When James Malm is not dealing in prophetic interpretations and end time speculation, he has great moments of clarity as to the current state of affairs of United Church of God and Church of God a Worldwide Association.
Today's post by Malm deals with Clyde Kiloughs member letter published on July 7th. Kilough goes to great lengths to distance himself and those henchmen he surrounds himself with as being apolitical righteous men. Yet, the main reason Kilough and his crew left UCG was over politics!
Kilough lays out these points as to what he says shows the political corruption that corrupts unfaithful Christian leaders (i.e. - not him or anyone in his splinter cult).
We could recount many stories in the Bible that illustrate politics at work and its destructive consequences for individuals, nations and the entire world. Would we dare be so naive as to think it could not exist in the Church today?
How does it manifest itself? Just to give a few examples, we can see politics at work when people:
- Ambitiously strive for personal goals and put themselves and their interests first in trying to advance themselves.
- Use their power or position to obtain their own will over what is best for the whole body.
- Advance certain other people due to friendship, reward or payback for favors.
- Manipulate situations to get close to those in positions of authority, either to influence them or perhaps just for the prestige of being in some kind of “inner circle.”
- Shift blame when they’ve done something wrong in order to avoid accountability and responsibility and thus try to protect their place or position.
- Manipulate others, such as through controlling the flow of information or slanting of information.
No siree Clyde! That does not sound like you and your men at all! No way, no how! Puke, gag, sputter..........
The best part of Clyde's letter is how he describes what these kind of men are like. Talk about a pot calling the kettle black!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me leave you with this thought. Where I live is in a part of the country where one of the nastiest and filthiest of insects—cockroaches—commonly invade and infest houses, and virtually everyone has a battle on his hands to keep them out. Worldly politics is one of the nastiest creeping sins that can infest the house of God as well. There are basically three things to do to prevent cockroaches: You don’t bring them in from the outside, you stop them from coming in by repairing the cracks in your house, and you keep your house clean so they don’t have anything to feed on. Brethren, preventing politics in our spiritual house is no different—let’s not bring it in, let’s not give it openings, and let’s not give it anything to feed on in our hearts and minds! July 7th Member Letter
Malm says there is a deeper meaning to this letter than Kilough is letting on. Malm says there is deep division in COGaWA concerning government. Many of the men who jumped ship to join up thought they were coming into a church that was going to clean up it's act. Now that the dust has settled, they are quickly seeing that things have not changed. Kilough and crew are still dealing in dirty politics and are in the process of weeding out all that disagree with him.
There is a power struggle going on in COGWA between the split leaders who want power and those who had followed them believing that a new and better way was on offer. Clyde and friends must be deeply frustrated to resort to this level of dirty politics.
The genius of this missive is that it does not name anyone, rather it takes the more generic approach of attempting to link the concept of any type of dissent, as somehow being evil and in need of being eliminated. The use of innuendo, inference and double talk to make his faction appear righteous and any dissent appear evil, is the very classic dirty politics which he is railing against.
By making this link in people’s minds, people are united in support of his factions policies and any dissent is thought as an unthinkable evil. This is “Power Consolidation” at its worst, and is the very thing that they complained about in UCG. This is the very reason some left UCG and here it is; right back in their face.
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The HWA WCG was a very political organization that was in a constant state of political intrigue which resulted in regular splits. The brethren were kept ignorant of most of this through the control of information. Even so several major splits in the 1970s could not be kept secret.
As the Tkach changes took place over a period of about five to sight years, most of the elders fully supported the changes [some did not]. Many of those who did not support the changes either resigned or were fired by those surrounding Joe T. Only when a large segment of brethren began to understand what was going on and began to leave, did a large group of Tkach supporters decide to leave and set up shop for themselves.
These people cared little for doctrine and cared mainly for power, a paycheck and personally belonging to a caste system that elevated them above the brethren. Within this group of elders was division over how to proceed, but the main division was over which clique of friends could gain and maintain control.
The really big issue with them was that Joe would no longer be able to afford to pay them with so many leaving, and there would be many layoffs and pay cuts. They acted to leave Joe and lead the leaving brethren; for the primary purpose of saving their jobs and pay checks! Doctrine was never a real issue for most of these folks. The elders who had doctrinal questions had already left long before. They come close to admitting as much on the UCGAIA website when they said that they left for administrative reasons and made no mention of doctrine!
Today, neither UCG nor COGWA has any real interest in doctrine; the split was all about control and power as Denny admitted. It is about the success model that they want to follow and the control to follow their agenda. To them doctrine is a means of keeping the brethren happy and contributing and it is really only lip service with little practical application.
It finally became clear in 09 that the Franks Kilough group would lose control and be forced out. As soon as the balloting for the new CoE took place the new president Dennis Luker invited the losing group to an amicable separation. This was a mutually agreed divorce. This then took some months to effect as both groups vied to maintain control over as many brethren as possible.
The new group called COGWA was then set up with the split leaders in charge temporarily; followed by those who would naturally follow them, as well as many who were motivated by disgust over the treatment of the Latin American brethren and the rhetoric concerning the UCG Council’s unethical behaviour.
You can read the rest of Malm's missive here:
COGWA Member Letter
