What Makes The Way International a Fundamentalist Cult?
What Makes The Way International™
a Fundamentalist Cult?
by Charlene L. Edge
First, what makes The Way International a cult?
The Way International
organization, at least while I was involved 1970-1987, exhibited two major
features of a cult:
1) A
"guru's" claim of special knowledge not found
anywhere else.
The Way was founded
in 1942 by Victor Paul Wierwille, its "guru," who claimed: "God
told me He would teach me The Word like it had not been known since the first
century if I would teach it to others."
Right away, that
claim set him apart from every other minister and let us know we couldn't get
this special Bible knowledge from anyone but Wierwille. I believed that claim
with my whole heart until about fourteen years into it, I began to doubt it.
This claim of
Wierwille's was published in Way materials, for instance, the book by Elena
Whiteside, The Way: Living in Love.
How did we get this
special Bible knowledge: we paid to take Wierwille's many Bible classes. In
them, he convinced thousands of followers that he taught the “accuracy of the
Bible.”
2) Control over
behavior, emotion, and thoughts. Wierwille's control methods included common
ones like intimidation, emotional manipulation of people and misuse of
Scripture (taking verses out of context), the power of suggestion, and heavy
indoctrination that is sometimes called brainwashing.
Although he was
charismatic and could be gentle and considerate when he wanted to be, I also
witnessed his dark side: a combination of bully, liar, and psychological
abuser. I discovered he was also a cavalier plagiarist.
And he was an alleged
sexual predator. Some women have testified in private emails and in books that
he was a sexual predator who used them. A few of my friends were his victims
during my time with The Way, although I didn't learn that until I was rejecting
the group and escaped in 1987. (I say "alleged" because he was never
prosecuted. Women were too afraid to speak up. He died before any cases could
be brought against him.)
Wierwille died in
1985, but many loyalists continue to believe and promote his teachings. They
will tell you, all over the Internet, how great a man of God he was.
Challenge them.
Second, what makes The Way International a Fundamentalist cult?
Wierwille's belief in
the inerrancy of the original copies of Scripture makes The Way a Fundamentalist
group because inerrancy is a hallmark of Fundamentalist Christianity.
What is scriptural inerrancy?
From his book, Religious
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't, Stephen Prothero,
chair of the Religion Department at Boston University, explains inerrancy:
Christian
belief, common among fundamentalists, that the Bible is entirely without error,
not only in theology and ethics but also in history, geography, and science. A
less strict view of the Bible, held by many evangelicals, is that the Bible is
simply inspired by God.
Inerrancy
matters to Fundamentalists
Think about this. The
originals of Scripture do not exist any longer. Therefore, inerrancy is impossible
to prove because those originals are long gone. No one has seen them;
therefore, how can anyone say they were "entirely without error?" So
inerrancy is a belief not based on evidence. We have some pretty good copies,
but, when you think about it, inerrancy is really a moot point. Why?
The
moot point of inerrancy claims
Even if someone could
reconstruct the originals of the four Gospels, for example, there would still
be contradictions between them. For instance, the number of men crucified with
Jesus. You may ask, who cares? Fundamentalists care.
Fundamentalists cling
to the notion that God told men what to write and because God is perfect
(doesn't make mistakes or contradict "himself"), what he told them to
write "must be perfect" and without errors or contradictions, too.
That is what Victor
Paul Wierwille insisted as true. Inerrancy was the foundation of what he called
was his "biblical research." He believed the ONLY way to know God is
through His Word, the Bible, often called the Scriptures.
The following is what
he says about this in his book, Power for Abundant Living (PFAL):
There
is only one author of the Bible and that is God. There are many writers
but only one author. God is the author while Moses wrote, Joshua
wrote...God being Spirit spoke to the spirit upon the holy men and told them
what He wanted said. Then the men of God used their vocabularies in
speaking what God had revealed. The original, God-given Word literally
contained no errors or contradictions. Why? Because God was its
author. Holy men simply wrote down what God revealed to them. This is how we
got the God-breathed Word. (Pg. 79)
Charlene's
thoughts on the topic
The examples
Wierwille used to “prove inerrancy” are many and can be found in his
publications. Attempting to show the gospels do not contradict each other, he
harmonized different accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection, for
instance. Among other things, he taught there were four men crucified with
Christ, not two. This idea is found in the work of E.W. Bullinger, whose books
Wierwille used, often without citing the source.
Wierwille tried to
fit the gospels together as if he were editing scenes for a film.
In my view, the
“film” he produced is actually a fifth gospel that makes VPW’s account appear
as if it is the “real” gospel. By doing that, VPW placed a false halo around
the belief in “inerrancy.”
By creating a
"fifth gospel," VPW reinterpreted what each writer was offering when
they recorded their version of events.
Doing this, he
avoided having to deal with uncomfortable questions about why there are four
different gospels to begin with, how they came into existence, who decided to
include them in most versions of what we call "The Bible" today, and
why they made those decisions.
Instead, he took the
easy way out, and with broad brush strokes, painted the four gospels into one
gospel, explaining away their differences.
I do not think that Wierwille’s
study method respects the gospel texts (written about 35 to 65 years after
Jesus died) as we have them today. It only makes VPW a 20st century
Bible thumper who tries to sound as if he knows what the “real” gospel should
be.
Sources
on inerrancy
For more about
inerrancy and the mirage that it is, check out a couple of my favorite sources:
Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman, and Fundamentalism by James
Barr.
---END---
Charlene L. Edge is
the author of the award-winning memoir, Undertow: My Escape from the
Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International. New Wings Press,
LLC. 2017.
Her most recent book
is From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life. New
Wings Press, LLC. 2022.
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