Exit and Support Network has a letter up from a man who left the United Church of God. The comments in his letter about how UCG acts are common statements made by many who leave UCG. UCG tries to portray itself as the "more enlightened" Church of God but it is anything but that.
I'm Leaving United Church of God
I’ve been a Sabbatarian pretty much all my life with a non-Armstrong church. My dad (a former WWCG member) began attending UCG a few years ago and as an adult I accompanied him for a couple years. I thought it was just my imagination, like I was being “stubborn and rebellious” to their instruction, but a few things have jumped out at me since Day 1:
Upon meeting UCG for the first time, some of them asked me if I was baptized by immersion. The answer happens to be “Yes,” but it seemed they were assessing my spiritual maturity and deciding whether I was deemed worthy in their eyes.
One time a deacon told a black man with long hair he couldn’t attend church unless he cut it. That bothered me a lot.
An 83 year-old man tried to convince me that “slavery was not as bad as how the history books portray it.” Classy, huh?
Overall, there were just weird things I tried to overlook, like a woman who introduced her adopted daughter to me as her “adopted daughter.”
A lot of these people are very tone deaf and lack situational awareness, as if they have been stuck in a time warp for 50 years (as you wrote). Let’s not forget
I was speaking to a Protestant co-worker recently and he just came right out and said that UCG sounds very much like a Mormon church in doctrine.1
A malignant and elitist sense of superiority pervades this congregation, even though I’ve seen a lot of them looking out the window and daydreaming during a sermon. The only consolation most of them have is the “fellowship” after services.
The main reason why I’m cutting ties with UCG is because they seem to believe Grace is a dirty word. It’s strange we have never sung “Amazing Grace” in church. I don’t even believe it’s in the hymnal. Secondly, UCG is absolutely obsessed with the Millennium and prophecy. It’s almost as if they’re relying on their scriptural scholarship to justify their salvation.
