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Thank you, chockfull. It's a very humbling experience. Whenever anyone trusts you, you feel honored, right? Today, I'm looking through old files and just found this little piece I wrote in 2008. It's background stuff for Undertow but didn't make it into the final manuscript. Like a whole lot of other pieces. For what it's worth: The myth is broken (on the reasearch team at Way HQ) My own myth, The Way’s dogma, became unworkable for me. It needed a blind faith to stay involved with it. I had blind faith no more. I no longer trusted vp’s integrity, which was shot for me after all those long Literals meetings. When I first sat down for my first meeting with the research team I was excited. Thrilled beyond belief that God would call me to such a day, time, and hour, as vpw would say. With an overwhelming sense of purpose, and an even bigger boost to my ego, I took on a persona of what I thought was biblical literariness. This biblical literariness is sort of like what I later experienced when, as a freshman at OSU, I would knit my eyebrows and hunch over a book on literary criticism by Charles Lamb in a library cubicle. I’d emerge hours later, disconnected from the flow of regular time. I had to reprogram my mind to where I was and what time it was. At The Way, I became a fraud, albeit a sincere one. I thought we were doing honest biblical research until I noticed how subjective it all was, how fraught with politics – [we were told] don’t reveal vp’s blunders, choose the least strident interpretation, make it apply to us today by using today’s words. It never crossed my mind that the writers of those N.T. books might have had their own interpretations of the words of Jesus. Indeed, since God authored each and every word, how could they have had such private slants? Politics of the first century was totally unknown to me. Note: The Trial of Socrates By I.F. Stone Pg. 16 "Xenophon and Plato may have “heard” Socrates differently on the subject [of kingship] in accordance with their own preconceptions, as disciples so often do.”

Again today another former follower of TWI contacted me through my website. A woman. A woman whose story of abuse by Way leaders broke my heart. She is one of numerous people, men and women, who have sent me similar messages since Undertow was published nearly seven (7) years ago. I carry these stories are in my heart, and I honor those people's courage to keep on living despite grave wounds. If you are reading this and are one of these people whose story I now know in part, be assured that I admire you and cheer you on in your journey of healing.

Well put!!! Rocky too!!. Am having anOTHER round of processing... I got involved in twi b/c of what was going on for me personally (some mental breakdown), and in the surrounding world/culture in the early 70's. E.g. All of my "spiritually-minded" siblings and cousins in New England turned to Eastern mysticism; we were SEARCHING. I had become a Jesus follower, but saw emptiness and hypocrisy in fundamental churches, and my hippie-ness was not welcomed. Been reading about Auroville in India- a Hindu (sort of) utopian community started in the 60s that drew ppl from around the globe, but turned out to promote similar types of magical thinking, leader-worship, conflict, extremism, etc. I was/many of us really thought we could CHANGE THE WORLD, eh? That idealistic youthful energy and belief. vpw took advantage of that... I very well could have joined an Eastern religous c ommunity instead of twi like my relatives, had it not been for God answering y prayers and leading me to saving faith in Jesus at age 16... Best to ALL here!

Hey Hammy good to see you. Yeah a lot of questions. I just read this week an article declaring that over 70% of people in the United States profess to be Christian. That’s a lot even including fuzzy math. They broke them down into groups - Evangelical Protestants were the largest, Catholic, Non Evangelical Protestant, they even listed my fav cults Mormon and Jehovahs Witnesses as denominations with 16m and 8m as the lower numbered big denominations. I mean by sheer logic if God functions on grace and love that campfire is going to be fairly large. I just don’t see that campfire being the narrow angle lens on the first 3 rows of the VPW PW auditorium. That’s reserved for the zealots soon to implode.

Greetings, Alex. What can we get for you? Coffee? Tea? Reality?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/grace-road-churchs-dream-life-in-fiji-threatens-to-fall-apart SEOUL—Authorities in Fiji have smashed a South Korean cult that threatened to take over the South Pacific nation’s economy, arresting four of its leaders and sending two of them back to Korea. The crackdown on the Grace Road Church shocked its 400 Korean and foreign adherents, who had moved to Fiji after being warned of an apocalypse about to annihilate South Korea. They submitted to regular thrashings, some of them caught on camera, in what their founder, a middle-aged woman named Shin Ok-su, claimed were needed to knock the devil out of them. Shin was expelled back to Korea, arrested for child abuse, assault and false imprisonment, and sentenced to six years in prison in 2019, but the church survived until Fijian authorities this week rounded up church members in a drive to stamp out the influence of a cult that’s been madly buying up Fijian companies and property. The church, founded in South Korea in 2002, decided in 2014 that Fiji, an archipelago with a population of slightly less than 1 million people, was “the center of the world.” Fijian authorities turned a blind eye as the church took over construction companies, beauty salons, restaurants and much else, establishing a mini-conglomerate called GR Group, modeled after the chaebol or conglomerates that dominate Korea. [...] The leaders of the church allegedly controlled their adherents by confiscating passports, forcing some to live in virtual imprisonment, ordering them to work on church-owned projects and beating them periodically into submission. It was not until a new government took over early this year that authorities recognized the seriousness of the inroads the cult had made into Fijian life and decided to clean house. Fiji’s previous prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, six years ago gave Grace Road an award for business excellence, recognizing it had “invested heavily in Fiji.” Now the seven top leaders of the church are listed as “prohibited immigrants” while authorities search for two of them, including Daniel Kim, son of founder Shin Ok-su. In charge of the church’s sprawling business interests, he remains on the lam while the GR Group, “very enraged by all the lies,” claims to have been “working proudly as owners.” All the stories of “passport confiscation, forced labor, incarceration and violence,” said GR Group, were “unspeakable lies” created by “those who wish to slander us.” [a likely story... one we've heard way too many times before] [...] “The reason for so many new religions among Koreans is that a) there is real freedom of religion in Korea even compared to Christian countries,” said Breen, a long-time businessman in Seoul. “That’s one reason they thrive. People come up with all sorts of interpretations and shifts in theology and practice.” Like Moon’s Unification Church, smaller cult-like groupings feel the urge to expand overseas in the same spirit as Korean big business and K-pop. Blind adherence to the dictates of a single leader is characteristic of Korean life. The Rev. Tim Peters, a Protestant pastor in Seoul with a long background working with North Korean defectors, placed the rise of Grace Road in the context of “the 5,000-year history of Korea.” “A strong leader with a stirring message resonates deeply in the Korean psyche,” Peters told The Daily Beast. Charisma helps. “A congregation’s appetite for an emotionally stirring sermon often eclipses a congregant’s individual spiritual growth,” Peters said. “Joining a new religious movement that has radical doctrines sometimes fulfills a need for young adults to break free from their parents’ or grandparents’ suffocating spiritual traditions.” Chang Sung-eun explained the appeal of Grace Road Church more simply. “Koreans are passionate and energetic,” she said. “They have a strong yearning for salvation. They believe somehow, ‘God will save me.’ That’s the baseline. They tend to fall victim to pastors and ministers who have strong disciplinary policies.” [more]

Steven Hassan (cult expert and former Moonie himself] tweeted this link and I am very happy to see Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon's wife, who took over the Moon cult after he died in 2012, featured in this article on Korean cults. She paid Trump $2 million for endorsing her cult- a few weeks after the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol.

Your last sentence seems to be a sticking point for all of the splinter groups. They can’t seem to admit “I was wrong” pursuing the TWI cult and its goals and idolatry. It is interesting the conversation is progressing to the topics of “Love” and “Fear” or “Courage”. These are more common tangible virtual desirable characteristics. Any religion should accomplish the goal of helping the individual to form the best possible version of themselves with respect to developing virtue. In the TWI cult and splinter cults all the effort goes in to propping up the leaders as larger than life as opposed to developing virtue as an individual. It is pretty clear when you examine facts Wierwille was a narcissistic preacher with a sex and alcohol problem who founded a cult of personality as opposed to being de frocked by his denominations slow moving judicial arm for attacking their missionary work and having an affair with his secretary. The facts and human behavior patterns are undeniable. Whereas imagined snowstorms on gas pumps are certainly called into question. I guess there was a part of me that believed the snowstorm story and so I stuck it out with the group for a few decades. But the cognitive dissonance adds up over time and people do not buy the snake oil after a time. Truth comes out. Despite all the whitewash effort which actually represents a bulk of their activity. Want to be a TWI leader? Here is your assigned paint brush and area to whitewash.

I personally would argue similar but somewhat differently, that the Bible is reasonable to consider in the context of cultural anthropology. Anthropology is the study of the human as at once an individual, a product of society, and a maker of history and culture. It’s the nature of the human condition to live within structures of symbol, belief, and power of our own fashioning: religion, art, gender, war, ecosystems, race relations, embodiment, kinship, science, colonialism, language, nations and states, play, subsistence strategies, mass media, illness, pain, and pleasure. In a word, culture.

In retrospect all of the warning signs were there from the beginning regarding VPW's predatorial and sordid nature.

Certainly, some of the locals knew vpw's reputation growing up- he was a showoff, a braggart, and something of a bully. He used to zoom his motorcycle around, trying to get attention, All indications are that his own dad had a reputation for being mean and something of a bully as well (big surprise there, right?) When vpw said he wanted to go into ministry, NOBODY thought it was a good idea, starting with his Dad, and the locals certainly didn't think he had the right character for the job, so they didn't take him very seriously. Small wonder his first church was such a drive away from where he grew up (when they decided to move things back to the farm, he lost some of his church because it was too far to travel regularly for services.) During the twi era, vpw didn't exactly work hard making friends of the locals, either. When one neighbor complained of a racket, vpw told the noisemakers to make MORE noise, not less. I doubt that was an isolated incident.

I still have a blood relative who is entrenched in Way theology, though not involved with the organization in a physical sense. It's a thin sheet of ice I have to travel sometimes, so I somewhat understand. The Way promoted, and continues to promote, a twisted and harmful way of looking at scriptures and life in general. That can't and shouldn't be denied. We don't have to stand on the roof tops and shout it, but we have to at least acknowledge it. Sometimes when you get old you look in the mirror and wonder, "What the hell happened to me?" GSC helps people answer that question, provided they really want an answer.