to give an "average offering" figure: this is then announced to the congregation before the end of the service.
I saw this figure climb from $22 to $55 per person from 1978 to 19831, or from $88 to $220 for a family of four, for each separate holy day. Combined with the high unemployment and underemployment in the congregation, this must have had a staggering impact on family finances. With a good-paying job, after taxes and tithes I had only half my income left, and I was never able to afford such offerings.
It is worse when you are a poor member in the congregation: an offering announcement like this leaves you paralyzed with inadequacy. It takes more strength of spirit than most people have to remember that the Pharisees were criticized for their unhealthy emphasis on tithing. Although it was something they ought to have done, they gave so much importance to it that they "omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgement, mercy, and faith" (Matt. 23:23). Only when an individual can balance his personal and family responsibilities with his own judgement of what he owes God, can he give as he is able, willingly, and not under duress; then tithing can nurture, not wither, his spiritual growth.
Even in the Old Testament, required offerings had flexibility, so that the poor could give as they were able (Lev. 27:8); so, in the New Testament, Paul describes the ideal gift as being given by someone "according as he purposes in his heart," and not "of necessity," that is, under duress. In other words, the prudent person has counted what he is able to give, then gives this willingly and cheerfully, remembering that his first responsibility is to take care of his family: neglecting this for religious reasons is roundly condemned (Mark 7:7-13).
I do not believe it is a coincidence that so many families in the church were badly in debt, when these same people often gave large offerings. In attempting to show their faith, they showed instead a lack of prudence and judgement, and a severe lack of faith in God's ability to understand their situation and be merciful.
When the congregation began to groan under the burden of the money they were paying out to the church, they would be told that God would provide unexpected gifts of money and goods; if this bounty did not arrive, the members were told their blessings were spiritual, and more valuable than mere money.
There was always the unspoken accusation that the money problems themselves were a sign of God's displeasure, on the theory that misfortunes are the just deserts of the spiritually inadequate--a philosophy fit only for Job's false friends. To assuage his guilt over admitting that God may not cover ever financial strait, to show God He is still trusted, and to forestall His dreaded censure, the typical member will send in a generous offering.
Meanwhile, just as the sermons have predicted, gifts of food, money, furniture, and clothing will arrive, often from "unconverted" relatives, friends, and acquaintances moved to pity by the member's plight, thus enabling him to feed his family. If this does not happen, the member will begin to use credit to cover the necessities of life, until he incurs a crippling debt.
This reliance on outside sources for support not only erodes the member's self-respect, but often produces an unreal, dream-like view of finances akin to the lottery-mentality of the secular poor. This is vehemently condemned by St. Paul, who says, "If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel" (1 Tim. 5:8).
5.2. Calvin's Ugly Head
Such overemphasis on the spiritual significance of money bears the taint of early Calvinist teachings, whereby, although a person could never know if he were predestined to salvation or damnation, he could make a shrewd guess by observing whether or not God was (financially) blessing him. And so also in the WWCOG does the achievement of monetary success become a religious goal, as a confirmation of God's approval. The fruits of this theology are, among other things, lack of charity to the poor, blaming them for their own fate; obsessive work habits designed to lead to prosperity, and thus, God's blessing; and, generally, mistaking wealth for righteousness.
As Herbert Armstrong, the WWCOG's founder, came out of a tradition of Methodism, better known for teaching faith rather than stringent works, this influence probably comes from the all-pervading atmosphere of Calvinism that early saturated North America, giving it its peculiar "work ethic" and hardheartedness towards the poor.
5.3. Fascist Families
The most chilling results of immersion in the Worldwide Church of God culture are in people's families and lives: far from "building character," which the organization claims to do (like the Army), association with the Worldwide Church of God tends to erode the best of good characters and seal up the worst of bad characters with the whitewash of relentless orthodoxy and ceaseless church-related activity.
It does this by systematically replacing the individual's natural moral impulse (which needs education and nurturing, not destruction) with the lower moral response of fearful obedience to rules and orders. Rather than helping someone grow towards the divine ideal of a being who wills only to do good, the organization attempts to create a being with no will at all, with the habits of a creature well-trained by having its own instincts turned against it.
In the congregation I was in, it was normal for men to ignore and denigrate their wives in public, and walk all over them in private: they delighted in forcing the women to show their obedience and submission. One example that comes to mind is of two young husbands who decided to take their pregnant wives hiking up a mountain, forcing them onward despite their tiredness, to show their male mastery over them. One of the women refused to go on; the other, who had been ill before the climb, obeyed out of fear and a sense of duty, and soon after, lost her baby. To my knowledge, neither of the men was ever rebuked by the ministry, though it was not thought beneath the ministers to busy themselves repeatedly counselling another woman over the style of her clothes.
The men were often similarly harsh and cruel to their children, punishing them for the slightest expression of discomfort or discontent. Single men tended not to bother taking single women out on dates, preferring to congregate with other single men in restaurants, because, in their words, they saw no point in spending money on women when they were not allowed to take them to bed anyway.
5.4. A Culture of Cruelty
Childless women were taunted mercilessly by women with children; people with a spouse outside the church (referred to as "your unconverted mate" to the member's face) were generally shunned; the suburban rich hobnobbed with each other, while the poor were left out in the cold; gossip spread like wildfire about everyone and anyone, and in general, the culture was cold and merciless and about as far from anything recognizably Christian as one would like to imagine. People were superficially pleasant over coffee, and put on a good show, as if that were their main concern.
If this were merely a troubled congregation, these details would be irrelevant: in fact, these problems were often caused by church teachings, and aggravated by sermons and counselling. The church was also extremely segregated: while all members went to services and Bible studies, other church activities were for couples, or singles, or teens, and those who did not fit into any category were often forgotten. Those with a spouse outside the church were often ignored by singles and couples alike. This did not encourage the congregation to grow in empathy, or challenge their Christian charity: besides, since they were forbidden to discuss the one thing they did have in common with these disparate people, their faith, they never discovered any commonality with those outside their own physical situation. In this way, like went with like, and very little growth took place.
It is easy to see how the rich might not have much to do with the poor, considering the unconscious streak of Calvinism running through the WWCOG's beliefs; the church's emphasis on judgement at the expense of mercy, and its habit of holding people up to public criticism from the pulpit, also encouraged the ruthlessness and the gossip.
The way women were spoken of, and the pressure the ministry put on singles to get down to business, and date with a view to marriage, made the idea of enjoying a woman's (inferior) company unthinkable for many single men, unless marriage were a serious possibility. When a woman's only creative outlet is her children, it is no wonder that many would lord their fertility over the childless, particularly with the church view that medical problems were God's judgement: if, once you had been anointed, you had not been healed, you were suspect. In this way, the infertile, like the poor, were seen to deserve their fate.
Time and again, I recall wincing at some teaching or emphasis coming from the pulpit: yet another putdown of women, or emphasis on men's authority; another dose of guilt that would be swallowed most avidly by those needing it least; another diatribe against the poor and the unemployed; or yet another tale calculated to inflame the congregation's already bloated appetite for cruelty. One does not talk about alcohol in the same way to teetotalers as to heavy drinkers: context is all, and the messages the congregation heard were often only to their moral detriment.
I remember vividly one story whose point has been lost from my mind: it had something to do with a warning not to ignore ministerial advice, or not to criticize goings-on in the services. The minister spoke of a woman in the congregation who, when childless, had been disturbed by the ceaseless crying of the children near her in church, and had been told that some children cry more than others, and she would understand when she had a child of her own. She continued in her complaints, however, to get some enforcement of the church policy that parents take crying children out of the room to settle them down, but nothing was ever done. Later, when she had a child of her own, it cried so vigorously one day in church that it ruptured itself during services. The congregation roared with laughter at this edifying story. Thus, an anecdote intended to teach a lesson in empathy became one sanctioning a cruel and judgmental callousness. No one would listen to me when I was so upset with this. "Don't you see? It's all right; God obviously did that to teach her a lesson," I was told.
5.5. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
This is not to say there were not some people who maintained a real relationship with God, tried their best to behave kindly, and were genuine and good. I knew and valued several people like this: without exception, their greatest troubles were those given them by the church itself. There was the divorced mother struggling to work and raise her children, who was also going to college to better herself and make it easier to support her family. When she won a scholarship to pay for her last year, the ministry ordered her to quit school, because they said the time she spent away from her children was causing them to misbehave in church and Bible study. Heartbroken, she felt she had no choice but to drop out.
There was a married woman whom the ministry constantly discouraged from finishing college, who decided maybe she would just quit and stay home to have another baby, but was told by the ministry that even though they wanted her to be more domestic, they did not want her to have any more children. Then there was the man who had been a faithful member for more than ten years, diligent in study and prayer, scrupulous in self-judgement, active in the church, who was told his personal struggle with a besetting temptation showed a lack of God's Spirit, and proved that he had never become a true Christian at all: somehow, they said, at his baptism, the laying on of hands had not "taken"; crushed, he was secretly rebaptized, to his deep and wounding shame.
5.6. Pushed to their Doom
There were the people doomed never to marry because no one in the church was quite the right colour: interracial dating or marriage was not allowed in the church, and anyone of mixed parentage was assumed to belong to the nonwhite portion of their ancestry.
It is impossible to forget the man who became so obsessed, trying to live only for the church, that he was suspended, tried to break into the church service by violence, was repelled, and later committed suicide. Obviously someone highly unstable, he had found the spirit in the church did not give the power of a sound mind, but instead, only furthered his confusion.
Even the girl who was not allowed to go sketching with me did not fare well. Later, she was tormented with mental illness. While the ministry discouraged resorting to psychiatry, I believe her family did try to get her some help. She finally ended her life. I heard about this after leaving the church, so I can only wonder how she could have gone from the vibrant, intelligent, strong, confident young woman I knew to the person who finally gave in to rage and despair. I, too, went from being a strong-willed confident woman to someone who left the church only after a long bout of mental torment and obsession with suicide, punctuated by thankfully-futile attempts.
There is no end of wounds I saw inflicted by the church: these examples are only ones I am able to use without giving away anyone's identity to those who did not already know their stories, thus sparing anyone further humiliation.
1
This figure is based on my own (obviously unpublished) notes of church services at the time, including announcements of offerings.
