The Worldwide Church of God and Racism : a Correspondence with

Herman Hoeh in 2004

By Neotherm

March 5, 2008

"Cruelty is clever where goodness is imbecile"

-- John Updike, The Centaur

 

Introduction

 

When I was working on the Ambassador College (AC) campus in Big Sandy, Texas campus back in the Seventies, a couple of books were popular among some of the students.  The books were “Letters to Philip” and “Letters to Karen” by Charlie Shedd, a Presbyterian Pastor.  The books were collections of letters to Shedd’s son and daughter about how to have a happy and loving marriage.  For the readers of Shedd’s “Letters” at AC and others affected by the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong, there was an equally important collection of letters that needed to be read.  These collections would be exchanges with the “founding fathers” of Armstrongism concerning the origin and development of ideology in the Worldwide Church of God.  But a forum that would permit such exchanges did not and could not exist at that time, because of the nature of the organizational government in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), and these collections were never written.  In an attempt to capture some of this unwritten knowledge, at this late date, I engaged in a correspondence with Herman Hoeh in early 2004 about the origin and development of racism in the Worldwide Church of God.  

 

I was intrigued with how racism found its way into the Worldwide Church of God.  It then occurred to me that racism may have entered through the personal viewpoints of those people who were the early architects of WCG and Ambassador College (AC).  They simply created a belief that reflected what they already absorbed from American society. On the other hand, racism may have been introduced through Biblical exegesis gone wrong.   What was its origin?  The person who was closest to this issue, who was also an architect of the WCG belief system and who was present to see the development of ideas from the beginning was Herman Hoeh.  So I wanted to pose this question to him.

 

Notice that this inquiry assumed that there was racism within the WCG.  Many WCG members at that time and this would take exception to that idea.  But to analyze this we must inevitably turn to the powerful influence of British-Israelism on the belief system of the WCG. Upon inquiry, WCG members would agree that the northwest European people of Britain and the United States are the chosen people of God.  They would also grant that these people are intended to be the leaders among nations.  They would also assert that the “gentiles” had hardened hearts and did not have the same compassion and humaneness as people of “Israelitish” heritage.   They would point out the “blessings of the womb” among the Israelitish people to support the idea that “Israelites” had superior offspring. When all these factors and many others unwritten here are taken together, they amount to racism.  These beliefs produce the attitudes of racism and the actions of racism.  But WCG members of that time would assert that these ideas are not racism but are Biblical and represent the viewpoint of God.  But Christ said that you will know the tree by its fruit.  If it behaves like racism, it is racism.

 

Back some years ago, I wrote a letter to Garner Ted Armstrong about racism.  Garner Ted Armstrong was a distant cousin of mine.  He wrote me a cordial letter back and said that he was thinking of writing a novel about our Quaker ancestors.  I had heard that Herbert W. Armstrong had a distinct disliking for Native Americans.  My mother was a Native American and for that reason I am a member of a Plains Indian Tribe.  I asked Ted about his Dad’s views on Native Americans.  Ted said that to his knowledge his Dad had no prejudices against Native Americans.  I also inquired about racism.  It was interesting that Ted did not deny that racism existed in the WCG but he felt that racism in the WCG was a by product of the belief in British-Israelism.   If someone as close to the foundation of the WCG belief system as Garner Ted Armstrong felt that there was racism in the WCG, it is a subject worth examining.

 

I hoped to initiate an e-mail correspondence with Herman Hoeh but could not locate his e-mail address.  I knew that Ron Kelly was in Pasadena and I imagined that his office was not far from Herman Hoeh’s office.   So I guessed at Ron Kelly’s e-mail address and was lucky.  I asked Ron Kelly how I might get an e-mail message to Herman Hoeh.  He said that Hoeh preferred not to deal with computers but that he would print out a message and hand carry it to Hoeh.

 

What you will find in this document is the exchange that I had with Hoeh.  At the time that this exchange took place, Hoeh had already made the transition to orthodox Christianity and was a member of the post-1995 WCG.  I felt that my chances were excellent to get good honest answers to these difficult questions. 

 

Now that Dr. Herman Hoeh and his wife are deceased, I feel it is appropriate for this material to become a part of the historical record.

 

The First Letter

 

This e-mail was sent to Ron Kelly and he printed it and took it to Dr. Hoeh.   The essay entitled “Advocacy of Genocide”, I intended to be provocative treatment of this issue.  It was published on the web some years before by Mark Tabladillo and seemed like a good way to evoke a response from Hoeh.  The essay assumes knowledge of WCG beliefs because the audience for Tabladillo’s forum consisted principally of WCG members and ex-WCG members.

When I worked at Ambassador College (AC), Big Sandy back in the Seventies, a few AC students persecuted me because of my Native American heritage. I refer to this briefly in the essay below. The students were fond of reminding me that I was someone who should not exist because Native Americans should have been exterminated. At a Friday evening Bible Study in the AC Field House, in this same time frame, someone sent up a question to Ron Dart asking whether Native Americans should have been exterminated. Ron Dart took a progressive stance on this issue and replied that if God had wanted Native Americans to be exterminated, he would have sent a prophet to Washington, D.C. and would have revealed extermination as his will.

Dart's response would be an inadequate answer for most followers of Herbert W. Armstrong. They would refer to God's clear command in Genesis and would question Dart's authority to draw a conclusion in contravention to this clear command. Both Ron Dart and my student persecutors believed in carrying over Old Testament prescriptions into New Testament practice. Dart just drew the line at a place that excluded genocide. The students who persecuted me would have drawn the line at a different place that included genocide. This controversy could exist because Armstrongism provides no comprehensive criteria for determining what of the Old Testament is still in force. So implicit in this account is the larger question, for Armstrongites, that will not be addressed here, of what should be included and what should be excluded when merging parts of the Old Testament into New Testament practice.

 

Mr. Hoeh:

      To my knowledge, of the principal architects of Armstrongism, only two, you and Ron Kelly, have made the transition to Christianity.   I have always wondered to what degree, back in our former Armstrongite history, people like you actually understood the impact of their declarations on the average lay member.  Was there an "Ivory Tower" affect -- a kind of a disconnect between Armstrongism at the theoretical and ideological level and Armstrongism as implemented by the organization in the "local areas."  Many in the WCG have used this rationale to protect the memory of Herbert W. Armstrong.

     This affected me personally and has sharpened my interest in this topic.  When I first began attending the WCG in Wichita, Kansas back in 1969, Volumes 1 and 2 of The Compendium of World History, with green covers, were in the WCG library.  They were ragged and fingerprinted and apparently had been gone over thoroughly during the previous years.  Many lay members I spoke with could recite loudly ideas that came from this two volumes, though in many cases not accurately.

     I took exception to some of the material in the Compendium back then because I felt like it was pseudo-history, lacking substantive foundation,  rather than history.  I spoke with Dean Blackwell about this back in about 1974 on the Big Sandy campus.  His best response was that the Compendium should not have been made available to lay members and that I should never have had access to it.  No access, no problem.

     The ethnocentricity of the Compendium was startling as I consider it from 2004.  Back in 1974, it seemed much more acceptable.  But all of this "history" was translated into policy and action in local WCG organizations.  (I believe other documents and articles that you wrote on racial relations formed an important part of the implementation in the WCG world, not just the Compendium alone.)  Please view the link below to get a flavor of what I mean.  This is something that I wrote concerning my experiences and was posted on the web some years back:

      <See the essay below entitled the Advocacy of Genocide.  In the e-mail sent to R. Kelly this was hyperlinked at this point.  Ron Kelly cut it and pasted it to make an integrated document for Hoeh.>


      Were you aware that your historical companion works to the Bible had this kind of impact on people's lives?  I believe racism still lingers in the current WCG.  Curtis May is the head of the Reconciliation Ministry.  I respect him and have corresponded with him, but I would imagine many current WCGers would regard the RM as a "bone thrown to" the Blacks and something that Whites needn't take seriously.  I would appreciate hearing from you.  I am at daa@lanl.gov

      Thanks.

The Essay:  The Advocacy of Genocide, a Past WCG Distinctive

    

It is little known that the WCG advocated genocide in the past. Specifically, numerous ministers and lay members believed that the people who occupied lands prior to the arrival of Anglo-Saxon settlers should have been exterminated. This is because the Anglo-Saxons were Israelites and the prior inhabitants were Canaanites (whether they were Maori, Hawaiian, American Indian, African Blacks, Australian Aborigines or Laplanders).

  

It is an odd position, because at the same time we advocated not bearing arms. So we had an unusual stance where we did not take action to correct this problem of the survival of aboriginal people but we did advocate that the ethnic Israelites (Anglo-Saxons) should have done so. Had we not had the proscription against bearing arms, conceivably, the WCG could have become an organization something like the Aryan Nation or other violent, quasi- religious, white supremacists groups. We had genocidal beliefs; we just didn't have the mechanism to implement these beliefs. Spiritual murder, in the form of hatred, however, was in the hearts of those who held these beliefs. Had the U.S. Government decided to exterminate American Indians back in 1975, theoretically WCG members would not have participated but would have applauded.

 

The genocide of aboriginal peoples was openly advocated by an local church elder in the Wichita, Kansas congregation in the late Sixties during a Bible Study at the Cotillion Ballroom. The pastor, a current WCG regional director, was sitting at his elbow and did nothing to correct this statement and by his silence, agreed with it. This was certainly the message that came across to the audience.

 

(I do remember this pastor explaining in Spokesman's Club that American Indians were Canaanites. This even though American Indians are classified genetically to be of Asiatic extraction and Canaan seemed to have been of Negroid extraction. It was just too neat and affirming to have the Anglo settlers be Israelites and the American Indians be Canaanites to give much consideration to science.)

  

Since I am half American Indian, I was especially wounded by this declaration at a Bible Study where most of the congregation knew my ethnic background. Since that time, I have encountered numerous people in the WCG who maintain this belief. If I mentioned that I was American Indian, it always seemed like some lay member would take it upon himself or herself to make sure that I knew that my ancestors should have been exterminated.

 

I worked at AC Big Sandy back in the Seventies for a period of time and was persecuted by some AC students who liked to poke fun at my ethnic background and specifically the fact that I should have been killed had the will of God been done by the Anglo settlers.

 

I also dined with a deacon and wife when I arrived in <location deleted> back about 14 years ago and the deacon's wife, who knew my ethnic background, stated while we were eating that all the American Indians and Hispanics in <location deleted> should have been 'wiped out'. Among many of the members of the <location deleted>  Church there was a discernable feeling that Hispanics and Indians were interlopers on Israel's land and were trashing the beautiful State of <location deleted>. I did not respond to her statement because she, of course, being married to deacon, outranked me and could say anything she wanted.

 

I could cite other amazing examples but let me mention just a couple more. Once at Spokesman's club in Wichita, a prominent member spat out: 'Americans feel sorry for Indians but they're the Canaanites'. It was if that being of a particular racial category, Canaanite, meant that you were not eligible for compassion or for being accorded human dignity. The Holocaust of the Jews was deplorable but the Holocaust of American Indians was something many in the WCG could feel patriotic about (based on another statement in the same Spokesman's Club). Once again the WCG could adopt a position that made it feel different from and superior to the rest of American Society and supposedly find the endorsement of God for this racist approach in the pages of the Bible.

  

When I was in Big Sandy, I briefly lived with a man who, I believe, is now a local church elder somewhere. He knew of my Indian background and one evening at the Night to be Much Remembered expounded his feelings concerning Indians. (It was certainly a night to be much remembered for me.) He stated, in his best Dr. Hoeh imitation, that when the Israelites came to North America they brought Indians along with them as clowns. They would get them drunk aboard ship and laugh at their antics. He went on to explain that such musical sounding Indian place names as Cincinnati were really Israelite creations because Israelites had the musical ability (he played guitar) not Indians.

 

Many are not aware of this advocacy of genocide on the part of the WCG. I have never been able to trace its origin - even though it was a widely held viewpoint. It doesn't seem to have come from HWA, at least publicly. I believe that most WCG members were not sensitive to this issue unless they happened to be in one of the targeted ethnic groups. I have mentioned this rarely to anyone in the WCG because the reaction is usually 'who cares'.

  

Something that really plays with your mind is being a part of an organization that you believe is the one and only true church and the only pathway to salvation and at the same time recognizing that the organization deplores your very existence as a human being and wishes that you were not alive.

 

The Second Letter

 

In response to the first letter, Herman Hoeh sent me a card containing a small amount of text.  He explained that he had been raised in a family with a cosmopolitan outlook.  He spoke of his connections with Buddhists and his concern for African Pygmies.  He felt that the WCG was only behaving like the larger society in its treatment of African-Americans.  Since he did not reference my essay on The Advocacy of Genocide, I thought he might not have received it, so I resent it.

 

 

                                                                                                                February 13, 2004

                                                                                                              

Dear Mr. Hoeh:

 

Thank you very much for the card.  I had corresponded by e-mail with Ron Kelly and he was kind enough to offer to pass along something I had written to you.   By way of introduction, I was a dedicated member of the WCG for thirty years.  I first began listening to the World Tomorrow Broadcast in 1965.   Currently, I am a Christian and attend the WCG congregation in <location deleted> two or three times a year… 

 

My reaction to your message is that there is a substantive discrepancy between the way you view yourself and the way you are viewed among Armstrongites and ex-Armstrongites. 

 

Your personal self view is that you were raised in an environment that was conducive to the acceptance of other peoples and cultures.  As early as 1957, you became involved with the Pygmies of Africa.  Later you developed many friends among Buddhists.  This presents a cosmopolitan and philanthropic view of yourself that I certainly would not challenge.

 

But there is another view of you that is much more common.  (As I describe this, the spin on this will be negative because I personally rejected most of what you originated and advocated in the past when I became a Christian.)  You created the ethnocentric ideological infrastructure that existed and still exists within Armstrongism.  Your articles on race and the Compendium of World History were the foundational documents for the WCG in developing its view on race, culture and social relations.  I believe that if reasonable minds examined this foundation, they would agree that it was essentially racist.  

 

In fact, it is relatively easy to establish the racist nature of WCG beliefs.  Here is a short list of evidences:

 

  • Racial intermarriage was forbidden.  It encompassed races that most would not even consider to be that far removed – such as the proscription against people from Southern Europe intermarrying with people from Northern Europe.  This was based on your ideas about who was Japhetic and who was Semitic in the European domain, for instance. 

  

  • The offspring of these marriages were stigmatized as being genetically deficient.  In essence, these substandard offspring were the “penalty” those who engaged in “miscegenation” had to pay.  Hence, Armstrongites made a tainted racial background the “unpardonable sin” for any who fell in that category.  Such people had no participation in the Armstrongite community of believers except in a degraded and subsidiary role.

 

  • People of different races were forbidden to socialize together.  (This leaves me wondering what the quality of the contact was that you had with these pygmies.  Did you follow your own directives, and ostensibly God’s will, and remain aloof so as not to be sullied by those of a divergent racial nature?)   Back in the Sixties, I first attended the Feast of Tabernacles in Big Sandy.  All of the Blacks sat in certain sections and the whites sat in other sections. A deacon explained to me, his face glowing with misguided zeal, when I asked about this practice, that “God’s church believes in segregation.”

  

  • When I worked at AC Big Sandy in the early Seventies, I noticed that there were two Black families on campus.  I wondered why so few and an AC employee and former Pasadena student explained to me that they were “experimental.”  He said that it was believed that Blacks and certain other races could not profit from an AC education.  This education was meant for Israelites only and other races did not have minds that worked in the same way.

  

  • An AC graduate gave me a copy of the racial guidelines for marriage that he had received at AC Pasadena.  If someone were 1/8th Hamitic or more, they would could not marry into the white race.  If someone were ¼ Japhetic or more, they could not marry into the white race.  It is clear that this implementation is intended to preserve the purity of the white race, whereas the migration of white genes into the Hamitic or Japhetic races would not be an issue.  Without a doubt, this is an ethnocentric perspective that places the white race in superior position in relation to other races. 

 

I could go ahead and cite a list of declarations in private and from the pulpit I heard over the years from various Armstrongite ministers that were racist in viewpoint and the list would be large and alarming but I think the points above establish the nature of this belief within Armstrongism.  I will attach a small essay I wrote and is now posted on the web concerning my own personal experiences.  Ron Kelly told me that he would “cut and paste” something to pass along to you but I am not sure if he included this little article (Advocacy of Genocide).

 

While the points above might not be based on formal WCG policy, they are part of a pervasive atmosphere that characterized Armstrongism.  The proponents of these ideas, in every case, would found their ideas on your writing.  These ideas would have the air of solid and unquestionable scholarship because, after all, they came from our most astute scholar.

 

Now, after many years, I have come to be interested in how all this happened and what your perspective on this might be.  Let me be quick to add, that I, too, believed all of this.  I was an orthodox Armstrongite.  Much to my great regret, I preached, in sermonettes and split sermons, orthodox Armstrongism.  I gave spiritual support to the Armstrongite ideology by my presence in a congregation and through financial support.  So I do not regard myself purely as a victim of Armstrongism, but as a victim/perpetrator.

 

You and Ron Kelly are the only two Architects of Armstrongism that, I am aware of, who have made the transition to Christianity.  Ron Kelly cited to me a number of other prominent men, but these men were just recipients of the Armstrongite dogma rather than originators of it based on what I know of them.

 

The questions of greatest interest are these:  At the time that you developed these ideas, did you understand how adversely this would affect the average lay member?  Did you understand how these theories, policies and doctrines would be implemented at the lowest levels within the WCG?  Did you do anything to somehow monitor what happened when all of this was released upon the WCG population?  Please refer to my attached essay (Advocacy of Genocide).  Did you foresee that this would be the outcome of these decisions in its impact on personal lives of real people?

 

My theory is that you did not and may, to this day, not understand this impact.  Let me use a military analogy.  A leader sits in a remote mountain stronghold, beautifully appointed, with his generals and makes decisions, over a cup of tea, about the strategic movements of armies and battalions.  Such a strategy session has an academic quality to it – it is like an exercise or a game.  But when the strategy is implemented, to a soldier on the front lines, it translates into shed blood, dismemberment and death.  I see the Armstrongite leaders of that time, including yourself and Ron Kelly, as the generals in this kind of a model.

 

It is a devastating blow to believe that you have found the “true Church of God” and then to discover that it is a racist organization and that you, by virtue of being part American Indian, are forever persona non grata and there is no recourse if you hope to receive salvation.  That you are essentially classed as a subhuman by the broad population of people in the WCG, many of whom have been marginalized in society and need something to be proud of, who exult in being Israelitish and God’s Chosen.  The direct deduction that one may make is that if God’s Church views me this way, then God must surely view me this way.   If Herman Hoeh suggests that it is unlikely that you, as someone racially mixed, can ever be happy, I am prejudged and condemned to a personal perdition, no matter if I, technically, receive eternal life.  I steeped in this belief for 30 years. This is something that has altered my life permanently and irretrievably.

 

My last comment is in response to your statement that “Conversion expresses a life long journey – a change of heart and turning onto another road not easily traversed…without knowing He takes the lead in each ones journey.”  I believe that in some cases Christ proactively leads and in others he reactively uses what we decide.  It is impossible to sort out what is going on when.  But I certainly would not want to subsume all of my decisions in life under the concept that Christ led me to these decisions and this has all been a part of my foreordained “Christian walk”.  I do not believe that the large number of erroneous decisions that Herbert Armstrong made can be attributed to the direction of Jesus.

 

Thanks much for you response….

 

Best regards,

 

 

The Third Letter

 

Herman Hoeh sent me another card in response to the second letter.  It contained a one page letter that seemed to me to be from the WCG Personal Correspondence Department (PCD).  I mistakenly thought it was something that he had saved in a file and that it dated from the Armstrong period.  The letter was quite apologetic about the treatment of other races by the WCG.  It was not signed.  He also included copies of three newspaper clippings that described the base way that Blacks were treated in the United States in the past.  At this point, it did not seem to me that Hoeh was responding to my questions.  In order to state the issues more clearly, I decided to use an academic technique and establish two hypotheses and ask Hoeh to reject or affirm one of these hypotheses.  Hoeh’s response, then, could be as minimalist as “yes” or “no”.

 

 

                                                                                                                February 28, 2004

                                                                                                               

Dear Mr. Hoeh:

 

Thank you for you response and the included statement from the “Christian of Jewish background.”  If I have interpreted this material correctly, you have sent me a standard form letter from the Personal Correspondence Department dating from sometime in the Armstrong era. 

 

The only Jew I can recall from my Ambassador Big Sandy days would be <Name deleted>.  As I recall, he is now a minister in the United Church of God.  I do not consider members of the UCG, or any other Armstrongite group, to be brothers in Christ.  Theologically, Armstrongites lie outside the pale of Christianity and I class them with the many other cults that have appeared, seemingly spontaneously, on the American scene in the past few centuries.  Any correspondence from <Name deleted>, or any other Armstrongite, would not be welcome. 

 

The standard PCD letter is enlightening in that it indicates that there was some effort on the part of the Armstrongite WCG, before its collapse, to apologize for past injustices and theological deficiencies.  But it does wander somewhat off target from my original concern.

 

My original question to you had a different focus:

 

  • What was the historical genesis of the doctrine of the races of mankind within the Armstrongite WCG?

This is not an ad hominem attack on you.  But you were closer than anybody to this point of genesis.  You might ask why it is so important to me.  This doctrine had a profound impact on my life and the lives of people I know.  At a minimum, it would be helpful to receive an explanation as to why and how this particular approach to racial relationships became an Armstrongite characteristic.

 

I would also like to add that I do not favor interracial marriage but I do not base this view on traditional racist ideas.  I believe that marriage is a fallen institution in a fallen world and is, at best, a high risk proposition.  The more the bride and groom have in common, the more likely the marriage will be a success.  I absolutely reject the idea that people in interracial marriages should be stigmatized and their offspring considered subhuman as was practiced under Armstrongism.  If an interracial marriage is concluded among Christians, the Christian church should lend support to that marriage as to any other marriage.  

 

I would like to respond to some of the issues raised in the PCD form letter:

 

  • “I deeply regret that you suffered offense and great personal pain due to the insensitivity and ignorance of various individuals.”

This form letter seems a little insensitive in itself for a general mailing to members who write in concerning this very personal topic.  Who is “I” and what does that person have to do with this.  Also, the phrase “various individuals” includes none other than the leadership of the WCG.  Against this backdrop, the “regrets” of the uninvolved writer, although sincere, seem a little inappropriate.

 

  • “I want to assure you that it was never the intent of the church to inflict pain or humiliation on anyone.”

Can the writer really speak on behalf of the WCG?  Does the writer know any thing about the history of the ethnocentric infrastructure created in the WCG?  I believe, based on actual experience, that the statement above is false.  It was the dedicated purpose of the WCG leadership and ministry “to put Gentiles in their place.”  This included not only people of color but white Gentiles as well.  This was the topic of many sermons and was implemented in local churches in a variety of ways.  Dean Blackwell and Gerald Waterhouse were leaders in Gentile bashing.  If you would like, I can cite incidents that happened in local areas that were clearly racist in motivation, including material from “Bible studies” delivered by Dean Blackwell.  It was, in fact, a specific objective of the WCG to champion the Israelitish cause at the expense of Gentiles.  The statement above is either naïve or a statement of expediency to cover a difficult and historically embarrassing problem.

 

  • “The real reason for seating African-American church members separately from the rest during the Feast of Tabernacles was that the surrounding community threatened to create furor if they saw evidence of “miscegenation” or mixing the races together.”

My recollection of this differs from the statement above.  Rod Meredith, I recall, mentioned the statement above at a later Feast and added the detail that the policy was suggested by Harold Jackson and it may well have been.  My actual experience at the Feast at that time leads me to believe that the statement above is a retrospective gloss painted over the actual substance of this policy.   I will mention a few issues:

 

  • Why was the policy never explained to the lay membership in this way?  I attended the Feast in Big Sandy in 1968 and anyone I asked about this explained that “God’s Church believes in segregation.”  Why were lay members permitted and, perhaps, encouraged to believe this?  A Black friend of mine sat in a white section with me in the audience and was promptly removed by an usher, with a grim face and sharp gestures,  who seemed to relish his role.  If this was just a practice to appease the surrounding community, then it would be amoral to permit the membership to conclude wrongly from this practice that the WCG was firmly pro-segregationist.

 

  • This policy comports with the policy that you had already promulgated that people of different races should not fraternize with each other.  This policy of non-fraternization, established in an article that you wrote, I believe, was formulated without reference to the social conditions extant in the Sixties in the Big Sandy area, but was, rather, founded on Armstrongite “theology”.

  

  • Why were Black members encouraged to attend the Feast in Big Sandy where they would be subjected to this kind of demeaning treatment?  The fiction that I heard preached from the pulpit was that Black members could not find hotels at any other Feast sites.  I doubt that this was true even in 1968.  But if it were true, why not select at least one Feast site that was “Black friendly” rather than subject these people to the kind of debasement that they experienced in Big Sandy? 

  

  • The WCG was so exclusivist, I doubt that people in the surrounding Big Sandy community would actually know much about what happened in Piney Woods.  When I camped out there, it was always heavily guarded, almost in a military fashion, by a corps of deacons and assistant deacons.

In other words, this statement seems expedient and does not have a ring of truth to it.

 

  • “Nonetheless, God’s word advises us not to dwell on the mistakes or sins of the past.  Instead, we must press forward toward the Kingdom of God.” 

This is a disingenuous sentiment.  In fact, we will all be rewarded according to the works cumulated over a lifetime.  God does not forget.  While the writer may see this as an elegant solution to the problem, to someone who has actually experienced the impact of racism in the WCG, it has a much different effect.  Let me give you the sense of this effect with an analogy.  You cut off someone’s right arm through neglect and then tell the person not to dwell on past mistakes but to press forward.  In effect, the writer observes that God would have us all disregard the dismemberment and, as good Christians, overlook the perpetrators and progress towards the Kingdom.  That kind of devaluation of someone’s personal anguish is an insult, not to mention that it implicitly releases the perpetrators from any accountability, all in the name of God.

 

Overall, the form letter from PCD seems to make the highly ethnocentric Doctrine of the Races of Mankind in the WCG to be an almost inadvertent event and involving a few “ministers and individual lay members”.  And it was, after all, just a reflection of society at large that one might well expect.  But you and I know that it was a cohesive, systematic, highly managed body of clearly stated policy emanating from the leadership of the WCG that persisted for decades and formed a large piece of the cultural backbone of Armstrongism.  In short, this bewildering form letter seems to assume that the reader would somehow not recall the actual history of the WCG.

 

Finally, there was an enclosure in your letter of response which was a copy of three newspaper clippings.  I am not sure what inclusion of these clippings were intended to demonstrate.  It seems to indicate that the RCG/WCG may have selected the worst examples of racism from state policy and religious nominalism for emulation.  (I once picked up a “Christian” book published in the 1800s in the South that claimed Blacks were descended from pre-Adamic men.  <Name deleted>, who is active in Rod Meredith’s cult, stated this same belief the last time I saw him. This is appalling pseudo-theology.  Rather than seeking an accommodation with such views, these views should be condemned.) The question, then, arises why the WCG chose to emulate larger society on this point and depart from larger society on so many other points.  The motivation for this predilection seems suspect. 

 

To clarify my concern, let me propose two hypotheses about the origin or genesis of the view on races in the WCG.  Perhaps, you can strike one of these down and affirm the other.  If there is a third alternative, I would be interested in that as well. 

 

Hypothesis I:  Back in the late Forties and early Fifties, when Ambassador College was founded, the policy on races was established.  It was imported into the Armstrongite organization by early students who were ethnocentric in viewpoint.  Within the Armstrongite fold, clever proof texting provided an essentially racist viewpoint with a pseudo-scriptural underpinning.  This was appealing to the lay membership at that time – mostly poor whites with low self-esteem who had been marginalized in society, people who needed a pretext to feel good about themselves on the basis of something like race, something that required no accomplishment, personal attainments or character.  This highly ethnocentric view of races provided an excellent point of departure for future membership growth among that population group.  It permitted these people to live out the egocentric and false fantasy of being the “Chosen People.”  The necessary and complementary effect was the systematic derogation of “non-Israelites.”  In this scenario, the viewpoint on race preceded and determined “exegesis”.

 

Hypothesis II: The view expressed in the doctrine of the races of mankind was not imported from society at large by students who early matriculated at Ambassdor College, Pasadena.  But, rather, the doctrine came into existence as the consequence of deficient exegesis and the lack of the presence and direction of the Holy Spirit.  But it derived from a sincere though solely human attempt to interpret scripture.  So it was established and preached as doctrine.  Those who formulated the doctrine were not directly impacted by it so they had no concern about how it would be implemented in the lives lay members in the WCG or how it would evolve over the years.  Perhaps, if the destructiveness of this doctrine were known, some revision would have been attempted.  It was a pervasive belief in the WCG until the collapse of Armstrongism around 1995.  Over the years the belief was softened but it was never decisively revoked.  In this case, “exegesis” preceded and gave rise to the viewpoint on race. 

 

I believe that somewhere in all of this is the truth.  I know that you as a Christian, prize the truth, just as Christ did.  Institutional racism in the WCG is something that had a profound effect on the lives of people in the WCG.  It imposed great distortion on the view they had of themselves and, more destructively, the view that they believed that God had of them.  And here I mean both those favored and those punished by the racial policies of the WCG – both groups developed pathological self views.  “Israelites” developed an inflated, self-aggrandizing view of themselves and “Gentiles” a deflated, self-deprecatory view of themselves.  This kind of institutional racism continues to be a hallmark of various Armstrongite splinter groups today and, to the reasonable mind, would serve as adequate demonstration that these groups are not Christian. 

 

There were many small errors implemented under Armstrongism that have impinged on me personally and painfully.  These small things I have, for the most part, set aside.  But some errors had such a large, destructive and permanent impact on me personally that they cannot be disregarded but must be confronted.  I do not harbor the belief, like a Calvinist, that God has predetermined all things without regard to human free will.  There are many passages, through life, any given Christian may take, leading ultimately to salvation.  Some passages are good and some bad.  Unfortunately, my passage became a very bad one when I was captivated by the World Tomorrow Broadcast in 1965 as a teenager.  My regret and losses are unending.  Understanding why and how this view on races and interracial relationships originated in the WCG would provide me with a valuable step towards personally processing my regrettable and lengthy experience with this destructive doctrine.

 

Best regards,

  

The Fourth Letter

 

Herman Hoeh responded to the third letter and upbraided me for not understanding that the PCD memo he sent was not vintage but was of recent provenance.  He seemed to feel that my statement “My regret and losses are unending” was an over dramatization.  He did not respond to the two hypotheses that I established.  This fourth letter contains a trenchant argument inset into the text entitled Black and White Issues authored by Gavin Rumney, an ex-WCG member.

 

                                                                                                                March 19, 2004

                                                                                                               

Dear Mr. Hoeh:

 

Thank you for your response.  I understand now that the letter you sent was newly authored but was intended to represent how the PCD (Personal Correspondence Department) might have responded to an inquiry from me several decades back.  This, of course, undermines my observation that the Armstrongite WCG made an actual attempt to correct some deficiencies.

 

I recall <Name deleted, a former Personal Correspondence Department employee> and that he plays the violin.  I did not know he was of converso Jewish in descent.  I live in an area where there are many Hispanics and, in general, I am skeptical of the claims to Jewish ancestry that many Armstrongite Hispanics make.  This actually is relevant to the topic that we have been corresponding about.  Because of the shame created by the ethnocentric policies of the WCG, many Hispanic WCG members claim Jewish ancestry in <location deleted>.  They look Mexican, speak Mexican, come from a Mexican culture, but they are somehow Jewish.  Most do not even remotely look like European Hispanics or Jews but clearly are Mestizos.  One of our deacons in <location deleted>  fell into this category.  He was from <location deleted> and claimed to be Jewish and would frequently refer to his Jewish forefathers in prayer.  If he was Jewish at all, he might have been 1/256 or 1/512 or 1/1024 or less.  The fact is, he did not want to be Hispanic.  To be Hispanic was to be Gentile and persona non grata within the WCG.

 

A Puerto Rican Armstrongite once told me that any Spanish name ending in –ez indicated Jewish ancestry.  His name was Perez.  All manner of pseudo-history and pseudo-science was brought to bear on this topic.

 

One of the strangest, pseudo-scientific ideas I ever heard was espoused by Dean Blackwell.  He gave a Bible Study in Wichita, Kansas that was essentially racist in content.  His objective was to indoctrinate lay members with the idea that God had created races (There was some question about this.  Blackwell stated that the races were not, after all, an unintended mutation) but expected them to be subservient to Israelites throughout eternity. He had just made a visit to Mexico and showed a slide show of some of the ruins.  He then said that Mexicans were actually a pure race and that it was Satanic for them to think of themselves as a bunch of “crazy, mixed up half-breeds” (his words).  He indicated from this that he knew not the first thing about the history of the people of Mexico and he also revealed his attitude towards people of mixed ancestry.  He later turned to a place in the Bible that supposedly showed the superiority of Israel and blatantly misquoted the scripture.  People in the audience diligently rustled pages during his Bible Study and listened with rapt attention but nobody caught the misquotation.  At that point, Dean Blackwell became someone of no credibility in my sight and I realized how indoctrinated Armstrongites were.

 

<Name deleted, a former Personal Correspondence Department employee > and I had a mutual friend named <Name deleted, an AC Student in the Seventies>.  <Name deleted, an AC Student in the Seventies>  used an unusual and illogical argument to establish his connection to the Israelitish race.  <Name deleted, an AC Student in the Seventies > was Syrian  but once cited to me the fact that in the Old Testament the Israelites were to describe themselves as descended from a “wandering Aramean”, no doubt a geographical reference.  Somehow <Name deleted, an AC Student in the Seventies > thought that this made the Arameans, ancestors of the Syrians supposedly, a part of the general Israelitish community.  He used this backward logic because he did not want to be a Gentile because of the demerits attached to Gentile ancestry by the WCG.

 

This shame and denial of identity will give you some insight into how the policies of the WCG affected people personally.

 

If I understand your correspondence up to this point correctly, you characterize ethnocentrism in Armstrongism in a couple of ways:

 

  • It was an accommodation to the larger society and its racist views
 
  • It was something that was practiced by only a few individuals

I believe both of these assertions to be false.  On the first point, while society at large historically was racist at the inception of Armstrongism, Armstrongite ministers and ideologists firmly rooted this, through deficient and flawed doctrinal formation, in the Bible.  In the 30 years I spent as an Armstrongite, nobody every mentioned to me that the views of the WCG on race were somehow instituted so we could get along with larger society or even simply reflect larger society.  It was always given a Biblical foundation.  I do not think you mentioned a single place in your article on the Races of Mankind that “we are doing this so as to not create problems for ourselves with our local governments.”  When Dean Blackwell and Gerald Waterhouse presented racists views they did not characterize it as a public policy decision that would prevent offense in local communities.  It was always characterized as the Will of God.

 

My short essay entitled “Advocacy of Genocide, a WCG Distinctive” cites examples of how ethnocentrism was implemented in local Armstrongite congregations.  None of this was intended to be an accommodation to larger society but has its origin in religious belief.

 

The information that the Pasadena AC graduate (now a UCG minister living in Monrovia) gave me to the effect that if one were ¼ Japhetic or 1/8 Hamitic, one could not marry into the white race may have had parallels in larger society but was an ideological part of Armstrongism.  He received this material from <name deleted, a minister> in Pasadena.   In your letter you state “This you cited as if it were a doctrine developed by the (Armstrongite) church.”  The words Japhetic and Hamitic might be a clue as to where it was developed.  Like I wrote earlier, the Armstrongite WCG had its own unique implementation that I do not think can be attributed in formulation to society at large.  Someone who was southern European and Japhetic could not marry someone who was northern European and Israelitish.   Who was Semitic, Hamitic or Japhetic was based on your definitions.

 

The second point I will not spend much time on.  A body of policy, with ideological underpinning and a well developed apparatus for enforcement, is not orchestrated by a collection of isolated individuals.  I doubt that this policy grew up without Herbert Armstrong knowing what was happening.  Anybody familiar with the history of the WCG understands the cohesiveness and pervasiveness of the Armstrongite view on races.

 

You asked about my personal circumstances.  I wrote in a previous letter that “my regrets and losses are unending.”  If ones self-worth is undermined or greatly diminished the collection of the decisions that one makes that constitute life will be deficient or defective.  Many of the deficient decisions lead to circumstances that have no end in this lifetime. 

 

From the broad perspective, racism is a direct attack on a person’s self-worth.  It is compounded and magnified extraordinarily if you are taught that the attitude of racism directed toward you is nothing other than God’s own attitude toward you.  As a loyal member of the Armstrongite WCG, I believed that Herbert Armstrong, his ministry and his church represented the will of God on earth.  If the WCG and its leadership regarded me as persona non grata, then this was a reflection of God’s own attitude.  When I approached God in prayer, for instance, I knew that I did not have the acceptability that a pure blooded Israelite would have.  But, one might say, we are all sinners and need Christ’s sacrifice and priesthood to approach God.  But within those constraints, do we all approach God on equal footing?  I knew clearly that I did not have parity with others because I could see this attitude outplayed in God’s own church directed by God’s own Apostle and God’s own ministry.   After all, to the orthodox Armstrongite, I was a subhuman and my degeneracy was the penalty that my parents had to pay for the sin of miscegenation. 

 

One might say that none of us have self-worth.  This is the typical response from WCG ministers and is a Red Herring.  It is intended to make you feel that you have no right to human dignity.  Yes, we all fall “short of the glory of God.”  But I mean self-worth in the sense of being able to live life and apply abilities as God intended, to have a life of achievement and accomplishment unhindered by the indoctrination that you are a subhuman and not much can be expected of you or that you capacity for happiness is impaired.  I believe that my life might have been quite normal in this regard had I not encountered Armstrongism.

 

While I cannot in a small space give you a comprehensive view as to how this has affected me, let me focus on a single aspect of my life.  … At the age of 17, I was snared by the cult of Armstrongism.   I soon discovered that within the Armstrongite fold, I was an unacceptable person.  I was regarded as an outsider and with suspicion because of my tainted racial background for the duration of my 30 year tenure in the Armstrongite WCG.  The Armstrongite church was never a family to me.  I was always the illegitimate child at the family reunion  that everyone was embarrassed about.  

 

…

 

I am reluctant to relate this because you may receive this as a corroboration of your view that people of mixed racial ancestry cannot be happy.  Let me then be quick to add that had I not been snared by Armstrongism, I believe that at a minimum I would have had a church family and very probably  … had a normal life.  Certainly, I would not have had decades of being steeped in the doctrine of my own inferiority.    Once you decreed that people of mixed racial ancestry could not be happy, it was as if the Armstrongite WCG zealously set out to make this proclamation true through oppressive policies and doctrine.

 

Let me close by pasting something in this letter concerning you that I got from a website called Ambassador Watch.  I think it adequately displays the continuing significance of Armstrongite ethnocentrism on people’s lives.  It clearly shows that many out there in Armstrongite land believe it is much more than an accommodation to local ordinances or the work of a few interested individuals in the Armstrongite WCG:

 

  

Black and White Issues: Dan Rogers stood up in the pulpit seven years ago and preached a sermon that still has the potential to turn BI (British Israelism) bigots whiter with shock. Called The Evidence of Black People In The Bible, it was published in the WN the following year. It's worth a look, though it does ramble a bit, which is understandable given that it's a transcript.

In contrast, an old article by Herman Hoeh has been doing the rounds recently among conservative cult members. Titled Who May Attend Our Schools (Good News, March 1958), in it the Herbal Reichschancellor wrote:

God puts no difference between men and women, or between races in matters of spiritual fellowship, BUT GOD DOES NOT WANT THE DIFFERENT RACES TO MIX SOCIALLY OR TO INTERMARRY...

Some have not fully understood what the Bible says about our mixing interracially in the schools...

Thus converted Israelites (who are Semitic) may intermarry with converted Semitic Germans, West Slavs, Armenians and Syrians (who are all sons of Shem), and with non-Semitic Whites such as Russians (who are from Meshech, Tubal and Madai -- the sons of Japheth) and Greeks (who are of Javan, the son of Japheth) and Italians (who are of Javan and of the Tyrians from Sidon, the son of Canaan).  These are all of the White racial stock (though they may have come from different sons of Noah) and are permitted to attend Ambassador College and the present Imperial Grade and High Schools.

     

Herman has it within his power to retract and thereby discredit this material. Why doesn't he?

Our Negroid brethren are of course Hamitic, and may intermarry freely among themselves...

Our Latin-American brethren understand in general, why their children are not to intermarry with Israelites.  Their racial origin should be studied by everyone, for it is more diverse than that of our Negro brethren...

This, then, is the policy which God ordains for the administration of His Schools.

  

Has Herman - even now a member of Joey's tame "Advisory Council of Elders" - ever bothered to withdraw and apologize for this nonsense? Or does he still believe it? The fact remains that, whatever his present views may be, the racist propaganda that flowed from his pen in past decades is still being used today by hard-line Armstrong extremists to bolster and justify their diseased view of the world. Herman has it within his power to retract and thereby discredit this material. Why doesn't he?

On a related note, these comments from Cecil Maranville appear in UCG's January 7 Home Office Update.

  

Several GN subscribers took offense at the photograph of the couple with a child featured in the November-December issue, thinking it shows interracial marriage.

  

Shock horror! Maranville moves quickly to reassure the sheep: "(The couple is of the same race.)" 

Thanks for your correspondence.  I believe we have probably exhausted this topic.  So far you have given me nothing that would make me believe that somehow I might have had a mistaken impression about Armstrongism.   

  

Best regards,

 

  

The Fifth Letter

 

                                                                                                                March 11, 2004

                                                                                                                

Dear Mr. Hoeh:

 

After I mailed my previous letter to you, based on my first impressions of your letter, I reread your letter and realized that there are a number of questions that you asked and other issues that I did not address at all.

 

You wrote: “It was one of many laws of the various states we had to face to avoid legal problems that could land such couples in jail.”

 

Once again, I believe that the racist ordinances and policies of the WCG had little to do with conforming to local public policy.  These matters were clearly grounded in “theology” and enforced zealously by church government as the Will of God.  In the issue of military service, the WCG recommended conscientious objection even though it might lead to prison.  The basis was that we must obey God and not man.  By contrast, in the issue of the races, the WCG avidly adopted and implemented its own version of racism.  I would conclude that the invidious racial laws of larger society would be one area where the Armstrongite WCG would believe that America “had it right for a change.”

 

In my last letter, I included an excerpt from a very popular website that mentioned you and your participation in forming racial policy for the Armstrongite WCG.  The reason why the various current Armstrongite groups continue these policies is because they are based in ideology.  These ordinances and polices were intended to have a Biblical foundation.  If they had been just an accommodation, they would have dropped away with the change in the view of American society on race.  Instead, these ordinances and policies are perpetuated through their ideological status.

 

I believe that the racism in the WCG was catalyzed by British Israelism.  One cannot teach a form of white supremacy without a corresponding debasement of other races.

 

You wrote: “…nevertheless there was no church that from its inception in the Church of God 7th Day was as integrated as the Radio Church of God (WCG) was and is.

 

The Armstrongite organization (as a Christian you must now realize that the RCG was not a church and is not continuous with the present Christian WCG) was highly segregated throughout its existence.  This segregation still exists in its splinter groups.  Although physical segregation was discontinued at some point and Blacks no longer sat in separate seating at the Feast or had their own separate evening of entertainment, there was a perpetuation of spiritual, emotional and psychological segregation.  I heard a respected minister in Big Sandy use the term “nigger.”  I have seen the parents of a Black AC student show up at Big Sandy for a visit and be regarded with extreme suspicion.  These events occurred in the mid-Seventies.  The RCG and the WCG were never integrated except in some very weak or logistical sense of that word.  Like much of Armstrongism, the carefully managed appearance was not the substance.

 

You wrote: “So from this non-segregated basis, let us walk forward in grace and wisdom and break down hurts that can make us focused on our individual selves.”

 

Again, I do not believe that this basis was as non-segregated as one might like to think.   Curtis May is doing a good work but I find it remarkable that it seems to be  focused on external groups when it should be focused on current WCG members who yet retain the indoctrination of Armstrongism on race.  Unfortunately, those people in the WCG, many of whom sit patiently waiting for the return to Armstrongism, would probably not attend any of May’s meetings.

 

The focus of racism will always be personal.   There is nothing more destructive to human dignity.  Defending the history of Armstrongism in regard to race effectively conserves and intensifies these “hurts.”  Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

   

You wrote:  “Remember, the Church of God has respected marriages that were interracial (and inter-religious) before conversion.”

 

I remember no such thing.  The WCG congregations that I attended in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas preached against these marriages and stigmatized the children of these marriages.  The reasons for condemnation were just as valid for marriages already concluded as they were for possible marriages of this type. It was not rocket science to understand this. (It is mysterious to me why you would make the statement above.  Actually, it is such statements like this that prompted the writing of these letters.  There seems to be a genuine disconnect with what leadership in Pasadena believes and what really happened in people’s lives.  The reason for this disconnect intrigues me.)  In some cases, we were told from the pulpit that interracial couples were instructed that they could not have children.  I remember Dean Blackwell explaining from the pulpit how horrid and psychologically damaging it is for a white woman to have a child that did not look like her racially.  I remember <Name deleted, a former WCG Pastor> explaining how natural talents were lost because of the genetic turmoil in mixed race children.  I remember <Name deleted, former WCG Pastor> speculating on whether a person of one race could really love a person of another race.  How would you propose that any of this constitutes “respect for marriages that are interracial”?  The evidence is that there was an infrastructure of disrespect within the WCG for interracial marriages. 

 

You wrote: “We leave it up to individuals to make final decisions today because so many have become of mixed racial background already.”

 

 My reaction to this statement is that you are saying that there was nothing wrong with Armstrongite policy on races but that it just cannot be enforced today because it is so hard to sort out people’s racial backgrounds.  But given a world where everyone was “pure”, the Armstrongite view would be the best policy.   If Armstrongite policy were only a social recommendation that people should marry as close to their racial and cultural heritage as possible just to reduce the conflicts and friction that can jeopardize marriage, I would align with this.  But Armstrongite beliefs and practices included such things as derogation, stigmatization, segregation, advocacy of genocide, systematic oppression, hindrance of spiritual life and white supremacy.  (I would be glad to cite examples of any of these that you would like.)

 

You wrote: “But the most important issue in your case is confidence in Christ to give you wisdom in responding to the outside world where some measure of prejudice is embedded and may show itself unexpectedly and discourage you in your spiritual life.”

 

I am not sure what you mean by the “outside world” but the greatest racial discrimination I have ever experienced, by any measure, has been internally, within the ranks of the WCG.  In fact, when I first started attending the WCG back in 1968, American Society became acutely aware of the mistreatment of Native Americans and Indians have since that time been rather popular.   I have experienced some discrimination and unfairness from whites and Indians but nothing approaches the systematic discrimination, intensified by religious zeal, I experienced in the Armstrongite domain.  That fact that I was a dedicated member of an organization that deplored my very existence may be a measure of my intense focus on God or, on the other hand, may just be a measure of my stupidity.

 

You wrote: “And may I ask if you found some help in Joseph Tkach’s column, p. 6, titled “It’s Hard to Forgive.”

 

I read this article and found it to be a good statement of the issues converging on forgiveness.  I would like to think that my concern with this issue falls under the heading of Not Forgetting rather than Not Forgiving, but I know that is a great challenge to the human heart, a challenge that is not often well met.   I know I must forgive those who mistreated me and others like me but I will not abide a distortion or denial of history.  Or a whitewashing of Armstrongism to remake it into something noble and full of good intentions.  It clearly was not.  Such a misrepresentation is a disservice to history and a disservice to all those who suffered under Armstrongism.  My interest, mostly, is a matter of sorting through historical fact and understanding the lessons of history rather than an exercise in vengeance. 

 

I am reminded of an incident I once read about in a magazine.  An alcoholic father who greatly mistreated his family and lived in a state of denial about his alcoholism for decades finally entered an AA program and saw the light.   He was in his Sixties and his involvement with raising a family was pretty much over.  The damage was done.  So he went to visit his son for the first time in years, knocked on the door and asked for forgiveness.  He extended his hand to his son but his son did not receive his handshake.  Instead, the son said “You screwed up your life and everybody else’s in our family and now, after everything is destroyed, just because you have joined AA, you want to be forgiven.  I’m sorry; it’s just not that easy.”  The son then closed the door in his father’s face. 

 

I believe the son should have forgiven his father from his heart.  But I do not believe that his son must forget what his father was and what he did.  I do not believe the son’s personal anguish should be trivialized under the umbrella of forgiveness. I do not believe it is necessary for the son to associate with the father, like they were now pals, and pretend like nothing ever happened.  And I do not believe God requires any of this of us.  God, after all, does not forget our works but rewards us according to them.  He just does not make our salvation contingent on those works or nobody would be saved.   I hope to forgive all of the dark and demented personalities who affected me in the Armstrongite organization over the years.  But I doubt that I will ever lose fascination with what happened historically.  For me, the impact of Armstrongism will reverberate throughout future generations of my descendants, because of bad decisions I made within the Armstrongite context and at the encouragement of Armstrongites.  If someone wants me to pretend like nothing ever happened, I would have to say “I’m sorry; it’s just not that easy.”

 

You wrote:  “So what kind of circumstances are you I as far as home, occupation, goals, friendships, health?”

 

I was not sure how to react to this question.  My first conclusion was that you wanted to know more about me as a person of mixed ancestry.  Perhaps, you might conclude, all of what I had written could be conveniently attributed to my genetic disarray.  But I assumed the best intentions on your part and I responded by writing about the fact that I have no family connections.  This material is personal and please do not circulate it.  My description of this was a little weak because I omitted some details:

 

  • I was anathema to most Armstrongites not simply because I was mixed but specifically because I was mixed with Native American ancestry.  Based on your writing (The Compendium, which had almost the status of scripture to Armstrongites.  The Mormons had the writings of Joseph Smith and Armstrongites had The Compendium of World History), Native Americans were Canaanites, a despicable and degenerate race, cursed of God.  In their zeal for everything Old Testament, Armstrongites could gain a greater measure of self-righteousness through their deploring of me.  This was especially attractive because it was in contravention to larger “evil” society, which, as I mentioned earlier, began to revise its view of Native Americans in a positive direction.  If I had been mixed with Chinese, I probably would have been treated somewhat better.  I also had a university education among predominantly blue collar workers.  In short, I had all the characteristics to be utterly unacceptable to the general Armstrongite.  The WCG was never my family.  And I used to be puzzled by all the malarkey about the Philadelphian era, the strange lip service paid to brotherly love and the idea of the church being the Mother of us all.  She was clearly a better mother to some than to others. 

  

  • I have almost no connection with my Dad’s family or my Mom’s family.  When I became an Armstrongite at the age of 17, I was discouraged from family associations.  The instruction I received from the WCG was that these associations would lead me from single minded devotion to the WCG and I would slip into the unpardonable sin and lose salvation.  So it was my personal policy to avoid all relatives and past friends.  So at this time, most of my extended family has no association with me.  Some of them probably remember my name. 

  

  • I actually had very little association with my mother, father and sister after becoming an Armstrongite.  I never spent holidays with them of course, always lived far away, and never gave them any birthday presents.  After decades, a wall developed because traditional customs were not observed.  They are all now deceased.

     

A couple of comments:   I do not want you to look at this as an Armstrongite and say to yourself, “Just what I expected for someone racially mixed – no family, no happiness.”  I want you to look at this objectively and say to yourself: “This is what Armstrongism did to people.” 

 

The other comment:  while I feel deeply deprived at the loss of family (one of the consequences of Armstrongism among many others that are financial, emotional and psychological and spiritual), I am not alone in this.  This seems to be one of the most frequent curses God has brought to people who “played” with Armstrongism.  I know many, many people who are now Armstrongites or ex-Armstrongites who are bereft of all family connections. Many divorces occurred in the 1995-2000 timeframe.  Many families dissolved.  Herbert Armstrong himself was a good example of this being bereft of family.  He died estranged from the most important people in his family and surrounded by strangers who idolized him or to whom he was pathologically related in some way.  Perhaps, even you have people that you are estranged from or that you cannot reasonably expect to receive salvation because of their dedication to Armstrongism.   For years we spoke and believed heresy about the nature of God.  We heretically espoused a polytheistic “family”.  Now God has made us, like Moses grinding up the Golden Calf in water, drink these waters.

 

I missed my goal of being brief.  You needn’t respond to this letter.  I think this discussion has run its course, unless you have something to add.  I believe my story is just one of many such stories among those who used to be associated with Armstrongism.  I am sure most have not elected to write to anyone in Pasadena about their lives.  This lack of correspondence or other communication may have given you a skewed and inaccurate view of the current WCG.  Thanks for the correspondence.

 

Best regards,

 

Concluding Letters

 

I wrote to Greg Doudna sometime in 2007 about this correspondence.   In an e-mail to Greg, I characterized Hoeh’s responses as follows:

 

Hoeh adhered to a single theme in his responses.  The elements of this theme are:

1)  No admission of a theological basis for the Armstrongite racial policies.
2)  The racial policies were only a public policy formulation to keep the WCG and its members out of trouble with the larger society.

He did not depart from this theme in any of his correspondence.  He did suggest to me that I read an article that recently appeared in one of the WCG publications on forgiveness.  He also seemed to be disturbed that WCG members would think highly of themselves because of their supposed Israelitish ancestry.   Overall, I felt that Herman Hoeh wanted to skirt the issue of the theological basis for the WCG's past racial policies.  He did not answer any of my questions directly.  But apparently he felt like something was wrong because he prescribed forgiveness on my part.  My conclusion was that he did not regret the racial policies but was unhappy with their implementation in the local areas and with the way that lay members responded to these policies.   Apparently, one of his grandchildren is half Native American.  He felt as if she were a well adjusted person and got along well with "circum-Pacific" people.  But in this statement one glimpses the idea that racial background is determinative for where one fits in society.
       

I still feel this assessment to be accurate.  I passed my disappointment along to Ron Kelly in the following letter:

 

Mr. Ron Kelly:

     Thanks for passing along my e-mail to Herman Hoeh.  He and I exchanged a few letters about a month ago.  My letters were long and his were brief.  In general, his responses were really not satisfactory.  I was interested in how the theological underpinning for racism developed in the WCG and why.  Mr. Hoeh focused only on his own personal record of good relations with people of other races.  He also characterized the WCG's practices regarding race as nothing more than public policy issues which were intended to keep us out of trouble with local legal authorities.  No doubt this played a role, but to attribute it all to public policy is somewhat disingenuous.  The WCG, at that time, had an extensive set of doctrines based in theology that pertained to race and I believe most of it originated with Mr. Hoeh. 

      Either someone advised him not to speak on these issues or he was not understanding the course of my inquiry.  After several letters, I failed to really get him to engage, his correspondence became repetitive and I felt that the dialog had run its course.  But I do appreciate your passing along my questions.  Unfortunately, these questions will remain unanswered.
      

Ron Kelly made a gracious response to this in the following e-mail:

 

Sorry to hear things did not go as you had hoped.  I can assure you, however, that no one advised Dr. Hoeh not to speak on these matters.  That would be contrary to anyone's feelings here in leadership positions.  In fact, I would guess than only you, Dr. Hoeh and I were aware of your correspondence with him.

 

As to his answers (or lack thereof) I don't know what to say.  Dr. Hoeh, is well, Dr. Hoeh and he does have his own unique way of addressing (or not addressing) issues.  That's been the Dr. Hoeh I have known for 45 years.

 

Suffice it to say, on behalf of the WCG and especially Curtis May and his Reconciliation Ministry we sincerely apologize for the racism that indeed was part of our church culture.  We repent of it, and are striving to make a difference in the world today.  I believe you and I had this conversation a bit earlier.

 

God's blessing in your life.

 

Ron Kelly

 

Conclusion

 

There are a number of conclusions that one can draw from this exchange: