“….And All Her Harlot Daughters….”

It has long been maintained, in Church theology, that the Church of God is totally separate and distinct from “The Great Whore of Babylon” (Hislop’s Roman Catholic Church) and “all her harlot daughters”, the variegated Protestant offshoots that came about after the separation of Britain from Rome. Also the separation of Alexandria, but it is not Eastern Orthodoxy which I wish to address in this post.

The purple hymnal, as the “How This Hymnal Came to be” page (the one in the book, not the one on this site) tells us :

Having no hymnal of our own I was forced to use one of the somewhat thin paperback Protestant song books. The elderly Bible scholar said, “It is just as sinful to sing a lie as to tell one.” I had to agree. For some time I realized that many of the standard hymnals contained songs that were unscriptural.

As has been made clear through the pages of this site,  Armstrong’s version of  ”scriptural” hymns took on a very different meaning to the professing Christian hymns of the day. We were singing “songs inspired by God’s words”, we were told, and did not bend knee to “The Great Whore of Babylon and all her harlot daughters”, by singing the songs of the pagans.

The truth is somewhat different than the parallel reality we were presented with. For all the insistence that our hymns were THE hymns of “the one true church of god”, it has subsequently come out that many of them were actually cribbed from a clearly Protestant source, but “The Old Scottish Psalter” was probably OK, since they were “of the tribe of Ephraim”, after all. (Therefore, not REALLY “harlot daughters”.)

Some recent reading has led me to discover a particular Protestant hymn called the “Benedicite”, apparently beloved of both Catholics and Anglicans, for many centuries. Originally in Latin, the English translation from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is as follows:

O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O let the Earth bless the Lord : yea, let it praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Fowls of the Air, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

Hm. Sound familiar? Looks like we weren’t quite as far removed from all the “harlot daughters” as Armstrong had us believing…..

Compare and Contrast

4. It is still true: Church of God members are not allowed to read any critical websites. It is still an offense punishable by disfellowshipment and/or marking. However, once a hardcore Church of God member gets on the internet, they will spend weeks and months reading everything they can.

5. It is still true: Church of God members do not know the basic facts of their own church. They believe the PR and ignore the stories of sexual deviance. Church of God members tend not to interact with the worldly or to minimize interactions.

6. Church of God members live in a highly censored false reality system where the sense of group and loyalty is extraordinarily strong. The distortion of reality in a Church of God group is incredibly hard for a non-believer to fathom.

Here’s the original.

Any questions?

Happy Solstice Season Everyone!

Merry/Happy Christmas, Xmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Happy Winter Solstice (so mote it be), and to all a good night.

See you in 2010! (Sorry Weinland!)

When it Changed (Our Uncommon History)

Portions of this post have been reprinted from I Survived Armstrongism.

People of my parents’ generation ask each other, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”

People of my generation ask “What were you doing when Challenger exploded?”

Kids of the Internet generation will ask each other, twenty years from now, “What were you doing when the towers went down?”

Second- and third-generation survivors of the Worldwide Church of God ask each other, “Where were you when the changes hit?”

My First Christmas

This post is a reprint from I Survived Armstrongism.

OK so a “first Christmas” should, by all rights, involve pictures of a toddler ripping apart mountains of paper under a tree with lights and tinsel and mountains of stuff. Right?

My first Christmas, not so much.

A Child’s Sabbath (pt. 2)

This post is a reprint from I Survived Armstrongism.

The YES lessons often talked about “taking a time machine into the past” of the bible stories, so that we might “unlock the vital understanding of prophecy”. Today, on I Survived Armstrongism, I propose a time machine into a past that didn’t get nearly as much play, as did “the major prophecies of the minor prophets.”

The following account is just fuzzy enough on the identities and the locations, that I am hopeful everyone who was once a child of the church, will be able to see themselves, or some part of their childhood, in what follows.

Part 1.

A Child’s Sabbath (pt. 1)

Following on from J’s post, this post is a reprint from I Survived Armstrongism.

The YES lessons often talked about “taking a time machine into the past” of the bible stories, so that we might “unlock the vital understanding of prophecy”. Today, on I Survived Armstrongism, I propose a time machine into a past that didn’t get nearly as much play, as did “the major prophecies of the minor prophets.”

The following account is just fuzzy enough on the identities and the locations, that I am hopeful everyone who was once a child of the church, will be able to see themselves, or some part of their childhood, in what follows.

Part 2

We are the children of the church.

Click over to Shadows of WCG: Next Generation, for a post that I could have written myself.

There are far too many good parts of the post for me to quote, without re-posting it in its entirety, but I will give you the passage that made me go “HELL, YES!”

Am I making excuses? Of course not. The intent of this post is to burn home to those reading this fact: The second generationers were the most indoctrinated, most impacted sponges of all of the Armstrong Empire. And when the Empire broke up in 1994 and 1995, the emotional stress of it, I am willing to bet, impacted second generationers the worst. Understand this: Their entire way of life since birth was shattered or changed. It is much like taking one gender and throwing that gender into the body of the opposite gender. You must adapt, learn, and change to your new circumstances – but in many ways, you will always be the you you always mentally were.

Click. Read.

We are the children of the church.

Our Own Private Apocalypse (pt. 2)

An earlier version of this post appeared on I Survived Armstrongism.

Given the continued whitewashing of Basil Wolverton’s indoctrination materials, for those who can’t stomach the thought of reading through the material again, below the cut I present 87 excerpts, from all six volumes of The Bible Story. Not quite as text-free as Mont’s little money-maker for GCI, one gets more of a sense of the context and thoroughness of the thought-reform engendered by these books, with the captions included. Something “The Wolverton Bible” conveniently left out. Possibly because it would have gotten a “hard R” rating, otherwise.

On books that were distributed to families with pre-school children.

Part 1.

Our Own Private Apocalypse (pt. 1)

An earlier version of this post first appeared on I Survived Armstrongism.

Given the continued whitewashing of Basil Wolverton’s indoctrination materials, for those who can’t stomach the thought of reading through the material again, below the cut I present 87 excerpts, from all six volumes of The Bible Story. Not quite as text-free as Mont’s little money-maker for GCI, one gets more of a sense of the context and thoroughness of the thought-reform engendered by these books, with the captions included. Something “The Wolverton Bible” conveniently left out. Possibly because it would have gotten a “hard R” rating, otherwise.

On books that were distributed to families with pre-school children.

Part 2 coming soon!

The tomorrow that never was.

An earlier version of this post was printed on I Survived Armstrongism.

I have progressed through a lot of emotions, over the last couple of years, as I have finally come to terms with what my childhood meant and resulted in for me. I freely admit, there are moments when I still regress, back to a comfortable and safe reaction. I’m trying to recognize that when I do it, and at least minimize the effects, if not necessarily eliminate them.

I have definitely reached a point where I can now accept that the church is an integral part of my past, and that it has shaped everything that I am. Whether or not that has negative or positive effects, here in the present however, is entirely my doing.

This background research paper on the church by a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a good, neutral, and thorough overview of life lived, in a parallel universe, whose wormhole is shrinking closed, ever-so-slowly. (Thanks to Gavin for the tip.)

Soon, my friends, we will live entirely in a universe where there are, at best, a handful of small Church of God congregations (I include Junior’s fiefdom of WCG/GCI in this.) We will be the last survivors of a tomorrow that never, ever arrived.

A bittersweet victory, to be certain, but one that provides a cautionary parable. We, alone, can stand outside of the control of other closed, high-demand groups, and say, “Wait, this doesn’t look good.” We have been here before, and we know what to watch for.

We can be sentinels, based on our pasts, warning of petty prophets and false Armageddons, far into the true future that is spread out before us, in all its uncertainty and wonder.

That Old Time Religion

The winter solstice draws near once again, and the darkness before the dawn of the new terrestrial year, begins to close in. I thought that I had finished this particular chapter of my (blogging) life, and that I had said everything I needed to say, about the Purple Hymnal.

I have received a couple of emails over the last few months, people telling me they have found this site, and have found it useful, to help them process what the hymns really meant to those of us singing them.

To that end, and in the spirit of the season of darkness, which to a Church of God member can be very dark indeed, the Purple Hymnal blog is alive and well again.

I will be reprinting some posts from the now non-functional I Survived Armstrongism site (I managed to salvage the posts even though they can no longer be accessed), write a few book reviews, and maybe some other stuff too.

Stay tuned, there’s lots more to come!

Lexicographer’s Final Notes

So our journey has now concluded. (OK my journey has concluded — I realize the PH has approximately two readers, one of them me.) This has by no means been a thorough or complete breakdown of the entire hymnal, but it is fairly exhaustive (also exhausting, but hopefully in a positive way).

The reason I have “left out” some of the hymns is because we never sang them. As in, we never ever sang them, or if we did, it was a brief experiment by an overly-ambitious song leader that never ended well.

The hymns I have reproduced and examined here are the ones that we sang, week to week, and depending how religious the household was, day to day. When I started this project, it was with a little bit of snarky “Kilroy was here!” and a touch of maybe, yes, that dreaded b-word. Better that it should be presented in the open, then left to fester. Yes? Yes.

So if I’ve left out your “favourite” hymn, or you think I’ve missed out on excoriating a particularly appropriate hymn, let me know, at purplehymnal@gmail.com.

It has been a long, strange, interesting, sometimes exhausting journey. But I would not have traded the past few months, for anything in the world. I may not have cleared every last one of the cobwebs of religion out, but I think I made an admirable effort towards getting most of them.

I hope that the information that I have presented here will be helpful to someone else, somewhere along the way, on their journey out of the church. When it is needed it will be here.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to get out of the house, and enjoy the remainder of the day. And the rest of my life.

Alphabetical Hymn Index

ALPHABETICAL HYMN INDEX

The Closing Pages

The remaining three hymns in the purple hymnal are America the Beautiful (to this day, we are probably still the only Canadians who can sing all four verses of it), Onward Christian Soldiers, and Battle Hymn of the Republic. Standard Christian staples, the first one neatly slotted itself into the British-Israelite beliefs of the WCG, and the latter two fit quite contiguously with the apocalyptic theme the church’s entire theology was based on.