Related
Translate
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Guyana’s Jonestown suicide site gets plaque
- Gaddafi preaches Islam to Rome beauties
- Scientology practices ‘putting people at risk’
- Recession: Muslim schools in UK under threat of closure
- Australian senator tells Parliament of widespread criminal conduct within the Church of Scientology
- When a child dies, faith is no defense
- Muslim terrorists smuggle fatwas promoting Jihad out of secure UK prisons
- Techie Holy water and geeky bishops
- Israel Charges Extremist With Attempted Murder Of Messianic Family
- 1-year prison term for man who participated in cyber attack on Church of Scientology Web sites
Rampage Puts Spotlight on a Church Community
More articles on this topic: Living Church of GodWhen a parishioner went on a shooting rampage during a church service in the Milwaukee suburbs this past weekend, his inexplicable violence put a spotlight on the Living Church of God, a tenacious community of about 7,000 believers that has struggled through a series of crises over the last 20 years, ever since the death of its founder.
The Living Church of God and its predecessor, the Worldwide Church of God, have long faced scrutiny because of doctrines and practices that other denominations call outside mainstream Christianity. The church does not believe in the Holy Trinity, and it celebrates the Sabbath on Saturday. It maintains that the English are descendants of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. And it teaches that the apocalypse is near. Its members do not vote or serve on juries or in the military.
How the Worldwide Church of God changed from being a cult of Christianity (theologically) to embracing mainstream Christianity
The church survived a sex scandal in its parent church that led to the excommunication of the son of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, and it flourished despite a series of schisms.
Now, as it buries the eight who recently died in Brookfield, Wis., including the local pastor and the gunman, Terry Ratzmann, who committed suicide, the police say they are examining whether a Feb. 26 videotaped sermon might have set off Mr. Ratzmann’s rage. The investigation has left church leaders and members saddened and rattled as they struggle to explain their teachings.
“I’d like the world to get their facts straight, but I can’t do it,” said Kathleen Wollin, a church member who was present last Saturday when the shooting erupted and who broke into tears when a reporter called her.
Glen Gilchrist, a church pastor for Arizona and New Mexico, wrote in an e-mail message to a reporter this week, “While we, as a church, teach many things different from mainstream Christianity, we are a normal, Christian community with every range of human strength & frailty.” John Ogwyn, a spokesman for the church, said at a news conference yesterday in Milwaukee that among those to be buried with full church rites was Mr. Ratzmann himself.
“He and his family were victims, too,” Mr. Ogwyn said.
Shirley Ratzmann, the mother of the gunman, told a deputy medical examiner that her son had disagreed with the church’s new pastor, according to The Associated Press.
In a way, the Living Church of God was born out of struggle.
The church is one of dozens of splinter groups that broke away in the late 1980’s and 1990’s from the Worldwide Church of God after the death of Mr. Armstrong.
An adman who went through a religious conversion in the 1920’s, Mr. Armstrong fashioned a denomination that judged many aspects of Christianity as pagan and instead sought a biblically pure faith.
The church he created taught literal adherence to the Bible and held that humans would soon face the “end times” of apocalypse and cataclysm, with the saved set apart from those who were not.
The church grew steadily from its founding thanks to Mr. Armstrong’s preaching over the radio and later television, and through the distribution of its literature. With its growth came sharp criticism from many Christians who saw the church as heretical, said J. Gordon Melton, president of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., who is an expert on small denominations and cults.
“Worldwide Church of God was considered a big target because they were making serious inroads into the evangelical community,” Mr. Melton said.
But in 1978, the first fractures in the church occurred, when Mr. Armstrong fired his son, Garner Ted Armstrong, from a top position because of allegations that he had had an extramarital affair. Moreover, after the elder Armstrong’s death in 1987, his successors began to revise church doctrine, moving it closer into the mainstream.
Dozens of groups that wanted to stick to Mr. Armstrong’s original teachings left the Worldwide Church of God. These mainly comprised a few families here and there, as well as three main groups, including what is now the Living Church of God, Mr. Melton said.
Led by Dr. Roderick C. Meredith, a 74-year-old minister ordained by Mr. Armstrong, the Living Church of God eschews church buildings and instead meets in hotel conference rooms and other modest venues, in the belief that it is the worshipers who make a church. The service where Mr. Ratzmann killed himself after opening fire was being held in a Sheraton hotel.
The church has given the police a copy of a sermon shown on a DVD that Mr. Ratzmann apparently saw during a Feb. 26 service, when he left abruptly. Most pastors in the church travel a circuit of cities, so every month they get sermons on DVD made by preachers in Charlotte, N.C., that congregations can view when their minister is away.
“The truth is that we’re still working it, the issue, we’re still working the evidence,” Lt. Mark Millard of the Brookfield police said of the examination of the sermon for clues. “To try to draw conclusions at this point is way too early.”
J. D. Crockett, a church spokesman, said the DVD the Brookfield congregation saw on Feb. 26 was a sermon by Charles Bryce, director of church administration in Charlotte, about living as a good Christian.
Mr. Crockett said that while the church wanted answers “more than anyone” about why Mr. Ratzmann killed, he did not think the sermon could explain the violence. But Mr. Crockett said that as memorials take place, the church must go on.
“In times past,” he said, “there have been various things that have happened in the church that have been scandalous in nature, and those were difficult to handle. But this is a totally different kind of hurt; it’s shattered lives. It is a gut-wrenching, hard-to-grasp sort of thing. While we don’t have an explanation, we trust that God will show us in time.”
Mary Kamps and Maggie Jacobus contributed reporting from Milwaukee for this article.
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
 Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
 Previous entry: Memoir alleging sex abuse draws fire from family, Mormon church Next entry: Arrival of splinter Mormon group in West Texas makes locals wary
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
