This morning, I had a longer commute than usual, since I had to drive out to the western edge of Fairfax County. I was doing the usual channel surfing on the radio, when I paused on
DC 101. The Elliot in the Morning show was on, and Elliot was interviewing a local band called
Army of Me. I tuned in midway through the interview, and one of the band members was discussing his unusual experiences growing up. He was talking about how parents had been part of an extremely conservative Christian group, and how there had been issues with the group trying to control everyone's behavior, such as deciding who individuals should be allowed to date. Given my history, this is sounding interesting, and I turn up the radio a little. The guy continues to describe how the organization was formed as a result of the Charismatic Renewal moment in the 1970's. Oh, and he called it, "The Community."
Um, ok. That really got my attention. Elliot in the Morning is definitely
not the place one hears about things like the Charismatic Renewal movement. Or organizations that call themselves, "The Community". Now I'm getting a little annoyed by the static on the radio as I head north on 7100. And just
which charismatic Christian community is he talking about? He describes how families moved into the Montgomery Village area to be near each other. Back in the day, people in those circles used to call that "clustering", although he doesn't refer to it as such. And while the fact that it wasn't in Ann Arbor means that it wasn't the Word of God community, everything he is saying about the one in Montgomery Village is sounding just like the Word of God. Good intentioned people becoming control freaks, and then the organization splitting apart. Freaky. And rather amazingly, he proceeds to explain the Charismatic movement to Elliot and Diane, including the whole speaking in tongues thing. He did a fairly good job of describing it without using the typical religious jargon. And of course, the fact that I'm hearing this on DC 101 means that somehow I just entered the Twilight Zone.
The band then played one of their songs, and shortly afterward I arrived at my client's site. I really would have liked to hear the rest of the interview. Tonight I did a little research, and found the organization that he was referring to. The organization was called (and what's left of it still is) the "Mother of God". Unlike the Word of God, which had an ecumenical mission, Mother of God was a Catholic-specific group. The group had its genesis at Notre Dame in the same way as the Word of God, and shared similar philosophies. Judging from what I could find on the net, Mother of God had many of the same inbred, control-bent, community-above-church tendancies that the Word of God developed, but they seem to have taken them twice as far as the Word of God ever did. And the organization ended up suffering the same type of schism as the Word of God. However, the remaining portion of the Mother of God got straightened out through some active intervention by the Catholic Church.
The interview brought back so many memories of a childhood that I left behind many years ago. One of these days, I should probably write about my observations on the Word of God, and how even a good intentioned organization can do so much harm even as it is doing so much good.
In the meantime, I wonder how many other organizations ended up following the same path as the Word of God and the Mother of God. I also wonder how many other children who were raised in these organizations are out there, and what their experiences were like.
