It's Feast time again and tens of thousands of COG members are
gathered together around the world to hear amazing sermons and exquisite
music.
Oh sorry, wrong decade.
Let's start over.
It's Feast time again and 10's of people are gathered at various
Festival sites to hear recycled sermons and some half way well done
music.
Imagine getting to listen to well trained choirs and voices
of superb singers singing songs of praise to God. Well, we all know
those days are over. No mass choirs with orchestra
like we had in the Pocono's one year. No huge choir with a majestic
organ like we had in Jekyll Island.
I am sure there are still good singers in the COG who honestly do
try their best. Plus, who cannot help but clap for the kids when they
get up and sing!
The WCG and its various harlot daughters over the years have
jumped from clapping to no clapping and then back again, over and over.
A report came in to me today that in one area where members were forbidden to to clap for music or sermons. The
reason was:
"There is no clapping at the Feast so no one has pre-eminence above another to lift them up to give them special attention".
That's pretty strange considering how HWA thrived on the
clapping. I remember while at the huge Feast sites in Jekyll Island, Lake of
the Ozarks, Pocono's, St Petersburg, etc., clapping like lusty seals the
minute HWA or GTA's name was announced. Men and women wept at the sight
of these men mounting the stage.
Being a deacon in Pasadena I remember for years being told that
we were to initiate clapping the minute HWA, GTA, or Tkach Sr. came out
on stage. We were to immediately jump to our feet and start clapping.
It was standard practice anywhere HWA went. His handlers sometimes
would prep the sites they were visiting with instructions to make sure
people clapped.
Congregations and Feast sites even clapped for his sermons, besides his entrances and exits.
Here is a sermon in the 1980's HWA gave where the members sat there clapping when he made one of his bombastic comments:
This subject is causing a lot of trouble.“Today I would like to speak on what may be the very next attack” on the Church by Satan (ie. preventing interracial marriages from taking place in the Church).‘Satan is going to use interracial marriage as the next attack upon God’s Church’.“If we want to be with God, get on his side. Or get on Satan’s side and go into the lake of fire” with regard to this question.I will not compromise one millionth of an inch on social trends of interracial marriage.Some say we must have racial balance in this world – we will not go the way of Satan!‘But I say that for me and my family, we shall serve the eternal God’ (in relation to interracial marriages). [audience claps loudly in support]The Sin of Interracial Marriage
But then as HWA started to age he sat at home more and more and
watched services on his TV. When he started seeing the sheep clapping
after sermons by Meredith, Hoeh or Waterhouse, he started to get
perturbed. Clapping was soon banned because these men were starting to
get big heads and expected it. Meredith was could be one grumpy dude
when no one clapped after his sermons.
You can go to each of the 600 some splinter groups sites and find 600 some different ways on dealing with clapping. Most do it.
Even the Seventh Day Adventists don't have that much of an issue with it.
There is no clear evidence that this gesture was part of worship in the Old and New Testaments. In fact, I didn't find the phrase in the entire New Testament. Therefore, there does not seem to be any biblical parallel to what takes place in our churches today.
You may ask, "Why do we do it?" I'm not sure. I suspect that we incorporated clapping into our services from our cultural environment. Clapping is usually associated with the entertainment industry, but has become very popular in televised evangelical religious services. Perhaps we copied it from them.
Leaving aside the issue of cultural influence, I suppose that what really matters is that each person be fully aware of the reasons he or she claps in church. Motivation becomes extremely important in this context. Is it an expression of joy in the Lord and His saving power? Is it only a physical expression or a substitute for what used to be the audible amen? Or is it a recognition of the good performance of the singer or the preacher? Adventist Biblical Research
So why does your Feast site allow it and others don't? Why does your minister tell you not to do it when HWA and others thrived on it and expected it?
Is he really afraid that when you clap after his sermon that you are actually GLAD he is walking off the stage?
I remember having a Japanese teacher whose name escapes me at the moment. Mr. Lee? He told us that when we had a guest speaker that we should not "Crap in crass."
ReplyDeleteWe thought that was a really good idea so we didn't ;)
More stupid rules that have a legacy after everyone has forgotten why they were made in the first place.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, Herbert Armstrong came sweeping into the auditorium in his Limo, surrounded by guards with real guns with bullets in them. As the people clapped and cheered, he waved his arms indicating "more! more!". One minister said that if he didn't get that kind of adoration and attention, it would kill him. That would have made a great experiment.
The truth: We don't allow clapping because we are a mind controlling Doomsday Cult!
Back in the day, some of us on campus would proclaim in an artificial AM hipster disc jockey's voice, "Remember, at Ambassador College, above all things, we're sincere!" and then affect a big toothy grin.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I'd say that applause can be a sincere indication of appreciation, and therefore, really should not be regulated. From the information reported in this post, it appears as if WCG encouraged applause as an insincere brown-nosing tool directed towards the senior ministry. That is fake as a three dollar bill, as was so much else about Armstrongism. Hardly surprising. What about "Thou shalt not bear false witness........"?
BB
In some areas, clapping is not even allowed for the children's choir.
ReplyDeleteAnd there they stand, looking like refugees from "Kindergarten Cop" and no applause.
With the COGs, it seems like it always comes down to what is allowed and what is not. And it never seems to be for sensible reason.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first went out to Pasadena in 1967, HWA told people not to applaud when he came out on stage. Later, after he started traveling a lot, he came back to Pasadena and scolded people for not applauding. I think he wanted people to show they missed him while he was gone. Then applause for him became the norm.
ReplyDeleteNO2HWA, I think it is interesting that you referenced Herbert Armstrong's position on interracial marriage. It is well known that he thought that black people just were not the intellectual match for white people.
ReplyDeleteThis painfully reminds me of the afternoon after services in Bellevue, Washington in Dennis Luker's congregation in the 1970s while the church still held the view that there couldn't even be interracial dating. That afternoon, Chuck Harris opened his suit jacket and showed me the holster with his pistol in it that he had brought to services.
It turns out at the time, he was trying to date Brenda James, but the WCG said no because it was interracial dating, whereupon, one day, Chuck went to Brenda's apartment, shot and killed her and several others and wounded still others. This, as you can imagine, made the Seattle Times, replete with pictures of the minister and a member irrelevant to the story. As I recall, it was soon after that the WCG decided to change its stance on interracial relationships. The problems confronting the WCG would have been to onerous to negotiate. I wonder how Herbert Armstrong felt about the official policy changing.
This is not all. Amongst the pschopathic salesman grown up in the church selling music CDs on the Sabbath to teens in the WCG in the parking lot where church met as a thriving little side business (the same yahoo who sold fake Masseratis he had whipped up in his garage and sold for one third the price of a real one), Chuck Harris had made some teen friends. Two of them were taking illegal street drugs and had some how ended up with their drug dealer who propositioned them. They took out a pistol and shot him to death. This didn't so much seem to hit the front page, although one of the guys was the son of the local elder, who went to prison. The other teen also went to prison and said he wanted to be with Chuck there.
The local elder had gotten heavily involved with "The Tracker" who was some sort of wilderness survival guru. "The Tracker" seemed to be more important to the local elder than the church.
So here we have it.
The WCG had an artificial and in retrospect rather negotiable absolute doctrine -- not unlike the stance on clapping -- which had to be changed under pressure and convenience. As always, the church was really good at making the rules, but when things went wrong, they claimed absolutely not one shred of accountability, even though, in theory at least, they are accountable for our "souls".
Perhaps the reality lies in, YOU FOLLOW OUR STUPID RULES but if you get into trouble, it was your choice and you are on your own.
Speaking of taking responsibility, let's pose a purely hypothetic scenario. Let's suppose a young woman who has grown up in the church sees an athletic guy she really likes. He doesn't know one thing about religion, but she wants him so bad that she gets him to be her "fiance", in spite of the dictim of "be not unequally yoked". Let's say further that she drags him to the Feast and he is suddenly plunged into the wonderful world of Armstrongism cold.
ReplyDeleteOK.
But also suppose, just hypothetically speaking, that he has just signed up with the military and has a firm contract with them for years ahead.
Now then.
He knows nothing of the church policy about young men in the military. If you are not all primed on this, let us review: Thou shalt not kill. You cannot enter the military if you are in the church and be a member in good standing because the military organization's main focus is to kill, maim and restrain what ever enemy we invent this term. Moreover -- and there was a time when there was -- if there is a draft, and you were subject to be drafted, you were obligated to declare yourself to be a conscientious objector. In the past, this did not always end well, because (and I know some who actually did) you could go to prison if they thought you were faking it. (I know some young men who fled to Canada, rather to do service or be conscientious objectors and are now local elders.)
There are other problems. The Apostle Paul said that if you were in the military, seek to leave, but if you couldn't do no harm to no man.
Well, then.
In our little theoretical exercise, we have a young man trapped in a situation where, if he minimally wants to keep the Sabbath, he could in reality face a court marshal and spend the rest of his life at the end of a shotgun doing hard labor in a military prison.
Question: If you are one of the prisoner members in the ACoG, do you try to help the man by explaining all this to him? No? Well, how about going to the guard minister and explaining it to him to see what he can do about the situation?
Oh, dear!
It should be noted that there is really good cheery news about our totally fictional, invented, fantasy, made up guy in the above made up unrealistic story facing a choice about the ACoG and the military: He (and remember, this is total fiction) has aready met the minister hosting the Feast to ask him the question about clapping.
ReplyDeleteDouglas Becker said...
ReplyDelete"This painfully reminds me of the afternoon after services in Bellevue, Washington in Dennis Luker's congregation in the 1970s while the church still held the view that there couldn't even be interracial dating. That afternoon, Chuck Harris opened his suit jacket and showed me the holster with his pistol in it that he had brought to services."
MY COMMENT: I don't know what happened to Charlie. He was a real nice guy in the Navy, and no, he was not a Navy seal, just a cook. Unfortunately, I introduced him to Armstrongism. He ended up killing his wife later on, and I heard that the COG people visited him and befriended him while he was in prison, before he blew away some of them. I wonder why he snapped? It's funny how all that was kept hush, hush from the other congregations around the U.S.
It's funny how all that was kept hush, hush from the other congregations around the U.S.
ReplyDeleteSteve, that is the standard practice of cults. They tell you the good positive stuff and hid the truth of anything which would bring them into question.
They lie, they cover up, they cover up the cover ups and make the whole thing undiscussible. The cult way is to lay the blame at someone else's feet to protect the people in power.
The hush hush went into effect when Don Weininger went to his wife's attourney's office to plead that she not get the divorce and when she would not comply, he took his pistol, shot her dead and committed suicide. The Spokane congregation went into shock for months. Some never really recovered.
Ah, but we only talk of good things, lovely things, things of good report as commanded by the Scripture. And then turn right around and the ones in power break all the laws and expect to be free of any consequences. The WCG corporation was not just about profit, it was about limiting liability. What ever you do, don't say anything that would harm our great prison system.
Hey people: If you have difficult problems, don't burden the ministers with them. Get help elsewhere, or, better yet, suffer in silence.
Steve, thanks for the info. I had forgotten he was married before. As I understand it, he was trying to marry Brenda at a time that he was already married to someone in Canada that he didn't bother to mention to anyone in Bellevue.
Thank you, everyone. I got such a laugh reading your comments.
ReplyDelete