Charlene Lamy Edge Speaks about The Way International

  Greetings, readers! We're still celebrating ten years of Undertow's story in the world. Today, I send a million thanks to all the good, thoughtful, and intelligent people who read the manuscript back in 2016 and made time to craft their responses to the story. I'm honored by the careful attention they gave it, and for the instructive insights they shared. And I'm grateful to them because they took a risk: they stuck out their necks to help me promote this disturbing story of cult deception and abuse. If you care about my story and the sorts of people who found it worthwhile enough to blurb it, read on. But first... What I tell people about Undertow I wrote this book to educate, inspire, and heal others. Undertow is the only memoir by a former Way leader who was also a biblical researcher trained by The Way’s founder himself, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985). I was committed to Wierwille's fundamentalist cult for seventeen years (1970-1987). Why do I say The Wa...

Photo by Charlene Edge Greetings, readers. The following essay is about love. I post it here because it conveys some things about how my experiences in The Way affected me. I wrote it in 1990. Maybe its value to you, readers, is that it shows what happened to me soon AFTER I escaped the cult in 1987. I haven't posted much about that, about how I "deprogrammed" myself from Victor Paul Wierwille's cult. Note : I do not use AI to compose anything I write.  About Love: A Conversation In December 1990, I was on the verge of divorce. Despite unimaginable stress at home, for a college class final project, I managed to write about the assigned topic: love. That collapsing marriage, my first one, was to a man I met in the fundamentalist cult, The Way, when I was eighteen and he was twenty. Our cult-saturated union ended in April 1991 when I was 39 years old. Divorce wasn’t easy, like most people tell you, and for me it had been a longtime coming. If you’ve read my memoir...

THe following Endorsements are found in the front pages of the book, Undertow . Praise for Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International “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 tr...

First, a few words about Undertow If you’re not acquainted with my story in Undertow , here’s a section from the Preface of my book: 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. Former Way devotees endorse Underto...

Greetings, readers. Do you know a "high-control" group or a cult when you see one? From my 17-year experience in The Way International™, founded by Victor Paul Wierwille (1961-1985), I know first-hand what it's like to be in one of those groups. Their leaders, like Wierwille, and their recruiters, engage in usurping your life, not respecting personal boundaries, and making you feel powerless. They reinterpret this behavior to mean it's what God wants. This post gives helpful hints to avoid that trap. First, below is a valuable summary of such a group's tactics. It's published in the newsletter "Cult NEWS 101." One of the editors of the newsletter is Patrick Ryan. Years ago, Patrick provided a promotional "blurb" for my cult memoir, Undertow . At the end of this post, you can read the blurb.  Below that you'll find a great description of "reality bending" and the link to the Substack article where I found it. CultNEWS101 Articl...

Greetings. If you're a reader who appreciates Undertow , today we continue celebrating its upcoming10th birthday by revisiting a breathtaking moment back in 2017 . Enjoy this blast from the past! 8/7/2017 How do you spell 'honored'? B-O-O-K  A-W-A-R-D. Undertow just won a Gold medal! I'm still weeping with joy. All my thanks go to Team Undertow : editors Mary Ann De Stefano and Alice Peck, copy editor Ruth Mullen, book designer Duane Stapp, artist Rachel Chase, all the "first readers," memoir professor Lezlie Laws, PhD, experts and authors who provided "blurbs," and my husband, Hoyt Edge, PhD, for his magic, love, and those home-cooked meals he put together for this writer when he preferred to watch basketball. I love you! For the record, books were judged by librarians--oh how we revere them. Here's the official announcement. Photo gallery below. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ken Johnson, Committee Chairman Florida Authors and Publ...

Hi, readers! Thanks for joining me in my continuing celebration of Undertow's 10th birthday coming up this November. That's when we sold it on my website and many readers got signed copies then. That offer continued for one month, then we "went live" on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online vendors. Undertow is still out there for sale in paperback (List price: $24.95) and eBook (List price: $9.99). Don't pay more! There are suspicious sellers asking for more, even for my second book, From the Porch to the Page .  What is in Undertow is not the whole story Undertow could not be "the whole story." Lots of events were left out. The story told in Undertow had to have a focus, a theme supported by particular, relevant scenes about salient events, etc. That took some heavy hours of contemplation and countless hours of editing, since the whole story about those seventeen years would have spanned who knows how many volumes and would have taken me...

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). She spent 17 years (1970-1987) in The Way as a leader and Biblical researcher trained by the founder of The Way himself: Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985).  In 1987, she escaped the cult's headquarters in New Knoxville, Ohio, where she worked as a member of the Biblical Research team. Years later in Florida, she earned a B.A. in English from Rollins College, graduating summa cum laude  (1994). Her writing career includes more than decade of work as a technical writer and proposal writer in the software industry.  A member of the Florida Writers Association, the Authors Guild, and the International Cultic Studies Association, Edge is also a prize-winning poet. She lives in Florida with her husband, Hoyt L. Edge, Rollins College Professor Emeritus of Philosophy.     More on Edge's ...