Undertow: How Life’s Undercurrents Can Pull Us Where We May Not Want to Go
“Undertow is Charlene’s engaging personal story of being recruited into a Bible-based cult, the destructive effects of following the cult’s authoritarian leader, and how difficult it was to escape.”
It changed my life.
Charlene Edge and I met over six years ago at a small social event where I learned her memoir, Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International had been published a few months before. What intrigued me most about Charlene and her book was that she wrote about an organization my brother had been a part of for many years and refused to recognize as a cult.
My brother and I were quite close growing up, but when he joined The Way we became estranged. It took us many years to rebuild our relationship, but we managed to do it. Barely two months after signing the divorce papers that signaled the end of my thirty-seven-year marriage, I received a call in the middle of the night from my sister-in-law. My darling brother had been kidnapped! Three weeks later we found out he was murdered the very same night.
(I am not using his name here because my sister-in-law begged me not to reveal to my nephews the circumstances of my brother’s death. At the time their youngest son was just fourteen years old.)
For the longest time, I lived in a state of shock. I spent long hours researching the story of his kidnapping and of The Way International. My brother was a brilliant man, and I couldn’t understand how he had been ensnared by a cult as an MIT student and fallen prey to a drug cartel when he crossed the border into Mexico to have his car repaired. I wanted answers and I thought I would find them in Charlene’s book.
Undertow confirmed many suspicions about The Way and provided a lot more information than I ever wanted to know. Because Charlene, my brother, and I were close in age, I asked her to meet me so we could talk about her experiences in The Way. Would Charlene tell me she’d met him? She graciously accepted, and a long and incredible friendship evolved from there.
As it turned out, Charlene and my brother did participate in several events at The Way but never had a chance to meet. She knew of his leadership, but this was a huge organization that transferred its members around the nation often, so they never got to interact. Ironically, the summer my brother and his wife moved away from Headquarters, where he had been working on Greek New Testament projects, Charlene and her husband moved back there so she could work on Aramaic (Syriac) New Testament projects. They missed each other by a couple of weeks!
1982 Satellite Biblical Research Fellowship conference with Research Team. Rome City, Indiana campus. Charlene second row, second from right. My brother is a handful of people away from her! Photo used by permission from the author of Undertow, Charlene L. Edge.
This is the first time I sketch a few bits of my brother’s story. I believe that at some point I will write in more detail after I have the opportunity to discuss them with my nephews. Meanwhile, I am forever grateful for the information Charlene gifted me with, including pictures of my brother at The Way, and for her gentle support. It is still extremely painful to write about it, but my sweet friend continues to walk with me throughout my grieving journey. When I get the courage to do it, you will be the first to know!
