Greetings, subscribers and other readers who stumble across this website. By now, you have probably noticed I have a book in the making. It’s my very personal story of seventeen years in The Way International, a biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry that became one of the largest fundamentalist cults in America in its heyday of the 80s. I met many good people at The Way and you’ll meet some of them in my book soon.
Ever since I launched this website in March 2015, I’ve written many posts about cults and fundamentalism. Today, I just want to make some points clear for those of you who have never come in contact with any Way people before.
Good people in The Way
First, not all Way followers treated outsiders or insiders badly, at least while I was in the group. Most people who left, however, were considered influenced by the Devil. Not all Way people tricked recruits into joining just to get their money, either. Most of us really believed The Way had the methods of getting the right interpretation of the Bible (termed “the accuracy of the Word”) and offered great fellowship with loving believers, so we genuinely recruited others from a good place in our hearts. The most loyal of us believed we followed “the man of God for our day and time,” Victor Paul Wierwille. He died in 1985.
Most Way folks had good intentions about helping people, many desired to serve God in every way, and others sought a godly cause to live for. However, I now consider even the most sincere of Way followers (then and now) as misguided, deceived, and in some cases … gulp … brainwashed. Myself included. Thankfully, with help from many folks, I’ve learned to sort the good from the bad over the years, and am still doing it. My book, Undertow, tells a lot of my story. But the sorting and learning will never be over, even after Undertow is published, which will be soon after the elections next week.
In my book, Undertow, you will meet many good people I knew at The Way. Some who have left are still my friends.
Believe me, I’m more than grateful for this chance to tell my story (many others cannot or will not or just don’t know how to do it). I’m also unimaginably thankful I chose to publish it myself (that’s another story!) with the help of talented experts.
Question: What is one major problem that caused me to leave The Way and that persists to this day, since The Way is still around?
Here’s my answer: The Way insists that the only way to know God, at least their notion of who or what God is, is through knowledge of the Bible. Therefore, the more Bible knowledge you have, the better you know God.
Problems with that answer involve issues like, what are we really referring to when we say the word God? Which version of the Bible are you talking about? What do we know about the material in the Bible and who wrote it? Isn’t the Bible written by and for people who lived long ago? Is the Bible true? What is truth? Does the Bible really have to be “perfect?” like Victor Paul Wierwille, founder of The Way, said? What parts of the Bible are still good-to-go, if you’ll pardon the expression?
I do not know the answers to all of those questions, but I think they are worth asking. They were part of my journey out of The Way. Undertow not only tells my personal story, it sheds some light on those issues, especially in the last part of the book.
If you missed the info about ordering a copy of Undertow, look at the end of this post. Reading online is not one of my favorite things to do, so I don’t blame you if you want me to hurry up and finish this post. If you have read this far, I am very grateful for your attention!
Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of
The Way International
When is Undertow for sale?
Subscribe to blog posts to find out when you can get Undertow on this website. There will be a PayPal button on the home page for easy ordering.
Special offer for customers in the USA
For the first 30 days, order directly from me at this website and receive a signed copy. We expect to get it to you by Christmas.
What about overseas customers?
Soon after Undertow’s release date, anyone, including overseas customers, can place orders with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many more vendors. Stay tuned to this website for that information.
Who cares about Undertow?
“Edge has written a timely and compelling story about the power of words to seduce, to betray, and ultimately, in her case, to save. Avoiding tabloid cult tropes, Edge instead reveals, with maturity, honesty, and insight, the ways that fundamentalist groups twist the very words that honest seekers of truth believe. That she sought religious truth, worked in The Way’s Research Department to discover the truth, and ultimately became a writer to tell the truth, strikes me as perfectly poetic coincidence.”—Robyn Allers, author and journalist
P.S. In August 2019, I edited this post to remove references to a website where former Way followers shared stories. I did this for privacy reasons.
Billy Williams
In my opinion, saying that there were good people in a cult, that there were some fun events, even that there were some good teachings, does not in the least water down the label. My reasoning? Most people involved (maybe all?) hook up because they see good things. They don’t have to be physically roped in. The good we know (or think we know) and see leads us eventually, through the group’s teachings, to the idea that all is good.
I was on an ex-cult forum years ago in which someone always carried the tag “The most dangerous lie is that which most closely resembles the truth”. We wind up accepting abuse from leaders (and giving it out when we reach that plateau) because, through the good things, we eventually become convinced that all is good. If something doesn’t seem good, then it is only because we don’t understand the reason, so we must continue to learn and make ourselves more holy, more Godlike.
It was easy to get like this in The Way. Outside the Way Corps, you get ingrained with the idea that people and fellowships and other meetings are wholesome and normal. We were not leaders and not “spiritual” enough to understand the things that went on at higher levels. That is why, once we got into the Way Corps, we came across lockboxes. We were now (or becoming) spiritual enough to understand, for example, how a “woman of God”‘s duty was to satisfy the “Man of God”, but we dare not try to explain that outside the Corps in twig fellowship; that would be like feeding filet mignon to an infant, or something like that.
It all started with the good appearance on the outside. Some of that good appearing stuff had to be real; and convincing.
Charlene L. Edge
Hi Billy,
Thank you for posting your thoughts here and on other posts. It’s interesting that you say this:
“In my opinion, saying that there were good people in a cult, that there were some fun events, even that there were some good teachings, does not in the least water down the label.”
I could not agree more. Cult activity has to do with the way critical thinking is discouraged, how the leader motivates with fear, how dissenters are labeled as working for the devil, and many other controls on behavior and thought that are accepted by the group because they think the leader is “of God,” and they get used for his propaganda purposes. Corruption of the leader is hidden from view to the majority of followers. Of course some of the good was real … plenty of good-intentioned people really did love each other, respect each other, help each other in times of need. That’s why the cult experience is so complicated. Sorting the good from the manipulative. Sorting the real love of people for who they were, not for what they believed. What I’ve noticed is that in cults like The Way, the end justified the means. Wierwille collected people, he did not let them grow into who they were, but rather into his puppets. Thank goodness we got out. Literally. Goodness from a real friend helped me escape.