Worldwide Church of God:

The Saga of a "Cult" Gone Good
Jon Trott

Cornerstone, vol. 26, issue 111 (1997), p. 41-44
ISSN 0275-2743

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A pseudo-Christian cult? Herbert W. Armstrong?s Worldwide Church of God (WCG) had all the earmarks. Armstrong founded WCG?s predecessor, the Radio Church of God, in 1937, changing its name to the Worldwide Church of God in 1968. He taught that the Trinity was a pagan invention, that the mark of a true Christian was celebrating the Sabbath according to Old Testament Law, that the Protestant and Catholic Church together were the Great Whore of Babylon. Armstrong also taught that being ?born again? referred to human beings themselves becoming Gods. He subscribed to a version of ?British-Israelism,? the idea that the English (and thus white Americans as well) are a lost tribe of Israel. The racist implications of such teachings were evident. Top that off with a doctrine of triple tithing, refusing to celebrate Christmas or Easter (pagan holidays, Armstrong said), and strict stances regarding makeup and dress. One gets the idea that in the Worldwide Church of God, there was not much ?Amazing Grace? to be found!

But unlike any previous countercult article Cornerstone has published, the story of the Worldwide Church of God is not a story with a tragic ending. Instead, the WCG today is a church in every sense of the word. Make that ?Word.? The journey toward orthodoxy began in 1986, after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong. Joseph W. Tkach Sr. took over the reins of the WCG as its Pastor General, and almost immediately cracks began to appear in the foundation of Armstrongism. Though the elder Tkach died in September of 1995, his son Joseph, along with other leaders, continued dismantling Armstrong?s doctrine in favor of biblical orthodoxy.

We interviewed Joseph Tkach Jr., along with his coleaders, Michael Feazell, director of church administration, and Greg Albrecht, editor of Plain Truth magazine.

Mr. Tkach, you could begin by helping us understand the series of events that led to the Worldwide Church of God?s remarkable transformation.

Joseph Tkach (JT): Herbert Armstrong, our founder, died in January of 1986. He had appointed my father to be his successor as Pastor General, and a few years after my father began serving in that role, he appointed people such as Michael Feazell, Greg Albrecht, and me to various positions. We soon found ourselves having to answer various questions and challenges regarding Herbert W. Armstrong?s former teachings. Since we?d been schooled in what I?ll call ?Armstrongism,? we knew how to defend it.

Some of the questions that came were new, unique in that we hadn?t seen such a challenge before. As we would independently do our individual research to answer certain questions, we all found that the things Herbert W. Armstrong was teaching were in error, both historically and biblically. Being that we were in such a legalistic system we didn?t feel the freedom to talk much about that with each other, but eventually we did.

My dad, the first couple of years after he was our denominational leader, couldn?t help but think about the notion previously taught by our church?that there are no other Christians, that we?re the one and only true church?and find himself quite bothered by that. He began looking around him and reading about what was going on in the greater Christian community. He asked, ?How can we say we?re the one and only true church when I see people giving their lives for missionary work? Not many of our people do that.? That issue caused him to question things in his own mind. And that made him open to understanding or entertaining these changes, that Herbert W. Armstrong could be wrong.

Greg, Mike, and I were part of those changes. My dad?s desire was to make changes slowly and to explain them thoroughly enough that everyone could understand them, that we wouldn?t lose anyone. But that ended up being an impossible dream. As soon as you pointed out there were some errors in Armstrongism, hundreds of people would write in with their pet theories, and not just theories, but good questions: ?If he was wrong on this, then here are another couple of things that need to be answered.? If I can use the analogy of driving a car, though we rarely had our foot on the accelerator, we had no control over the increasing speed of change. We had to answer the questions that came to us, and as we did that, there would be more questions. It moved with its own momentum. We would take the research and information we were discovering to my dad at the time, and we began to announce the changes we felt were necessary to the church.

We tried to do that in an orderly manner, but as soon as we made the first change, it was as though the tremors of an earthquake traveled through the entire organization. We had previously taught that going to doctors was a very suspect thing to do. Many of our members held this very fundamentalist view, that it was a lack of faith and perhaps that going to a doctor was akin to going to Satan for help. The way Herbert Armstrong reasoned was that Christ?s sacrifice was to be divided into two categories?His blood for spiritual sin, His body for physical sin. We realized that you don?t bifurcate Christ?s sacrifice that way. And so going to doctors was the first change we made, and interestingly, around 95 percent of our people accepted and agreed with that change. Around 5 percent didn?t like it but didn?t do anything about it other than grouse and complain.

What that did was to open the door and let a little light shine in; Herbert W. Armstrong could be wrong about something. Each subsequent change caused a bigger tremor. For instance, we started discussing the nature of God. Herbert W. Armstrong?s position was really polytheistic: he taught there were two separate God-beings in the God-family and that our ultimate destiny was to be God as God is God in that family. We had to discard that in favor of the Trinity, and that was the last straw for quite a few people. Before, we had viewed the Trinity as an essentially pagan teaching.

We?d been helped by people from outside our church who had written to challenge us on God?s nature; they would point out that our teaching was polytheistic. It might be a Catholic priest or nun, or someone from a Protestant denomination, who would write and ask challenging questions about the oneness of God. They would, for instance, raise the fact that Elohim didn?t mean what we said it meant. And so as we researched that, we saw that there were errors in what we believed.

As far as my dad?s personal journey, he had colon cancer and ended up dying last September. His struggle with cancer was happening concurrently with all these changes in our church, and for me personally, watching him on his journey, it?s as if he was making his life and death stand for truth. He made the right decisions, and died. I personally believe that he accomplished what God wanted him to accomplish.

What else did you find that helped in your journey toward orthodoxy?

Michael Feazell (MF): Church history. We?d believed that during the time of Constantine the doctrine of the Trinity was introduced via pagan sources. We had never studied Church history intently, since as ?the only true church? (we alone were Sabbath-keepers), we believed the broad majority of what was called Christianity was really a false Christianity. They had not remained faithful to the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. So we had rejected Church history. But going through a very careful study of how the doctrine of the Trinity came to be part of the Church, we were presented with a very different picture than that presented by our own literature. Scripture and Church history forced us to conclude that we were wrong.

Likewise, Herbert Armstrong taught that we?re not ?born again,? that we?re only conceived and won?t be born again until Christ returns. He misunderstood the Greek?some have said he didn?t know how to work a lexicon (laughter) and probably that?s true. We realized that yes, you are born again, and this idea of being only conceived is not true.

Some of our practices that came out of the holiness movement? that women shouldn?t wear makeup, slacks?changed. We used to teach that tithing was required for salvation; we don?t teach that anymore. We used to teach that Sabbath-keeping was required for salvation; we don?t teach that anymore.

And so much of what Herbert W. Armstrong taught was on the physical reward of being in the millennium, of living through or escaping the tribulation. That tended to overshadow salvation and eternal life. If I could put it this way, it?s almost an anachronism; we?re transported back and are looking at the future through the eyes of Israel. Herbert W. Armstrong taught that we?re not under the Old Covenant, but neither are we under the New Covenant, because it doesn?t begin until Christ returns. So that gave him a platform to pick and choose from the old covenant what he felt was still in force.

Is this where Armstrong?s spin on the doctrine of British-Israelism comes in?

MF: Very much so. British-Israelism was a central plank in Armstrongism because in fact that was one of the reasons Sabbath-keeping was required for salvation. The United States, Armstrong taught, doesn?t recognize its identity as one of the ten lost tribes, and they should be keeping the Sabbath. But we did, of course, abandon British-Israelism.

Since you had been Sabbatarian, did the Seventh-Day Adventists? approach to the Sabbath appeal to you as an alternative to your previous beliefs?

JT: No. Our previous doctrinal view on the Sabbath actually is rooted in theirs anyway, so by repudiating it, we actually repudiated their perspective as well.

Do you still hold to ?soul sleep,? the concept of somebody not being conscious after their death until Jesus? return, at which time they are raised?

MF: Yeah, that has always been the position of the Worldwide Church of God. It still is. But as fast as we say, ?Well, that?s our official position,? we also tell our members that it isn?t the only way to interpret Scripture on this issue. These are things that we will not know for sure until we?re all dead anyway. God knows what He?s doing, and we probably wouldn?t understand it if He explained it to us in clearer terms!

How did all this change affect the WCG as a people, a community?

JT: In 1986, we had eighty-nine thousand members. Half our membership no longer are with us, and the majority of those who are no longer with us are nowhere. They don?t attend any church. That?s over forty-thousand people in a state of confusion.

Greg Albrecht (GA): As I have listened to you discussing with Joe and Mike various theological changes we have made which are biblical/academic/cognitive, there is, of course, another side to the story! And that is the emotional side. Because people in our fellowship could go ahead and read the Bible with us, they could see what we were saying, and of course we were telling them to read things in a larger context than just a ?prooftext? context. We had in the past taken verses out of its chapter, book, and genre, connecting them with a few other disconnected verses. (We weren?t, of course, the only movement to have done that!)

But the emotional part! ?For thirty years, I?ve done it this way or thought this way.? Or, ?I came into this church because of Herbert Armstrong?s book, The British Commonwealth and Prophecy.? That book was essentially a book detailing our views on British-Israelism. Those are the emotional issues, to a great degree among the many who have left us and to a lesser degree among those still within our fellowship. So the emotional side has been a tremendous struggle, and continues to be, as people try to cope with changes in what has been their entire life. Who was Herbert W. Armstrong? What was all this about anyway? If he was wrong on x, y, or z, then what about a, b, and c?

As we?re talking about the personal element for those people who were unable or unwilling to go with the changes, was there also the opposite reaction from other camps: ?You?re not changing fast enough! You still believe heresy!??

JT: There was a small number that felt the changes weren?t fast enough. In some cases, those people left and joined other denominations, which we understand and even appreciate. I?m afraid though, in some cases, people didn?t deal with the problems they needed to deal with and just took their problems with them. In some cases, people felt we had to abandon some of the forms of worship we had, which to us seemed just as legalistic as we used to be. In other cases, people who left didn?t feel a fit?didn?t feel welcome?in the new fellowships, and they stopped attending there, perhaps staying home in a state of confusion, not going anywhere.

For some people it has been an emotional issue of depression, feeling like, ?Wow, I?ve lived thirty years of my life in vain?!? For some it?s feeling angry at God, ?How could You have allowed me to have been so deceived for so long?? Those issues are still present for some people.

A third battlefront, beside the people not able to move fast enough and those moving faster than the rest of us, was in dealing with the countercult groups. They became sources of information that ended up dividing a lot of our people, because in their quest to provide information about what was going on?some rarely or never talked to us?they often reported things that were untrue or inaccurate.

Mr. Tkach, you have said publicly that cult-watching groups made this journey ten times more difficult.

JT: Maybe it was two or three times. We had credibility with our people. They [countercult groups] became interlopers in publishing what they thought was really going on behind the scenes. And some of what they were saying coincided with dissident voices who were splitting off and starting their own Armstrongism-based groups. And these dissident groups who remained in culthood cited countercult publications as their proof of what was going on behind the scenes. That hurt our credibility with our own constituency.

We?ve had three groups split off from us, the first one calling themselves the Philadelphia Church of God. I think they are far more dangerous than Herbert Armstrong ever was, as that group represents the zealots. The next would be the Global Church of God, and then next the United Church of God. They all retain features of Armstrongism. The United group would be more of a snapshot of what our church was like in the seventies, and the Global group would be more of what our church was like in the sixties. Some people left and didn?t join any group, perhaps still sitting at home in a state of confusion.

Because the doctrinal changes were so very important to our membership, we wanted them informed sensitively and carefully and as scripturally supported as we possibly could. And sometimes the countercult pe