Raising the Ruins (2 page)

Real Truth Emerges

Why did it take these men
so long
to make this change? For one, Feazell wrote, the decision to finally
begin
the process in 1996 “was made easier by the fact that rigid doctrinal opposition in the administration no longer existed.”
³⁷

W
HAT A SHOCKING AND SHAMEFUL REVELATION.

Writing as Tkach Jr.’s right-hand man, Feazell admitted that one reason Tkachism was so slow to relax the church’s rigid stance on absolute power was the
STRONG OPPOSITION
within the church
against doctrinal reform! It was only after that opposition was
REMOVED
that the Tkaches could then finally consider the prospect of relinquishing their total control.

Tkach Jr. said essentially the same thing in his book. Writing in 1997, he acknowledged that the church was even then working to change the way its government operated. “We do not believe that one form of church government is more biblical than another,” Mr. Tkach wrote, “and are taking steps to decentralize our ecclesiastical structure.”
³⁸

Later in the book he wrote, “There is no question that [Mr. Armstrong’s] administrative and organizational structures allowed unbiblical teaching to be believed and perpetuated.” So he blames Mr. Armstrong’s authority as the reason why “unbiblical” teachings were believed and perpetuated. Tkach then wrote, “In His mercy God has
changed our doctrines first,
and we are
NOW
working to change our governmental structure and polity.”
³⁹

In other words, once the changes had been made and the opposition removed, it was time to consider restructuring the government.

But how can he condemn the hierarchical government Mr. Armstrong supposedly employed to perpetuate his beliefs and, in the very same paragraph, consider that
SAME
hierarchical form to be divinely
inspired
because it was used to dismantle everything Mr. Armstrong stood for? Why is Mr. Armstrong’s approach likened to rape, whereas Tkach’s is a sign of God’s love and mercy?

B
ECAUSE THAT’S WHAT
J
OSEPH
T
KACH SAYS—THAT’S WHY
.
He just knows.
Never mind Mr. Armstrong’s legacy—that he left behind a unified, financially solvent church with a committed membership devoted to supporting a worldwide work. Never mind Tkachism’s legacy of destruction—of excommunicating people by the thousands; dividing families; destroying marriages; closing colleges, youth programs and foundations; and wasting away hundreds of millions of dollars.

Never mind all that—
just believe what Tkach says.

As members in the church taken hostage by Tkachism,
that
was our
ONLY CHOICE
, or else we were
FORCED OUT
.

I repeat: W
E WERE FORCED OUT
! It was
Tkachism,
certainly not Mr. Armstrong, that
FORCED
its will on the members of the Worldwide Church of God.

Legacy of Abuse

According to a document produced in 2002, Feazell said that Mr. Armstrong “had complete authority doctrinally and administratively. Disloyalty among ministers was dealt with by firing and expulsion from the church fellowship.”
⁴⁰
The exact same thing can be said about the Tkaches, as Feazell later admitted in a court deposition: “Any minister of any church is required … to teach what the church’s doctrines are …”
⁴¹
And if someone “teaches contrary to church doctrine [in the wcg], then they are subject to being disfellowshiped.”
⁴²
And many were.
How many
is an open question, but it isn’t going far out on a limb to suggest that the Tkaches were responsible for forcing more people out than Mr. Armstrong ever was—
by far
. According to Feazell, since the Tkaches took over, more than half of the church’s membership and ministry has either left or been shown the door.
⁴³

Leaving aside the numbers, keep in mind the big picture. Think about the
way
Tkachism preserved loyalty to its administration. Under Mr. Armstrong, at least members and ministers had the benefit of knowing what they were getting into. A prospective member, for instance, could have seen Mr. Armstrong on television, requested literature and then arranged for a visit with a wcg minister. If he chose to, that individual could then study for baptism and finally become a member of the church. All along, the member would have known exactly what he was signing up for.

The same would have been true for
WCG
ministers under Mr. Armstrong. Most were probably trained at the school Mr. Armstrong established to support the work of the church—Ambassador College. All of them had a thorough understanding of the church’s doctrines. If a minister, over time, decided he didn’t agree with Mr. Armstrong’s teachings and started causing division, he would leave or be disfellowshiped. As Feazell acknowledged,
any
minister of
any
church should be required to teach his church’s doctrines. But again, at least that minister knew what he was getting into from the beginning. Mr. Armstrong was the founder—what he taught is what the church believed. If the minister once agreed with Mr. Armstrong’s teachings and subsequently changed, why stay in Mr. Armstrong’s church? How is it forcing your will on that individual to tell him,
if you don’t preach the doctrines of this church, you don’t belong here?

With Tkachism, however, the element of
FORCE
was clearly at play. At the point of Mr. Armstrong’s death, there were 120,000 people in the Worldwide Church of God who, to some degree or another, agreed with Herbert W. Armstrong’s teachings. But at the very top of that church’s governmental pyramid, surrounding Tkach Sr. was a band of men who never agreed with those teachings but somehow remained in the church. And after the founder died, these men, with Tkach’s blessing, determined to change the very
core beliefs
of a church that had existed for over 50 years.

And since these changes were made
FROM THE TOP DOWN
, by men with unchecked authority, ministers and members alike were left with only one option: They had to abandon the fundamental truths they had proven and believed and taught
for years
while inside the Worldwide Church of God and accept Tkach’s new teachings—or they were
FORCED
out by excommunication.

In my mind,
that
is using authority forcefully and abusively.

Powerless

Feazell explained in his book, “Ironically, the same authoritarian governmental structure that created the heretical environment in the first place
was necessary to correct it.
” They were justified in using absolute power, Feazell says. “Tkach would not have been able to implement the massive doctrinal transformation that characterized the later years of his administration without the unfettered hierarchical authority delegated to him by Armstrong.”
⁴⁴

Realize just how stunningly blunt this admission really is. He knows—he’s
ADMITTING
—that without
TOTAL POWER
, their transformation would have never happened! The church membership simply would not have allowed it! But by God’s “mercy,” they were able to use absolute power to force it down our throats—or else show us the door.

Feazell admitted that “change of such magnitude”—like what happened in the
WCG
—“virtually demands a hierarchical, authoritative form of church government .…”
⁴⁵
Furthermore, he wrote that “without such total authority,
the changes in doctrine and direction would never have happened.
”
⁴⁶
He’s not saying
might,
or
perhaps,
or
maybe
. Without absolute power, the Tkach transformation would
NEVER
have happened.

T
HAT
is abuse of power
.

Feazell wrote about seven dynamics that accompany an organization in the midst of massive change. Under his sixth point, he wrote, “W
CG
members were frustrated with their sense of
powerlessness.
Not only did they have no voice in the decision to change their cherished doctrines, but in a church culture that valued being able to understand and explain one’s beliefs, they feared that they could not adequately understand the new doctrines.”
⁴⁷
The entire church membership, he says, cherished their old teachings—couldn’t understand the new—and were powerless to prevent the changes from happening.

T
HAT
is abuse of power
.

Feazell’s seventh point is this: “If you take the pressure off, people will revert to their old behavior. People tend to hope the crisis will just go away. If we were to stop teaching the changes right now and invite members to go back to the old doctrines, I am convinced that a certain percentage would do so.”
⁴⁸

And these men think
Mr. Armstrong
used his office to forcefully pressure people into believing a certain way?

It’s Always Something

At a 2002 deposition, we asked Mr. Tkach Jr. about the much-anticipated changes he had vowed to make in church governance. “Were those changes effected by the end of 1997 or early 1998?” we asked, referring to what he indicated in his book.

To which he responded, “No.”

And what had they done in the five years since Tkach released his book? “We’ve had discussions,” Tkach said. “[W]e’ve produced a manual, and
we won’t make those changes until we conclude the sale of our property in Pasadena
.
”
⁴⁹

Quite a coup: Force new doctrines into the church environment and give the members “no voice” in determining the church’s course. Do away with the church’s work—the television program, most of the literature, the colleges, the high school, the cultural foundation and so on. Excommunicate “disloyal” ministers. Drive out “divisive” members by the tens of thousands.
Remove all resistance.
Then sell off all the church’s assets—including multiple millions of dollars worth of real estate in Southern California and Texas.

THEN, and only then—MAYBE—consider changing the way church government is administered.

New Financial Model

In the same
Worldwide News
(the in-house church newspaper) in which the
WCG
reported the sale of Ambassador Auditorium and the Pasadena property, the church’s controller, Ronald Kelly, announced plans for a new financial model. “As a result of the successful sale of the east campus and the sale of a portion of the west campus,” Kelly wrote, “we are now beginning plans to implement our long-desired decentralized financial model.”
⁵⁰

Keep this in mind: They had abandoned the headquarters-oriented work way back in the mid-1990s. The church’s mission, like many other Christian denominations, was to develop congregations of worship at the
local
level. Again, Tkachism had completely done away with the “worldwide work” concept that Mr. Armstrong employed. There was no work, except at the local level. Congregations worked to develop their own identities.

B
UT THE MONEY
—
by the tens of millions
—kept flowing into the Pasadena “headquarters” even as late as 2004. Think about that. By 1995, virtually everything in the church had been decentralized—all except for the authoritative government and the financial model!

In his article, Mr. Kelly mentioned that the process of decentralizing the financial model had begun in 2003. That year, Pasadena collected $18.6 million in revenue. From that, they returned $1.5 million back to congregations—
a meager 8 percent.

But as of June 2004—with the Pasadena property pulling in an estimated $70 million for Tkachism—now church administrators were finally prepared to decentralize the financial model so that members’ tithes and offerings could actually be put toward the work that the church was doing at the local level.

Now, with his absolute, unchecked authority still intact, Joseph Tkach could divvy up the fortune acquired by selling off property paid for by the tithes and offerings of members who had supported the work done by Mr. Armstrong.

Once the spoils are dispersed, maybe then he’ll be ready to decentralize the church’s
government
model.

Then again, maybe not.

“[W]e are acutely aware of the heavy legacy of our past. … We have much to repent of and apologize for. We were judgmental and self-righteous .… So to all … who have been casualties of our past sins and mistakes of doctrine—I extend my sincerest heartfelt apologies.”

— Joseph Tkach Jr.

Plain Truth, March-April 1996

Tkachism has portrayed Herbert W. Armstrong’s legacy as that of an ignorant, wild-eyed religious fanatic who used his power to abuse people. The problem with that portrayal, besides being false, is that it represents a minority viewpoint
,
even among members and former members of the Worldwide Church of God
.
In
Transformed by Truth,
Tkach wrote, “While a
large number
of the letters we have received over the past few years can be characterized as angry and hostile, we always have gotten a
few
precious letters from members encouraging us to maintain our current course.”
¹
He doesn’t give exact figures, but admits that a
large number
of letters they receive are from members who are upset about what Tkachism has done.

Tkach said that church attendance peaked at 150,000 in 1988, two years after Mr. Armstrong died.
²
By the time Tkach wrote his book in 1997,
WCG
attendance had dwindled to about 58,000—an attrition rate of over 60 percent. Yes, their “remarkable” transformation, as Feazell wrote four years later in his own book, resulted “in the exodus of more than half of the church’s members and clergy .…”
³
Today, that mass exodus must surely be nearer to 75 percent. That’s not to say that
all
those who left did so in order to uphold Mr. Armstrong’s teachings. But neither did they hang around to lend their support to Tkachism.

In 1996, Mr. Tkach Jr. wrote a “Personal” in the
Plain Truth,
where he offered a pathetic apology on behalf of Mr. Armstrong,
who had been dead for 10 years.
“We have much to repent of and apologize for,” he said, explaining that the church had been “judgmental and self-righteous.” He then rattled off a number of “flawed” doctrines Mr. Armstrong taught. “These teachings and practices are a source of supreme regret. We are painfully mindful of the heartache and suffering that has resulted from them,” he wrote, without elaborating on how, exactly, people
suffered
as a result of what Mr. Armstrong taught.
⁴

“We’ve been wrong,” he told subscribers, before concluding with this: “So to all members, former members, co-workers and others—all who have been casualties of our past sins and mistakes of doctrine—I extend my sincerest heartfelt apologies.”
⁵

“Casualties,” like “rape,” is inflammatory. But instead of dwelling on that, let’s consider another interesting angle to this transformation. By the time Tkach wrote this apology,
ALMOST ALL
Plain Truth
readers from Mr. Armstrong’s era had long since
CANCELED THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS
. Judging by the circulation nosedive after 1985, it seems the real “casualties” were among
Plain Truth
readers who were uninspired by Tkachism.

Under Mr. Armstrong, the
Plain Truth
was a popular international magazine with an ever-increasing circulation. Tkachism ruined all that, and then apologized for what Mr. Armstrong did?

The Most Remarkable Story Never Read

The fact that so many have been turned off by Tkachism hasn’t exactly discouraged
WCG
officials from working hard to spread their “Armstrong was a crazed fanatic” gospel. Tkach Jr.’s 1997 tell-all book, according to the inside flap of the cover jacket, tells a “remarkable story of how the Worldwide Church of God was transformed by truth.” According to the church newspaper, the book discusses the “miraculous reformation” within the
WCG
after 1985.
⁶
Tkach himself described their transformation this way in the
Christian Research Journal:
“
Many
are now advising us that
PROFOUND COURSE CORRECTIONS OF THIS MAGNITUDE ARE WITHOUT HISTORICAL PRECEDENT
, at least
since the days of the New Testament church.
”
⁷
He’s talking about a transformation so unusual and massive that nothing in the history books can even compare to it.

Predictably, a number of evangelicals raved over Tkach’s book. Dr. Ruth Tucker called it a “landmark book.” Pastor Gordon Kirk said the book painted a “picture of one of the most dramatic works of God in our century.” He described Tkach’s behind-the-scenes account as “compelling,” “convicting” and “awesome.” Dr. James Kennedy said the changes in the
WCG
were “more intensive than those that brought about the Protestant Reformation.”
⁸

Granted, you wouldn’t expect them to promote their book with lukewarm reviews, but still, “without historical precedent”—more revolutionary than
even the Protestant Reformation?

That is quite a story to tell. And according to Mike Feazell, quite a lot of people would be interested in a story like that. “There is a great deal of curiosity about what God has done within the
WCG
. Former members, former
Plain Truth
readers, former listeners to our television program, as well as the greater Christian world are all interested in the how and why of what happened.”
⁹

I actually agree with that. I believe there
is
a huge audience out there curious about the
how
and
why
of their transformation, but not from Tkach’s angle—
that Armstrong was uneducated, taught heresy, etc.
Mr. Armstrong’s small circle of critics said those things for as long as his work existed. There’s nothing original about that story.

But what about making an appeal to Mr. Armstrong’s
legions
of followers—the tens of thousands of members who actually
liked
his teachings, the hundreds of thousands of co-workers and donors who, though not members,
liked
his message enough to support it with donations, the
millions
who followed his ministry on television or who read his literature? What about appealing to
that
mass audience, among which there must be many wondering,
how did the Tkach administration manage to hijack the Worldwide Church of God and, in effect, excommunicate Herbert W. Armstrong post mortem?

Now
THERE
is a story worth telling.

But Tkach’s story? If anything, it is
un
remarkable—unless, of course, you happen to be one of his evangelical friends, like Don Jacobson, president of Multnomah Publishers, responsible for distributing Tkach’s book. “We view the publishing of
Transformed by Truth
as a stewardship responsibility,” Jacobson told the
Worldwide News.
“Telling the story of the sweeping changes and movement of the Spirit of God within the Worldwide Church of God is one of the most exciting projects with which we have ever been involved.”
¹⁰

But not everyone was as excited about the book as this small publisher of mostly religious materials. According to the
Worldwide News,
by early 1998, the first printing of the book had sold out and a second printing was underway, but the article did not comment on how many copies were initially printed.
¹¹
According to a Multnomah representative, they printed and distributed a total of 30,000 copies of the book before it went out of print in 1999.
¹²
In 2001, the
WCG
offered the discontinued book online for free.

That same year, Mike Feazell finished his version of their “remarkable” story in
The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God.
Eddie Gibbs, of Fuller Theological Seminary, said he believed Feazell’s book was “destined to become a standard work, which church historians and religious sociologists will continue to consult for years to come.”
¹³

Dr. James Kennedy, who also plugged Tkach’s book, said of Feazell’s, “This is the most astonishing change that I have ever seen or heard of in any religious group.” Another friend of the transformed church, Ruth Tucker, said, “Never before in the history of Christianity has there been such a complete move to orthodox Christianity by an unorthodox fringe church.”
¹⁴

Tkach Jr., even after interest in his own version of the story had fizzled, had high hopes for Feazell’s. “We expect that his book will have a strong impact on making many more people aware in a positive way of the changes that have occurred in the Worldwide Church of God,” he told the
Worldwide News.
¹⁵

But again, besides church historians, sociologists and the
WCG
’s evangelical friends, hardly anyone else cared enough to pay $20 to read about the
WCG
’s “miraculous” journey.

During a 2002 deposition, Feazell seemed very uncomfortable answering questions about book sales and the royalties he received for writing it. He said the royalties fell between the 5-to-15 percent range. The book’s publisher, Zondervan, gave him a cash advance of $8,000 for his manuscript, which would count against whatever he collected from royalties. And at the time of Feazell’s deposition, the book having been available nearly a year, Feazell still hadn’t made enough in royalties to cover the advance.
¹⁶

According to a Zondervan representative, they printed 6,000 copies of the hardcover edition in 2001. That version is now out of print. In 2003, however, Zondervan produced a paperback version, with a print run of 4,200. According to their representative, they sold about 3,000 of these to bookstores. As of January 2006, Zondervan had 740 of the paperbacks still in stock.
¹⁷

As much as the
WCG
and other evangelicals hyped
Transformed by Truth
and
The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God,
the final sales numbers had to be disappointing. Apparently, their “remarkable” transformation into any old mainstream denomination—“without historical precedent” in modern religion—is a story that didn’t much resonate with the general public.

Mr. Armstrong’s “Remarkable” Book

When the
Plain Truth
finished its serialized version of
Mystery of the Ages
in November 1986, Mr. Tkach Sr. introduced the last installment by saying it was a “remarkable book” that was “in a very real sense” Mr. Armstrong’s “last will and testament.”
¹⁸
He said that Mr. Armstrong did not underestimate the value of the work.

And indeed, whenever Mr. Armstrong talked about the book, he heaped praise upon it. Soon after Mr. Armstrong began work on
Mystery of the Ages
in 1985, he told the church membership that it would probably be the “most important book” he had ever written.
¹⁹
In the Author’s Statement of the book, Mr. Armstrong proclaimed, “Time may prove this to be the most important book written in almost 1,900 years.”
²⁰

According to Joseph Tkach Jr., Mr. Armstrong perfected these kinds of hyperbolic “hooks” while working as a young advertising salesman in the 1920s.
²¹
“Unfortunately,” Tkach wrote, “he brought that sales mentality into the founding of our church.”
²²
Regarding the “time may prove” statement, Tkach said, “This was an introductory statement he had used previously in substantially similar terms for a number of booklets and books.”
²³

In other words, Mr. Armstrong supposedly said those things about
everything
he wrote
. It was a sales technique,
we’re supposed to believe. “He was excited for the people who would read the book,” Tkach’s father explained in 1990. “And he simply got carried away in his description of it,” Tkach said, barely three years after he called the book “remarkable.”
²⁴

One could be forgiven for seeing a similarity between “time may prove this to be the most important book written in almost 1,900 years” and the statement Tkach Jr. made about the
WCG
’s transformation: “[C]ourse corrections of this magnitude are
without historical precedent,
at least
since the days of the New Testament church.
”
²⁵
The big difference, of course—
and substantially so
—is that
masses
of people were actually interested in reading
Mr. Armstrong’s
“remarkable” work.

The church initially printed 150,000 copies of the hardcover version of
Mystery
. They distributed a complimentary copy to every family in the church. A publishing house in New York—Dodd, Mead, Inc.—distributed the work to bookstores in the United States and Canada. The church sent 1,000 advance copies, along with press kits, to reviewers all across America. One positive review for
Mystery of the Ages
appeared in
Library Journal,
a publication that libraries rely upon to determine which books to order. The journal praised Mr. Armstrong for presenting the church’s doctrines in a “clear and straightforward style” and recommended libraries order it for either their religious or public sections.
²⁶

In November 1985, the church offered
Mystery of the Ages
to 480,000
Good News
subscribers. According to the
Worldwide News,
within a 10-day period, nearly 100,000 subscribers requested the book.
²⁷
By the end of that year, about 50 percent of the subscribers sent in requests, which shattered a 21-year-old record in the church, set in 1964, when 41.4 percent of
Good News
subscribers requested
God Speaks Out on the New Morality.
²⁸