WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD (and splinter groups) (Religious Movement)

The Worldwide Church of God is remarkable for its shift to orthodoxy after the death of its founder, following fifty years of heterodoxy, and for its consequent massive splintering.

The Church, which took its current name in 1966, was founded as the Radio Church of God by former Church of God, Seventh Day (COG7) minister Herbert W.Armstrong (see Armstrong, Herbert W.) in 1937. Some of its teachings could be found in COG7, particularly its strong emphasis on not just the Saturday Sabbath, but also on maintaining the Jewish Holy Days and food laws, and the teaching of the imminent return of Christ. In those respects, Radio/Worldwide Church of God was a strict Sabbatarian millenarian Christian sect.

But Armstrong focused on a number of elements which were to make the Church distinctive. True Christians must obey God’s Old Testament commands not just because they are spiritual descendants of the Jews, but because they are literal descendants. Borrowing wholesale (though without acknowledgement) from J.H.Allen’s 1902 book Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, Armstrong taught a version of British-Israelitism in which Britain and America are descended from Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Mannasseh respectively; thus, any prophecy in the Bible referring to these tribes, or to Israel generally, meant present-day Britain and America. Like the Mormon Church (see Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons)), Worldwide Church of God was very much a religion for America. Armstrong and others wrote hundreds of articles analysing world events—wars, earthquakes, famines, etc.—to prove that we were in the End Times.

Armstrong’s teaching on the nature of God was unorthodox: God is a family, currently consisting of Father and Son, but true believers will become part of the God-family—part of God. (The Spirit is not a person, so the Trinity was a false doctrine.)

The Worldwide Church of God became a hugely successful broadcasting and publishing operation; its radio and TV programme The World Tomorrow aired around the world, and its flagship magazine Plain Truth had a worldwide circulation, in several languages, of between six and eight million a month. Worldwide published other magazines, a large number of booklets and a few full-length books, all distributed free to enquirers. All of this was paid for by the tithes of co-workers (members of the Church)— as were three splendid college campuses in Texas, California and near St Albans, England.

Worldwide was heavily criticized by Christian counter-cultists (see Anti-Cult Movement) for its doctrinal heterodoxy, and by anti-cultists for many things, including the heavy tithing (in some years members had to pay three full tithes of their gross income, plus frequent ‘freewill offerings’), and the perceived authoritarianism of the Church; Armstrong taught a strictly hierarchical form of Church governance, and at times this led to abuses.

In the 1970s the Church was hit by a number of scandals, including the revelation of sexual impropriety by Armstrong’s son Garner Ted Armstrong, who as his father grew older effectively ran the Church. Garner Ted was suspended, then reinstated, but after a furious row with his father, was finally disfellowshipped (i.e. excommunicated) in 1978. He formed his own Church, the Church of God, International.

It was widely expected that Christ would return in the 1970s (there was even a booklet entitled 1975 in Prophecy), and some members left when this failed to happen. Some ministers left when Armstrong reversed two teachings, on the date of Pentecost and on remarriage after divorce; their offshoot Churches taught a purer, stricter form of ‘Armstrongism’ than Armstrong was now teaching himself.

After Armstrong’s death in January 1986 at the age of 94, his chosen successor Joseph W.Tkach withdrew all the Church’s literature, and began a doctrinal review. Over the next ten years, one by one Armstrong’s distinctive teachings were dropped, until by 1995 Tkach announced that the Worldwide Church of God was now effectively a standard conservative Evangelical Church (see Evangelical Christianity). During these years many senior ministers left, taking large numbers of members with them. The three largest offshoot Churches, each holding in different ways to Armstrong’s teachings, were the Philadelphia Church of God (founded 1989, c. 6,000-7,000 members), the Global Church of God (1992, c. 6,000-7000 members) and the United Church of God, an International Association (1995, c. 15,000 members).

But this was not the end of the story. United, the most democratic of the three, demoted its leader David Hulme, who left to found his own Church of God, an International Community; most of the British ministers and members of United realigned with Hulme’s Church. Roderick C.Meredith, one of Armstrong’s earliest students back in 1949, fell out with the board of the Church he had founded, Global Church of God, and left this with about 80 per cent of the members to found the Living Church of God. The remnant of Global, effectively bankrupted, reformed as the Church of God Christian Fellowship, most of which later merged with United, though a further remnant became the Church of the Eternal God, which in Britain is still known as Global Church of God.

There was another offshoot from Global, shortly after Meredith left it to found Living; one of its leading ministers, David Pack, left to found the Restored Church of God, sticking very strictly to Armstrong’s teachings and accusing all the other offshoots of deviating from the Truth.

Shortly before his death Armstrong had written ‘the most important book since the Bible’, Mystery oftheAges. The Philadelphia Church of God, the first and most dogmatic of the ‘big three’ original offshoots from Worldwide under its leader Gerald Flurry, reprinted this and distributed it to enquirers. Worldwide, which had denounced the book as ‘full of errors’, still held the copyright, and took Philadelphia to court. A groundbreaking court ruling in Philadelphia’s favour, neatly distinguishing between the Church as corporation and the Church as believers, was overturned by the appeals court. At the time of writing the legal battles are continuing.

Armstrong’s son Garner Ted also had his problems. After another sexual scandal in 1995, about two-thirds of his Church of God, International (CGI) left in 1996 to form independent local churches linked loosely as Church of God Outreach Ministries. In 1997 CGI removed Garner Ted Armstrong as leader, and he left his own Church to set up yet another new one, the Intercontinental Church of God.

All of these Churches, and others, have suffered further schisms, so that by 2002 there were over 300 offshoots, some with no more than a handful of members. The continuing story can be followed at the website below, and many others.

Next post:

Previous post: