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penworks

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    Skyrider

    in Open

    Posted

    ohmygod. I'm shocked and saddened by this news. Lloyd was a brave and beautiful person. So sorry for Tricia, a lovey woman I knew from back in 1971.

    Peace,

    Charlene Lamy Edge

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

    in About The Way

    Posted

    From today's blog at https://charleneedge.com

    Happy almost-7th birthday to Undertow in November. In this post, I’m pleased again to honor the very first former devotees of The Way International who read drafts of my memoir, Undertow, offered valuable feedback, AND THEN stuck their necks out to publicly endorse the book. If you know anything about The Way, their speaking out is HUGE.

    FREE copies of Undertow

    On Nov. 1st, I’ll send you the scoop about getting a free copy of Undertow. I have only seven (7) to give away. So, stay tuned.

    A few words about Undertow

    If you’re not acquainted with my story, here’s a section from the Preface of my book:

    In its heyday in the 1980s, The Way International was one of the largest fundamentalist cults in America, with about forty thousand followers worldwide.1 Founded in 1942 by a self-proclaimed prophet, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916–1985), who marketed the group as a biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry, The Way still operates in the shadow of its dark history. I knew Wierwille personally. As one of his biblical research assistants and ministry leaders, I am a witness to his charisma, as well as his abuse of power and manipulation of Scriptures to serve his own agenda. I discovered his sexual abuse of women and chronic plagiarism. Today, those underbelly facts are hidden, denied, or otherwise squelched. The years of Wierwille’s authoritarian reign and the chaos after his death provide the context of my story.

    Former Way devotees endorse Undertow

    “Undertow could be called ‘The Great Mystery of The Way Revealed: How the Research Department Really Worked.’ Every sentence rings true. In telling her story in Undertow, Charlene has also told mine. Holding degrees from the University of Toronto, having studied Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac, I taught and conducted biblical research for The Way International, albeit in a minor role, from 1976 to 1978. With remarkable clarity, Charlene tells her journey of recruitment, service, eventual disenchantment, and escape, which mirrors much of my own. I heartily recommend and endorse this well-written, captivating, engagingly told tale.” —Marty McRae, former Eighth Way Corps member and former faculty member, The Way College of Emporia

    “A tenderly written, intensely personal narrative about being swallowed alive by a cult. Charlene Edge’s encounters with the abusive Victor Paul Wierwille and her firsthand observation of how The Way’s Research Department twisted the Scriptures are enlightening and chilling.” —Karl Kahler, author of The Cult That Snapped: A Journey Into The Way International

    “In Undertow, Charlene Edge manages to bring to life the inexorable, age-old struggle of light triumphing over darkness, of the search for truth in the misty range of a ‘false prophet’s’ deception which she encountered firsthand as a research assistant in The Way International. While she was promised liberty, she found herself a ‘servant of corruption’ (2 Peter 2:19). Ms. Edge’s heartfelt and earnest journey will leave you in awe of what the human spirit can conquer when it launches out in the search for truth. Well-written, compelling, and inspiring.” —Kristen Skedgell, author of Losing the Way

    “Undertow is a gift to young people and their families who want to understand the inner workings of fundamentalist cults. Charlene Edge’s experience parallels much of my own twelve years as a follower of Victor Paul Wierwille’s ministry. Undertow sheds light on the decisions, questions, and longings that she encountered, and ultimately worked her way through. In the words of Canadian author Matshona Dhliwayo, ‘Books are kinder teachers than experience.’ May Undertow be a kinder teacher to you than Charlene’s seventeen years in The Way International were to her.” —Steve Muratore, publisher of award-winning political blog the Arizona Eagletarian

    —END—

    Public Service Announcement

    International Cult Awareness Day

    November 18th is set aside to honor victims of dangerous cults and help others avoid the lure of harmful groups.

    For more information on this topic of public concern and interest around the world, visit here.

    Next post: November 1 – How to get a FREE copy of Undertow

    Thanks for reading!

    Your writer on the wing,

    Charlene

    • Like 1

    Splinter work IS the wierwille legacy

    in Out of the Way: The Offshoots

    Posted · Edited by penworks

    Some of you know I write a blog and have warned people about offshoots of The Way International because they perpetuate Wierwille's plagiarized materials, beliefs, and high-control practices over followers. Because I was embedded in The Way in the "early days" of 1970- 1987, I happen to know some of the people who run these groups. Today, just to participate in this thread, I'd like to say that what I mean by an offshoot of TWI:

    The leader of the group was formerly a leader or follower in the original organization, The Way International, but broke off from it to form their own group. Most of them still promote the teachings of V.P. Wierwille. Sometimes they revise these teachings. Sometimes, they don't. Some divulge their former association with Wierwille. Some don't.

    Some of these break-away groups consist of only one home fellowship attended by family members and friends who left The Way. They continue to mimick what they did while involved with The Way, i.e. recruiting people to their group, promoting Wierwille as the man of God, etc.

    Others are highly organized, like one run by Vince Finn*gan who is a graduate of the Third Way Corps (I was in the 2nd Corps so I knew him) and was a Way leader for the state of New York, among other responsibiblities, before he broke away from Wierwille's original organization. His group has a website and offers lots of teachings, etc.

    There are other groups, like one run by Wierwille's grandson. It's called S.O.W.E.R.S. About S.O.W.E.R.S.® – S.O.W.E.R.S. (sowersonline.com)

    To me, it looks as if he's trying to recreate the Way Corps program. The 5 principles are the same ones his grandfather gave us in 1971. 

    There's also a group headed by Michael Gud*orf who was on the biblical research team with me at Way headquarters 1984 - 1985. He doesn't mention his devotedness to Wierwille.

    And there's one run by John Shoenhe*t, also on the team during that time. There are some threads here that refer to him.

    All these folks seem to be really nice guys, but our ways part like the Red Sea when it comes to beliefs about Wierwille and the Bible.

    Enuf on that. To each his/her/their own. We live in a country that says we have freedom of religion. 

    Cheers,

    Charlene

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted · Edited by penworks

    From one of my upcoming blog posts:

    International Cult Awareness Day

    November 18th is set aside to honor victims of dangerous cults and help others avoid the lure of harmful groups.

    For more information on this topic of public interest around the world, visit here.

    • Like 1

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

    in About The Way

    Posted

    A little Undertow history:

    Did you guys know I've been writing blog posts on my website since 2015? That activity connected me to readers who were anticipating the publication of Undertow in November 2016.

    Here's a link to the posts in the Cults category: Cults Archives | Page 11 of 11 | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

    And the link to the Fundamentalist category: Fundamentalism Archives | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

    Enjoy!

    • Like 1

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted

    17 hours ago, Rocky said:

    How true. Unfortunately, logic is pretty much not associated at all with cult decision making anywhere.

    Greasespotters know this already from experience, but cult "experts" tell us emotion--mainly fear of losing something or not getting something-- is the prime motivator in cult decision-making circumstances. i.e. I'd better learn God's Word if I want to know what God wants me to do, so to learn it, I should take this PFAL class. On and on and on and on the hamster wheel turns...

    • Like 3

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted

    21 hours ago, chockfull said:

    I don’t think the current leadership acts that way but they are heavily invested in covering up VPs faults there because they have doubled down on his class PFAL Today.

    I hope you're right about current leadership. But I think they have an uphill battle "covering up VPs faults," since there are hundreds of people who can testify to his narcissism, sexual abuse, plagiarism, and other "faults." Some of us speak out.

    Also, there are countless families with parents from my generation (I was in the Way Corps 1971-73) whose grown children who even have children of their own now, are questioning VPW's teachings. They are turning away from how they were raised to follow VPW's ideology. They are jumping ship and rocking the boat. I hear from them regularly.

    So, while many of my generation are busy running offshoot-groups or at least continuing to brainwash their kids with VPW's plagiarized bible teachings and derived mumbo jumbo, this next generation is beginning to wake up and leave. They might derail TWI outreach to the extent that it dies out by the time their kids are grown. Or not. Fundamentalist bible cults attract vulnerable people who want easy "answers" in a confusing world.

    But bad and disconcerting news gets around ... and often makes people stop and think.

    • Like 1

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted

    Yes, there's that. But more importantly and shockingly is the fact her mom was part of VPW's sex ring, as I call it. 

    The situation of his seducing women is depraved. If my mother had been part of that, I can't imagine how heartsick I would be.

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted

    1 hour ago, oldiesman said:

    Can you share what happened?

     

    I keep those messages confidential. But one thing I can tell you without naming names is one person asked whether I knew if their mother was one of VPW's "girls." I did and I told that person the truth, which they said they already suspected from comments they'd heard directly from their mother, who was a Corps grad. I also know she solicited other women for VPW. 

    How would you like to hear that about your mother?

    • Upvote 1

    Cults S3

    in About The Way

    Posted

    Hilarious but seriously sad.

    In my experience with The Way (1970-1987), Wierwille's suggestions and outright orders amounted to "Do what you're told." 

    Many of us loyalists in The Way Corps derived our willingness to obey Wierwille from our belief that when we did what we were told, we were "obeying God." We believed Wierwille spoke for God.

    This setup treats mature adults as children. It kept me and other Way Corps especially, stuck in an immature role, not thinking for ourselves, not claiming our own autonomy, not questioning VP. Today, I say he was overbearing and mean.

    Added to this, Wierwille called us "his kids." He would say it in a charming way, like when we sat around the campfire in the Way Woods down Wierwille Road. We felt like a family then. BUT he was deliberately setting himself up as a father image and we fell for it. Until some of us woke up to the B.S., and that doesn't stand for Boy Scouts :-)

    WE WERE NOT HIS KIDS. We had our own parents.

    HE WAS NOT OUR FATHER.

    HE WAS A CON ARTIST who used us to promote him as a bible authority and get others to support his organization.

    Can you tell I'm worked up this morning? I'm feeling like this because this week I got more messages from victims of Wierwille's insanity, either in the old days or recently in an off-shoot spawned by Wierwille's twisted beliefs and practices.

    You may know about the phrase we all used (and MANY innies and off-shoot believers still use): "Dr. Wierwille is our father in the Word." That was so ingrained in many of us (not all) that it locked us into dependence on him, trapped us in a stage of unquestioning obedience to whatever he said the Bible said to do.

    We also adopted his opinions about the world and how we should behave in it.

    For instance, he taught that The Way represented God's true household of believers because we had "the accuracy of The Word." That fostered the practice of looking down on outsiders. It made us think we were more "spiritual" than they were and we'd get more rewards in heaven if we remained faithful to The Way (give our time, money, resources). As Greasespotters know, this only breeds haughtiness and unkindness to people who did not follow Wierwille--to say the least. 

    I could go on, but enough already.

    Have a good day.

    Charlene L. Edge

    Author of Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International

    • Like 1
    • Upvote 1

    Are you writing a story of your experiences in The Way?

    in About The Way

    Posted

    From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com)

    Write your story somewhere, somehow, in some way, but write it down, especially for your children and grandchildren. That's why I wrote Undertow: primarily for my daughter.

    One of my favorite quotes about memoir from Patricia Hampl's book, I Could Tell You Stories:

    "If we refuse to do the work of creating this personal version of the past, someone else will do it for us.  That is the scary political fact.  'The struggle of man against power,' Milan Kundera's hero in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting says, 'is the struggle of memory against forgetting.'  He refers to willful political forgetting, the habit of nations and those in power (Question Authority!) to deny the truth of memory in order to disarm moral and ethical power. It is an efficient way of controlling masses of people."

     

    Charlene ad_v3.jpg

    Cult Identity Theft

    in About The Way

    Posted

    I wrote the following blog September 9, 2015 at

    https://charleneedge.com

    Phenomena known as mind-control or brainwashing have been written about by psychologists, sociologists, and many other “ists.” Now it’s my turn.

    Note: This post was written in 2015, about one year before I published my memoir, Undertow, about my cult experience.

    My name is Charlene, and I am a former cult-ist

    The mere fact I am a former cult follower makes some cult researchers consider my testimony as non-objective, which makes what I say at the very least suspect; at most, unreliable. Their suspicions include: I might have an axe to grind. I probably exaggerate. I let my emotions color the real nature of my experience. Okay. Maybe. But show me a 100% objective researcher.

    No human being can be 100% objective, but I’d like to think I can add valuable insight into how intense indoctrination hijacked the “real me” and in its place substituted a facsimile, at least at the beginning of my seventeen-year long involvement. This alteration of vulnerable youth is covered in the news nowadays. It’s called ISIS recruitment. The group that altered my identity was The Way International, a fundamentalist cult. Ever since I left in 1987 I’ve been examining what happened to me, what transpired during that era of my journey on the planet.

    What did it all mean? I’ve written an entire book about this, a memoir I’ve finished and yet to have published.

    He lost me to a cult

    Doing research about how the indoctrination that I underwent changed my identity, I asked one person still alive who witnessed the dramatic change in me up-close—my former boyfriend, Rob Ruff. We were together the summer of 1970, just before I went off to college where the cult, founded by Victor Paul Wierwille, recruited me.

    I broke up with Rob because he would not adopt my cult’s beliefs. Much later, Rob worked in television and became a senior news producer for a major network. He is well acquainted with interviewing people and portraying their stories. We’ve had dinner twice within the last three years and discussed those old times.

    Here are a few snippets from Rob’s account of me before The Way’s influence and then after I spent three months on The Way’s Ohio farm in 1971 for a 24/7 summer school program of indoctrination into beliefs claimed to be “the accuracy of the Word,” the Bible.

    Rob writes:

    “The Charlene I remembered pre-Wierwille was an engaging, bright-eyed, flexible teenager who fit in seamlessly with all around her. There was nothing rigid, obstinate, single or closed-minded about her. It was clear there was a bright bulb inside that was reflected in a personality that fit well within the boundaries of ‘normal.'”

    “…That August [after Charlene went to Way summer school] our reunion started out well enough, but once religion and The Way took center stage everything changed. You seemed to erect an invisible wall of silence and detachment from the subject at hand—and from me. It was as though someone had taken over your body and transformed you into a single-minded person incapable of normal or ever any interaction with anyone except fellow believers…I was speaking to a wall…the brightness and life that I remembered was replaced by detachment.”

    He wrote more about this that I plan to use in a longer article, but for now, in light of recent news stories about the power of ISIS to brainwash vulnerable and disaffected young men and women around the world, I felt it was important to address this subject. It is real. It happened to me.

    Mind control happens

    Brainwashing happens out of the mainstream, but powerful sociopaths can and do grab a person’s mind when that mind is susceptible and yearning for certainty in a confusing world. Usually the powerful influencer makes appealing promises, like rewards in the afterlife.

    We see ISIS terrorists on T.V. almost every day grabbing recruits and turning them into killing machines. And we don’t have to look far into the past to find Hitler’s Youth amassing. I’ve been to Germany. I saw the Dachau ovens. We’ve promised ourselves, NEVER AGAIN.

    The question is: how well are we paying attention to that promise?

    Cults destroy cherished ideals

    In his New York Times article, ISIS and the Curse of The Iraq War, John Cassidy asks, “What explains the reluctance among politicians to consider confronting, head-on, a movement that has been intent on eradicating ideals that the United States and its allies hold dear?”

    Are we too overwhelmed by and under-educated about ISIS to dismantle it? I just don’t know.

    I do know that there are destructive cults in our own country that eradicate ideals, like free speech and respect for all civil rights that we hold dear. They don’t go around beheading in the name of God like ISIS, but predatory cults can still form non-profit organizations and can get away with unsavory, even criminal acts. Like changing people’s identity. Until someone blows the whistle.

    Where are the whistles?
    3830812620_42c99ee0e9-250x181.jpg
    By: Steven Depolo

    How do we deal with the single-mindedness I had that Rob described? I exhibited it AFTER I’d been under the influence of a charismatic authoritarian.

    Victor Paul Wierwille, founder of The Way, was so powerful that he led me to abandon ideals my country holds dear, like freedom of speech and the democratic value of debating ideas, not insisting you have all the right ones. In the cult, I spoke only “the Word” as defined by Wierwille. I derided anyone who did not believe as I did. I de-valued them. I hurt, abandoned, and confused my friends and family. What’s good about that?

    The good news is that mind control can be undone, but it is not easy. A person has to wake up. This occurs in different ways for different people, if it does at all. Some people never leave cults.

    For the most part, education was the catalyst that helped me regain some semblance of my old self. After I escaped the cult, I finished my college education and made new friends—ones who loved me for who I was.

    Identity theft by any destructive cult is something to worry about, something to derail whenever possible. It is real, but it is not always permanent. Returning to interests, hobbies, and people you love helps recovery. For people born into a cult, the task is harder. There is no pre-cult identity to regain. I know some of those people and believe me, they are scarred in ways I am not.

    I’m grateful I retrieved some sense of the person I was pre-Way (only wiser, I hope!) I’ve tried to get that bright bulb burning again. Many kind and loving people have helped me do it.

    So has education. Light dispels darkness. Knowledge is power. Critical thinking is essential. Love mends minds.

    Rob writes: “And by the way, the person I know today in no way resembles the one from 1971!”

    Two helpful books

    Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeline Tobias

    Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan

    *****

    You are invited to subscribe to these posts by entering your email address in one of the Subscribe to Updates boxes at this site. I never will sell or share your email address.

    See you next time.

    • Like 3

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

    in About The Way

    Posted

    When folks read the subtitle of Undertow, I sometimes get asked what I mean by Fundamentalism. They think only of the cult aspects of TWI, not the foundation it was built on, which was VPW's use of a fundamentalist view of Scripture. Much of it he plagiarized from work of other fundamentalists.

    Here's one of many blogs I've written about this:

    https://charleneedge.com/whats-on-the-menu-fundamentalism-basics/

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