Rocky

They appeal to noble motives, (See Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people, Item 10 in the list of 12 ways to win people to your way of thinking) even if they have no freakin' idea how to actually make those motives produce results (fruit).

It took me (in the 1970s and 1980s) 12 years to cycle through it. Btw, Skyrider, weren't there thousands of people who had gone out WoW?

While TWI purports to be about the "accuracy and integrity of God's Word," I believe the bottom line is that's just a ruse. Not that anyone (while in the cult) consciously believes otherwise, from a personal, sociological perspective people stay because they feel (yes, feel) a sense of belonging. It would be intriguing to get an idea of how people at the home fellowship level respond to the question about leaving, if there could be a way to capture that feedback.

BAM! I think you hit the nail squarely on the head.

My apologies WordWolf, for the edit I made to one brief section of your comment above.

Inserted links for Karl and Kristen.

Hi Brainstormer, Great insights shared by others already. I'll echo and emphasize a point made by Waysider. Challenging doctrinal issues is almost certain to be counterproductive. The Way built it's cult(ure) on classes intended to emotionally establish in the student's mind that all of Christianity was wrong except for how Wierwille and those who came subsequently presented it. Keeping your relationship open with your child is crucial. Let him (or her) know you trust and believe in her (or him). Ask your child questions that enables the person to come to the correct answer and think he/she came up with it on their own. This is often how people who write letters to editors of newspapers succeed in getting readers to look at issues differently than they did originally. If you can provide information from neutral sources that shows how to recognize spiritual abuse, that can be helpful. More on spiritual abuse and leaving a bad church. I was involved with The Way for 12 years as a young adult. When your child is ready, one key will be having a good social support system available so it won't feel like walking away from Jessie's own entire network of friends. I wish you and Jessie the best. <3

And here I thought NYCoC would have been the NY Chamber of Commerce.

Info on how you will be able to obtain a copy of Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International.™

Wouldn't it just be easier to live together and keep the mystery (of how intimate they really are) going?

Joey's family must be pretty well off financially since he's attending the Harvard Law School. The comments to Joey's post are pretty interesting too.

I think you were describing Animatronics. And I probably couldn't come up with a better description of JAL. I've thought for a long time that he has seemed inauthentic.

How does that relate to the topic as discussed in this thread?

No, it doesn't/didn't predate Westboro. The Phelps clan was picketing at Rock of Ages festivals in the 1970s.

The Confidence Game: Why we fall for it every time

Going back to the notion of academic research related to social and emotional intelligence, I just found this article published yesterday.

Hey Lanikaigal, You seem like a very interesting person...

Indeed, to exploit vulnerable people who were too trusting and not guarded enough... and no doubt did assist with mindreading, to a degree.

That may just be a matter of semantics. Perhaps technically true. Nevertheless, those manipulators often can have a great deal of influence over what you are thinking at a given moment. Again, this is, in my view, more a social issue than spiritual. What about "likemindedness" or being of "one mind" or of "one accord?" How does something like that come about? In sports, it's sometimes so tangible that casual observers can see it even if they don't know how to articulate or explain the concept. They call it, "team chemistry."

Excellent example. It's also the reason why John Grisham is one of my favorite authors.

Are you sure about that? I would have to figure that Jesus was quite adept at reading the social situation and dealing intelligently with it.

Regarding the Will Smith movie... we are ALL subject to being conned. And wierwille was pretty darn good at conning us.

Do or can we ever unconsciously, or unintentionally, share them with someone else? Remember the expression, "wearing your heart on your sleeve?" Of course we do not always telegraph our thoughts, intentions, feelings or attitudes. Nor do we want to. Another "of course," is that when we (at least when I was) were young wayfers, social intelligence wasn't necessarily a skill that was in abundance... I wasn't adept at reading social situations, that's for sure.

What a difference 45 years makes. I believe it is very possible to read people. What does that mean? Telepathy? Not really. But still, to a degree, we can and often do figure out what others' intentions, attitudes, feelings and even thoughts are before they are articulated verbally. But it's neither hooky-spookism nor godly revelation. From Psychology Today, There's plenty of research that has been done on Social Intelligence. I cannot recall whether anyone formally or informally taught or even just talked about any concept like this when I was a young wayfer. But I now believe that the intuitiveness that I then thought was akin to revelation from God is related to social and emotional intelligence. It's really not all that mystical (anymore).