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Undertow: My Escape from the
Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International
by Charlene L. Edge
New Wings Press, LLC, 2017.
ISBN-10: 0997874708; ISBN-13: 978-0997874709.
Paperback, 474 pages, $24.95. Kindle, $8.49. Amazon.com
Reviewed by Bart
Stewart
Undertow may
be looked back on someday as an important book for how deeply it immerses
you inside the fundamentalist Christian world. If like me you have never
been there, you may not know how this “other half” lives. And considering
that fundamentalists comprise a significant portion of the US population,
it might be a good idea to know what they think! A big part of it is that
they want you to be one of them. Author Charlene Edge says of the early
stage of her recruitment, “Evangelicals are practiced at overcoming wimpy
objections” (p. 13).
Ms. Edge was not part of a
typical evangelical church. She was a member of The Way International.
The Way had components of three major movements in Christianity:
evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and Pentecostalism. The organization has
shrunk significantly from its 1970s and 80s heyday, when she was in, but
it still exists. These days it is widely considered a heretical cult in
Christian circles.1
I should say at the outset
that there are distinctions between these three movements, as well as
overlap.2 Generally speaking, the broad, more amorphous
evangelical movement encompasses a wider spectrum of biblical
interpretations than the more literal and absolutist lens of
fundamentalist Christian sects. Pentecostal practitioners, a major (and
growing) segment of fundamentalism, emphasize passionate emotional
experiences they see as coming from the Holy Spirit, including visions
and speaking in tongues.
This lengthy, in-depth
memoir imparts the
feeling of a very different world. It is a little hard to
describe. (Read the book.) They have a very disciplined approach to life,
certainly. A somewhat conformist demeanor prevails. Certain lines of
scripture may take on an importance with them far beyond what the words
would convey to an outsider. Basically all aspects of life are filtered
through ancient religious writ.
Charlene Edge was a
teenager in the 1970s, a practicing Catholic, and heartbroken by the
death of her mother. A friend invited her to a Christian fellowship
called Young Life. It started with get-togethers at the friend’s home,
and soon progressed to travelling to another town for much larger events.
At one of these, during a singing of How Great Thou Art, Charlene
converted to Protestantism. After a year in Young Life, she describes
herself as being a “fanatic.”
I wondered if her earlier
religious life primed her in some way for this more intense experience.
Would a secular child have become as fanatical? In all likelihood it just
depends on the individual and the circumstances at the time. Charlene
said that “the idea of Jesus as a pal” held great appeal to her. She was
in college soon enough, and at a Christian meet-up there she encountered
a young attractive guy who was a member of The Way International.
The founder, Victor Paul
Wierwille, started the outfit up at his farm in New Knoxville, Ohio, in
the 1940s. It all started with a miracle.
Wierwille claimed the voice
of God spoke to him, out loud, and said that He would allow him to know
the many secrets of the original text of the Bible if he would share them
with others. Wierwille asked for a sign from God to seal the deal, and
when he glanced out the window he saw that a perfectly clear day now had
deep snow all over the place.
This sacred snow emergency
did not make the newspapers, and Wierwille was all alone at the time it
happened. But the events of that day were taken as absolute Truth for
decades to come by tens of thousands of believers who became members of
The Way.
Charlene had a revelation
that she belonged in The Way and dropped out of college, to the
consternation of her father.
Linguistic study was
central to the teachings of Wierwille. (The final E in his name is
silent, and the second I is pronounced like an O, so the name is
pronounced like werewolf without the F.) The Way taught that by intense
study of the words of the Bible in their various original languages,
helped by a little divine intervention, it would be possible to restore
the Bible to its “original form.” The Way would restore the Bible to how
it was in the first century, cleansed of all errors of interpretation.
The original text of the
Bible no longer exists, of course, if it ever had a single, preeminent
state. The typical Protestant canon includes 66 books,3 written
in different languages in different places and centuries. Coalescing a
single original version out of the textual variances in old Greek,
Syriac, Hebrew, and Aramaic is not possible. Nor is knowing what was an
ancient monk’s copying error, or outright forgery. Wierwille taught
almost exclusively from the King James Version from the 17th century, but
also felt that the text had been distorted. Therefore, The Way devoted
decades of research with the original languages to find the real,
intended meanings. 4
The Way’s extensive,
long-term efforts in Biblical research never seemed to bring about any
major breakthroughs in the understanding of Christianity, according to
Charlene, who became an expert in Aramaic. She would work at the
ministry’s headquarters in New Knoxville as part of a special team that
spent their days poring over ancient texts. Their work was expected to
confirm the pre-existing ideas of Victor Paul Wierwille—and they always
did. It was part and parcel of their belief in the doctrine of Biblical
inerrancy. 5
Charlene said
fundamentalist belief in Biblical inerrancy is “as strong as a child’s
belief in Santa Claus, times 1,000.” She defined fundamentalism in five
words: The certainty that you are right. However, I sensed there were
questions that Charlene pondered, but didn’t dare to ask during her time
in The Way—namely: Why did God keep his message so thoroughly
hidden away if He wanted it to go out to all the world?
The Way claimed any number
of overtly supernatural manifestations. They could heal with the laying
on of hands. No amputated limbs were regrown, but other conditions were
healed. They could speak in tongues, and they could teach you how to do
it. And of course Doctor Wierwille was on direct speaking terms with the
Creator of the Universe. In the religious order he founded, Wierwille was
considered on par with the Apostle Paul. The farm in New Knoxville was
considered hallowed ground.
Wierwille smoked
cigarettes, which startled Charlene at first. I was curious as to which
brand he smoked. L. Ron Hubbard smoked Kools. Supposedly in every
Scientology Center of a certain size they maintain a special room with a
big easy chair and a little table with a pack of Kools on it. Because
Hubbard is “coming back” someday. Later in Undertow we learn that Wierwille smoked
Kools! Is there something in the curing process of that fine American
tobacco?
Wierwille also drank. Hard
liquor. Every night. A true believer, Charlene found a way to justify her
leader’s behavior and felt that his many changing moods meant that he was
“strong in the Lord.” Wierwille ultimately would die of liver cancer.
Wierwille was the arbiter
of marriages within the group, as well. A man proposed to Charlene, and
she accepted. Wierwille told them to wait. He didn’t ask. He told these
two adults to wait to get married.
Eventually they wed and
began an intrepid climb up the ranks of the ministry. First Corps. Second
Corps. Third Corps. Fourth Corps. Twig. Limb. Power For Abundant Living,
which was actually the first step of The Way. W.O.W. (Word Over The
World.) So many levels and departments. So much jargon, or Wayspeak, as
Charlene came to call it.
Then there was the Bless
Patrol. This was the armed security section of the ministry.
By 1976 Doctor Wierwille
was getting rich—and paranoid. He fretted about a communist takeover of
the United States and instituted survivalist prepper procedures
throughout The Way. He also became virulently antisemitic and a Holocaust
denier.
Charlene’s marriage was
rocky, but it produced a daughter, who transformed her life. Later it
turned out her husband was cheating on her, and they were going to
divorce. But Wierwille insisted they get back together. Ultimately, it
didn’t last.
Following Wierwille’s
sudden death in 1985, a series of revelations came out about him, which
became a cascade of scandals. Not everyone believed it all, but Charlene
did, having been earlier disabused of notions of his infallibility by a
serious textual error he had made. Of course, that was nothing compared
to what was being said about him now. She also saw for the first time how
basic human rights were being curtailed in The Way. No freedom of speech.
No critical thinking. She made secret plans to leave with her daughter.
This is a book that anyone
interested in evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, or aberrant fundamentalist
Christianity should read. Maybe everybody should. As I read it I wondered
how many other, similar movements there are like this one? What about
Bill Gothard? Herbert Armstrong? Tony Alamo? How about the small, or
not-so-small army of money-grabbing televangelists and radio preachers
all over your broadcast dial? Not spiritual giants, just narcissistic con
artists out to wrap healthy minds in a banal, stultifying cocoon of
control. Charlene Edge calls it “the concrete coffin of fundamentalism”
(p. 255).
The ending of Undertow implies that
she has not returned to religious life. She has remarried and resumed her
education. She describes her daughter from her first marriage as “the
great gift from my years of cult involvement” (p. 428).
In her case, the number of
those years was seventeen.
Notes
[1] According to Christoph Kreitz, an instructor at Cornell University, the
beliefs of The Way International have been characterized “as a mixture of
Evangelical Christianity, Pentecostalism, and a few ancient heresies which The
Way shares with Jehovah’s Witnesses and other cults.” https://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/kreitz/Christian/Cults/4.way.pdf [2] Regarding the overlap between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and on
the difficulty of defining these labels, you might check out these sources as a
starting point. The National Association of Evangelicals hosts a website
at https://www.nae.org/sharedfaith/.
Bruce Hindmarsh addresses the complexity in his article on “What is
Evangelicalism?” in Christianity Today at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/march-web-only/what-is-evangelicalism.html [3] To complicate things further, historically, prior to the Reformation,
the historical church had recognized 73 books in the scriptural canon since 382
A.D. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon.Then, in the
early 16th Century, Protestant reformer Martin Luther ejected six books from
the traditional canon. For more on the differences of opinion (and making the
case for less literalism/fundamentalism), see https://earlychristiantexts.com/how-many-books-in-the-bible/ [4] For more on the history of The Way, see “Whatever Happened to The Way
International” at the link here. Regarding biblical matters, see the section on
Beliefs and Practices, Authority and the Bible. https://www.marketfaith.org/whatever-happened-to-the-way-international/
[5] For more on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, see Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
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