Huh??? I'm blown away.... every time I think there nothing big I missed from TWI past, there comes another one. Time magazine? I've got get me a copy of this.
No one I knew every mentioned anything about this. And I remember when some believer was going to be on the Phil Donahou Show (it wasn't about the way or anything... in fact I don't know why he was going on), and some Corp was discussing how he had to watch out for Phil's tricks (I was still a "babe" so I didn't ask any questions). But that nothing compared to this.
I starting to get afraid to look at new threads, I might find out that there were old plans to put a BOD face on Mt. Rushmore.
Speaking with my pastor... with a real doctorate. I told him I had trouble enjoying reading the Bible, so therefore I read books about the Bible, i.e. Smith Wiggles worth etc.... He investigated me.
It was THIS he found so destructive
Wierwille argues that the Bible as a whole is not relevant to all people of all times. Every word of Scripture is equally inspired by God, he says, but different books were addressed to different audiences. The Old Testament and the Four Gospels are for the Jews and Gentiles; the rest of the New Testament is for the "Church of God" of "born-again believers."
Next, the fear of the "Jesus spirit" and not understanding Jesus. Thus, taking away our conversational fellowship with him.
Then, the misleading our focus... Such as we read Romans and we focused on Jesus being the creation and people worshiping the created more than the creator - even though all the verses around it condemned the behaviors going on in TWI.
Then, VP had us focus on the GRACE administration - because all his sins could be forgiven as he twisted that up in his favor.
So VP, took away the Bible, the savior, and had us focus on GRACE - this ladies and gentlemen - was a false prophet.
For to loose intimacy with God always leads to sexual sin.
Then, the erroneous teaching to NOT SAY THINGS OUT LOUD or the devil will hear it!
The Bible does NOT teach that, as a matter of fact, the POWER of God is unleashed in SPEAKING - from Let there be light to the LOUD voice you hear in Revelations...
So, we had our Bible taken, our Jesus minimized, our focus redirected, our speaking the word/prayer power diminished, GRACE to sin exhaled - and we wonder why (for some) it is hard to read the Bible?
Actually I have a copy of the 1971 LIFE Magazine around here someplace in a box. It was an article written about The Way and I think it was titled "The Groovy Christians of Rye New York"
It seems that da Way was busy in the news that year. I looked online to see if I could find a copy of it to link or cut and paste.
If I feel overly ambitous or extremely bored I'll concider typing it up for yur viewing pleasure. Not likely.but maybe.
I wish I were more computer savy... so that I could just post a link, but
I did a google search on 'groovy christians of rye new york' and it returned, among other things, a published article called "My Cult Years" a personal history by John Seiffer.
To save Time on their bandwidth, here's the part of the article that references twi...
==================================
The Jesus Revolution (TIME, June 23) includes preachers of hellfire and promoters of love, fundamentalist Christians, mainstream Protestants, and even some Roman Catholics. Most, however, at least share a common belief in the basic tenets of Christianity: the triune nature of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Gospels as the cornerstone of faith. But some so-called Jesus freaks really subscribe to exotic creeds all their own that to orthodox Christians are close to what used to be called heresy. And not only to traditional churchmen: even many inside the movement look suspiciously on these fellow travelers with Jesus as distorters of the true Gospel. Two such eccentric groups are The Way and The Process:
The Way
Externally, The Way looks like any other branch of the Jesus movement: its adherents are mostly bright-eyed, smiling teenagers, ecstatically exchanging "Bless yous," telling of drug cures, perpetually thumbing their Bibles. There is also the ubiquitous music drumming across Gospel messages, sometimes to the beat of hard rock. In mid-August, more than a thousand young followers descended on The Way Biblical Research Center in New Knoxville, Ohio (pop. 850), for a weekend of spiritual study almost continuously backgrounded by rock. Musical groups of Way believers with names like The Dove, Cookin' Mama, and one from Long Island called Pressed Down, Shaken Together & Running Over, belted out the sounds.
But it is The Way's message, not its music, that is offbeat. That message is preached by the movement's founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, 54, a trim, tanned, fast-talking six-footer who likes to wear Western-cut suits with a scarf around his neck and tool around the countryside on a big Harley-Davidson. A former minister of the United Church of Christ who has studied both at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, Wierwille is now a crackerbarrel theological promoter who grandiosely claims to have done the only "pure and correct" interpretation of the Bible since the First Century. He has been working on his theology for about 25 years, ever since he shucked his academic background by burning more than 1,000 religious books "to clean myself out" before starting his own research.
Wierwille argues that the Bible as a whole is not relevant to all people of all times. Every word of Scripture is equally inspired by God, he says, but different books were addressed to different audiences. The Old Testament and the Four Gospels are for the Jews and Gentiles; the rest of the New Testament is for the "Church of God" of "born-again believers." But Wierwille and his Wayfarers concentrate mainly on the nine Epistles of St. Paul to the early churches, especially the letter to the Ephesians, which, he insists, distills nearly everything important in the Word of God.
Wierwille dismisses the doctrine of the Trinity as a throwback to paganism, because it proposes, he says, "three Gods." To him, Jesus is "the Son of God," but not God the Son. "You show me one place in the Bible where it says he is God," Wierwille thunders. "I don't want your rapping, your doubletalk, your tripletalk; all I want is Scripture." And the Holy Spirit, says Wierwille, is just a synonym for God. Wierwille's theology is propounded in pamphlets, a magazine, and books, but mainly in a filmed and taped "foundation course," into which he has unloaded 36 hours of rambling, folksy lectures on the Bible. The title of the course—which costs $65 per head: "Power for Abundant Living." Carrying Norman Vincent Peale's pious optimism a good bit further, Wierwille promises that right "believing" will keep away sickness, ensure prosperity, and even protect soldier converts from Viet Cong bullets. Poverty is seen as a result of imperfect faith: the Good Life is a proper reward for believers.
Most of Wierwille's converts come from just that Good Life: comfortable middle-or upper-class families in predominantly white suburbs. Sometimes parents have followed their youngsters into the fold. Although Wierwille founded his research center in 1953, the movement around it has started to grow only in the past few years. He keeps no records and gives only the vaguest estimate of the number of his followers—"5,000, maybe 10,000," in "most" states and "nine, twelve, 15 countries." There is a vigorous chapter in Wichita, Kans., and strong groups in Rye, N.Y., and in Mill Valley, Calif.—which are called The Way East and The Way West. All conduct meetings where they listen to Wierwille's recorded words and offer extemporaneous prayers. Attendance is also good at the sermons that Wierwille delivers in person at New Knoxville. His brother Harry, 64, the treasurer of the center, claims that Sunday services take in as much as $10,000 a night. The money, say the Wierwilles, is being used for a $3,000,000 building program to expand The Way still further.
==========================================
==========================================
For the curious, the rest of the article was on "the Process".
Here's that:
==========================================
The Process
The polite, earnest, uniformed "Messengers" of The Process Church of the Final Judgment are hard to miss these days if one walks up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue or Chicago's Michigan Avenue. The points of their collars are decorated with red three-horned goats' heads; between the horns dangles a large silver cross. Satan and Christ? Yes. And more. If the followers of The Way have trouble accepting a Trinity, the Processeans emphatically do not. But their "Three Great Gods of the Universe" are jealous and warring deities who battle among themselves in an eternal "game" for control of men's souls.
The three gods of their bizarre theology represent "three basic patterns of human reality." One of them is Jehovah, a "wrathful God of vengeance and retribution," who demands "discipline, courage and ruthlessness" from his followers. The second is Lucifer, wrongly confused with Satan, they say. He is the "Light-Bearer" who urges humans to "enjoy life to the full, to value success, to be gentle and kind and loving." The third is Satan, "the receiver of corrupted bodies and transcendent souls," who impels humans both toward a subhuman life of depravity and a superhuman life of asceticism. The Processeans see Christ as a transcendent "unifier" who ultimately reconciles all three of the competing gods.
The Process was founded only eight years ago in London by a former Anglican named Robert de Grimston, now in his mid-30s, who is known as "the Teacher" to Processeans. De Grimston has no permanent base, but conducts a will-o'-the-wisp peripatetic ministry, communicating with his followers in letters they call "brethren information." Occasionally he drops in at a Process chapter to teach the "brethren" in person.
Weird though it may be, his message seems to be spreading. Although the London chapter is closed, there are others in Toronto, Chicago, New Orleans, Cambridge, Mass., and soon, the Processeans hope, in New York City. So far the followers are few in number—about 500—but extremely zealous. Members of the sect with outside jobs are expected to tithe. Those who choose to become full-time Processeans help support the movement by hawking on city streets paperbacks about its message and goals. In keeping with the vaguely clerical garb often worn by members, the Processeans are strict in their ethical teachings: unmarried adherents, for example, are expected to remain chaste.
Many of the Processeans come from the same drug-strewn, rootless backgrounds from which the Jesus people have fled. But The Process preaches more psychological self-realization than faith. One of the movement's key practices is a weekly telepathy session in which "contact and communication" are emphasized in much the same way as they are in encounter therapy. At the core of Processean psychology is the gloomy and negative conviction that human enterprise is a futile escape from the painful contradictions of a world in which most men are pawns in the game of the gods. Only by facing the bitter reality of that situation and taking his own full responsibility for his actions can a Processean escape the game. Christ, the unifier of forces, is his ally in the struggle.
The telepathy sessions are supplemented by Saturday-evening services that seem rather mild for a sect that includes Satan among its gods. The services consist mainly of prayers, spontaneous dialogues and hymns, punctuated by guitars, gongs, drumbeats and incense. In the candlelit worship room, the goat's head and the cross share equal prominence. Christ's enmity with Satan, say the Processeans, will eventually be overcome by Christ's own dictum to "love thine enemy." For Processeans, that eventuality is near at hand, for they believe in the imminent end of the world.
I wish I were more computer savy... so that I could just post a link, but
I did a google search on 'groovy christians of rye new york' and it returned, among other things, a published article called "My Cult Years" a personal history by John Seiffer.
With seemingly nice teenagers morphing in just months into suicide bombers, it’s of no small interest how exactly this happens. I sure don’t know. Still, this note from one of you helped me imagine how one comes to drink the Kool-Aid. (Have we a remarkable readership, or what?)
-------------------------------
My Cult Years
Personal History by John Seiffer
Growing up in an upper middle class town with parents who were smart, intellectual, and cultural Jews, I was a hippie wannabe. I was old enough to identify with flower children, smoke a little pot and even march against the Vietnam War, but I was only 14 when Woodstock happened and I wasn’t old enough to be a full-fledged YIPPE or anything serious like (god forbid) a Weatherman. And I wasn’t the right color to be a black panther. Perhaps I could sue for discrimination?
The summer before my junior year in high school (1970), an older sister of a friend of mine came back to town as a Jesus freak and turned a bunch of us on to the bible. Now this was something cool! It was unusual (to say the least) and totally anti-establishment. It was against established religion (not that I’d had any ties to religion to begin with) it was certainly anti-intellectual. It gave us a cause (we were on a mission literally to save the world) and it was communal. Not in the sense that we lived together but we were a tight knit community. Having alienated everyone else, what other choice did we have but to commune with each other?
The group was The Way International, a two-bit “ministry” founded by a guy in Ohio who had gotten kicked out of his parish years before. He said he was forced out for teaching the real truth like it had never been known before, but I’ve since heard it was for messing with the money, the women or both.
We started some prayer meetings and bible studies in high school and since we were in a liberal part of the country (Westchester county NY) and most of us were top students we attracted the attention of a writer who did a story on us for Life Magazine called “The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY” My mother was quoted in the article as saying “Drugs I can understand, but this is creepy.” Don’t you hate it when your mother turns out to be right after all these years?
When I got involved, the group was beginning a pretty large growth spurt that in the next 10 years would include almost 100,000 people. So there was a need for leaders. I went through their leadership program and got ordained. I was legally able to perform wedding and funerals and such. I was never at the very top of the organization – I rose to a level perhaps analogous to Vice President in a public corporation.
The teachings of the group were supposed to be built on biblical research but as is typical in such organizations, it was really built on “What the head guy says is THE TRUTH.” There were some references to obscure ancient texts, some mistranslation of Greek and Aramaic and such, but no real questioning allowed and certainly no academic-style inquiry. It was pretty fundamentalist in doctrine and very conservative in politics - which it didn’t mind foisting on followers who were assumed not to be spiritual enough to make up their own minds about such matters.
As you would expect from a group that believes God has called them to spread the one true light, there was a high degree of fanatical devotion. It differed from the current religious right in isolating itself more from main stream society (it was, among other things not nearly as involved politically) and in a few doctrinal differences (acceptance of abortion being one – turns out the top leaders needed this to cover evidence of some of their indiscretions).
The organization was based on fellowships in people’s homes. It was not a communal cult, like the Branch Davidians where everyone lived together. But it did have a sizeable training program where as many as a thousand people lived on 4 campuses for 2 years of indoctrination. At its height it had fellowships in all 50 states and dozens of other countries. And it was certainly a cult in the sense of devotion to its leader and the obedience it required in almost every aspect on people’s personal lives. There was also, I was to find out later, quite an amassing of money and sexual favors at the very top.
Looking back, I know that the reason it appealed to me personally was I was a kid with “potential” but no inner drive or direction. Not uncommon when one has an overbearing mother and an emotionally distant father. Involvement in The Way provided direction, a surrogate family and a strong father figure. Not to mention shelter from having to do the hard work of growing up emotionally.
When I first joined, it was a rather free spirited, but as it grew in numbers, the organization instituted rules and required more commitment – especially for leaders. Commitment to such a cause required orienting your entire life around it – jobs, friends, family etc. In my case, with no internal ambition, I found this an easy path for me to follow. I stayed involved through college and into my thirties.
They provided a “career path” for some who became paid employees. But they weren’t paid or treated well. I found it easier to remain a committed volunteer. I supported myself with a series of small businesses that gave me the income to live and freedom to be involved with annual retreats, and leadership conferences. They also encouraged leaders to move every few years, and being entrepreneurial made that easier. So it was actually the start of my life as a serial entrepreneur.
And as an ironic side note, as the group grew, it became obsessed with growth and even more so after the numbers peaked and started to slide. The height was probably in the late 1970’s. In the early ‘80s I was in charge of the fellowships in Marin County (and up the coast) in Northern California. It was a time when Japan was economically kicking the butts of companies in the US so there were a lot of business books written about how to get, or stay on top. My “boss” was in charge of a couple western states, and at our leaders meetings he would talk about stuff he was learning from those books in an attempt to help us increase our numbers. So it also furthered my education in business principles, which in retrospect has been a lot more helpful than what I learned about the bible.
As things progressed I did feel a bit constrained but by then I had no other part of my life to balance out. Leaving the group would mean having to rebuild my entire life – new friends, new employment, new identity in a certain sense. And I wasn’t ready to even consider that. It took an organizational crisis for me to decide it was time to take that jump. By then I was married (thankfully we got out before our first child was born) and I don’t know if I could have done it without the support of some friends who were doing the same thing.
What happened was a power grab. The man who started the organization (Victor Paul Weirwille) had decided, for whatever personal reasons, that he would replace himself as leader before he died. He chose his successor based on loyalty. This guy (Craig Martindale) was loyal, but also loud, boorish, and obnoxious. The group was already starting to decline in numbers (due in large part, I think, to social changes that made YUPPIES more attractive than Jesus Freaks) but Martindale’s leadership style furthered that decline.
Still Weirwille was around for a number of years and either through senility, declining health or frustration with having been kicked up stairs (even though he himself did the kicking) he lashed out against his successor just before he died. But he lashed out privately – to a confidante he had installed as leader of the operations in Europe, a man named Chris Geer. Coincidentally Geer was a fellow “groovy Christian.” I knew him in high school and we had gotten into the organization at the same time. Weirwille told Geer of his dissatisfaction and also the fact that he was dying of cancer. He told him to wait a year after he died and if things didn’t change, to come back to the States and raise hell. Which is what happened.
As a member of the clergy, I was invited to some of these hell raising sessions which had the effect of putting the organization in turmoil. Folks were deciding which person they were going to follow and a few of us decided not to follow either of them. Some started their own groups but me and some others took the opportunity to reject the bible, Christianity, and any of the stuff we’d been taught. We then got on with rebuilding our lives.
Epilogue
I left in late 1986. The group is still alive. Groups actually. Geer runs his own. And many followers have left to form or join offshoot groups. Martindale was tossed out as President of The Way a few years ago after a former employee sued on charges of sexual abuse. It was settled out of court. But the group never came clean about the extent of the problem. They just kicked the one guy out and hushed it up. The Way became much more legalistic in the years after I left. It has shrunk to a number estimated at fewer than 4,000 with maybe half of those children. But it is reputed to have assets of around $40 million.
Most of the former members I know who did not join (or start) an off-shoot have in fact gone back to beliefs similar to those they grew up with. In my case, after some therapy, a divorce and re-marriage I’m a more fervent agnostic than I’ve ever been, and I practice non-observant, cultural Judaism with a burning indifference I never had before.
Conclusion
The experience has certainly given me insight into the fundamentalist mind set. You can’t talk to these people. It takes so much effort to maintain these kinds of beliefs, despite all the evidence that the world doesn’t work that way, that logic is just not given much weight. Every idea, action, opinion, thought and emotion is judged only against the holy doctrine and is concluded to be either right or wrong. No shades of gray are allowed. The sense of superiority and hubris are immense. Such is the burden of one called to know and (more importantly) spread the only truth that can save people from an eternity of damnation.
When applied to action, this mind set provides intense motivation to do tireless grunt work. Such vast armies of dedicated folks who are willing to be seen as weird yet who are conditioned not to think outside the lines are a huge benefit to leaders who want to rise to power.
In “my day” we focused this action on recruitment (the Mormons still do). But in the last 20 years it has been focused on transforming politics and education. I no longer pretend to speak on behalf of the almighty, so I’m not willing to say if God equates an elected town council person with a saved soul, but I can tell you it probably feels a lot more successful to man a phone bank or hand out political flyers than it does to try to get the disinterested to come to your church or bible study.
This attitude has taken the political left completely by surprise. Even when the progressives (or whatever you call them) had people in the streets and willing to do the work (I’m thinking of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 60s) those leaders never considered that their followers would gladly give up their capacity for thoughtful questioning. But such is the mind set of a fundamentalist.
I’m not sure my personal history of getting in and out of this mindset can be applied to the religious right today. The main reason that I got in was as an act of rebellion. My sense is that most “believers” today are in due to a sense of community and family tradition – not rebellion. Also my involvement was due to some intense psychological/emotional needs. As you can imagine most relationships were pretty superficial so I didn’t really know the others involved as well as I thought I did. But I’d be willing to bet they had psychological problems as well. I can practically diagnose the top leaders as narcissists and megalomaniacs. I’m sure some of that plays into the thinking of fundamentalists today – but maybe in a less pathological way because there seems to be more functionality on a social level.
And I got out due to an internal crisis, with the support of others doing the same thing. But I was in a group removed from society (and we knew it). The religious right today is much more a part of society – albeit one they are trying to reshape - so the prospect of an organizational crisis that shakes their belief system is less likely. And trying to “get someone out” is like trying to cure an alcoholic before they’ve hit bottom. I knew people whose parents hired deprogrammers to kidnap them. A number of them came back, they were after all of legal age.
And the biggest problem is that once you are a believer that mind set filters everything else you allow yourself to consider. It’s not just that the ends justify the means (which they believe) but that the end conclusion justifies or invalidates any logical argument or whether you consider any data set valid or not.
It happened to communist ideologs and radical lefties who were out to change the world (where are they now?) and it’s always been present in the radical religious movements in this country. One difference now it they’ve learned the patience and the willingness to work the system in ways that other groups have not.
I wish I were more computer savy... so that I could just post a link, but
I did a google search on 'groovy christians of rye new york' and it returned, among other things, a published article called "My Cult Years" a personal history by John Seiffer.
The article in the first post on this thread was evidently a follow-up. The date of it was Sept. 6, '71, but the well-known piece called "The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY" was in the May 14, '71 issue, with Carol Burnett on the cover, which JustSayNo posted. That was the one that mentioned Kris Skedgell among others.
The article in the first post on this thread was evidently a follow-up. The date of it was Sept. 6, '71, but the well-known piece called "The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY" was in the May 14, '71 issue, with Carol Burnett on the cover, which JustSayNo posted. That was the one that mentioned Kris Skedgell among others.
I disagree.
I don't think the articles were related at all.
The LIFE Magazine article was first, focused on the local kids, and made the KIDS sound great and the LOCALS stupid.
(I photocopied it when I was in college.)
The TIME Magazine article, a year later, made the group sound like crackpots, and vpw the King of the Crackpots.
It focused mostly on vpw. It also had a single photo- vp on one of his motorcycles.
And can we ever forget some years later from the Cleveland paper, "Cornfield Cult, Bible and Bullets"? Seems like they had us pegged long before we knew how to peg it.
The motorcycle and limited tours. Well by the 40th anniversary of TWI and the Living Victoriously teachings and extended hoopla around VPs retirement, the motorcycle would be of limited use.
Historically there was an annual Harley ride at the ROA that was a photo op one time a year. VPs liver and corresponding health problems with cancer would mean that he would get little use out of a motorcycle at that stage in his life. He probably couldn’t handle a full day of riding or the road miles and the Mrs sat in that sidecar as little as humanly possible.
Time magazine centered on that photo as a cult leader and the lavish gifts they receive.
So a special gift for a museum is all that ever was to become.
All the current decisions of the BOD seem targeted towards ignoring the outside world and getting back to nostalgia which was a rip off of the Jesus Revolution from the start.
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cheranne
thanks,anything on 1978?
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fooledagainII
Huh??? I'm blown away.... every time I think there nothing big I missed from TWI past, there comes another one. Time magazine? I've got get me a copy of this.
No one I knew every mentioned anything about this. And I remember when some believer was going to be on the Phil Donahou Show (it wasn't about the way or anything... in fact I don't know why he was going on), and some Corp was discussing how he had to watch out for Phil's tricks (I was still a "babe" so I didn't ask any questions). But that nothing compared to this.
I starting to get afraid to look at new threads, I might find out that there were old plans to put a BOD face on Mt. Rushmore.
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socks
I'm sure that the kinder, gentler, and so very much betterer Way of Today would have mentioned it, II, they just didn't have time. (get it...time...)
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Dot Matrix
Speaking with my pastor... with a real doctorate. I told him I had trouble enjoying reading the Bible, so therefore I read books about the Bible, i.e. Smith Wiggles worth etc.... He investigated me.
It was THIS he found so destructive
Wierwille argues that the Bible as a whole is not relevant to all people of all times. Every word of Scripture is equally inspired by God, he says, but different books were addressed to different audiences. The Old Testament and the Four Gospels are for the Jews and Gentiles; the rest of the New Testament is for the "Church of God" of "born-again believers."
Next, the fear of the "Jesus spirit" and not understanding Jesus. Thus, taking away our conversational fellowship with him.
Then, the misleading our focus... Such as we read Romans and we focused on Jesus being the creation and people worshiping the created more than the creator - even though all the verses around it condemned the behaviors going on in TWI.
Then, VP had us focus on the GRACE administration - because all his sins could be forgiven as he twisted that up in his favor.
So VP, took away the Bible, the savior, and had us focus on GRACE - this ladies and gentlemen - was a false prophet.
For to loose intimacy with God always leads to sexual sin.
Then, the erroneous teaching to NOT SAY THINGS OUT LOUD or the devil will hear it!
The Bible does NOT teach that, as a matter of fact, the POWER of God is unleashed in SPEAKING - from Let there be light to the LOUD voice you hear in Revelations...
So, we had our Bible taken, our Jesus minimized, our focus redirected, our speaking the word/prayer power diminished, GRACE to sin exhaled - and we wonder why (for some) it is hard to read the Bible?
WE WERE LIED TO
STOLEN FROM
DECEIVED
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JustSayNO
Actually I have a copy of the 1971 LIFE Magazine around here someplace in a box. It was an article written about The Way and I think it was titled "The Groovy Christians of Rye New York"
It seems that da Way was busy in the news that year. I looked online to see if I could find a copy of it to link or cut and paste.
If I feel overly ambitous or extremely bored I'll concider typing it up for yur viewing pleasure. Not likely.but maybe.
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waysider
If this is the same article I am remembering, it contains a quote from the mother of one of the "Groovy Christians".
(Chris L.,I think.)
Speaking about her son's new found enthusiastic pursuit, she said something like, "Drugs I understand but this is just creepy."
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JustSayNO
I think your right, sounds familiar
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doojable
I just read that quote this morning. It's correct - though I believe a different person's mother made the insightful statement.
I never did find the actual article.
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wing
I wish I were more computer savy... so that I could just post a link, but
I did a google search on 'groovy christians of rye new york' and it returned, among other things, a published article called "My Cult Years" a personal history by John Seiffer.
http://www.andretobias.com/cgi-local/display_col.pl?050720
In the article he quotes that it is his mom, speaking about him: "drugs I can understand, but this is creepy"
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WordWolf
I posted this once before.
To save Time on their bandwidth, here's the part of the article that references twi...
==================================
The Jesus Revolution (TIME, June 23) includes preachers of hellfire and promoters of love, fundamentalist Christians, mainstream Protestants, and even some Roman Catholics. Most, however, at least share a common belief in the basic tenets of Christianity: the triune nature of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Gospels as the cornerstone of faith. But some so-called Jesus freaks really subscribe to exotic creeds all their own that to orthodox Christians are close to what used to be called heresy. And not only to traditional churchmen: even many inside the movement look suspiciously on these fellow travelers with Jesus as distorters of the true Gospel. Two such eccentric groups are The Way and The Process:
The Way
Externally, The Way looks like any other branch of the Jesus movement: its adherents are mostly bright-eyed, smiling teenagers, ecstatically exchanging "Bless yous," telling of drug cures, perpetually thumbing their Bibles. There is also the ubiquitous music drumming across Gospel messages, sometimes to the beat of hard rock. In mid-August, more than a thousand young followers descended on The Way Biblical Research Center in New Knoxville, Ohio (pop. 850), for a weekend of spiritual study almost continuously backgrounded by rock. Musical groups of Way believers with names like The Dove, Cookin' Mama, and one from Long Island called Pressed Down, Shaken Together & Running Over, belted out the sounds.
But it is The Way's message, not its music, that is offbeat. That message is preached by the movement's founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, 54, a trim, tanned, fast-talking six-footer who likes to wear Western-cut suits with a scarf around his neck and tool around the countryside on a big Harley-Davidson. A former minister of the United Church of Christ who has studied both at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, Wierwille is now a crackerbarrel theological promoter who grandiosely claims to have done the only "pure and correct" interpretation of the Bible since the First Century. He has been working on his theology for about 25 years, ever since he shucked his academic background by burning more than 1,000 religious books "to clean myself out" before starting his own research.
Wierwille argues that the Bible as a whole is not relevant to all people of all times. Every word of Scripture is equally inspired by God, he says, but different books were addressed to different audiences. The Old Testament and the Four Gospels are for the Jews and Gentiles; the rest of the New Testament is for the "Church of God" of "born-again believers." But Wierwille and his Wayfarers concentrate mainly on the nine Epistles of St. Paul to the early churches, especially the letter to the Ephesians, which, he insists, distills nearly everything important in the Word of God.
Wierwille dismisses the doctrine of the Trinity as a throwback to paganism, because it proposes, he says, "three Gods." To him, Jesus is "the Son of God," but not God the Son. "You show me one place in the Bible where it says he is God," Wierwille thunders. "I don't want your rapping, your doubletalk, your tripletalk; all I want is Scripture." And the Holy Spirit, says Wierwille, is just a synonym for God. Wierwille's theology is propounded in pamphlets, a magazine, and books, but mainly in a filmed and taped "foundation course," into which he has unloaded 36 hours of rambling, folksy lectures on the Bible. The title of the course—which costs $65 per head: "Power for Abundant Living." Carrying Norman Vincent Peale's pious optimism a good bit further, Wierwille promises that right "believing" will keep away sickness, ensure prosperity, and even protect soldier converts from Viet Cong bullets. Poverty is seen as a result of imperfect faith: the Good Life is a proper reward for believers.
Most of Wierwille's converts come from just that Good Life: comfortable middle-or upper-class families in predominantly white suburbs. Sometimes parents have followed their youngsters into the fold. Although Wierwille founded his research center in 1953, the movement around it has started to grow only in the past few years. He keeps no records and gives only the vaguest estimate of the number of his followers—"5,000, maybe 10,000," in "most" states and "nine, twelve, 15 countries." There is a vigorous chapter in Wichita, Kans., and strong groups in Rye, N.Y., and in Mill Valley, Calif.—which are called The Way East and The Way West. All conduct meetings where they listen to Wierwille's recorded words and offer extemporaneous prayers. Attendance is also good at the sermons that Wierwille delivers in person at New Knoxville. His brother Harry, 64, the treasurer of the center, claims that Sunday services take in as much as $10,000 a night. The money, say the Wierwilles, is being used for a $3,000,000 building program to expand The Way still further.
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For the curious, the rest of the article was on "the Process".
Here's that:
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The Process
The polite, earnest, uniformed "Messengers" of The Process Church of the Final Judgment are hard to miss these days if one walks up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue or Chicago's Michigan Avenue. The points of their collars are decorated with red three-horned goats' heads; between the horns dangles a large silver cross. Satan and Christ? Yes. And more. If the followers of The Way have trouble accepting a Trinity, the Processeans emphatically do not. But their "Three Great Gods of the Universe" are jealous and warring deities who battle among themselves in an eternal "game" for control of men's souls.
The three gods of their bizarre theology represent "three basic patterns of human reality." One of them is Jehovah, a "wrathful God of vengeance and retribution," who demands "discipline, courage and ruthlessness" from his followers. The second is Lucifer, wrongly confused with Satan, they say. He is the "Light-Bearer" who urges humans to "enjoy life to the full, to value success, to be gentle and kind and loving." The third is Satan, "the receiver of corrupted bodies and transcendent souls," who impels humans both toward a subhuman life of depravity and a superhuman life of asceticism. The Processeans see Christ as a transcendent "unifier" who ultimately reconciles all three of the competing gods.
The Process was founded only eight years ago in London by a former Anglican named Robert de Grimston, now in his mid-30s, who is known as "the Teacher" to Processeans. De Grimston has no permanent base, but conducts a will-o'-the-wisp peripatetic ministry, communicating with his followers in letters they call "brethren information." Occasionally he drops in at a Process chapter to teach the "brethren" in person.
Weird though it may be, his message seems to be spreading. Although the London chapter is closed, there are others in Toronto, Chicago, New Orleans, Cambridge, Mass., and soon, the Processeans hope, in New York City. So far the followers are few in number—about 500—but extremely zealous. Members of the sect with outside jobs are expected to tithe. Those who choose to become full-time Processeans help support the movement by hawking on city streets paperbacks about its message and goals. In keeping with the vaguely clerical garb often worn by members, the Processeans are strict in their ethical teachings: unmarried adherents, for example, are expected to remain chaste.
Many of the Processeans come from the same drug-strewn, rootless backgrounds from which the Jesus people have fled. But The Process preaches more psychological self-realization than faith. One of the movement's key practices is a weekly telepathy session in which "contact and communication" are emphasized in much the same way as they are in encounter therapy. At the core of Processean psychology is the gloomy and negative conviction that human enterprise is a futile escape from the painful contradictions of a world in which most men are pawns in the game of the gods. Only by facing the bitter reality of that situation and taking his own full responsibility for his actions can a Processean escape the game. Christ, the unifier of forces, is his ally in the struggle.
The telepathy sessions are supplemented by Saturday-evening services that seem rather mild for a sect that includes Satan among its gods. The services consist mainly of prayers, spontaneous dialogues and hymns, punctuated by guitars, gongs, drumbeats and incense. In the candlelit worship room, the goat's head and the cross share equal prominence. Christ's enmity with Satan, say the Processeans, will eventually be overcome by Christ's own dictum to "love thine enemy." For Processeans, that eventuality is near at hand, for they believe in the imminent end of the world.
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WordWolf
Don't know why your link didn't work.
http://www.andrewtobias.com/cgi-local/display_col.pl?050720
Here's what it says:
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NOTES FROM A FORMER CULTIST . . .
With seemingly nice teenagers morphing in just months into suicide bombers, it’s of no small interest how exactly this happens. I sure don’t know. Still, this note from one of you helped me imagine how one comes to drink the Kool-Aid. (Have we a remarkable readership, or what?)
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My Cult Years
Personal History by John Seiffer
Growing up in an upper middle class town with parents who were smart, intellectual, and cultural Jews, I was a hippie wannabe. I was old enough to identify with flower children, smoke a little pot and even march against the Vietnam War, but I was only 14 when Woodstock happened and I wasn’t old enough to be a full-fledged YIPPE or anything serious like (god forbid) a Weatherman. And I wasn’t the right color to be a black panther. Perhaps I could sue for discrimination?
The summer before my junior year in high school (1970), an older sister of a friend of mine came back to town as a Jesus freak and turned a bunch of us on to the bible. Now this was something cool! It was unusual (to say the least) and totally anti-establishment. It was against established religion (not that I’d had any ties to religion to begin with) it was certainly anti-intellectual. It gave us a cause (we were on a mission literally to save the world) and it was communal. Not in the sense that we lived together but we were a tight knit community. Having alienated everyone else, what other choice did we have but to commune with each other?
The group was The Way International, a two-bit “ministry” founded by a guy in Ohio who had gotten kicked out of his parish years before. He said he was forced out for teaching the real truth like it had never been known before, but I’ve since heard it was for messing with the money, the women or both.
We started some prayer meetings and bible studies in high school and since we were in a liberal part of the country (Westchester county NY) and most of us were top students we attracted the attention of a writer who did a story on us for Life Magazine called “The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY” My mother was quoted in the article as saying “Drugs I can understand, but this is creepy.” Don’t you hate it when your mother turns out to be right after all these years?
When I got involved, the group was beginning a pretty large growth spurt that in the next 10 years would include almost 100,000 people. So there was a need for leaders. I went through their leadership program and got ordained. I was legally able to perform wedding and funerals and such. I was never at the very top of the organization – I rose to a level perhaps analogous to Vice President in a public corporation.
The teachings of the group were supposed to be built on biblical research but as is typical in such organizations, it was really built on “What the head guy says is THE TRUTH.” There were some references to obscure ancient texts, some mistranslation of Greek and Aramaic and such, but no real questioning allowed and certainly no academic-style inquiry. It was pretty fundamentalist in doctrine and very conservative in politics - which it didn’t mind foisting on followers who were assumed not to be spiritual enough to make up their own minds about such matters.
As you would expect from a group that believes God has called them to spread the one true light, there was a high degree of fanatical devotion. It differed from the current religious right in isolating itself more from main stream society (it was, among other things not nearly as involved politically) and in a few doctrinal differences (acceptance of abortion being one – turns out the top leaders needed this to cover evidence of some of their indiscretions).
The organization was based on fellowships in people’s homes. It was not a communal cult, like the Branch Davidians where everyone lived together. But it did have a sizeable training program where as many as a thousand people lived on 4 campuses for 2 years of indoctrination. At its height it had fellowships in all 50 states and dozens of other countries. And it was certainly a cult in the sense of devotion to its leader and the obedience it required in almost every aspect on people’s personal lives. There was also, I was to find out later, quite an amassing of money and sexual favors at the very top.
Looking back, I know that the reason it appealed to me personally was I was a kid with “potential” but no inner drive or direction. Not uncommon when one has an overbearing mother and an emotionally distant father. Involvement in The Way provided direction, a surrogate family and a strong father figure. Not to mention shelter from having to do the hard work of growing up emotionally.
When I first joined, it was a rather free spirited, but as it grew in numbers, the organization instituted rules and required more commitment – especially for leaders. Commitment to such a cause required orienting your entire life around it – jobs, friends, family etc. In my case, with no internal ambition, I found this an easy path for me to follow. I stayed involved through college and into my thirties.
They provided a “career path” for some who became paid employees. But they weren’t paid or treated well. I found it easier to remain a committed volunteer. I supported myself with a series of small businesses that gave me the income to live and freedom to be involved with annual retreats, and leadership conferences. They also encouraged leaders to move every few years, and being entrepreneurial made that easier. So it was actually the start of my life as a serial entrepreneur.
And as an ironic side note, as the group grew, it became obsessed with growth and even more so after the numbers peaked and started to slide. The height was probably in the late 1970’s. In the early ‘80s I was in charge of the fellowships in Marin County (and up the coast) in Northern California. It was a time when Japan was economically kicking the butts of companies in the US so there were a lot of business books written about how to get, or stay on top. My “boss” was in charge of a couple western states, and at our leaders meetings he would talk about stuff he was learning from those books in an attempt to help us increase our numbers. So it also furthered my education in business principles, which in retrospect has been a lot more helpful than what I learned about the bible.
As things progressed I did feel a bit constrained but by then I had no other part of my life to balance out. Leaving the group would mean having to rebuild my entire life – new friends, new employment, new identity in a certain sense. And I wasn’t ready to even consider that. It took an organizational crisis for me to decide it was time to take that jump. By then I was married (thankfully we got out before our first child was born) and I don’t know if I could have done it without the support of some friends who were doing the same thing.
What happened was a power grab. The man who started the organization (Victor Paul Weirwille) had decided, for whatever personal reasons, that he would replace himself as leader before he died. He chose his successor based on loyalty. This guy (Craig Martindale) was loyal, but also loud, boorish, and obnoxious. The group was already starting to decline in numbers (due in large part, I think, to social changes that made YUPPIES more attractive than Jesus Freaks) but Martindale’s leadership style furthered that decline.
Still Weirwille was around for a number of years and either through senility, declining health or frustration with having been kicked up stairs (even though he himself did the kicking) he lashed out against his successor just before he died. But he lashed out privately – to a confidante he had installed as leader of the operations in Europe, a man named Chris Geer. Coincidentally Geer was a fellow “groovy Christian.” I knew him in high school and we had gotten into the organization at the same time. Weirwille told Geer of his dissatisfaction and also the fact that he was dying of cancer. He told him to wait a year after he died and if things didn’t change, to come back to the States and raise hell. Which is what happened.
As a member of the clergy, I was invited to some of these hell raising sessions which had the effect of putting the organization in turmoil. Folks were deciding which person they were going to follow and a few of us decided not to follow either of them. Some started their own groups but me and some others took the opportunity to reject the bible, Christianity, and any of the stuff we’d been taught. We then got on with rebuilding our lives.
Epilogue
I left in late 1986. The group is still alive. Groups actually. Geer runs his own. And many followers have left to form or join offshoot groups. Martindale was tossed out as President of The Way a few years ago after a former employee sued on charges of sexual abuse. It was settled out of court. But the group never came clean about the extent of the problem. They just kicked the one guy out and hushed it up. The Way became much more legalistic in the years after I left. It has shrunk to a number estimated at fewer than 4,000 with maybe half of those children. But it is reputed to have assets of around $40 million.
Most of the former members I know who did not join (or start) an off-shoot have in fact gone back to beliefs similar to those they grew up with. In my case, after some therapy, a divorce and re-marriage I’m a more fervent agnostic than I’ve ever been, and I practice non-observant, cultural Judaism with a burning indifference I never had before.
Conclusion
The experience has certainly given me insight into the fundamentalist mind set. You can’t talk to these people. It takes so much effort to maintain these kinds of beliefs, despite all the evidence that the world doesn’t work that way, that logic is just not given much weight. Every idea, action, opinion, thought and emotion is judged only against the holy doctrine and is concluded to be either right or wrong. No shades of gray are allowed. The sense of superiority and hubris are immense. Such is the burden of one called to know and (more importantly) spread the only truth that can save people from an eternity of damnation.
When applied to action, this mind set provides intense motivation to do tireless grunt work. Such vast armies of dedicated folks who are willing to be seen as weird yet who are conditioned not to think outside the lines are a huge benefit to leaders who want to rise to power.
In “my day” we focused this action on recruitment (the Mormons still do). But in the last 20 years it has been focused on transforming politics and education. I no longer pretend to speak on behalf of the almighty, so I’m not willing to say if God equates an elected town council person with a saved soul, but I can tell you it probably feels a lot more successful to man a phone bank or hand out political flyers than it does to try to get the disinterested to come to your church or bible study.
This attitude has taken the political left completely by surprise. Even when the progressives (or whatever you call them) had people in the streets and willing to do the work (I’m thinking of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 60s) those leaders never considered that their followers would gladly give up their capacity for thoughtful questioning. But such is the mind set of a fundamentalist.
I’m not sure my personal history of getting in and out of this mindset can be applied to the religious right today. The main reason that I got in was as an act of rebellion. My sense is that most “believers” today are in due to a sense of community and family tradition – not rebellion. Also my involvement was due to some intense psychological/emotional needs. As you can imagine most relationships were pretty superficial so I didn’t really know the others involved as well as I thought I did. But I’d be willing to bet they had psychological problems as well. I can practically diagnose the top leaders as narcissists and megalomaniacs. I’m sure some of that plays into the thinking of fundamentalists today – but maybe in a less pathological way because there seems to be more functionality on a social level.
And I got out due to an internal crisis, with the support of others doing the same thing. But I was in a group removed from society (and we knew it). The religious right today is much more a part of society – albeit one they are trying to reshape - so the prospect of an organizational crisis that shakes their belief system is less likely. And trying to “get someone out” is like trying to cure an alcoholic before they’ve hit bottom. I knew people whose parents hired deprogrammers to kidnap them. A number of them came back, they were after all of legal age.
And the biggest problem is that once you are a believer that mind set filters everything else you allow yourself to consider. It’s not just that the ends justify the means (which they believe) but that the end conclusion justifies or invalidates any logical argument or whether you consider any data set valid or not.
It happened to communist ideologs and radical lefties who were out to change the world (where are they now?) and it’s always been present in the radical religious movements in this country. One difference now it they’ve learned the patience and the willingness to work the system in ways that other groups have not.
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JustSayNO
The first link was missing the "w" in andrewtobias
no biggie, just a typo
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Mark Clarke
The article in the first post on this thread was evidently a follow-up. The date of it was Sept. 6, '71, but the well-known piece called "The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY" was in the May 14, '71 issue, with Carol Burnett on the cover, which JustSayNo posted. That was the one that mentioned Kris Skedgell among others.
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wing
WordWolf, and JustSayNo.....
Thanks guys
love ya's
_ing
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WordWolf
I disagree.
I don't think the articles were related at all.
The LIFE Magazine article was first, focused on the local kids, and made the KIDS sound great and the LOCALS stupid.
(I photocopied it when I was in college.)
The TIME Magazine article, a year later, made the group sound like crackpots, and vpw the King of the Crackpots.
It focused mostly on vpw. It also had a single photo- vp on one of his motorcycles.
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RumRunner
And can we ever forget some years later from the Cleveland paper, "Cornfield Cult, Bible and Bullets"? Seems like they had us pegged long before we knew how to peg it.
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Mark Clarke
You're right. I noticed the dates, but completely missed the fact that one was TIME and one was LIFE.
I guess I didn't LOOK. (Anybody remember that one?)
:D
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JavaJane
That Life Magazine article is still circulated by twi... at least last time I was there.
Funny how I had never heard of the Time article... and the Cornfield Cult one sounds like fun! Anybody have a copy of that??
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WordWolf
We're discussing this lately.
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chockfull
The motorcycle and limited tours. Well by the 40th anniversary of TWI and the Living Victoriously teachings and extended hoopla around VPs retirement, the motorcycle would be of limited use.
Historically there was an annual Harley ride at the ROA that was a photo op one time a year. VPs liver and corresponding health problems with cancer would mean that he would get little use out of a motorcycle at that stage in his life. He probably couldn’t handle a full day of riding or the road miles and the Mrs sat in that sidecar as little as humanly possible.
Time magazine centered on that photo as a cult leader and the lavish gifts they receive.
So a special gift for a museum is all that ever was to become.
All the current decisions of the BOD seem targeted towards ignoring the outside world and getting back to nostalgia which was a rip off of the Jesus Revolution from the start.
Ostrich management 101.
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penworks
I found this in my files.
Time Magazine 09-1971.pdf
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