clipping submitted by SHT
The Worldwide Church of God was actually no better than the Catholic church when it came to abuse of the youth in the church. While the physical abuse was more physical with beating children than it was sexual abuse, the physical abuse from spanking has had a lasting effect on those who grew up in the church as small children.
We had a minister in Cincinnati as I was growing up, who said from the pulpit, that children should be paddled with 20 swats. 20 swats laid on so hard on the child's bottom that it could be heard as the preacher was preaching. He actually said that he wanted to hear the swats and the child cry. One little boy was so traumatized from previous beatings that as his daddy was carrying him out to be spanked kept saying, "No Daddy! No!" Church members thought this was so cute and totally acceptable!
The local Spokesman Club used to sell paddles for church members that were 1 inch thick with holes drilled in them to cut down wind resistance. Scriptures were also engraved on them just so that parents could not forget the Bible approved of what they were doing.
Who can forget the spanking tents at the Feast sites? The church knew of the abuse that went on inside them so much so that in the Pocono's they actually told members to not be so abusive in case the public saw and heard what was happening in them.
When it came to pedophiles, the church covered up for them just as the Catholics have. Many COG's even employed them at the direction of the presiding leader.
Is it no wonder why the vast majority of youth who grew up in the church are no longer members?
36 comments:
In the last paragraph it speaks disparagingly about fathers who beat their children, it even uses the literal word beat.
I find the clipping itself more sexist than abusive. And by 1967 standards not even sexist, for the generation raising kids.
By 2018 standards all of the clipping is horrible. Therefore I do not understand why the USA is about the only nation not to have signed the treaty on child beating/abuse and choose a president who was openly sexist before the election.
As they say, it takes a generation.
What crazyness to sell paddles at spokesmanclub. What horrible abusive ministers in that congregation. (we were selling wheat grinders)
I'm surprised by the tenure of this blog that no spokesmanclub member has come forward so far where on ladies night the women sold the nitted white caps and whips for beating the gentile into submission.
Nck
As expected, HWA's f'd up internet defense attorney (nck) goes right to work!
Nck, you have no idea how radically different WCG's childrearing teachings were from typical USA practices of the 1950s and 1960s. Not even my neighbors or classmates who grew up under alcoholic parents were abused as badly as kids growing up in Radio/Worldwide.
The writer of the article quoted was right about contempt, just not in the way intended. Children have contempt for abusive parents. Unless kids grew up to continue the abuse cycle on their own children, there could be no love or respect for the parents. The parents I had known and loved died the day they entered HWA's church, and became people no child could have any sort of relationship with. I lived my entire life thereafter as a psychological orphan.
The author of the article cited was one Paul S. Royer in an article entitled "Child Rearing in Today's Sodom and Gomorrah!"
He graduated from the unaccredited Ambassador College in May 1963. He left WCG "due to disagreements regarding the then recent changes to the doctrines of Pentecost and Divorce & Remarriage" in 1974. He continued to preach Armstrongism until he was aged 94. He died on July 12, 2016 aged 96.
This information may be seen on the website of a COG group named Church of God Santa Rosa.
http://www.cogsr.org/about.html
Church leaders taught members to dominate and beat the crap out of their kids in order to condition these victims to be dominated and mistreated by the power hungry ministers later in life. This is typical abusive-cult mind conditioning.
Another reason why church fasts to increase membership numbers are a waste of effort. God will never bless evil churches.
NO2HWA said, "Is it no wonder why the vast majority of youth who grew up in the church are no longer members?"
MY COMMENT - Nail meet hammer! That may be the biggest condemnation of Armstrongism. The vast majority of the youth (including myself) saw the Church for what it truly was even though their parents couldn't see it even unto death.
Richard
Armstrong Apologist NCK said, "Therefore I do not understand why the USA is about the only nation not to have signed the treaty on child beating/abuse and choose a president who was openly sexist before the election".
MY COMMENT - Please leave President Bill Clinton and his victims in Arkansas - Paula Jones, Kathleen Wiley and all the others - out of the discussion. It's irrelevant to Armstrongism.
Richard
During GTA's 1972 "leave of absence" HWA replaced him on radio. In one program HWA mentioned he was left in a car with one of his grandchildren. The child misbehaved, and with a worried look said, Are you going to spank me, grandpa? Please don't spank me... HWA said he thought the child's pleading for mercy was so funny he started laughing and did nothing. He threw in a request "Please don't tell the child's parents about that..."
11:14
You know nothing about statistics and the historical and current child abuse record of the USA as compared to all other industrial nations.
Your personal experience has blinded you to the facts.
Nck
The Painful Truth states that Royer was one of the worst church nazis. A WWII vet. I would not speculate on PTSS, could be, but Royers character was in general part of a larger evil American conservative subculture. One that today constitutes the majority.
Nck
On racial issues I have asked many times for African visitors of this blog to contribute as compared to the experience that afro american brethren might have suffered. (although not substantiated by the increase in their becoming members)
I see there have been some 9000 visits from the (former 5000 member strong) philipine church. If you are visiting this blog I would be interested if you would step forward and comment on your experiences on child rearing as relating to wcg experience and your particular culture that does not strike me as an abusive culture toward children. Please comment.
Nck
2:29 AM, I absolutely agree with you on that point. Within the Armstrong cults is a demonic spirit that leads their "leadership" that is hell-bent on destroying lives.
Yes, amazingly enough... EVEN AMBASSADOR COLLEGE GRADUATES are guilty of this mismanagement!
That first line from the post shown, is very revelatory about how the church viewed people in their various social strata. How could it possibly be that these "cream of the cream" Ambassador College Graduates of "Gods Church" be anything less than ideal in every way!
My experience has shown me that Ambassador College graduates , as a whole, are the most mixed up, screwed up and dysfunctional people I have ever met!
Richard.
Clinton was secretly sexist.
Nck
Btw Did HWA write about spanking children? I can only remember the evil GTA write about it. But cant remember anymore.
Nck
As an AC graduate I like to think I am not screwed up, etc. We quickly learned when we had our own kids that GTAs book did not work and found other non-painful ways to discipline them. Now they are adults, we still get along and get together.
Those holes drilled in the paddles weren't for any "wind resistance" but to make the paddles STING MORE.
I distinctly remember Club members discussing that aspect & how they shrugged off the pain
they caused. Even laughed about it. A mere ping-pong paddle wasn't good/stout enough, had to
be that 1" pine board, etc. Insanity for sure. maybe it was "better" than a fist in the face or a working over with a club like I got when I was a kid but to me those paddles were not
excusable. Same mentality though and tragic thing is it carries over into the next generation
& their mindset. Brutality breeds more brutality.
Ah so! Nck has read “How to lie with statistics!” No surprise there.
The general population did employ corporal punishment to a greater extent decades ago. However, the statistics from back then could not possibly have documented the severity (20 swat rule above which some parents doubled) or the daily frequencies of the incidents common to Armstrongism. The kids also did not grow up in a vacuum. They had friends (usually other pariahs and misfits) with whom they discussed each others’ home conditions, so had a pretty good idea of the general practices in their communities.
Armstrongism’s own words on this topic are the most self-damning evidence. Its great ones went to great lengths in the articles, sermons, and booklets to differentiate between the “weak, lax, permissive” type parenting prevalent in “the world”, and “God’s” childrearing methods, which were far more stringent and punitive.
Armstrongism cannot be made whole through revisionism, incomplete statistics, and flawed comparisons. As in all other areas, it is simply the worst of the worst. I have to wonder about the basic sincerity of an individual who claims to have left Armstrongism, but defends it tooth and nail from every criticism or accusation leveled at it. That makes no sense at all, unless he simply thrives on extremely negative attention.
I was in Paul Royer’s Ambassador Club during my sophomore year at Ambassador College. I admired him for his proficiency in public speaking, and the dapper image he projected. He was amongst a group of Pasadena ministers who owned and rode some smaller Honda and Yamaha motorcycles together. The Royers lived off campus, and Mr. Royer put on a barbecue and swim party for our club at his home on one occasion, and was a very gracious host.
Every one of the ministers during the classic era of the R/WCG held in reserve a Nazi-like authoritarian part of their personalities as one of their tools of Armstrongian management. Paul Royer was no better, and no worse than the rest of them. In fact, his military experience may have imparted a general sense of fairness some of the others did not have. During my time in Pasadena, I only heard one complaint about him. And, oddly enough, a worse authoritiarian reversed the decision that was the reason for the complaint. Armstrongism was a very bizarre and conflicted experience.
BB
Perhaps someone should have made a distinction. Most of the AC grads who left the church have recovered from being screwed up. Before attending, they were tested for IQ, aptitudes, and personality, and most scored from high average into the upper levels. Needless to say, when they saw the error inherent in Armstrongism, they applied these natural abilities to their recovery, and largely succeeded.
I would agree that many Ambassador graduates who have remained in the church and splinters are some of the most screwed up people on planet Earth. I liken their condition to drug or alcohol dependency.
BB
Connie
My experience with AC graduates was that they had social polish, and the men had better public speaking skills than most. Otherwise they were no better than ordinary members.
But the thing that stood out in the church was that status wasn't determined by merit. In open society, status is the sum total of peoples assessment of another person. In the church, this responsibility is stolen by the ministers, with them dictating peoples position in the social hierarchy. Hence AC graduates were the "cream of the cream" by minister dictate. And if the minister didn't like you? Well,too bad. You were relegated to the lower rung. Trying to rise higher up the rung through merit was met with abuse, even slander.
This is bully morality whereby everything is up for grabs. Rights, and you reap what you sow are ignored.
Anon 2:33 PM Are you forgetting the rule from way back which states, "what happens in the family, stays in the family!"? The fear generated by a tyrannical parent (all it took was one) kept a lot of kids silent. They didn't even share with their closest pariah / misfit friends because the punishment for speaking out about the darkness in the home was death, or as good as. Same with any abuse and perpetrator. Don't tell or you'll go to hell. (i.e. I'll kill you or you'll wish I had.)
You didn't have to grow up in WWCg or any portion of it. I grew up without the influence of Armstrong. The upbringing I had made me a perfect victim to be ensnared by the regime of Armstrongism. The obey or else you gonna die!
In each and every posting I have acknowledged your church experience.
It is amazing the material one finds entering in google "spanking wifes in the 1950's usa" or other key words I have used.
I found articles that the paddles were used on the mothers aswell in the 1950's in the usa.
I don't care about making Armstrongism whole. I'm holding a mirror in front of todays current american splinter members that might or might not be involved in abuse of this kind.
It is not universal, it is not christian, it is 1950's american culture enforced upon you.
You are attacking armstrongism whereas my educated guess is that the vast majority of splinter members has grown beyond 1950 theories of parenting but perhaps has not unlearned the way they were raised by their parents.
I find the truth more effective as a reflective mirror for modern perpetrators. Your denial of the statistics makes perpetrators feel they are living the truth while they should recognize that they are part of a larger cultural pattern that is distinctly different from other cultures.
I believe many black leaders are also able to recognize problems that are distinct for their constituency. Without being racist they are able to recognize the root of the problem in order to solve it.
Or is it funny to see Elvis spanking a lady in movies, of course the famous Lucille Ball example and the many "funny ads" in the newspaper. Of course corrective spanking of wifes is not commonly accepted behavior anymore. But if it were, what does it help to point out Meredith's articles about the phenomenon, while not acknowledging the larger pattern.
nck
Personally, nck, I’d prefer to see Elvis or Rod spanking your mother.
There were two side of the coin. In profiling potential terrorists we find a special zeal that comes with being young and being a new convert coming to new truths.
The flip side of the attractive special energy that set wcg apart from "sleeping churches so called" came from the 90 percent new converts, young dynamic constituency etc. The misapplication of many healthy tenets also came with the immaturity of the structure as a whole.
The old boring mature churches were crumbling rapidly in the 50-60's This is what set the stage for the seventies cult experience for the idealistic seekers. The baby boomers were raising children given guidelines by the prewar generation. Dr Spock was making headlines.
Nck
9:39
It's quite a feat for me to comment and abide by my personal standards for this blog. Comment needs to be related to armstrongism, needs to be factual by scientific standards, needs to contain funnies, needs to adress the topic presented, needs to be easily crossed checked through google search.
Good thing you can do all that in 12 words.
I can do the snarky, but my first goal to tone done is a work in progress. One day I might evolve in a snarky anonymous. I have set reversed evolution in motion.
nck
Nck
Church leaders and members were supposed to live by every word of God. You use the background culture to whitewash abuses that were self evident to most reasonable people in the church.
Baptised members made a vow to follow Christ and strive for moral excellence. Come judgment day, God will not accept the 'ministers said I could do it,' or 'the American culture said it's OK.'
This white washing is beginning to feel like intellectual harassment rather than honest differences in beliefs.
Did HWA write about spanking children?
While nothing comes to mind here, I remember how he exploded over the popularity of a book on Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) in the 1970s. One teacher's evaluation of HWA's outbursts was that he obviously hadn't read the book...
I think some people are making a lot of crap up. The church you describe is not even close to the one I was once a part of.
Someone may have already said this. I did not read everything posted. Because the WCG emphasized spanking based on the fact that the ministry had tunnel vision about a few scriptures, they never developed a mature model of family relations. They forever stayed at the retarded stage of using physical violence for instant and ineffective behavior modification. Corporeal punishment was easy, immediately executable, thoughtless and demonstrative (for those who wanted their "righteousness" to be on display) and without appropriate communication. People did not solve problems - they just picked up a stick and started thrashing. The fruit of this WCG children growing up, leaving the church and despising their parents. And, BTW, also despising god. All of this cascading from this Neanderthalian approach to rearing children. "By their fruits …"
5.48 AM
Please elaborate.
5:48 AM, You clearly had rose coloured glasses on the time you spent in that cult.
Anonymous 5:48 AM said, "I think some people are making a lot of crap up. The church you describe is not even close to the one I was once a part of".
MY COMMENT - That would be poster Near Earth Object who says the Church preached exterminating Native Americans. He took personally an absurd comment made to him by a lowly deacon once and extrapolates it in his mind as Churchwide doctrine. My family has 60 years of Armstrongism experience and I have never heard such a teaching from the legalism of the Church that taught the ten commandments and "Thou shalt not kill".
Richard
The church you describe is not even close to the one I was once a part of.
I too was blissfully unaware of the problems, and agreed with whatever explanation the ministry gave for apparent anomalies. If you're not confused, you're not paying attention is something I learned later...
12:25
It is neither harassment nor a differnce in belief. I said I believe it happened to you and others.
I know the majority did not do as you describe.
But I'm not calling you a liar. The problem for the US churches seems to have been big before the seventies. My initial reaponse was triggered by the ridiculous comparison in the posting with what expired in the catholic church. This is a blatant ridiculous comparison and made me comment. Not the pitifull experience some in the sixties experienced. I guess wcg moved the statistic average a bit higher. But NOTHING compares to what happened in the catholic church.
Nck
9:38 AM, It would seem that 5:48 is still brainwashed and it would probably be just about impossible for them to elaborate in any way, shape or form that would be remotely believable.
There is no coincidence between the hard-line years of the 1960s and the goals of the Church. In the 1960s, the push for the building finance, the abuse of the co-worker letters, the pressure on the field ministers to produce, the pressure to keep the Church "in-line" - all of these things were done by force and pressure from HWA to finance and fund his master plan.
This is just my own surmising here, I haven't looked into it deeply enough to factually source this - but I believe that the ministry in general took out their personal stresses to meet the demands of HWA and the executive team on the Church membership - who took that stress out on their children. The children born in the 1960s and the 1970s bore the brunt of the toxicity from two fronts: Their parents, who were trying to rule and qualify and make it, while pleasing the ministry and avoiding the pink slip, and the Church, who preached tribulation, Petra, Germans, disaster, and the whole world ending in just a couple of years. Some also bore the brunt of abuses from their friends because of their "differences". In short, the attempts to "rule" according to the standards of "GTA" with the family and child rearing directly enabled the abuse described here.
Those who did not experience this (and there were some who did not), had parents who simply were not going to take everything GTA, HWA and team said at face value. (The "Slackers" heading for the LOF??) But, most did. Hence the Club Paddles, the Spanking Tents, the "Belt" and the "Wooden Spoon", and the other abuses.
My generational history in the Worldwide Church of God links directly by baptism to Rod Meredith and Raymond F. McNair, who started the chain of it all in my family line. McCrady was also involved in the family line in a ministry responsibility as well. These were three of the most domineering and dictatorial ministers in the Cult. Two were evangelists, and one was avoided. In my deeply entrenched in Armstrongism family line, many, many generations ago, there was all manner of abuses, and trauma from those first-generation members, ENABLED by the Church, and COVERED UP by the ministers. Confidentiality will not permit me to tell the stories. But they are real. And they were NOT isolated. Not by any means.
There's another point I have to make. Many in the WCG were "two faced". You would never believe what some were like away from the Church and on the Sabbath and what some were like AT church and on the Sabbath. The most abusive, hard-lined, wicked, carnal, twisted, and perverted people to grace the Church you never would have known AT Church. So to say that "the majority did not do as you describe" is as reliable as exit polls. The problems were so severe - both IN the ministry AND IN the membership - if you take the time to read through the articles thoroughly from the 60s - that you could never tell WCG was attempting to be a Christian Church.. The general empire was more like a gang of hoodlums running a crime mob, in and out.
-SHT
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