Herbert W. Armstrong. Trends.

A search of Google search terms has revealed that HWA is becoming increasingly irrelevant as time passes.

Click on the chart.
When I put into the Google bar ‘Herbert W. Armstrong racist’, 177,000 results appeared.

One article from the New York Times appeared that I found to be of interest. You can read it here.

Another is a post from Glynn Washington, who wrote:

Washington admits that he was a true believer until his late teens.  “Then [he] dug deeper into the doctrines and found a strong racist strain.  [Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God] taught that Black people were cursed by the Lord.  [Washington and his family] were a Black family living in a White Supremacist organization, and nothing could be more crazy. [He] fled.”

You can find his Biography here.

Another search found this:

Memoir Documents Author’s Youth In ‘White Supremacist Doomsday Cult’ Can you guess who the guru was?

Christian Identity at Wiki identifies this movement:

The Christian Identity movement emerged in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s as an offshoot sect of British Israelism. The idea that “lower races” are mentioned in the Bible (in contrast to Aryans) was posited in the 1905 book Theozoology; or The Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, a volkisch writer seen by many historians as a major influence on Nazism. Hitler, however, did not subscribe to the belief that the Israelites of the Bible were Aryans; in a speech he gave in Munich in 1920 titled “Why We Are Anti-Semites”, he referred to and disparaged Abraham as racially Jewish.

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Now, the paragraph below is of concern. If anyone knows how to identify who wrote or modified this under ‘Groups’ let us know. This needs to be changed, with the appropriate links inserted.

Christian Identity is a major unifying theology for a number of diverse groups of white nationalist Christians. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for racial separatism. Herbert W. Armstrong is inaccurately described by some of his critics, as well as by supporters of Christian Identity, as having supported Christian Identity, due to his belief in a modified form of British Israelism, and the fact that during his lifetime, he propounded observances favoured by many Christian Identity groups, such as seventh-day Sabbatarianism and biblical festivals.

That is untrue. If the ACOG’s want to hide the fact that Herbie was a racist they will have to take down a significant part of the HWA searchable library. Think interracial marriage. That doctrine was Racist.

Click here to see the 177,000 results.

Now, on to some other trends:

Ron Weinland’s ‘Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God‘cannot even be found in search terms, however his name can.

I could go on and on and the results are the same. Armstrongism is failing. The religion he started is basically dead with the exception of a few hanger-ons.

So what makes a trend and why are we bringing this subject up?

Trends start and spread by people communicating with each other. One of the oldest social science theories, The DOA, Diffusion of Innovation Theory, states that people, through the social system, spread specific ideas, innovations, products, that changes the system throughout time. It is through this path that diffusion (ideas, innovation, etc) is possible within the society.
You can read more and apply it to Armstrongism. The application of this theory is the same over all groups.

Most of the current bunch sitting in your ACOG’s are the THE LATE MAJORITY. Some will acknowledge their error and change, many will not.

So how do trends die is the next logical question?

Trends die off when a model (business, idea, etc.) loses the luster or is a proven failure, or goes against the fabric of society. Take the buggy whip. Its a product that only the Amish might be buying this year. You and I drive automobiles therefor the need for a whip is not necessary.

Consider religion. We are now in the post religious age. The information age has rendered the concept of a god obsolete to the modern man. There just is no proof for the existence of a god. The evidence available seems to point against the concept of a god. Everyone has their own ideas and philosophies on this subject. To each their own I say.

Simple Google searches on the topic reveals more than most want to know. How many people Google HWA’s name and what do they find? This is exactly how I initially found the Painful Truth, except Google didn’t exist at the time.  I wanted to understand why I felt as I did, so I did a search on whatever the engine was 20 some years ago. The rest is history.

If the ACOG’s want to continue to live on in some form, they will have to drop Herbie from their agenda and adapt to acceptable societal norms. That actually is how it works.

Ian Boyne was starting to realize this, and perhaps if he had more time, he may of found himself converting to a mainstream Christ centered church.

If Ian did find a way to adapt the few teaching of Armstrongism that are theologically correct, he might have been able to pull off something that worked for the people of Jamaica. We will never know.