Hi all. My name is LaNisa. I’m an actor and writer. And I was born and raised in the Worldwide Church of God, an apocalyptic doomsday cult.
I am in pre-production for the podcast Black and CULTivated in which I talk specifically to Black and Brown cult survivors. This podcast is to give a voice to and help eliminate stigmas around us using humor.
I have a great guest lineup but I am hoping to round out the season with a few more folks. If you or someone you know (they don't have to be former WCOG members, but they DO have to have been in a cult and be Black or Brown) are interested, I'd love to hear from you.
Please email me at blackandcultivated@gmail.com for more information about the podcast and how it will be a safe place for us to chat about our experiences.
And if you are not Black and Brown, I hope you'll tune in and support! As former WCOG members I'm sure we're all aware of the disgusting and just plain wrong doctrine surrounding race HWA and others would preach. So I'm eager to and it's about time we have these conversations. We're slated to release in September 2024!
I am in pre-production for the podcast Black and CULTivated in which I talk specifically to Black and Brown cult survivors. This podcast is to give a voice to and help eliminate stigmas around us using humor.
I have a great guest lineup but I am hoping to round out the season with a few more folks. If you or someone you know (they don't have to be former WCOG members, but they DO have to have been in a cult and be Black or Brown) are interested, I'd love to hear from you.
Please email me at blackandcultivated@gmail.com for more information about the podcast and how it will be a safe place for us to chat about our experiences.
And if you are not Black and Brown, I hope you'll tune in and support! As former WCOG members I'm sure we're all aware of the disgusting and just plain wrong doctrine surrounding race HWA and others would preach. So I'm eager to and it's about time we have these conversations. We're slated to release in September 2024!
18 comments:
I can't wait for this! Black and Brown voices of those who have been abused by the church have been ignored for too long. "Just get over it, already" How many times has that been said!
Whenever we have had diversity on the ACOG anti-cult sites, it has made us all richer for the sharing. To my knowledge, BB King was never a cult member, but he once used an expression in an interview that has always stuck with me. Some experience in his life had seemed to him "like being black twice". Of course I was a fan. There are some amazing videos on Youtube in which BB is jamming with guitar players who admire him, such as Slash, John Mayer, Ronnie Wood, Derek Trucks, and Susan Tedeschi. Just watched one the other night, in fact. So obviously the life experiences which were formative contributed greatly to the sweet notes he was able to coax from Lucille, and fellow guitar greats have always wanted to learn from him!
I look forward to hearing more from LaNisa, and those she interviews. The things we learn from our fellow survivors always provide deeper understanding as to what happened to all of us. Armstrongism was not just a white experience. We need to see and understand the entire picture!
BB
Will be listening out for this. These ACOG cults are already a prejudiced hell. A POC’s story will color the depths of racism even more! “Grow a thicker skin, or, just get over it” is not enough. I hope many voices and truths can be heard and slowly healed.
This could be interesting.
I had an "old" minister or two try and label me as being lazy. They were doing this because I was black. I was actually working, just not getting highly paid. They would attack me in sermons. This is how awful they were towards someone just entering the job market and one of these splinter group. It was really sad on their part.
I know thats right. We always had to work three times as hard and... if you were anything but a janitor or a security guard, they seemed surprised. So silly.
I don't believe I've ever shared this. But, as my first real job, I was a licensed life and disability insurance agent, in what was primarily the Black areas of Pasadena and Altadena. There was a good cross-section of the entire socio-economic spectrum of the community within my fairly large territory. There was a healthy middle class area, and there was also "the 'hood", and places somewhat in between. During that time, my line of thinking became naturally, or organically adjusted away from the implications of WCG doctrines such as British Israelism, the times of the Gentiles, the mark of Cain, (or Canaan), Nimrod, etc. I enjoyed my job and made many friends, as I sat and talked with my customers every working day.
We were taught so many stereotypes in our WCG experiences. The Germans surely got a bad rub, because of our interpretation of the prophecies. The Jews were often looked to in a positive fashion, but during the 1950s, I heard HWA say in many sermons that he had never known a truly converted Jew. That was no doubt prior to his experiences with Stanley Rader. And, it didn't stop there. I heard unfair critiques leveled at Italians, Hispanics, French people, Arabs, and anyone else that was different, or alluded to in the prophecies.
This is why I always like to encourage everyone to get out and have some new experiences. Learn to think outside of the Armstrong "us and them" box. Golden Rule! There are good people and bad people in all races. Life is often difficult enough. Why make it difficult for fellow humans?
There's no law, written or unwritten, against trying to make the world a better place!
BB
Man, 7:03, ALL of the WCG folk treated me too (albeit a white guy), that same crunchy way!
It was mid 1980's, seemed hard for me as a young adult to find middle class income (with SABBATH OFF by the way). And it was era of manufacturing jobs fleeting Asia-bound or Cent. Am. bound away from USA. So I worked what I could find at the time : lower class entry level jobs, i.e. McDonald's, Burger King, Manpower Temp. Svcs. Light Industrial Division, Manpower Light Ind.
I knew, from being observant & "awake", that society & also WCG had placed black folks in general down onto "lower shelves" & as a McD etc. employed white guy, I found myself there on those same shelves with black folk.
The ministry & singles I hoped to date, literally kept me down on those pressure cooker lower shelves. I thought I was "enduring" what God was "assigning me" to deal with at that time. I should have known it was the humans, the "brethren" (not God), looking "down" on us there on those tougher lowered shelves in WCG.
IT'S STILL THE same now...a few years ago, (after my non-COG wife died), I joined a UCG-dominated, but generally all-COG singles email meet-&-greet site. Despite my later years with my wife, employed then gainfully as a CDL commercial driver/Class B vehicles (with highly scrutinized background checks proving I was "an ok guy" for old fogeys' middle aged daughters my age to date safely), the singles in that new COG dating site still keep me low down on those same lowered shelves.
Black or white, or brown, the COG gist of who's who still has "lowdown" shelves to stack you onto, if you don't have a bustling, higher end monetary portfolio lifestyle, to present to their picky standards...to this day.
Well, Carl, what I noticed about the COGlodytes when I was a member, was that when there were no minorities to look down upon, they'd begin eating their own! Looking down on people was part of that culture, whether it was on the outsiders, Sunday-Keeping Christians, or people who earned their livings working with their hands. I believe that this was due to middle class people being reduced by the tithe system and perpetual gun laps and emergencies to living as did the poor. Unfortunately, people were also left stranded by the specter of "the end". Many blew off the educations which would have provided better opportunities because "it's all going down in 3-5 years anyway".
There are always going to be people who try to level us, no matter what color we are, or what our profession may be. If it had been "God's" Church it should have been a sanctuary for us all. The people whom "the world" looked down upon should all have had one place where they could go where they got relief from the crap ignorant, prejudiced people heaped upon them! HWA's church made us all into pariahs, persecuted members of a religious minority. We should have had better compassion for one another! Unfortunately, the beliefs like British Israel, mark of Cain, and the times of the gentiles whored up the church with our own fubar caste system.
Exactly 12:38!! The older members looking down on a young member as he's trying to start out in life with the economic obstacles that one was facing. Meanwhile, when they were in their 20's in the 1950's or 60's, America living in a post war economy and lots of manufacturing took place. Older members (ministers) don't care. To top it off, then they use British Israelism to form a white nationalistic doctrine to divide people.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28)!!
But cog-Armstrongism uses this verse to actually divide people with different backgrounds instead of uniting us.
I think what some folks may be missing is that if you were a white male working an entry level job, you werent living up to your potential, or at least working in a profession that didnt suit you or your church affiliation.
If you were a black male and worked anything BUT entry level stuff, something was off about you and you might be "too worldly".
There now that zeros in on the entirety of how it was for sure RSK thanks.
LaNisa was on another podcast featuring various episodes such as RCG escapees, also was an episode with Bobby Fischer WCG days.
When I was at WCG FOT in St. Pete around 1989, they passed out a questionaire in the arena & one box was "what is your favorite TV show". At the time I liked "Tony Brown's Journal" on PBS so I put that on the list. Most others might have had Fantasy Island or Dallas or Dynasty. Tony Brown theme song was really zippy & very cool early electronic mild technofunk. I also liked McLaughlin Group too, both shows vaguely similar format.
Or the dreaded "uppity". Better not be black and "uppity". There's a mass grave in Bessemer full of those men.
6:20,
I guess you're talking about Bessemer, Alabama. I heard about a few cog-ministers from the alabama area, whew
WCG taught that segregation was God's way, but they surely did not practice "separate but equal."
I am. One of the ways that the state and municipal governments used to rid themselves of local black men who were too successful for their liking was to charge them with silly things like "being uppity" and then send them off to dangerous labor assignments where they were sure to be killed in due course. Alabama and Mississippi were hotbeds for it.
Yea RSK,
But even Oregon back in the day was like Alabama back in HWA day with the KKK. I hope that this isn’t some type of rap.
Oh yeah. Portland itself was a hotbed!
Post a Comment