Charlene Lamy Edge Speaks about The Way International

Over the years, I've found many definitions for "cult." In my view, one of the best is by Robert Jay Lifton, PhD, one of the first scholars to examine the cult phenomenon. Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and The Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry by Robert Jay Lifton. The New Press. 2019. Pg. 4, 5. [Chapter 7: Trump, is very timely]. "I have insisted upon retaining the word “cult” for groups that meet three criteria:  First, a shift in worship from broad spiritual ideas to the person of a charismatic guru;  second, the active pursuit of a thought reform-like process that frequently stresses some kind of merger with the guru; and  third, extensive exploitation from above (by the guru and leading disciples)—whether economic, sexual, or psychological—of the idealism of ordinary followers from below." For more voices on this topic, read here:  What is a Cult? For more about Lifton, visit  Robert Jay Lifton - Wikipedia

Pictured is Charlene L. Edge at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. 2022. Photo by her husband, Dr. Hoyt L. Edge. Welcome to my blog about The Way International and related topics such as cults, Christian fundamentalism, and my memoir, Undertow , that describes my 17-year immersion in The Way as a leader and biblical researcher trained by the founder, Victor Paul Wierwille.  If you don't know, The Way was started about 75 years ago by Wierwille in Ohio. It is still in business as I write this on September 10, 2026. That fact distresses me beyond measure. If you want to know why, my memoir answers that question, and so do many posts on this blog. The Way's current website is:  The Way International - Biblical Research, Teaching, and Fellowship The content on this blog Many of the posts you find here I first published on my author website at https://charleneedge.com. This month I retired that website. With its disappearance from the internet went more than 400 posts I wrote...

Today is the 53rd anniversary of my graduation from The Way Corps leadership program, 1971-1973. I'm distressed beyond belief that The Way is still in business and continues to operate that program of undue influence and propaganda indoctrination.  If you've read my memoir, Undertow , you know that my 17-year experience in The Way eventually revealed itself as a career in a fundamentalist cult where I was psychologically manipulated and deceived by the cult leader, Victor Paul Wierwille, who turned out to be a deceitful plagiarist and abhorrent sexual predator. This time of the year reminds me of that "graduation" and the annual Way festival held in August called The Rock of Ages (ROA) that Wierwille used to gain more committed believers for his organization. In 1972, a film was made of that festival and included appearances of Way Corps members. I was one of them. In those days, The Way's founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, trained the Way Corps himself. I was in the...

Greetings, readers. I'm posting this important announcement especially for any of you who are cult survivors like me. The announcement is in the form of a letter from Dr. Janja Lalich encouraging us to participate in a confidential survey whose results will help to educate counselors. I took the survey myself and submitted it last week. I'm grateful to Dr. Lalich for the wonderful work she does and for her support of my cult memoir, Undertow. At the end of this post, you'll find her bio and the endorsement she wrote for my book. Note: The deadline for taking the survey is August 31, 2026. A letter from Janja Lalich, PhD Professor Emerita of Sociology Founder & CEO of Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion Hello, I’m writing to encourage all survivors of cults, coercion, and/or extremist groups to [click this link:]  please participate in this study . This survey research was formulated by Dr. Natalie Fabert, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Dr. Fabert...

  Greetings, readers! We're still celebrating ten years of Undertow's story in the world. Today, I send a million thanks to all the good, thoughtful, and intelligent people who read the manuscript back in 2016 and made time to craft their responses to the story. I'm honored by the careful attention they gave it, and for the instructive insights they shared. And I'm grateful to them because they took a risk: they stuck out their necks to help me promote this disturbing story of cult deception and abuse. If you care about my story and the sorts of people who found it worthwhile enough to blurb it, read on. But first... What I tell people about Undertow I wrote this book to educate, inspire, and heal others. Undertow is the only memoir by a former Way leader who was also a biblical researcher trained by The Way’s founder himself, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985). I was committed to Wierwille's fundamentalist cult for seventeen years (1970-1987). Why do I say The Wa...

Photo by Charlene Edge Greetings, readers. The following essay is about love. I post it here because it conveys some things about how my experiences in The Way affected me. I wrote it in 1990. Maybe its value to you, readers, is that it shows what happened to me soon AFTER I escaped the cult in 1987. I haven't posted much about that, about how I "deprogrammed" myself from Victor Paul Wierwille's cult. Note : I do not use AI to compose anything I write.  About Love: A Conversation In December 1990, I was on the verge of divorce. Despite unimaginable stress at home, for a college class final project, I managed to write about the assigned topic: love. That collapsing marriage, my first one, was to a man I met in the fundamentalist cult, The Way, when I was eighteen and he was twenty. Our cult-saturated union ended in April 1991 when I was 39 years old. Divorce wasn’t easy, like most people tell you, and for me it had been a longtime coming. If you’ve read my memoir...