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Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Growing up black in the white supremacist Worldwide Church of God.
10 comments:
Lake of Fire Church of God
said...
A very interesting perspective presented by Glynn. I never married because of the same Church teachings indoctrinated into me about not marrying outside the Church.
It had to be very difficult for our black brethren to grow up in the WCG. I appreciate Glynn's perspective. I remember we had some segregated congregations - even into the early 1970s. I believe Harold Jackson pastored one in Chicago if I remember correctly.
Richard, I may be wrong but I do not believe Glynn was a WCG Church Member if you meant that. He tells other peoples stories on his radio program.
He advertised his program on facebook one time and I went and listened to him tell a story someone sent in. In it Glynn was impersonating Herbert W. Armstrong giving a sermon but he sounded more like a blend of Jimmy Swaggart, Martin Luther King Jr, and Jeramiah Wright. Nothing like HWA, so I know he never heard him speak. I emailed him about that.
In the Florida Church I attended the blacks were like part of the family, it was they who tended to separate themselves from the whites. Their children slept over at our home with our kids, went to the mall together, were close friends. They had good jobs and were in positions of leadership.
In Ohio when I was younger there was more segregation in the early 60's. But again it was the blacks that pulled away from the whites not the other way around.
One time my mom took me and my two younger brothers to visit a black church family in the inner city of Akron, The black family asked us to leave because it would cause them problems with the other black neighbors if they saw them entertaining whites.
My mom had no idea she was suppose to look down on any other race consequently neither did I.
Glenn was part of WCG at onetime. He was a youth in the church. I will see if I can find that. It may be on Felix's "Post WCG Life and Theology" blog where I saw it first.
I listened to the audio clip, and the experiences which Glynn relates sounds vintage Worldwide Church of God to me. Listen to the clip. He relates the story in a unique way.
My experiences in the Washington- Baltimore Worldwide Church of God congregations were a bit different. I remember announcements from the pulpit about segregated socials. But other than that, there was intermingling.
I was once driving in downtown Washington D.C. in the 1970s running an errand for my boss, and I took a wrong turn into a neighborhood where a white person shouldn't be. I got lost, and was afraid. As if by a miracle of God, I spotted one of my black teenage friends from the WCG riding his bicycle on the neighborhood street. After we greeted each other, he told me I shouldn't be in this neighborhood and proceeded to guide me on bicycle for several blocks back into the Washington D.C. business district. I was thankful for him.
My mother provided weekly transportation to Bible Study for one of our black sisters who resided on campus at a historic Black college in the Washington area.
While I was attending the University of Maryland (after being an Ambassador College reject - thank God. I know, what good am I?), after Sabbath Services a bunch of us single men would go over to the apartment of one of our black sisters for food and church fellowship.
For a while, I played on the Washington WCG softball team. The team was completely integrated with blacks and whites playing together.
I realize my Church geographic region may have been different in terms of racial experiences. For WCG ministers, we had black ministers Ben Wesley and Curtis May. So things may have been more integrated in my area than other areas.
I mention Glynn Washington and his site on an op-ed about Ron Wineland of all people. Here's the link: http://lifeafterwcg2.wordpress.com/category/glynn-washington/
When I told Glynn what HWA sounded like he did comment "that is not how I remember him," so I guess from that comment I should have realized he may have been in the WCG but maybe he just forgot how he spoke.
I certainly try to forget that voice, but after all those years it is seared into the folds of my brain.
"Brethren, Why are we here?" At every FT where ever he spoke. A real good question, I wish he would have gotten the right answer after all his studies.
I think that racial dynamics varied widely in the WCG across the USA. During the early 1960s we actually had black people baptized in the basement of our suburban home in a white neighborhood on the outskirts of a major Northeastern city. There was never any separatism in any of our church socials or in Spokesmans' Club.
Experiences in WCG varied widely, also. I know some people, both white and black, whose life's circumstances prior to WCG were so horrible, that WCG actually did improve their lives. Granted, such people would have benefited from any benevolent highly structured environment, but for some, this ended up being WCG. I had a black lady friend in WCG share with me onetime that she had had a horrible homelife until her WCG uncle stepped in, adopted her, and took her into their loving home in another state. She told me this as I was leaving WCG, explaining why she loved WCG and could never leave it.
In the early years, when my family travelled to Texas for the Feast of Tabernacles, blacks and whites were mixed in seating for regular church services, but were placed in different sections for social activities. The three years I attended SEP, it was for white kids only. And, upon arrival at Pasadena for my stint at Embarrassing College, I discovered that sabbath services were organized into L.A. #1, L.A. #2, and LA. #3 congregations, with racial lines being a defining factor. This was counterintuitive, because attitudes in California in the general population were if anything more liberal than back in the Northeast, and nothing like some of the public racial policies in the pre-Civil Rights Southeast.
I really don't care what people use to establish a hierarchy amongst the world's races, it all ends up as a justification for not "esteeming others as higher than ourselves". God created all of the races, and he "saw that it was good". God was not a racist. His standards concerned themselves more with people who indulged in the worship of false pagan gods, consorting with temple prostitutes and passing their children through the fire.
I think God is very much a racist...in a good way, and he loves all equally.
I don't think of race first when I get to meet someone new. I think first that they are created in the image of God, just like me.
The rules for dances in all of the WCG areas I have been in did not allow different races to dance together unless it was a square dance or the bunny hop or similar.
10 comments:
A very interesting perspective presented by Glynn. I never married because of the same Church teachings indoctrinated into me about not marrying outside the Church.
It had to be very difficult for our black brethren to grow up in the WCG. I appreciate Glynn's perspective. I remember we had some segregated congregations - even into the early 1970s. I believe Harold Jackson pastored one in Chicago if I remember correctly.
Richard
Richard, I may be wrong but I do not believe Glynn was a WCG Church Member if you meant that. He tells other peoples stories on his radio program.
He advertised his program on facebook one time and I went and listened to him tell a story someone sent in. In it Glynn was impersonating Herbert W. Armstrong giving a sermon but he sounded more like a blend of Jimmy Swaggart, Martin Luther King Jr, and Jeramiah Wright. Nothing like HWA, so I know he never heard him speak. I emailed him about that.
In the Florida Church I attended the blacks were like part of the family, it was they who tended to separate themselves from the whites. Their children slept over at our home with our kids, went to the mall together, were close friends. They had good jobs and were in positions of leadership.
In Ohio when I was younger there was more segregation in the early 60's. But again it was the blacks that pulled away from the whites not the other way around.
One time my mom took me and my two younger brothers to visit a black church family in the inner city of Akron, The black family asked us to leave because it would cause them problems with the other black neighbors if they saw them entertaining whites.
My mom had no idea she was suppose to look down on any other race consequently neither did I.
Michael:
Glenn was part of WCG at onetime. He was a youth in the church. I will see if I can find that. It may be on Felix's "Post WCG Life and Theology" blog where I saw it first.
Hi Michael,
I listened to the audio clip, and the experiences which Glynn relates sounds vintage Worldwide Church of God to me. Listen to the clip. He relates the story in a unique way.
My experiences in the Washington- Baltimore Worldwide Church of God congregations were a bit different. I remember announcements from the pulpit about segregated socials. But other than that, there was intermingling.
I was once driving in downtown Washington D.C. in the 1970s running an errand for my boss, and I took a wrong turn into a neighborhood where a white person shouldn't be. I got lost, and was afraid. As if by a miracle of God, I spotted one of my black teenage friends from the WCG riding his bicycle on the neighborhood street. After we greeted each other, he told me I shouldn't be in this neighborhood and proceeded to guide me on bicycle for several blocks back into the Washington D.C. business district. I was thankful for him.
My mother provided weekly transportation to Bible Study for one of our black sisters who resided on campus at a historic Black college in the Washington area.
While I was attending the University of Maryland (after being an Ambassador College reject - thank God. I know, what good am I?), after Sabbath Services a bunch of us single men would go over to the apartment of one of our black sisters for food and church fellowship.
For a while, I played on the Washington WCG softball team. The team was completely integrated with blacks and whites playing together.
I realize my Church geographic region may have been different in terms of racial experiences. For WCG ministers, we had black ministers Ben Wesley and Curtis May. So things may have been more integrated in my area than other areas.
Richard
Hi NO2HWA!
I mention Glynn Washington and his site on an op-ed about Ron Wineland of all people. Here's the link:
http://lifeafterwcg2.wordpress.com/category/glynn-washington/
No2,
"Glenn was part of WCG at onetime."
When I told Glynn what HWA sounded like he did comment "that is not how I remember him," so I guess from that comment I should have realized he may have been in the WCG but maybe he just forgot how he spoke.
I certainly try to forget that voice, but after all those years it is seared into the folds of my brain.
"Brethren, Why are we here?" At every FT where ever he spoke. A real good question, I wish he would have gotten the right answer after all his studies.
I think that racial dynamics varied widely in the WCG across the USA. During the early 1960s we actually had black people baptized in the basement of our suburban home in a white neighborhood on the outskirts of a major Northeastern city. There was never any separatism in any of our church socials or in Spokesmans' Club.
Experiences in WCG varied widely, also. I know some people, both white and black, whose life's circumstances prior to WCG were so horrible, that WCG actually did improve their lives. Granted, such people would have benefited from any benevolent highly structured environment, but for some, this ended up being WCG.
I had a black lady friend in WCG share with me onetime that she had had a horrible homelife until her WCG uncle stepped in, adopted her, and took her into their loving home in another state. She told me this as I was leaving WCG, explaining why she loved WCG and could never leave it.
In the early years, when my family travelled to Texas for the Feast of Tabernacles, blacks and whites were mixed in seating for regular church services, but were placed in different sections for social activities. The three years I attended SEP, it was for white kids only. And, upon arrival at Pasadena for my stint at Embarrassing College, I discovered that sabbath services were organized into L.A. #1, L.A. #2, and LA. #3 congregations, with racial lines being a defining factor. This was counterintuitive, because attitudes in California in the general population were if anything more liberal than back in the Northeast, and nothing like some of the public racial policies in the pre-Civil Rights Southeast.
I really don't care what people use to establish a hierarchy amongst the world's races, it all ends up as a justification for not "esteeming others as higher than ourselves". God created all of the races, and he "saw that it was good". God was not a racist. His standards concerned themselves more with people who indulged in the worship of false pagan gods, consorting with temple prostitutes and passing their children through the fire.
BB
BB you said,
"God was not a racist."
I think God is very much a racist...in a good way, and he loves all equally.
I don't think of race first when I get to meet someone new. I think first that they are created in the image of God, just like me.
The rules for dances in all of the WCG areas I have been in did not allow different races to dance together unless it was a square dance or the bunny hop or similar.
Michael D. Maynard said, "..bunny hop..."
MY COMENT - Ah yes. A WCG memory. You know you grew up in the WCG if you did "the bunny hop" at any and all church dances...hop,hop, hop!
Richard
He went to the GRand Rapids Church in Michigan. My older siblings know him and remember him.
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