You were told that critizing the government of South Africa during the apartheid years (the P.W.Botha years especially) was “cursing Israel”.
When at age 13 learning geography class about South Africa’s apatheid system, a man at church said to you, “Segregation is not wrong.” The strange thing that it was a black man who said that to you.
You believed in your whole heart that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and a no good commie—but thankfully you grew up and understood that Mandela was one of the few politicians (and I mean very few) in the world who believed and practiced true Christianity. If you can only kick yourself!
At the young tender age of 11, your parent was explaining and telling that interracial marriage was wrong. I no longer wonder why some people argue that Armstrongism is child abuse (even mentally)! Even in your teens,your parent tells you that you should pray to God to make you “fully” accept the church’s race policy. Talk about mind control and totalitarianism at it’s worst! Thank goodness you never followed through to accept that kind of cruelty.
In public school you faced a self-righteous ultra-conservative evangelical teacher’s aide who could not respect nor accept anybody elses religious liberties except her own was questioning why I was going “back”. This is regards to my eating matzah during The Days of Unleavened Bread. I guess this was a decade and a half advance preview of what was to happen in the church.
When your teacher in public school said to you,”You’re not Mr.Armstrong’s men!” When his teacher’s assistant, that same ol’ ultra-conservative evangelical was trying to find some school work I did not “honestly” complete. Ironically, me and the teacher were discussing HWA’s ad in a newspaper during some arts and crafts before the assistant’s “discoveries.” If I knew nearly 30 years later at that time, I would have gleefully relished of NOT being “Mr.Armstrong’s men!”
Also at age 11, you heard that HWA was going to visit your congregation in your city. As an impressionable young kid you exclaim, “I just can’t wait ’til I meet the guy!” Your parent corrects you sternly and tells you should say the word “man” instead of guy. Well, “pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”
Also around that tender age of 11, you told your parent you were watching the late great Merlin Olsen’s, “Father Murphy” and your parent said, “Did you know,you should call no man your father?”
As a teenager, especially a black kid you really like the expression of “Give me five!”, which includes the slapping of your hands to your friend’s. I did just that to my close friend at Sabbath services and his mom said that we shouldn’t do that because it was “rude”. Trust me, she was no Miss Manners but was from the small country bumpkin town outside the city but this still qualifies as another, “pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” moment!
You were a normal horny teenager and nothing more (which the historic WCG mulishly refused to have any concept of) your parent IMPLORED to talk to the minister about your “sex” problems. Thankfully you ignored the most mentally stupid of so-called advice!
As a teen, not yet baptized, you sometimes were faced the accusation of having, “one foot in the church and one foot in the world”. More correctly, you just wanted to put down the yokes place that were placed upon you and play like a normal kid.
You ran a junior high school newspaper. Your then negative and proud of it assoicate pastor had to damper the mood as he did so well by saying it was “too preachy” after reading it. Your high colleagues complained that it sounded “too much like The Plain Truth.”
Like the church literature, you capitalized letters for emphasis but your high school teacher (still a leftist contrarian jerk anyway) was in no way amused and was damn well determined to watch you like a hawk to make sure you were not going to capitalize any letters for effect in his class.
In the same class, you were doing a class presentation condeming Darwin, Freud and Marx and tried to do it in the dogmatic style of Rod Meredith. That teacher again was going to have fun (and he sure did) putting you in your place. I was overzealous but hey, he was still a left wing contrarian jerk! 🙂
Your parent did not like the idea of you sleeping with music from the radio. It was a way for Satan and his demons to get into you! Car 54, Officer Bill Maher—where are you?!
Your pastor bragged out loud that he was starting a ruckus on a Singles Cruise because the offending music that was being played was none other than “Bruce Springsteen!”
Your parent sternly said that you should NEVER speak sermon notes as your own. Duh??? What chapter and verse? I thought so. Just thinking from your authoritarian hyperactive imagination.
The exposure of stupidity and fanacticism will continue…
Life After The WCG: A Spirital Pilgrimage of an Independent Believer 
Speaking of Merlin Olsen, I had the pleasure of being a Verger at his memorial service last month. Incredible stories were told at the service by his family and friends. He was as kind in real life as he played on TV. The football players were there in full force too with fond memories.
I compare this to Armstrongite funerals where we were subjected to endtime prophecy puke and other worthless sermons. Armstongite funerals were never celebratory. They were dour, grumpy sad experiences. They also never permitted people to grieve. Grieving was satanic. You were expected to be happy and get on with life as soon as the funeral was over. No need worrying, they were waiting to be resurrected while you continue to live a miserable, sinful, rebellious, unworthy for Passover life.
Thanks again for your thoughts PasedenaGuy. Glad that you had the chance to say goodbye to Merlin Olsen.
I too think that’s awesome!
The PCG still clings to that “Nelson Mandela = Commie” shit.
God, I wish Flurry and his cronies would get a clue (or two).
I know what you mean Ezra. My heart goes out to any African-American, African-Canadian, Afro-Carribean and any Black person in the continent of Africa who are being duped, indoctrinated and deceived by this totalitarian cult. Flurry and his cronies will NEVER get it! The members are going to have to wait a few decades for their own “Joseph W. Tkach Sr.” to grant them liberty. Yes, I am saying history will repeat itself because some refuse to learn. I can only pray that I am wrong and that the members get a taste of freedom way earlier, so they can be spared the bitterness that comes with being deceived, indoctrinated and abused for a long time.
Criticizing South Africa’s apartheid is cursing Israel? I can believe that of WCG.
Having an African-American say ‘segregation is good’. Yes I can see that happening in WCG.
I recall in one 1950s PT article by Herman Hoeh he stated that segregation was good, discrimination was bad.
Segregation (races keeping themselves separate from each other) was taught to be the natural way of humanity.
Discrimination, he said, was caused because the races are already associating with each other too much. And this is back in the 1950s mind you.
He also stated that the ideal way to solve ‘the race question’ would be to send the African-Americans back to Africa.
“The whole problem would have been solved if the Negroes had been restored to their rightful inheritance in Africa….The Negro should have been returned to his rightful inheritance in Africa, just as Egypt should have returned the enslaved Israelites to Palestine.”
That is so racist and ignorant of their situation. Many of them have no idea where they’re from, they can’t communicate with the people who speak different languages over there, so this is not a good answer.
By the way that ‘answer’ has also been proposed by racists and neo-Nazis.
I never really cared to the liberal view that we should treat South Africa as the worst country on the face of the earth, especially when the African National Congress was bloody, and Communists were backing it. But I thought Herbert Armstrong idealized things when he said that he visited South Africa and the blacks there held their heads up high. If things were so peachy, we wouldn’t have that Truth and Reconciliation commission, or the need for forgiveness that Mandela called for.
I also hear you on the tendency of Armstrongites to imitate Herbert’s writing style—one-liners, capitalization for emphasis, ad-like sensationalism, etc.
Herman Hoeh taught a message of racial purity because he believed the agrarian laws of the Old Testament extended to human beings. Segregation fit neatly into this model. Hoeh did not believe that people of different races should even socialize with eachother. You may recall the separate Black and Hispanic fun shows at the Feast of Tabernacles in Big Sandy.
I questioned Hoeh carefully on the origin of the racial policies in the WCG. He denied that they had anything to do with an interpretation of the Bible. He felt that they had only to do with the prevailing atmosphere in the USA at the time. In other words, the WCG was just doing as the Romans do while in Rome.
But there was more to it than racial purity. The belief system exalted “Israelites” above the other races of the world. Hoeh was a member of the WCG, no the GCI, when he died. I always wondered if he had renounced the British-Israel ideas and how this affected his view on race overall.
— Neo
That should have read “Hoeh was a member of the WCG, now the GCI ….
The racial policy was bizarre. During my YOU years, I was not allowed to “date” or dance with a non black person. That meant no Asian, Indian or White girls. Mind you, the girls in my YOU years were fit for the dog pound and had a personality of a nail. Mind you, I paid no attention to these guidelines and I was better off for it. Yes, the WWCG promoted a segragationist, racist and sexist culture.
It was a bizzare policy but it was interesting that you mentioned about being prohibited from dating South Asians because at SEP back in ’87, I was allowed to dance with South Asian women (because they were also the sons and daughters of Ham in the Bible) and I did just that with (Ms. DeSouza who later became Mrs. Zacharias, a minister’s wife) a camp counsellor. Also, at the camp I met a girl from the U.S. from New Jersey of South Asian descent. At that camp session there was few South Asians and she was only permitted to dance with African-Americans (or Canadians) who were in majority to dance with. Very nice girl but she was direct in saying that she was not comfortable with them. She tried to get Camp Co-ordinator Kermit Nelson to find any legal loopholes. He said the generic saying, “We’ll look into it.” Tried to get her to dance with me a few times at the session but she politely declined. Yes, I was somewhat hurt but I am also glad that I wasn’t in any relationship with any girl in Worldwide (though I tried in writing letters only to understand that long distance relationships don’t work). That was then but this is now. Onward, upward for better times ahead!
FT,
I agree with you on dating via long distance. I dated one girl from another church area. I ended it b/c I thought I was spending too much time writing letters and her parents were way too churchy, preachy etc.
From my experience, the rule was in place in 1991 at SEP in British Columbia. Unless there was a black girl, I was forbidden (and the minister in charge made sure of that I wasn’t dancing with a white girl). FT, My problem with the policy was the explanation behind the policy. From what I recall, this was explained to my parents and I…
1. Parents did not feel comfortable allowing their daughters to dance with a black guy (and their daughters were VERY comfortable putting extreme pressure on me to win YOU track meets).
2. Black men get sexually excited while slow dancing..umm yah OK????
3. WCG feels it may lead to sexual intercourse.
I understand why some black folks want to date within their race. In the WCG, the rationale of their policy was absurd.
1991??? I know for a fact that Joe Sr. said in the July 30th,1990 edition of the Worldwide News (I have the paper personally!) that interracial marriage WAS NOT A SIN! This tells me that some church areas in North America where following Tkach and some were NOT deciding for themselves that HWA did it better but I shouldn’t be surprised. I remember when voting was allowed in ’93, I , of course was the first one to go ahead with it. I remember meeting some people from stateside, said they “DID NOT VOTE!” Strangely when the New Covenant doctrine came out, everybody wanted to say that they were on board but that is another story in itself…
I quoted from the Plain Truth a time or two in high school debates — during a year when the topic was whether “scarce world resources” should be “controlled by an international organization.”
Some of the “end-time” articles fit the subject perfectly. And it was source material that the other side couldn’t possibly have prepared for.
I also was on the high school newspaper two years (editor in senior year), and concerned my teacher/advisor with an anti-Xmas article I wrote one December.
I wasn’t really in WCG then — devouring its literature, while attending a United Methodist Church. But yup, it had an impact.
Actually, in my public junior high school, a guest speaker used a WCG publication on STDs to teach us to abstain. I doubt he even knew it was a church publication.
Felix,
Although Tkach, Sr said that interracial marriage is not sin but the fact remains that the “Segragational stupidity” was prevelant. Based on my memory, it was announced at the Feast in Niagara in 1991 that the doctrine was still in limbo (by that time, I had “almost two feet out the door” in WCG.
We have two different experiences about 1991—even when it comes to the Feast in Niagara but I think you and I agree that during that time until ’95, Worldwide was going in two contradictory directions, but Worldwide was always a place of the most schizophrenic and bizzare contradictions. That is another story within itself.
Yes, I would agree with your contraditory directions statement.