Grace Communion International (GCI), formerly named the Radio Church of God (RCG) and the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), is a Christian denomination based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and founded by Herbert W. Armstrong.
The organization's website reports 30,000 members spanning 550 churches in 70 countries. It is structured in the episcopal model and is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Founding In 1934, Herbert W. Armstrong, an advertising agent turned radio and televangelist, founded the Radio Church of God—a radio ministry in Eugene, Oregon. According to Armstrong's biography, he was ordained in 1931 by the Oregon Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day), an Adventist group, but he split from them in 1933.
According to the church, his first broadcast was in October 1933. On January 7, 1934, Armstrong began hosting his weekly The World Tomorrow show on a local 100-watt radio station KORE in Eugene. The program was formatted like a condensed church service, featuring hymns and Armstrong's message. The name of the program was likely inspired by the theme of the 1939 World's Fair, "The World of Tomorrow".
The church filed for incorporation on March 3, 1946, as the Radio Church of God. In 1947 the church was incorporated, and its headquarters were relocated to Pasadena, California. The church then founded Ambassador College as the denomination's educational arm. The broadcast of The World Tomorrow went into Europe on Radio Luxembourg on January 7, 1953. In 1968, the church was renamed the Worldwide Church of God (WCG).
Under Herbert W. Armstrong (1934–1986)
The Worldwide Church of God adhered to the teachings of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, until his death. Armstrong practiced a blend of Christian fundamentalism with some tenets of Judaism and Seventh-Day Sabbath doctrine. Armstrong preached that Britain and the United States were populated by descendants of two "lost tribes" of Ancient Israel. Armstrong's doctrine included strict observation of the Saturday Sabbath, annual festivals and holy days described in Leviticus Chapter 23; the distinction between the flesh of ritually clean and unclean animals listed in Leviticus Chapter 11; the forbidding of medical interventions, and the required payment of three tithes to the church. Armstrong rejected what he regarded as pagan practices and beliefs that had been absorbed into mainstream Christianity. These included the idea of the Holy Trinity, and the celebrations of Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and birthdays. Members were encouraged to follow a dress code during services. Armstrong's doctrine strictly opposed divorce and remarriage and encouraged members who had divorced to seek reconciliation with their former spouses, even if they had remarried.
Armstrong claimed that those "called" by God, who believed the gospel of the Kingdom, and received God's Spirit upon full-immersion baptism, became part of the true, biblical, 'Church of God'. Ministers were obligated to "disfellowship" any in their congregations who caused trouble or division. Such "disfellowshipments" were announced at services before the assembled congregation.
In 1956, Armstrong published 1975 in Prophecy!, a pamphlet that predicted catastrophic drought, famine, and epidemic disease in the United States between 1965 and 1972, as well as an upcoming nuclear world war instigated by underground German Nazis and the subsequent enslavement of Christians in Europe, concluding in the return of Jesus Christ. Armstrong predicted that these events would take place for three and a half years and would conclude by 1975. On January 5, 1968, the church was renamed the Worldwide Church of God.
By the mid-1950s, Armstrong had his son Garner Ted Armstrong take over as host of the radio and television versions of The World Tomorrow. By the late 1960s, Garner Ted was executive vice president of the church, vice-chancellor of Ambassador College (which by then had two more campuses in Texas and the United Kingdom), and executive editor of church publications including Tomorrow’s World, Good News, and The Plain Truth.
Armstrong's first wife, Loma Dillon Armstrong, died on April 15, 1967, after almost 50 years of marriage.
1970s: Scandal and conflict By the early 1970s, the church began to splinter. Members were disappointed that the events predicted by Herbert Armstrong had not occurred. Because church literature such as The Wonderful World Tomorrow, 1975 in Prophecy!, and many others had attempted to pinpoint the date of Christ's return, members continued to wait anxiously for the Second Coming. Some of Armstrong's evangelists, such as Gerald Waterhouse, had presented detailed, step-by-step accounts of the Second Coming in their sermons, which included Armstrong himself as one of two witnesses of the Book of Revelation.
In an article in the May 15, 1972, edition of Time magazine, Herbert Armstrong was reported to have ousted Garner Ted from his leadership roles in the church on the grounds that Garner Ted was "in the bonds of Satan." When questioned about the specifics of his accusation, Armstrong responded, "Look up 1st Timothy, Chapter 3, first five or six verses and Titus, Chapter 1, verse 6". The article surmised:"Both passages make two points in common: that a bishop or church elder must be faithful to his wife and rule strictly over believing children. Had handsome Garner Ted succumbed to an old and common temptation? His father was cryptic: "The fault was spiritual, not moral." In 1972, Armstrong declared Garner Ted repentant and named him the divinely ordained successor in the church after the latter signed a letter stating, "I have sinned against my wife, the children and the church", though neither specified what Garner Ted's transgression had been. While some congregants speculated adultery, others guessed that father and son had disagreed on the format of their radio and television programs, or on some tenets of the church, such as the Elder Armstrong's vocal support for racial segregation.
By March 1974, multiple ministers had quit or been ousted as dissidents, with several citing the church's unfairly lax response to Garner Ted's violations, denouncing elements of Armstrong's doctrine, and founding offshoot churches. Thirty-five ministers formed the Associated Church of God in Washington, D.C. Texas Minister Barry Chase, sent an open letter to church members signaling his departure, citing "monumental immorality in the highest echelons of this church."
Alfred Carozzo, former WCG director of ministers in the western U.S., sent an open letter to WCG members denouncing the church's tithe system, the Armstrongs' lavish lifestyle and expenditures, Armstrong's positions on divorce and remarriage, and alleging that Armstrong had treated Garner Ted leniently compared to church members accused of similar trespasses. Carozzo incorporated his own offshoot, the 20th Century Church of God. More departures followed, some retaining the Church of God component in their names based on Armstrong's assertion that this is the name God calls the Church in the Bible.
In 1977, Herbert Armstrong married Ramona Martin, a woman nearly fifty years his junior, and moved to Tucson, Arizona, while recovering from a heart attack. During this time, Armstrong administered and guided church affairs through Stanley Rader, the church's general counsel, and the church administration. The church continued to be headquartered in Pasadena. That year, six former students of Ambassador College published a pamphlet alleging that the church misused funds and violated church members' civil rights. The pamphlet asserted that the church's tithing system reduced members to poverty, costing up to 40% of their income, to support the Armstrongs' lavish lifestyle, including multiple homes, expensive cars, and a Gulfstream jet.
By 1978, Armstrong had disfellowshipped Garner Ted and ousted him from the church permanently. Garner Ted began his own church in 1978 in Tyler, Texas, called the Church of God International. Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong remained estranged for the remainder of the elder Armstrong's life.
Ambassador International Cultural Foundation During the 1960s, "Armstrong had sought to put into stronger action what he later termed God's way of give", which was said to include "the way of character, generosity, cultural enrichment, true education: of beautifying the environment and caring for fellow man." He began undertaking humanitarian projects in underprivileged locales around the world, which led to the creation of the church-run Ambassador International Cultural Foundation (AICF) in 1975. The Foundation worked in several countries, providing staffing and funds to fight illiteracy, create schools for disabled people, set up mobile schools, and conduct several archaeological digs at significant biblical sites. The church auditorium hosted, at highly subsidized ticket prices, hundreds of performances by noted artists such as Luciano Pavarotti, Vladimir Horowitz, Bing Crosby, Marcel Marceau, and Bob Hope.Flurry, pp. 25–26
The Quest periodical was published monthly by AICF from July 1977 to September 1981. Originally named Human Potential, the project was directed by Stanley Rader as a secular outreach of the church-funded AICF. Quest publishers hired a professional staff unrelated to the church to create a high-quality publication devoted to the humanities, travel, and the arts. The periodical was created in the aftermath of Armstrong's poorly received 1975 in Prophecy!, a publication which caused accusations of false prophecy to spread. (The use of the year 1975 was defended by church ministers as a device to explain biblical prophecy, by contrasting it with the scientific world's declaration of 1975 as the year of technological "Utopia"). The AICF became secular in its approach and thinking and the church began to cut back on its funding. Eventually it was discontinued by Armstrong, and its assets were sold to other interests.
Receivership crisis Several members prompted the state of California to investigate charges of malfeasance by Rader and Herbert W. Armstrong. A coalition of six ex-ministers brought accusations of misappropriation of funds against Herbert W. Armstrong and Stanley Rader to the attorney general of California, contending that the two men were siphoning millions of dollars for their personal indulgences. In 1979, California Attorney General George Deukmejian placed the church campus in Pasadena into financial receivership for half a year.