Let us pause to consider the Silenced.co blog which has just announced that there will be no more posts and has offered its final farewell.
Silenced is one of those valuable resources which may not look like much on the surface at first, but can provide a great many epiphanies into the window of the insanity of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia.
As we say goodbye to our colleagues and friends at Silenced, we would like to offer this link which can provide a great deal of informational background for those who may benefit from it:
Our thanks again to those who have served us faithfully for years at Silenced.
As Armstrongism shrinks into nothingness, the associated blogosphere is also contracting as more and more people rectify the Armstrong problem, and proceed with their lives.
There’s a golden era to many trends, and people can pick from a wide variety of interests making them constants in their lives. I remember when I thought the California rock n roll beach culture and AOR FM radio would go on forever. But, sadly, at best we derive temporary sustenance from these things as influences in our lives, and then are hopefully on to the next thing.
Nothing physical is forever. At best we have a collection of snapshots in time.
Silenced was part of this particular golden era, as was Ambassador Watch. They both addressed needs, and provided information and entertainment. But, just as we watched FM rock stations in L.A. go from four to two, and then to Classic Rock, we’re seeing our “dissident” or accountability blogs and websites go “off the air” and the various personalities redispersed amongst the survivors. I plan to be around for a long time to come, and hopefully most of our other friends will as well!
BB
The Painful Truth is ready and willing to absorb these great works if the authors are willing to allow their work to be held for as long as we have the doors open.
Yes, the ACoG sects may be declining, but it is a slow, long, drawn-out process and will take many more years, even decades before there is really significant change.
The problem is that those of us who have others we know still involved in Armstrong, understand fully the hold that the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia has on them. They’re in a rut and not getting out of it any time soon. And since nothing major is happening, they will continue in their deluded pathetic participation until they can’t. Here, locally, the UCG has a respectable congregation and lots of young people to continue the silliness of United. There are families established here with grandchildren and great grandchildren that were established in the Radio Church of God in the 1950s. It’s just not going away and they do have fresh blood.
There are those, such as my daughter who still suffers from nightmares from the WCG experience. She shocked me after Sabbath when she was about 12 years old to report that her best friend in church was being raped by her father. I learned later that one of the elders in the church was a pedophile interested in boys and the women in the church ‘watched him’ because though he had been reported to headquarters (a futile effort), the leadership would do nothing.
People downplay the impact that the CoHAM has had on people and truthfully, the PTSD and other induced maladies don’t just go away. Silenced provided a brief golden opportunity for those who had been silenced to have a say. And now, sadly, that has gone away, as has Ambassador Watch.
Those of us left — at least those of us at The Painful Truth — will carry on as best we can. It should be noted that we are not ‘rescuers’. People have to ‘rescue’ themselves. The Masthead explains our position very well:
“Understanding the psychology of religious seduction and spiritual abuse.”
Because, darn it all, as much as we’d like to hope that these Olde Testament Pharisees Sabbath Keeping Scientologists are just going to wither up and blow away, it isn’t going to happen in the short term.