Book review by Barbara Buzzard
I was asked to do this review. It has been very painful. We have known many ex-Way people who have either not known about the hideous practices of the Way International (once considered the 2nd largest cult in the U.S.), or did not want to know or in some way defended it. But unless you admit that you have been scammed or deceived, where is the discernment that is required of us? And do you not owe a debt of responsibility to save others from the same fate? There is a saying to the effect that not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until/unless it is faced.
And so here is a snapshot of the cult leader, V.P. Wierwille, guru of some 40,000 victims in The Way’s heyday. You should know that Wierwille sided with neo-Nazis in denying the Holocaust and put Jews at the top of his hate list. He became famous for the slogan “Word Over the World” (albeit a perverted “word”) and controlled people in 50 states, six continents and 40 countries.
“People join cults because they cross paths with cultists who single them out for attention, love, a hug, a sales pitch. The recruiters are victims themselves, normal people who were taken in by other recruiters and expertly trained to use the same tactics that worked so well for them.”
The Way classes were based on information overload. Some describe the experience as the mind going comatose, being bombarded and having no time to think or consider, being “tranced out.” “I quickly accepted what I was told. When the voice on the cassette claimed he was a Greek scholar, I’d believe it. When he’d explain passages in the Bible, I’d accept it…But looking back, I realize there was no message. The message was mind control.”
Cigarettes and even joints were often a part of this.
Speaking in Tongues Was Mandatory
A class was considered a failure (and there were to be none of those!) unless each student spoke in tongues at the end. Our author said to another student after that experience: “Guess what? You don’t have to believe God raised Jesus Christ from the dead to speak in tongues.”
“I know,” she said.
“Speaking in tongues is easy, if you can force yourself to speak gibberish. With no thought for how foolish you sound, you push syllables out of your mouth that link up to form nonsense words, a string of which will make a whole sentence of gobbledygook. Keep this up and you can speak volumes.”
It Gets Worse – a Sinister Way
(Believe it or not, I am sparing you the worst.) It was made plain to author Kahler when he was a student that any kind of cuddling, hugging or kissing inside “the family” was not only allowable but encouraged. But even this did not pave the way to imagine what went on in the leadership.
As per the author, “The Way’s crime is not unorthodox teaching; it’s murder of the mind. The Way erases people’s identities and gives them new ones. It takes away everything they believed previously and replaces it with what The Way wants them to believe.”
Kahler summarizes: “Dr. Wierwille was a spiritual quack whose doctorate came from a degree mill and whose ordination was revoked by the church that gave it to him. He liked to be called ‘the man of God,’ though after his death he would be called ‘egomaniac,’ ‘paranoid’ and ‘sex addict.’ He claimed that God audibly promised to teach him the Word as it hadn’t been known since the first century, yet he was a renowned plagiarist and a laughable Greek scholar.”
Kahler reasons that Wierwille “found his shtick” in coming to the conclusion that you are in control when speaking in tongues and exhibiting the other gifts, i.e. not the holy spirit, but you. He applied this false logic to the other gifts, the commonly used phrase being “all nine all the time.”
Kahler says: “I took the Intermediate Class and learned to interpret tongues and prophesy. (The secret, though no one would ever admit it, is you make it all up.)”
Follow the “Man of God,” Right or Wrong
Wierwille and the ‘60s were made for each other. “He had been bucking the establishment his whole life, and now the nation’s young were catching on to what he knew all along: the establishment was one big counterfeit.”22 And so the hippies provided just the audience that he needed, rather like harnessing a tidal wave. He hijacked the Jesus Movement. There would be Bibles on laps, with owners spaced out on drugs. He apparently liked and later used this model of love (!?), sex and drugs, creating “groovy” Christians. The girls were taught to be harlots and the men adulterous.
Many slogans were invented around that time, the creepiest being: “Follow the man of God, right or wrong.” As Kahler says, the kids were attracted by grace but as soon as they were “in” Wierwille pulled it back and put them under the law, in keeping with his megalomaniacal and egomaniacal tyrannical style.
Please know that at this point that I was forcing myself to keep going with this book. It was like a nightmare that I just wanted to be over, and I wanted to see our main character out of harm’s way. And also I thought that I should plow through it so that you wouldn’t have to. There are about 300 pages in the book.
After the first 100 pages, I thought, This is nuts! After 200 pages, I thought, This is sick! After 300 pages, I thought, No, this is really filthy!
So please do not read this book unless you are one who still defends Wierwille or his Way or some part of it that you liked. Remember, even a broken clock is right twice a day. The man apparently had a voracious appetite for flesh, a quality which he recommended for his ministerial leaders. He is described by those who knew him as an unhinged bully with a vastly swollen head, hurting everyone he met.
Did you know that there was a bomb-proof bunker at their headquarters, stocked with gold and silver, “all kinds of survival equipment, armaments you wouldn’t believe, Uzis, various kinds of shotguns, long-range rifles, grenade launchers, plastic explosives, a lot of explosives”?
Craig Martindale was reported to have said that there were thousands of weapons hidden in stockpiles in Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico and California. A sort of warfare school was started in order to prepare for the apocalypse.
“Tactics, not beliefs, make a cult a cult. And The Way met every test.”
“Charismatic leader who claimed to have a special connection to God? Check. Blind following who believed his every word was revelation? Check. Drastic personality change in new members, who are then separated from their families and warned against them? Check. Every aspect of followers’ lives directed and controlled by their leaders? Check.”And so on.
What Makes a False Prophet?
“On at least three occasions in the late 1970s, Wierwille predicted a national emergency on the scale of a communist takeover — and then claimed the prayer and believing of The Way had averted it.” (Clever.)
Also in 1979 he told the Corps to get their guns and prepare to defend against a nuclear attack. When it didn’t happen, he told them that it was the speaking in tongues which prevented it!
How the Cult Dynamic Works
Nine Way Corps members were asked: “If Dr. Wierwille were to hand you a machine gun and order you to kill your fellow members, would you do it?” Four answered yes. Kahler reports that the Kansas City Star spoke to “former Way members who say without hesitation they gladly would have killed anyone, including their own parents, if Mr. Wierwille had asked.”
One of the women involved with Wierwille says that 2 Peter 2 in the Living Bible describes him brilliantly: “They are a disgrace and a stain among you, deceiving you by living in foul sin on the side while they join your love feasts as though they were honest men. No woman can escape their sinful stare, and of adultery they never have enough. They make a game of luring unstable women.” She continues: “Forget the spiritual side—he was sick…He was a male nymphomaniac.” It is said that he died a tormented man.
Kahler quotes John Lynn as saying: “More than one woman has personally told me that Dr. Wierwille taught her, verbally and by example, that sex outside of marriage is not only permissible, but profitable.”
Lynn continues in an Overview of Events: “There’s no way I could begin to remember 10 percent of the horror stories that I have heard about him…I’m talking sexual abuse…Hollywood would not believe it…I know he was perverted…an insatiable sex addict.” (And there are other mentions of leaders with similar perversions.) Toward the demise of the Way, some in the leadership actually began looking into whether adultery was forbidden in Scripture. Seriously? (I couldn’t make this stuff up!)
A Sordid Way
I knew that this had to be coming and I can’t begin to tell you how I dreaded it. But with the multiple thousands of cases of approved and recommended adultery, the Way insisted that abortion was not murder. I wept as I read about this. It is truly heartbreaking. Abortion was a way of life, routine and common in The Way. The leader and his disciples were monsters in advocating the dismemberment or poisoning of an innocent and vulnerable child.
A Vile Way
Kahler has woven his own personal story into his description of The Way. I wish that he had not included his own sexual exploits. He comes out of The Way as an unbeliever, in my view scarred and defiled by all that he saw and experienced. He is certainly a bright journalist. Perhaps he has performed a service in informing all those who didn’t know. He has certainly revealed the grotesque and revolting behavior of the leaders. If only one fraction of it is true…
And where was Mrs. Wierwille in all this?! Had she only shouted and screamed and blown the whistle, she might have saved thousands of women from abuse! (Extracts from the book show that she knew; indeed, Kahler says, everybody knew.) What a ghastly tragedy that she failed to save so many from the horrible pain they endured. Any attempt to defend this depravity becomes as the depravity itself. So says Proverbs 17:15: “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.” Good people are not allowed to remain silent in the face of evil. I am so very, very sorry for all who got caught up in this, who have suffered so terribly. Some committed suicide; others left with agonizing memories. There were good, naïve people who became embroiled in this. My heart breaks for them — they were tormented, abused and defiled. And I grieve for all those who have been put off any nuggets of truth they might have learned by the disgrace and ill repute that this charlatan has brought, and for any truths that were sullied by contact with this group.
A Depraved Way
What went wrong? I humbly suggest that what was missing was conversion. I am not sure that the word was ever mentioned. Yes, they worked the Word but they perverted it. The Word was not sacred, not holy, but a thing to be used. There was no repentance! There was just license to sin. Instead of victory over sin, sin was indulged in. As the saying went, they “sinned up a storm.” All the crassness, filth, vulgarity and immorality of the culture was incorporated into the foundation of this movement. Their devotion to the false notion of “once saved, always saved” blinded them to the Scriptures. Their denial of baptism blinded them to repentance.
To have created a church without repentance and conversion is to have created something foreign to Scripture, with the exception of the Matthew 7:21 false variety. And according to the pattern in Romans 10:14 — how could the members repent and be converted without this message being preached to them?
The spiritual darkness present in The Way makes the current sexual harassment accusations in the media, in Hollywood and in Congress look almost Pollyannaish. “If the light in you is darkness, what awful darkness that is!” (Matt. 6:23b).
Addendum
While I have reviewed what is written in this book I cannot corroborate those allegations. It appears, however, that the leaders chosen by Wierwille have, in fact, written very similar stories, as have other former members. I am happy to report that The Way currently is only a shadow of its former self.
Another book describing life in The Way comes highly recommended:
Losing the Way: A Memoir of Longing, Manipulation, Abuse and Escape by Kristen Skedgell. An excerpt follows:
“I remember one incident vividly in which I questioned ‘the Doctor,’ the leader of the group, about the ethicalness of his behavior. He quoted Scripture and explained that I needed to be ‘spiritually mature’ to understand. The Doctor taught that if one’s mind was pure enough, one could do anything with one’s body. God did not care about the flesh. The sexual needs of the leaders were to be satisfied by females who were submitting to ‘the will of God’. He commanded me to keep our sexual encounters in the ‘lockbox of my soul’ — never to be spoken of or revealed to anyone else. ‘What if someone finds out?’ I asked naively. ‘Why, I’d lie,’ he said.
“Trauma experts have long advocated the necessity of ‘bearing witness’ to one’s abuse. Why? Because truth is acknowledged and affirmed in the context of community. Personal truth becomes understood when it is spoken.”
