Highway to Hell

William & Margie Hinson

In the 1980s, I read two books which, as far as Armstrongism is concerned, knocked the ground out from under my feet. One was David Robinson's Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web (1981), the other Marion McNair's Armstrongism: Religion or Rip-off (1977). Of the two, Tangled Web had the greatest impact. More than any other insider source, it ripped the facade off the Worldwide Church of God. After Tangled Web there could be no going back.

I know Robinson was by no means without fault. I know the book had to be extensively rewritten before publication to remove virulent antisemitic comments. Knowing that doesn't invalidate his whistleblowing. Robinson was a senior minister in the WCG, and we can be grateful he decided to blow its cover. Marion McNair was one of Herbert Armstrong's evangelists. Again, not a man without fault, but though he wrote several years earlier, it was the same basic story.

There was a third exposé; William Hinson's Broadway to Armageddon (also 1977). This was more difficult to acquire, and I eventually gave up. It wasn't as though more dirt was needed to demonstrate the rottenness at the heart of WCG. When David Barrett was writing The Fragmentation of a Sect he had trouble hunting down a copy and asked if I had one (as I'm sure he also asked others). The 14-page list of references to his study includes both Robinson and McNair, but not Hinson.

Fast forward thirty-five years, and I've had a chance to read Hinson at last. I didn't think I could be shocked all over again, but I am.

It's not a well-written book. Hinson was no wordsmith nor, despite acquiring ministerial credentials, a particularly well-educated man. I skimmed the first few chapters, though not without a growing sense of horror as to the way things were through to the mid-1970s. If the writing is a bit rough, it also conveys the rawness of life in a sect that was, without doubt, abusive in the extreme. D&R and healing in particular.

But it's the supplementary material that is a real eye-opener. The exit letters from ministers, the leaked papers, the adultery, the deception.

We have Bill Hohman to thank for making all three books - Robinson, McNair and Hinson - available for downloading in PDF format. I stumbled on Bill's Facebook page while updating the links on AW. If you have a FB account you can avail yourself of this trip back in time. Not a particularly pleasant journey, but one that might help with closure by putting those missing pieces from times past in place.