The Room Without A View

 

In a previous blog post, I posed the rhetorical question, "What did Herbert W. Armstrong do that was so wrong?"

That post was shared on the Banned By HWA blog (which I HIGHLY recommend you check out at some point) and generated the following comment from one of its readers.

"Tonto said...

The post said...." So, really, what did he do that was so bad?"

MY RESONSE: ARE YOU KIDDING??

* People DIED from the no medical treatment concept, including children!

* Multitudes of happy marriages were wrecked because of D and R

* Retirements and Financial well being were severely wrecked by endless hounding of money.

* A culture of submission and minimizing denied 100s of thousand of people the opportunity to grow , explore and prosper

* The promotion of child abuse and beatings.

AND MANY MORE!

Incidentally, the poster fantasized about "confronting HWA to his face". At least from 1970 on, it was impossible to gain access to HWA face to face. His appearances at the auditorium and at FOT sites , were very carefully laid out, with entry from side door s or from stage sides. I NEVER saw HWA just casually talk with the brethren out in the audience , not even one time. Ted on occasion would do that, but never Herbert. He had an entourage of handlers and body guards to prevent anything even remotely close to the posters imaginations coming true.

July 26, 2019 at 8:05 AM "

 

Obviously this person didn’t catch that my “What did he do that was so bad” question was rhetorical and served the purpose of posing a question that so many people have often asked me if only so that I could answer it in context. 

But that’s not what I want to point out to you.

What I want you to notice is how passionate this person is in even just scratching the surface of what was done to cause irreparable damage to hundreds of thousands of people.

The last thing on the commenter’s list is “the promotion of child abuse and beatings.” I hadn’t planned on getting into this so early in my series, but now I feel that it is something I should at least touch on.

I want to be very clear that was one of the very few incredibly lucky WCG kids that was not beaten. That’s only because my mom wasn’t strong enough to get the job done and I didn’t have a dad in “the Church” to help her do it. I’m sure she thinks that if she HAD been able to give me that level of discipline that I wouldn’t have “strayed from the truth.”

One of the strongest memories I have is of the last spanking I ever received from my mom. I don’t remember what it was for, but I do remember that the pastor told her to hit me with a belt. Luckily my mom didn’t have anything more menacing than a high fashion slender gold colored feminine clothing accessory no wider than a grown man’s index finger. She brought it out and tried hitting me with it. I laughed at her (which made her even angrier) and basically told her, as only a 6 year old can do, to give it her best shot. A few minutes later, exhausted and embarrassed by my continued laughter, she gave up and never tried to spank me again. My sister rarely if ever required spanking because

1. As the “first born” she had special privileges and different expectations.

and

2. She honestly wanted to be just like her mother in every possible way that she could.

So that’s why we weren’t physically abused like so many of the other kids at church were. And I knew that my mom (even though she never even came close to saying it out loud) recognized that by being expected not to remarry after she and my dad divorced, she was also being excused from the physical abuse that she should be expecting from her husband.

Now it’s time to talk about the Mother's Room.

First, a little bit of background.

The Worldwide Church of God only owned a handful of physical properties and church buildings. Its members almost always met in a wide variety of rented facilities (because "the people make the church" and thus don't need dedicated buidings). WCG members that lived anywhere too far from WCG HQ in Pasadena, California or the Ambassador College in Big Sandy, Texas had their weekly church services in literally tens of thousands of different locations over the years.

I remember lots of different places that the WCG used for church services when I was little. There was my favorite place, The Garden Center, located in Downtown Dallas, Texas,  very close to the Aquarium. The Garden Center was amazingly beautiful. (I remember lush beautiful plants everywhere, huge floor to celing windows, outdoor gardens, water features… oh man it was so perfect. Sometimes there would be a wedding ceremony with a potluck reception and dancing after church services were over. Those Saturdays were the best!) But for whatever reason, the rental agreement ended and we moved on to other spaces for our unusually long Saturday services. I remember several school auditoriums and/or gymnasiums, a Chiropractic college that was formerly a Baptist church, a few other places that I was too young to identify, and the place I hated the most out of all of them, the VFW event hall.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I sang "Blessed and Happy Is the Man" in that God forsaken building...

The DFW VFW Events Hall rented by the WCG for Sabbath services for a segment of the DFW congregation

All of these places were distinctly different and had their own features that the WCG congregation would adapt to their own needs. One feature that you could ALWAYS find in every rented WCG space around the world was something called “The Mother’s Room.” 

Even just thinking about the term “Mother’s Room” puts a knot in my stomach and I get an overwhelming desire to crawl under the nearest table and hide.

The Mother’s Room was a place to be used exclusively for the following 3 activities.

1. Changing diapers

2. Nursing infants

3. Beating children (way beyond what would be considered a "normal spanking")

Picture a stuffy unventilated room that reeked of breast milk, a hundred dirty diapers, and was full of the sounds of angry women’s voices, the smacking of wood on bare skin, and children screaming in pain and terror.

If you think it sounds like the stuff of nightmares, you’re right.

 I still have nightmares about it.

Most of the kids at church got hit with a bible or a hymnal at least a few times. We all knew that we deserved to be hit, although we were rarely clear on why. Making noise during the service, running around the hall before or after the service, or failing to have your Y.E.S. (Youth Educational Services) bible lessons fully completed seemed to be the most common offenses. And if you didn’t shape up after a trip to the Mother’s Room, then your Dad would take you to the Men’s bathroom (if it wasn’t in use by other men) or out to the car for some "real discipline" that was beyond what your mom was physically capable of delivering.

Wives almost always received their “corrections” at home after services, but were sometimes "corrected" in the parking lots alongside the children.

Usually those "corrections" were related to the misbehavior of the children at church, but they might just as easily have been for looking at another man in the congregation the wrong way or even just because the minister spoke in his sermon about how important it was a man to "leave no doubt about who is in charge" of his family  And then, as if that weren’t enough, there was always a good dose of “gaslighting” for mom and the kids from dads, who got it from the pastors, who got it from HQ in Pasadena. 

There was an actual flow chart to help you know your place in the hierarchy.

Herbert left no doubt as to the power structure in his "church."

I think what’s really the most challenging part of it all is coming to accept that not only are the people who did these things NEVER going to apologize for them, but they aren’t even going to acknowledge that they even happened.

My entire childhood was shrouded in secrecy and deception. The only way that I know that I’m safe, sane, and not going to suffer at the hands of an angry and vengeful and seemingly insane God is through the stories told by others who made it out and remember what happened to them too.

And again, I want to be perfectly clear… 

I was one of the very lucky few who weren’t hit with bibles or oversized homemade wooden paddles (the handles of which were left prominently sticking out of the tops of diaper bags to serve as a "reminder to behave").

 I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of hell those kids experienced. What I do know is that the thought of living one day in their houses was both my fantasy and my nightmare at the same time. I always wanted to live someone else’s life, but I never forgot how lucky I was that my mom was so obsessed with staying so slender and feminine that she was utterly incapable of physical violence. I didn't know or understand back then that verbal abuse and neglect were anything other than normal parenting. 

If you were one of those kids and you’re reading this now as a survivor, please know that I heard your screams. I still cry for what was done to you. It was real and your mind didn’t just make up that story and that memory wasn't planted in your head by demons to hurt someone or make them feel or look bad. 

What happened to you was wrong, they knew it was wrong but went through with it anyway because they believed that it was necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven and/or be spared from the tribulation. Their misguided attempts at salvation only served to perpetuate the worst kind of darkness and fear. 

These days, I'm quite happy to say that memberships of the splinter groups are dwindling more each year  The echoes of Armstrongism are dying out, and with them the sanctioned and promoted horrors of "The Mother's Room" are vanishing as well.

So let me ask the (rhetorical) question again.

What did Herbert W Armstrong do that was so wrong?

I think, if I had to sum it all up in one short statement it would be this…

Herbert W Armstrong used fear as a weapon to commit armed robbery. He was, in essence, a spiritual and financial terrorist.

In his wake he left millions of broken people who had been terrorized to the point that they would do ANYTHING to get to the “Place of Safety.” 

Remember, Herbert Armstrong openly admitted to the YEARS he sexually abused his daughter Dorothy multiple times. He didn't deny it even once. His admission is even included in the documents of his divorce from his 2nd wife. When confronted, Herbert would say that, "there were times that I wasn't as close to God as I could have been."

This man, whom so many followed so blindly, was given the power to dictate how tens of thousands of women and children should be made to suffer.

 We are so lucky that Herbert only wanted wanted money and status. He could have made his followers into killers if that's what he had wanted. Not anywhere close to all baptized members, but enough to make Jonestown look like a minor traffic accident.

People ate only what Herbert gave them permission to eat. Made love to with their spouse in strict accordance with Herbert's book about sex. They only wore the clothes he said were proper, at home, school, and sabbath services. The only secular songs allowed were songs from musicals and traditional "Barber Shop Quartet" style tunes sung by the "Young Ambassadors."  And above all, they only spent their money in a way that Herbert said that they could. 
He absolutely owned the minds, bodies, and wills of tens of thousands of people around the world and he could make them do anything he wanted in order to save themselves from the horrors of the tribulation and the lake of fire.

If you’re reading this and it means something to you in any way, please take a moment to comment and let others know that they aren't alone in what they remember.

Please share your memories of what your experience was in the Worldwide Church of God.

There are so many people like me who fight their way out of the darkness only to be overwhelmed and confused by the brightness of the light. It helps to hear the voices of those who remember what it was like to live in the dark shadow of Herbert Armstrong's toxic model of morality.