Former Religious Right Leader Endorses "Undertow"
Former Religious Right Leader Endorses Undertow
by Charlene L. Edge
Greetings, readers. I'm honored that my cult memoir is endorsed by Frank Schaeffer. If you have a copy of my memoir, Undertow, you'll see his blurb on the front cover and a longer version of it inside.
In brief, Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author, an artist, and, among other things, the son of Francis and Edith Schaeffer, Christian evangelicals, who in the 1960s, helped found what's known as the Religious Right. Keep reading to learn more. But first, the endorsement.
Frank Schaeffer Endorses Undertow
“In Undertow, Charlene Edge has written a brilliant and engrossing warning to the future by dissecting the past. There are really two books here: one is on a cult called The Way (one of the largest fundamentalist cults in America with about 40,000 followers [in its heyday]).
The second book is an examination of the dynamics of all personality, religious, and political cults. By looking (from a heart-wrenching insider’s point of view) at a misuse of power in one specific group, Edge has written a book that unpacks a far greater truth. What she exposes to bright liberating daylight is just how our political and religious worlds actually function based on the mesmerizing enticement of belonging to an in-group. This is a brilliantly written and timely warning against falling into the trap of thinking we’re the self-proclaimed ‘chosen’ (be that religious or secular, left or right) as we exclude the feared ‘Other.’” —Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and New York Times best-selling author of Keeping Faith
How in the world did this endorsement come about?
While I was writing my memoir about the seventeen years I was committed to The Way International, I read many memoirs to learn how other memoirists structured and composed their personal true stories.
One memoir I read was Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.
Why that book? I have an indirect connection with Mr. Schaeffer. If you've read Undertow, you may recall that when I was in high school I was involved with Young Life, an evangelical group that focuses on teenagers. The adult leaders of my fellowship in Salisbury, Maryland, encouraged me to participate in a commune-style Christian fellowship over in Switzerland called L'Abri. That's French for "shelter." Years later, I learned that the couple who founded it and ran the programs there were Frank Schaeffer's parents. In his memoir, Crazy for God, readers learn all about this.
Although I didn't have the chance to go to L'Abri, I never forgot about it.
When I finished reading Frank Schaeffer's memoir, I felt he would surely understand my story. His experience of breaking away from his parent's compelling Evangelical Christian world-view and lifestyle seemed to echo my own. He would also understand, better than most readers, the hazards of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, as well as evangelicalism, was the nature of The Way International founded by Victor Paul Wierwille. The Way was the Bible-based group I was in for seventeen years.
So, I promised myself that when I finished my manuscript, I would ask Mr. Schaeffer to take a look at it and see if he'd write what's called a "blurb" to endorse my book.
He did. Gladly. I found his email online and wrote him a message with my request. As it happened, he said he was in-between projects and would love to read my story. I sent it to him. Within a week, I not only heard back from him saying he finished reading it, but he included the "blurb" above!
I gained his permission to use part of that endorsement on the front cover of my book, too.
It's an honor to have Frank Schaeffer's good wishes for Undertow!
Visit Home (frankschaeffer.com)
Find Charlene Edge's memoir about her 17 years in The Way International at major booksellers and indie bookstores.
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