Rocky

Btw, I'm not pointing either one or three fingers anywhere.

Well, that's sad. The video was on practicing gratitude. Let's try it again.

This song (not this arrangement which much newer than when I was in school) was one of my favorites in high school when I was singing in choirs.

Thanks for the ideas. Btw, I certainly don't worry about how Jennifer presents her story/essay.

My IMPRESSION of Jennifer's essay is that she was citing data. I wanted to hear and relate to her STORY. This TED Talk given in February 2021, by Karen Eber, on how your brain responds to stories, and why they are CRUCIAL (for anyone wanting to get the attention of their readers and listeners). What do you want to do with your STORY? I hope you want your stories to matter more than they'd be if they were only facts.

Perhaps I was being a Lucy Van Pelt...

First person records. That's evidence.

I cringed when I read your answers. Religious (not necessarily limited to fundamentalist) frameworks, the whole gamut of Christian and Muslim, and maybe Jewish (but I don't know enough about Jewish faith or traditions to say with any degree of certainty) engulf their followers, notably indoctrinating them from infancy as much as possible in adversarial mindsets. Why does it have to be that way? Am I right when I posit that it may not have to be that way? IDK (I don't know). As to hating yourself sometimes, I would love to offer you comfort and encouragement. IOW, I hope it's possible for you to discard whatever in your mind causes such feelings or beliefs or thinking or whatever. This may or may not be foundational truth, but it can be comforting and encouraging.

Or any documentation thereof?

Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate your criticism. Glad what she wrote speaks to you.

How and why did the author decide to associate with TWI? Who told her what? How did she feel when the first person/people witnessed to her? That's something that might grasp the attention of a reader. Each of us here on GSC has her/his/their own story to tell... tell IT.

If they find out, they’ll think I’m weird. In the winter of 1987, my Sociology professor clutched a stub of white chalk, drew a pyramid spanning the height of the blackboard, and crowned it with an X. Thirty students, many half my age, surrounded me in a beige classroom. None of them knew my secret. “Okay. Last week we discussed gender inequality in the workplace,” Dr. Schaffer said. “Tonight, we’ll examine autocratic groups and how they operate. My not-so-elegant drawing represents their hierarchical power structure. Religious ones are often called ‘sects,’ or ‘cults.’ By the way, I’m saying, s-e-c-t-s, not s-e-x.” When laughs died down, she said, “The leader is X.” She underlined the X. “He or she dictates the group’s beliefs and behavior.” Dr. Schaffer straightened her red print scarf and examined our faces one by one. Students rearranged notebooks and clicked their pens. Tonight’s lecture was far from news to me, but I drew the pyramid anyway, mimicking other students, trying to fit in. Edge, Charlene L. Undertow (p. 1). New Wings Press, LLC. Kindle Edition. This is how Undertow begins. If you're still reading my comments, by all means, tell me what's the difference between Undertow page 1 and any part of the substack article?

Near the end of Undertow's Preface, My title invites the question, what makes The Way International a fundamentalist cult? Here is the crux of my answer: Wierwille believed in scriptural inerrancy, a cornerstone of Christian fundamentalism. As the biblical scholar James Barr tells us: “It is this function of the Bible as supreme religious symbol that justifies us in seeing fundamentalism as a quite separate religious form.” Edge, Charlene L. Undertow . New Wings Press, LLC. Kindle Edition. How many words does the substack article take to say essentially that much?

Another professor wrote this about Undertow: “Charlene Edge has created a deeply human story of her conversion, commitment, disillusion, and disaffiliation from an evangelical Christian cult movement, The Way International. With balance and grace, she gives the reader a compelling portrait of the group’s leader and his fraught relationship with his followers that stands as a warning beacon to all those drawn to charismatic prophets and their high-demand communities.” Edge, Charlene L. Undertow . New Wings Press, LLC. Kindle Edition. I challenge anyone who would take issue with my view to point out where in the substack there's anything approaching a deeply human story of the author's conversion, commitment, disillusion (etc.) with TWI.