Page 12 - Failed Experiment

A Failed Experiment

This could go on. The cases are many. I could probably catalog twenty
more similar events that I know of or have witnessed. The anecdotes
related here, support the conclusion that if AC was an experiment in
forming community based on Biblical principles, it was a failure.
These facts document that Armstrongism was and is an oppressive
class system and if you are on the ocean bottom, the downward
pressure will be enormous, this in spite of all the self-righteous lip
service given to the Philadelphian Era as the “church of brotherly
love.” Most 1-Ws I knew were invisible on the AC campus. They were
non-entities. They existed at the margin. Most 1-Ws I knew had no AC
students as friends, knew no faculty members, knew no ministers.
They came to AC without identities, worked without identities and left
without identities.

1-Ws did, however, have a great utility in the AC universe. Imagine
that you are an AC student. You have been told that you are special,
chosen and far above the Great Unwashed in the church. To underpin
this, the guy who is cleaning out your restroom or mowing your lawn
is a graduate with a technical degree from a major University (a school
that most AC students would be unlikely to be admitted to). You can
imagine the message. “This is what all those people from universities
and colleges “in the world” are good for. They clean out our restrooms
and mow our lawns.”

This is pretty heady stuff for a student who is constantly being fed the
idea that he or she is a man or woman of great destiny and special to
God – a student at God’s only college. It was excellent training in
looking down on lay members no matter what their accomplishments.

At this point, I will take some time to answer a few objections certain
to be raised about my assertion that AC failed in its mission.

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