Strong-Arming Garner Ted

The ins and outs of the Worldwide Church

As a TV and radio preacher, Garner Ted Armstrong specializes in glib moralism and biblical analysis used to buttress his apocalyptic commentary on current events. On The World Tomorrow he claims to reach an audience of 30 million. Many of his listeners become contributors and converts to the show's never-mentioned sponsor, the Worldwide Church of God, which regards itself as the "True Church" re-established by the Deity in 1933 to prepare for the end of the world.

Despite his pulling power, the church is removing Garner Ted, 48, from TV. More important, he has also been ousted from the church's board and from his job as the operating head both of the church and of church-owned Ambassador College in Pasadena, Calif. Last week Garner Ted lost his radio show too. The doer of these deeds? Garner Ted's father, Herbert W. Armstrong, the church's autocratic "Apostle," who has once more seized control and, at age 85, plans to go on TV himself in July.

Trouble between father and son is not new. Back in 1972 Herbert yanked Garner Ted off the tube and sent him into exile. Insiders later reported that the son was guilty of adultery. But by 1974 Herbert announced that the returned Garner Ted was his divinely chosen successor, a transfer of power that he likened to King David's handing the reins to Solomon (I Chronicles: 28). Angry schism ensued. Dissidents charged that Garner Ted had not properly repented his adulteries, adding that other church sinners had not been treated so forgivingly.

Times have changed. Now Herbert's closest aide and spokesman is Lawyer Stanley Rader, himself recently sidelined and now back in power. Rader denies that Herbert ever designated Garner Ted as his successor. In a florid churchwide encyclical, the father explains the sudden ouster by accusing his son of perfidy: "I derived my authority from the living CHRIST. You derived what you had from me, and then used it totally CONTRARY to THE WAY Christ had led me."

Many see in these goings-on a byzantine power struggle, in which Rader and his former secretary, who is now married to Herbert, have ganged up on Garner Ted. There is also another possible issue. Garner Ted has gradually played down some of Dad's more embarrassing dogmas. Among them: that heaven is racially segregated, that Britain and the U.S. have become the "real Israel," and that remarried converts must forsake their second spouses and, if possible, rejoin their first. He also opposed use of physicians.

Angry dropouts from the Worldwide Church publish a magazine, Ambassador Report, whose pages delight in Garner Ted's putative falls from grace. They treat Herbert just as harshly. The father's teachings, according to Report, "have caused suicides, bankruptcies and hundreds of premature deaths. They have broken up thousands of happy marriages." Chess Genius and sometime Disciple Bobby Fischer was quoted as saying that Herbert "is simply a madman who would love to rule the world. He continuously tries to frighten and panic you about the supposed imminent end of the world--so that you will empty your bank account before him."

Fischer, no spendthrift, sued the magazine over the article. He is known to have contributed at least $94,000 to the Worldwide Church. A trifling sum, when compared with the generosity of a reported 75,000 church members, many of meager means, who each year give more than a tenth of their gross income to the cause. The fabulous take: $75 million a year, including large donations from Garner Ted's radio-TV fans.

Even so there are reports of ballooning bank debts due to the church's free-spending ways. Dissidents complain of the cost of maintaining church leaders in many mansions, most of them lavishly furnished. A church-related foundation has poured nearly $2 million into Quest magazine. The same foundation will launch a secular book-publishing company, Everest House, with 30 titles this fall.

The main drain is Ambassador College, which costs $20 million a year to maintain. In April, Garner Ted decided to shut down the lavish Pasadena campus and move to Texas. Herbert figured the move was illadvised, rescinded the plan and sacked his son. But Herbert has nearly destroyed the school in order to save it. First he decided to close it completely, but now it will shift from a four-year course to various shorter training programs. The full-time student body is being slashed from 1,120 to 250, the faculty from 177 to 25. Long-sought liberal arts accreditation now appears impossible. While the chips fall, Herbert is buzzing off for a July 8 appearance with British royalty.

Who will eventually succeed the aged and ailing Apostle Herbert? Recent Convert Rader appears all-powerful, but he is not a minister and has numerous enemies. "Many people fear Stan immensely," says a veteran headquarters official. An anonymous "Committee of Twelve" has sent a vicious anti-Rader letter to all Worldwide ministers. Rader's candidate to take over may be the newly installed director of the church's ministry, C. Wayne Cole. But Garner Ted should not be counted out. Says Professor Joseph Hopkins of Pennsylvania's Westminster College, author of a recent book called The Armstrong Empire: "There is nobody around who can take Garner Ted's place as radio-TV money raiser. The Worldwide Church of God has no future without him."

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