Vision Casting with PG Joe

The latest Together (the replacement for the Worldwide News) includes the following informal job description for Pastor General Joseph Tkach:

"President Joseph Tkach oversees the spiritual and business affairs of the denomination, providing denomination-wide leadership and vision casting and fulfilling the many administrative duties required for national and international incorporation and registration.

"Dr. Tkach speaks regularly at church leadership conferences and meetings around the world, keeps current on theological and social issues, and represents the church at the various Christian organizations in which it holds membership..."
Vision casting? Keeping current? In other words, Joe doesn't do much. The position is, one might conjecture, a sinecure: very nice if you can manage it. The hagiography, part of a glowing report on the sect's new facility in Glendora, is written by Mike Morrison.

Mike fails to mention that PG Joe has an undisclosed salary, has never been elected to his position, runs a rubber-stamp board (making it almost impossible to replace him) and has overseen the continuing and irreversible disintegration of the church. Joe is, in other words, the Fidel Castro of the Evangelical gulag.

The stark nature of the WCG's continuing autocratic rule is plastered over by claims of "episcopal governance" (an outright misrepresentation) and sickly evangelical rhetoric. Apparently most people haven't been fooled: those with get-up-and-go have simply got up and gone. Sadly, too many into the waiting arms of the Armstrong warlords: Meredith, Flurry and their ilk.

How then does Joe justify his role or the perks of his office? Clearly he has been less than demonstrably competent. In recent months he even seems to have lost the support of Greg Albrecht, once an obsequious apologist, now steering "his" Plain Truth ministry in new directions and freezing out Joe and the WCG. And then there's the issue of the name change that changed back again. The church doesn't seem to be exactly in a safe pair of hands.

The reality is that Joe is unlikely to ever do the right thing and either step aside or (the better option) reform the administration by creating representative leadership. Sitting back in that big comfy chair, it's more than likely he'll be there till they wheel him out. If he can't do the deed, those remaining can still do the next best thing: cut their financial support and start looking for a healthy alternative.

Birth of an Apostle?

114 years ago tomorrow, July 31 1892, Herbert W. Armstrong was born in Des Moines. Not a man to encourage the celebration of birthdays, he nonetheless - unlike the children of his later followers - had the pleasure of receiving a 9th birthday party his mother organized, a photograph of which remained with the man-who-would-be-apostle throughout his life.

Like John Brown, Herb Armstrong's body lies a-mouldering in its grave. A man who built a religion and recruited his family into key positions (brother Dwight, son-in-law Vern Mattson, son Garner Ted), there remains only a shadow of the church he built and an absence of his descendants among its adherents.

Devotees of Armstrongism will scarcely mark this day, any more than they mark their own birth dates, but for those of us who've moved beyond his baneful influence (around 80% of the membership just over a decade ago) it's a chance to pause and consider the man, his motivations and his impact.

His impact on the world, or even the religious world was minimal. He barely makes the footnotes in reference works. But his impact in our lives was of another order.

As for his motivations, that's a complex question. Did he really believe what he preached? If not, how do you understand the attitude to medical intervention following his son Dick's fatal car crash? If he did, how do you explain his convenient rewriting of church doctrine to allow the marriage to divorcee Ramona? Perhaps he ended up convincing himself of his own fictions. As David Robinson observed, the web is so tangled it is almost impossible to peer beyond it.

While it is certain that Herbert Armstrong's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, it's less certain that his soul goes marching on. Perhaps its appropriate that for each one of his imitators in 2006, the followers of Pack, Meredith, Flurry and a gaggle of other wannabes, there are so many more who have reintegrated into a life unconnected with Herbert's grandiose vision.

And that, I think, is a cause for optimism.

Making a virtue of necessity

Down in Alabama the WCG remnant is trying to convince themselves that the Tkach revolution has been worth the grief. Here's a condensed version of how the July 7 Huntsville Times tells it:

A little more than 10 years ago, Paul Kurts pastored a congregation of 200 close-knit members. Today, his flock sometimes numbers as many as 20 - and he's never been happier.

For Kurts who, with his wife, had joined the church when he was a college student, it felt like someone had shifted the magnetic pole of the Earth.

There's a lot more in this pathetic little report. If this is typical of those who remain then you have to suspect that self loathing and self justification are mixed in nearly equal portions. Read it and weep.