Charlene Edge in The Way's Rock of Ages 1972 film

Today is the 53rd anniversary of my graduation from The Way Corps leadership program. It is still operating today. 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 who turned out to be a cavalier plagiarist and a sexual predator. 

That program for me was during 1971 - 1973. I was groomed to be a Way leader and biblical researcher in this intense two-year leadership training program called The Way Corps. The Way's founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, trained us himself. I was in the Second Corps group of 10 men, and 9 other women. We lived in trailers for two years at The Way International headquarters in New Knoxville, Ohio. This was the old 147-acre Wierwille family farm where he and his family lived, staff members were housed, and Way Corps worked and studied and obeyed Wierwille, their "father in The Word." 

What could possibly go wrong?

Read my memoir Undertow and find out.

Evidence of Charlene Lamy Edge's involvement with The Way

One piece of evidence of my involvement with The Way is captured on a film by a professional filmmaker, Bud Morgan. He produced it in 1972 when he paid a visit to Way headquarters, mainly to film the annual music and Bible teaching festival that Wierwille called The Rock of Ages. 

On the film, you see young people arriving at the Rock of Ages, Wierwille teaching the Bible, several music groups on stage there, and voice-overs of Way Corps members' testimonies that praise Wierwille's teachings that we called "The Word." These testimonies narrate scenes of First and Second Way Corps members jogging down Wierwille Road one morning. We did that to fulfill one of the Way Corps Principles: "Physical training making your physical body, the vehicle of communication of The Word, as vital as possible."

That group jogging scene is near the beginning of the film. As you watch and listen, when you get to the time 10:43, 44, 45 I appear in my gray sweatsuit running alongside a 2nd Corps guy I ended up marrying in August 1973. Our story is featured in Undertow. We escaped from The Way headquarters in 1987. We divorced in 1991.

Here's the video. Rock of Ages 1972 - YouTube

What I think of that Way Corps principle today: The goal of physical training was to make us better, healthier, stronger agents for selling Wierwille's propaganda. Everything we did was designed to make us more useful to him and his agenda: "move the Word over the world." The Word turned out to be just his interpretation of the Bible, much of which was plagiarized. 

For info on Wierwille's plagiarism, check out Victor Paul Wierwille & Plagiarism.

Thanks for reading,

Charlene

P.S. I changed my last name to Edge when I married my second husband, Hoyt Edge, PhD, in 2002.

Note: I do not use AI for any of my content.


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