In this photo provided by the Owen family, Rob Owen holds his stillborn daughter Clare Elizabeth Owen, March 7, 2008, at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md. This photo was taken by the mother, Erin Fogarty Owen, from her hospital bed.
One man wrote in and said this:
I know this for sure from personal experience. Our baby was stillborn in 1982. The WCG minister declined to take any sort of funeral, as he was adamant that our child would never be resurrected. This is no doubt why this is a subject very close to my heart.
Was this a WCG policy? I have never heard of this happening before. It would not surprise me if it did though. I also could almost guarantee you that that minister is now part of LCG or PCG!
We did have one minister in Pasadena (Imperial Gym) who told a young woman who had gotten pregnant that her "bastard child would never make it into the Kingdom of God." The young girl was devastated. He did not care and laughed about it with others. He also was the same guy who told his congregation that they were to turn in fellow church members if you knew they were reading "dissident" literature.
When I hear stories such as this it makes my blood boil! What kind of deviate men are these guys? They have no right being ministers. How many more lives will be destroyed by these degenerates before the membership says "enough is enough!"
All I can say is if some asshat ministurd had said that to me I would have knocked his teeth out! I refused to be intimidated by COG ministers when part of the cult and caused my husband no amount of consternation when he was constantly being told to keep his "wife under control."
ReplyDeleteIt makes my blood boil as well but NO, there was no class, policy, discussion, seminar or suggestion to think to do such things in such circumstances. WCG allowed for loons to go on and on in many topics of their personal taste. These things are the individual minister's hang up. The problem is that these jerks were never confronted when word of their behaviors or bullshittish opinions got around.
ReplyDeleteEx. I got tired of members in the South telling me John Rittenbaugh told the people that sunglasses were wrong as they blocked the eyes which were the something or other to the soul or heart or ass or something. I simply told them that was ridiculous which they already knew. Yet the man taught it and taught it and taught it over and over wherever he went just as he was known to give, when first in an area, his standard 20 week marathon sermons on HOW to keep the Sabbath. I guess members thought we all did that which of course no one else I know did. It was the lone ministers strange approach and the problems always were that no one challenged them.
I asked Church Ad how long they were going to continue to just transfer these types around rather than stop the foolishness. They never did. Men like Dave Pack, who traditionally turned a local church area on its head over and over and over and over, simply got moved, never stopped and told to stop being so anal. Why, I do not know. It was a life long frustration of mine to hear about these goofy beliefs or dictatorial styles over and over yet nothing was ever done to stop it.
I still love the story of the lone farmer boy type who, after Joe Tkaches , "why we can let go of the Sabbath" said, when he was called on to lead the last hymn of the service, "Well that was the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard. Let's take our hymnals and sing to the REAL God!"
I love that story!
If you ever read even just part of Dave Pack's autobiography, it's pretty clear he gets into a lot of disagreements with people. It's always the other guys fault, or the congregation was rebellious, or a demon was in the other person...
ReplyDeleteI guess it's that way for many people who are always "right".
I remember those incredibly long series of sermons that Rittenbaugh would give. Pasadena had an entire sub-culture that thrived on his words. His tapes were passed around more than HWA's. Large groups of people started flocking to Glendale where he preached to hear his words. I found his sermons be be incredibly trite and without any real substance. They were poorly researched and filled with all kinds of factual errors. All he really accomplished was dumbing down a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteDP is probably one of the most unusual minister types I have ever met. He tended to leave trails of carnage wherever he pastored.
ReplyDeleteI got no theological training at AC. I learned to become a Bible reader and a HALTAL* :)
(*Here A Little There A Little)
I have done better since I am not one.
ALL the "ministers" are assholes. I never met one that I liked or could even tolerate for that matter. If I met one of those assholes on the street, I'd do more than just knock his teeth out...the teeth I paid for!!!!
ReplyDeleteThings evidently got worse after I left in 74-75. We had plenety of inanity even then, but not this kind of pure crap.
ReplyDeleteAs sad as this story is, I have an equally mind-boggling account of COG cruelty and absurdity.
ReplyDeleteAfter 20 years out of WCG, my wife and I joined a small UCG congregation in a foreign country in 2009 where we had been doing church-raising.
From my former WCG responsibilities and the fact that I had been a Wesleyan pastor and missionary in the interim, I rose quickly to song-leading and sermonettes within the first year. The regional pastor's favor shown to me didn't please the local elder.
When my 82-year-old alzheimers mother, who we had taken care of for six years, died in 2010, I informed the local elder that one of the local deacons who had visited my mother and I would perform the funeral ceremonies as per my mother's long-time wishes. This was perfectly in keeping with the UCG Ministerial manual.
With this the local elder saw his chance to remove the 'thorn' from his flesh. In the midst of our handling the grief, he concocted a desperate story about my disrespecting his authority to the regional pastor.
Even though half of the church saw and heard us discussing my plans at the side of my mother's casket at the funeral home, he told the pastor that I had ignored him and I don't know what else.
Two days later, I heard there was a problem and I called the pastor to find out what. He had talked to the elder and was ticked saying that I had usurped the UCG government and that he the pastor should be handling the funeral.
When I had calmly explained the situation to him, he said that neither the deacon, nor the other leaders, nor the brethren would be able to participate in the funeral of my mother.
[See part 2 below]
[part 2]
ReplyDeleteThe next Sabbath, this pastor showed up at my mother's room at the funeral home with his son and their Egyptian business associate who had just flown in that morning to the local airport.
The pastor told me, directly in front of where my mother was laying, that now that I had no choice I should let him do the service. I controlled myself and told him that what he was doing was extremely disrespectful and that he had better leave the room as soon as possible.
When I stood he saw my face and left quickly and somewhat shaken. But as he was exiting the door, he told me he would not be able to attend the funeral service since he had 'business' back in his province the next day.
The brethren said that he came to services and told the leaders not to participate in the funeral, but decided to allow the people to attend if they wished.
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There is much more and much worse which transpired over the next few days, weeks and months, as my family performed the services and buried my mother, unsupported by the shell-shocked brethren, and 'under a cloud' of doubled grief, and then as I appealed my way up the wicked chain of UCG command.
I would love to tell you the names, locales, and details of this unprecedented debacle, but my principles will not permit retribution on such sad and depraved COG hirelings.
Fortunately, I was already emotionally prepared, because of the long-time nature of dealing with an alzheimers parent, and because of the intensely spiritual parting with my dear mother after such a close shared experience.
But when I look back at what they did, it is like a surreal dream without parallel. I actually feel worse for them than I did for myself.
The pastor by the way lost his regional position and all those wonderful tithes when he jumped the UCG ship for COGWA and wound up with just part of his home congregation, most of whom he already has to support financially. I think he may have lost his UCG retirement program also.
As my mother of happy memory often reminded me, ‘What goes around, comes around.’
One of the greatest sins of the Armstrong movement was that it desensitized people. There are some natural instincts within all people that are actually quite good. Incredibly, WCG taught us to supress them as part of our allegedly Christian walk.
ReplyDeleteIn some regions of the country, people of faith not only have funerals for stillborns, but also for miscarriages. It is loss of potential life, and human nature to mourn.
BB