Who Is Strong?

This post was first published on 9/21/2025 on my personal blog at https://charleneedge.com.

Greetings, readers! I hope this finds you doing well. I’m okay, but these days I’m flashing back to many alarming times I experienced in a cult. This time of year, I tend to reflect on the last stages of writing and publishing my cult memoir, Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International, which came out in November 2016. Today, I’m sharing the first few statements from the Preface in Undertow (at the end of this post, after some initial thoughts). These statements put a chill in my heart, striking me to the core even after all these years since the damaging events happened that I describe in my book.

In my memoir, you meet and hear from an authoritarian, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985), founder of The Way International™(1916-1985). The Way is the fundamentalist Bible cult I was in for 17 years (1970-1987), and it’s still in business today. Why? How did an authoritarian narcissist like Wierwille get and hold power for so long (about 40 years), and how and why does The Way today attract followers, given it venerates Wierwille?

For one thing, vulnerable people (all of us at one time or another) usually seek assurance, help, and direction from those they think are “strong.” And The Way faithfully promotes Wierwille as their strong “man of God.” Undertow gives you the background on how this came to be.

The question is: what is strength?

We usually assess people according to our values, and that includes deciding who is a strong person. Perhaps you follow, emulate, and obey that person—who may even appear heroic to you. You are loyal to them come hell or high water, even when it’s not in your best interest, even when you see them hurting other people, maybe even when you know they lie. You may not recognize that person for who they really are until after you’ve adored them a long time and start seeing cracks in their façade of strength, relinquish your fantasy about them, and finally reject their influence over you. I am living proof of that.

Whether these statements and the ones in the Preface chill you like they do me, I don’t know. But I do know and can assure you of this: the harm I reveal in Undertow would not have happened without an authoritarian leader who on the surface seemed charming but used his power to control sincere followers. He would gaslight them continually. He fired staff he suspected were not loyal to him, publicly shamed, ridiculed, and/or demonized people who questioned him, and behind the scenes sexually abused many women.

You’ll understand what I mean when you read Undertow.

From the Preface of Undertow

In its heyday in the 1980s, The Way International™ was one of the largest fundamentalist cults in America, with about forty thousand followers worldwide. Founded in 1942 by a self-proclaimed prophet, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916–1985), who marketed the group as a biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry, The Way still operates in the shadow of its dark history. I knew Wierwille personally. As one of his biblical research assistants and ministry leaders, I am a witness to his charisma, as well as his abuse of power and manipulation of Scriptures to serve his own agenda. I discovered his sexual abuse of women and chronic plagiarism. Today, those underbelly facts are hidden, denied, or otherwise squelched. The years of Wierwille’s authoritarian reign and the chaos after his death provide the context of my story.

—END—

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Who Is Strong? | Charlene L. Edge

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Thanks for reading!

Your writer on the wing,

Charlene

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