Undertow - Escaping from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International

[Rocky]

This showed up in my YouTube feed this morning. 

[Twinky]

On 2/27/2024 at 8:10 PM, Rocky said:

Btw, the young airman who self-immolated on Sunday, WaPo noted, had been involved as a child in a "high-demand" religious sect. I cited WaPo in this comment on the cults s3 thread. In case the link I posted in that comment wasn't a gift article link, this one IS.

Way to go! ... not.  A very painful way to die, and to achieve absolutely nothing for it.  He could have achieved so much more had he chosen to protest by a less violent method.

I don't know that that would have been part of his cultic background, though.

[socks]

20 hours ago, Twinky said:

Way to go! ... not.  A very painful way to die, and to achieve absolutely nothing for it.  He could have achieved so much more had he chosen to protest by a less violent method.

I don't know that that would have been part of his cultic background, though.

Somehow I ran across the Community of Jesus in the 70's and got their newsletters for a few years, back at the Way Nash. Being raised Catholic I associated them with the nuns/"sisters" of the Catholic orders, although they weren't Roman Catholic at all, and were a sect of the Episcopal church if memory serves. Kind of doing their own thing but mostly devoted to prayer and benevolent kinds of activities, iirc. 

One common trend in these organizations when they go sideways is that they are so internally focused and self reliant. It can be gradual, or by design but it seems apparent that the human condition needs air, it needs external exposure. We can survive on our own and may have to, but we do well with healthy roots and external contact. Jesus led a lifestyle that shows that I think, although His life had a different purpose (Messiah)

 

[penworks]

Socks, your phrase "external contact" jumps out at me. In my Way experience, the purpose of engaging with people who were not involved in The Way was to recruit them into it. Not be influenced by them to the point that you'd leave The Way or try to change it.

Since there were thousands of us involved over many years, there are probably many variations on this theme of "external exposure."

Here's a link to what I wrote about things to consider when evaluating Way stories.

REVISED Speaking of "Way" Stories ... | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

Cheers!

Edited August 27 by penworks
spelling

[socks]

19 hours ago, penworks said:

Socks, your phrase "external contact" jumps out at me. In my Way experience, the purpose of engaging with people who were not involved in The Way was to recruit them into it. Not be influenced by them to the point that you'd leave The Way or try to change it.

Since there were thousands of us involved over many years, there are probably many variations on this theme of "external exposure."

Here's a link to what I wrote about things to consider when evaluating Way stories.

REVISED Speaking of "Way" Stories ... | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

Cheers!

It's something we are very aware of. By that I mean, meant, good mental and emotional health needs contact with other people, the human condition has a social component to it, Bloom's taxonomy and Maslow's hierarchy of needs and such, provide us with ways to understand the place for it. There is a lot of thought that posits our need for connection is biological, deeply so. My own inquiry into those ideas started as a pursuit of getting a better understanding of what pastoral service is in the church, and it's broadened my overall understanding of how important it is to life overall. Survival, community, belonging, creativity, curiosity, family, acceptance, rejection, love, there are so many things tied to developing relationships and having contact of all types with others.

To your point - when all of that is tied to a single outcome or goal that is important only because it achieves what I want, it's considered narcissism - my satisfaction comes before the needs of others. What we saw in the Way's strategic outreach wasn't all that unusual for businesses and people driven by greed and pride, where a product can be sold that others might in fact need but where the goal isn't really to help others, it's to make profits. VPW was all about result as long as they grew numbers and made that the profit, everything had to be "profitable". But it would be considered a contradiction by Christian standards where the judgment and tallying of our value isn't done by us, nor are we the creators or progenitors of the plan, nor its continuance. 

It's the failing of many churches of course, and The Way was it's own boss by design. VPW condemned churches and any effort that wasn't part of his business plan. And it's still seen today by what they're doing now, as well as some of the splinter groups - they want a comfort level that's based on old familiar ways and traditions and they keep spieling the same stuff that keeps it going. 

[oldiesman]

2 hours ago, socks said:

 but where the goal isn't really to help others, it's to make profits. 

I find it hard to believe that my fellow believers in TWI didn't have a goal to help others.... I've experienced the opposite.   Have no regrets there.  What is regrettable now is selling a product (PFAL) that had unquestionable perfection or so we thought.

[socks]

8 hours ago, oldiesman said:

I find it hard to believe that my fellow believers in TWI didn't have a goal to help others.... I've experienced the opposite.   Have no regrets there.  What is regrettable now is selling a product (PFAL) that had unquestionable perfection or so we thought.

Each fellow believer in TWI can speak for themselves, oldie man, as do I. My goal was to help others, yes. At the same time I didn't enter it blindly, I knew clearly I didn't need the artifice of a religion, having already rejected formal Roman Catholicism, but I did now the support of a structure and commonly shared goals with others to live and work with had it's benefits. So my entry into the Way Corps specifically was a milestone decision to do 2 things - work with others in Christian outreach through music, and to learn up close and personal from Dr. Weirwille. I'd already taken the PFAL series, and pretty much had that under my belt, as well as starting to learn the research path he'd use and was using it myself. With my own characteristic tendency of my youth to under estimate my own progress and over value that of others, I didn't assume I knew as much as I did. I found out the real balance of it all within a couple years, and my own growth pattern was to correct that kind of tendency in myself. I did. 

You've drawn a line to the extreme of what I wrote about, including everyone all the time, which isn't what I wrote but the selling of PFAL is part of the clarification - nothing needs to be bought or sold to help others with the gosepl of God's grace through Jesus Christ, and selling PFAL didn't start with me or you. VPW decided that he was going to take what he claimed was God's revelation to him regarding the Word of God as it hadn't been known for 1000's of years and which was absolutely essential to knowing God as He truly wishes to be known - AND SELL IT.  To clarify 

VPW's primary goal was to promote his ministry of teaching, specifically PFAL after he filmed it in 1967 and then the series of classes around that. Those were the marketing tools being used to carry the teaching. Unfortunately he carried out that work to the elimination of anything else and surrounded himself with others who - at least for the time being and to his face - would buy into that whole cloth and continue to grow and value his original work and premises. 

Everyone didn't do that, of course, so don't characterize what I wrote as meaning that - BUT there were many who attached themselves to VPW's cart and made advancing up his pole of promotion part of carrying out the ministry of reconciliation and the work to accomplish that. That environment allows for the whole range of corrupt behavior to take hold - it doesn't have to but where personal achievement and profiteering is one's goal, the cockroaches are going to nest. 

 

Everyone? No. All the time? No. Dr. Weirwille's goals were obvious. I will recognize though that for those people who only knew the marketed Teacher Entertainer that rolled off his motor coach waving to the masses of Corps lined up at Emporia to welcome The Man of God home with applause and gifts, who heard the rough hewn Farmer Teacher one day, cagy Businessman the next and then the devout Teacher Researcher the next day then finally to sit in the room with the Man of God declaring yet more light for his age, and never wondered just what all that was really about - might not have gotten the full picture. 

 

Edited August 28 by socks
And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

[penworks]

Undertow: Happy 8th Birthday | Charlene L. Edge