A frank, in-depth account of one woman’s struggles in a controlling organization.
An author recounts her experiences with the religious group The Way International in this debut memoir.
Although Edge was raised Roman Catholic, she drifted from the religion as a teenager. Following the loss of her mother to cancer, she had questions about God that Catholicism seemed unable to answer. After participating in a Young Life camp and other flirtations with Protestantism, she came across some young men at East Carolina University who claimed to have something stronger. They were representatives of The Way International, a group founded by Victor Paul Wierwille, whose aim was to present the Bible in a way that “would reveal the original, noncontradictory, error-free Scriptures that God authored.” It was with The Way that the author’s life would change completely. From dropping out of college to becoming part of The Way Corps to marrying another member, she would spend years immersed in what many, including Edge, would consider a cult. Although The Way claimed to be an organization aimed at researching and spreading the original message of the Bible, the author argues that it was really a group that embraced the whims of its often moody leader: “This wasn’t a church where people attended only once a week, but a thriving family with a common cause.” It is easy to see from Edge’s account what might attract one to such a family, despite warnings from others. While a variety of controversies ended up surrounding The Way, the author’s most astute portrayal concerns her participation in its research branch. As she and others worked to translate old biblical texts, it became clear to her that the only interpretation that mattered was the one that had been decided by Wierwille. After all, his whole claim of authority came from his notion of “a perfect Bible.” Scenes of disagreements among researchers might not be as salacious as accusations of sexual misconduct within the group (which Edge mentions, though she did not experience it firsthand). But the clashes pointedly illustrate the contradictions at the heart of such an institution. If a research branch denies its own findings due to the will of one man, then surely trouble is afoot.
A frank, in-depth account of one woman’s struggles in a controlling organization.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9978747-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: New Wings Press
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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