A chic cabal would be rumored to control something cool like Politics, The Media, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, etc. Mine isn't like that. Our real estate moguls have achieved only tempered success in certain flyover state university towns with lower-division basketball teams. They live in new-money Orange McMansions with tennis courts never visited beyond house tours. We have a few tenure-track professors, a few civilians really high up in the defense industry. What else...
Maybe we have one or two billionaire families but they aren't doing any nation-state building or hosting Eyes-Wide-Shut-type Christmas parties. I hear they used to, back in the 80s, before this thing shriveled up into its current form.
At least a few of our people in the 10s-of-millions USD wealth range are known to travel by helicopter.
There's 10s-to-100s-million dollars of reserve cash in custody of some trusted Elders somewhere. Renting out these Gospel Meeting venues isn't cheap. They keep quiet as to who the Money People are, exactly, but you can basically sus them out based on who the Workers hang around, which last names are more familiar, which kids have the most Instagram followers, so forth.
World Famous Cool Guy Rockstar Bono is rumored to have roomed with One Of Us in college.
Joyce maybe referenced an offshoot of us in his notes developing Finnegans Wake. (Todo, hunt down page 138 of Notebooks at Buffalo VI.B.10. The guy who discovered this reference thinks the rest of us are stupid, has decided to gatekeep context).
A few of our 323 Youth have tried to start YouTube channels and memepages but none have broken a thousand subscribers. Most of these channels tend in some way or another to be about our horrible suffocating little culture.
Not a very impressive reach, if you ask me. We believe and practice the way we do because it's what God demands, and no one else gets it right and is as pure of heart. We don't say much about it to people on The Outside because they wouldn't get it. If they read the bible and lived honestly they'd be one of us. We are The Truth.
I wish I didn't have to, but I guess to start I'll explain who The Workers are, the kernel of the whole system. Workers are Those who have Responded to the Call to Give Their Lives to Christ.123 Workers are the Ones who have Gone Into The Work of Spreading the Gospel Story. Some of us believe the Workers possess Apostolic Authority but no one really has any clue what this means practically.45 Some Workers are only Holy Fools, most are keepers of secrets.
The Workers have made their choice to dedicate their lives to The Truth as ordained by scripture, sent out two by two, not congregating in a central church building, meeting only in homes or rented halls.67 They don't have real-life jobs and don't own property beyond what fits in their suitcase. They are completely untrained, many do not even have a concrete understanding of the basic texts (stick to the easy parts like Romans). Most have little to no normal life experience, living among The Friends, traveling from house to house. Ministering, they say.8 A couple nights with these Friends, a couple with those. If your house is nasty or your family is weak in Faith then they might not visit that often. If you're a normal kid, your parents will supplant you from your bedroom to give it to the workers for their stay. If you're a rich kid then maybe your house has a room for the Workers and they stay there a lot. The Workers are celibate, they say.910 There's no money involved, they say. Virtually without exception, as far as I know, their only interactions are with people who go to Meeting. Not that there's any rules about it, it just typically works out this way. If you're a normal person in The Fold, you won't interact with the Workers much because they have more important things to do. It's up to you to put the effort into building that relationship. If they have anything to say, you will listen. You speak to Workers as royalty, because they are. They're in your room and the door is closed.
To The Friends, Workers are the purest living example we have of orthodoxy, piety, austerity. They dress conspicuously cheaply, in muted colors. Their presence is stifling in all ways. They have the authority to correct. The workers are coming? Hide the bottles, hide the TV. This isn't a megachurch, turn off any music that isn't Hymn Sing field recordings. Pull the window shades down, they hate bright lights, the outside, and sunny days, for some reason. No posters, no modernism, no jokes. It doesn't matter that you hide anything well, just that it's enough out of sight that you don't set the precedent of being confronted about it directly. This does Workers the favor of not having to administer you a sermon. They’d be happy to do it but it’s not easy for anyone. It would be their courtesy to you to provide you with the interface to God’s correction and it doesn’t reflect well on you to demand that of them. You'll be judged anyway, by them, by The Friends, the Fellowship, God. Be careful not to offend, always. You don’t talk to the Workers much, but you carry this omnipresent filter of what-would-The-Fellowship-think with you everywhere (by proxy what-would-God-think). This is why I didn't want to start with the Workers: although they are central to the system, interaction with them is rare.
Something really cool about, like, the Amish or Mennonites is that they are elite artisans of renown. Furniture, dairy. We also have our crafts, we're just not good at them. Guys typically end up being Accounting, Farmer, Engineering Middle Manager, or Real Estate. Girls it's Workplace Admin, Nurse, Naturopathy Quack, Chiropractor Quack, Oral Hygienist, Elementary School Teacher. For girls it's an MRS degree, it doesn't matter. Formula for life: marry the girl in your Sunday Morning Meeting, get tied down in a suburban longhouse mortgage, wife gets fat from all the midwestern starch food, raise your kids in the way they should go. You've probably got a last name that a lot of people recognize, you've probably got a few celebrity Workers in your family. (Of course being a close relative of a Worker with a familiar name grants you elite status). It's without question your parents, aunts, and uncles are all Elders. This is our upper class, our oligarchs, our princes and princesses. If you're one of these you get to wear makeup and normal Outsider clothes. Rules apply to you less, you are allowed to relax a little.
Outside our elite there's the ones that don't quite make it, they don't reach that front-office green lawn stability. The bottom-quartile of 4th-or-5th-generation Meeting-goers who never really made it up the ranks. I'll call them The Flock. The Flock bear the most accountability for adherence to all the contradictory, silent norms imposed by the Friends' rigid, suffocating social structure I can only define through glances. What bloats out the sides is a languid, aimless deviance. These are anaerobic bacteria found only in the darkest recesses of this rotting carcass.
It's less simple, less parametric to illustrate The Flock, Anna Karenina principle or something. In spite of this, there's something of a shared ethos to all of them and it's typified by a class of gathering I think most are familiar with. Imagine a homeschool activity group that rents out a local civic center indoor basketball court. The basketball court has ice-cold fluorescent lighting with vertigo-inducing flicker and it smells like paint chemicals. They set up card tables with folding chairs and green roll-up chess boards they play checkers on. The dusty red playground ball lodged in the ceiling beams, its backstory is an evergreen topic of conversation. Who knocked it up there, how long ago, how did they feel about it? How do we make progress to get it down? The kids who show up at this thing, the highlight of their month is coming to this event. They'd be furry if they were online enough. They have made ASDFmovie their whole personality. Lacking exposure to the outside world, all they have to latch onto is the mire of their local library YA fantasy aisle. Not Animorphs or Bone, maybe ElfQuest or late-era Xanth. No one tell them about Homestuck. If they could get away with it their only meal would be Chicken in a Biscuit with Easy Cheese and Gatorade Frost. Uno and Rook and mid-century parlor games are a staple activity. They host sleepovers where the main attraction is Bare-Hands table Spaghetti and then afterward everyone including the parents sits on the floor crotch-to-ass in a circle to do a “massage train.” Gummo bathtub scene happening over there in the corner. These are The Flock. They are my people and I am one of them.
The boys are stunted. I think it's because the culture allows them essentially no masculine expression. They are subordinated to a silent, morose god whose only will is that they sit quietly in meetings, listen to countless hours of those monotone stream-of-consciousness Worker's Sermons (Workers don't prepare sermons, they speak from the heart; it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak) and especially to don't do anything that might offend the congregation. To obey perfectly is our only true joy. The boys’ absolute disconnection from reality and lack of social capital leads to escapism. It is not uncommon to see them “running around” playing war with sticks well into their 20s. They dress thoughtlessly in Payless black bicycle-stitch oxfords with Kirkland Signature white gym socks, Ross relaxed-fit khaki trousers, dad's brown leather belt dad used hit them with when they wriggled around too much in Sunday Morning Meeting, traditional-fit tartan office shirt, also Ross, buzz cut. Like Adam before he knew he was naked.
The girls wear outfits that are so oppressive and nonspecific that I can't stomach researching them. Split ends on their hair cause hair is a woman's glory, so NO CUTTING YOUR HAIR. EVER!!! They all wear those wire-frame or rimless glasses off the CVS rack. The only hairdo that is allowed apparently is a bun with your hair pulled back the way that its unhealthy for your scalp. You aren’t allowed to paint your nails or get a tattoo or get a piercing at Claire’s. No jewelry. Nothing nice, NO FUN. The good ones don’t wear makeup. Long denim skirts, do they make Rockports for girls? Often timid and remote, seem to interact with the adults more, seem more socially important, closer to God. I don't know what they're doing or thinking. Horrific things have happened to some of them. The boys act like they do because they are profoundly stinted but the girls are, I think, sharper from having had sooner and more directly to face the realities of the severe system they're trapped in. I don't understand the girls very well, I never really had any socially admissible reason to go talk to them, and I was held to it. See above.
All members are family. They are unique among the people of this world. Sure you are allowed to engage with The Outside, but why would you? They’ve made a decision to face a lost eternity, they’re like NPCs.
Right now we are hemorrhaging members because it got leaked from a Workers’ meeting that decades of nasty stuff11 have been allowed among the elites, the Elders, and the most powerful Workers, that everyone important enough knew about it and decided to keep it in the inner circle, that the victims should keep it to themselves, that it's up to God to judge abusers' infractions. It is a shit-ton of abuse, over 10% of the clergy by some estimates. The FBI is involved. Our system is amazingly productive at mobilizing pedophiles. It’s not localized, it’s everywhere. To The Friends, this is only a sign of the great prophesied Falling Away, wherein ‘the love of many will wax cold.’ The wheat are being separated from the chaff. It has been made known by some of our most beloved in the fold that God's Will Is The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever. His way is perfect but People are Not.12 The population, so disconnected from the decency of common society, have so mutilated their concept of humanity that it’s in the realm of normalcy (propriety) that our few trusted, respectable authorities forgive, dismiss (sanction) these abuses in secret on behalf of all the rest. The people in this thing are far below baseline in their consideration of fellow man, let alone of God.
From birth I have been a part of this thing. Its shamefulness has always been plain to me. I felt a sense of responsibility to this languid, necrotic world, the only one I believed there was for me because, well, knowing about it prohibited me from living in ignorance. How could you ever be justified in Leaving once you have understood The Truth is God’s One True Way, that it is you who is responsible for all The Truth’s flaws? The scandals absolved me. I am not in a position to help any of them. I am a subordinate, not a peer. Nearly 30 years of continuous attempts to reinvent myself to meet their hideous standards has failed to improved my standing. I was born into the underclass and cannot shed my reputation. I moved to Brooklyn for a change of scenery. I am not remembered, I try to forget them. TFW no GF, etc.
We have deliberately raised a generation without qualities. We are in the world and not of it, we eschew earthly pleasures to store treasures for ourselves up in Heaven. We'll continue to take on new, stranger forms as we shrivel up further. We are fading out of sight uncontrolled into the barren void of deep space in the direction of nothing. We are now operating in full death drive. Since the rash of scandals and the thinning of the herd we've become even more close-knit. Spinning into oblivion the customs continue to derez into yet more contorted, misanthropic forms.
How to become a Worker: First, as most things come to us, you have to feel a divine Calling, the Still Small Voice working with your heart. One of the gravest sins available to us is to ignore so direct a call from God. If you're a kid growing up deep in the center of this thing among the most central families you might find yourself pressured to offer for the work. At 7 or so I was overcome with grief because I knew in the pit of my stomach I was going to be Called, the worst thing I could imagine ever happening to someone.
You make known your calling by Offering For The Work and writing a formal petition to the Workers assigned to your Field, usually around Convention time. If they're sister workers, they'll pass the inquiry along to the nearest Brothers. You're vetted by a private committee. Reputation goes a long way. We have hymns about it. There's an indefinite waiting period before you get assigned an Older Worker to travel with in the next Worker's List.[2] You generally have to get a few years of real-life work experience under your belt before they take you, but if your last name is important enough they'll fast-track you.
We have liftoff! Now you give all your belongings to your parents, forfeit cash and personal autonomy to the administration, and at this point you're really jacked in. The Older Worker now basically controls your life until you evolve into their position. Older Workers are an aging population, many in their mid-70s. Some believe that to become a Worker you have to undergo a ritual involving a Laying of the Hands. Details on what this entails are opaque.
Workers are appointed for life and there's no real exit plan. There are rumors of an old folks/hospice exclusively for Workers out in Texas run by one of the richos. The catch-all term for Workers Retiring is that they're announced as "Resting" on the new Worker's List. Details on the politics of why each individual gets Rested are controlled info/need-to-know. I hear if you weren't put away for some bad reason, then you can beg some asshole up the chain of command for an allowance of like $30-300/month out of the big stash. Pension for a life’s service. Lilies of the field and so forth.
The worker groomed into their position from way-too-young with no personal autonomy or means of escape is one of the sorest victims of this whole enterprise. It is forgivable how alien and deranged they all become. You ever feel like nothin good was ever gonna happen to you?
Lists are the ‘backend glue’ that maintains order. Decentralized as we are in normal operation, it is only this mesh, these sinews and tendons, that render our body. Some of our few concrete cultural artifacts.
Union Meeting list, what last names go where each month
Special Meeting List
Friends in the Field, their contact info
Genealogy, notetaking, and record-keeping are common obsessions and almost a requirement to stay awake for most meeting sermons. Have to occupy the mind with something.
Workers lists, they come out around Convention time and contain coveted information. "Who are the new Workers going to be? Are they rotating out Dan and Scott?" Privileged friends will know the answer before you.
Gospel Meeting Venue Info Ribbon
Convention speakers lists. Who's speaking when. These are weirdly kind of standardized. Postcard-sized square of copy paper. Heading with the convention name. 4x3 grid of sections, each 3 or 4 Workers' names, one on each line. Each grid is a list of speakers for Sparsifications of this format (e.g. repeat speakers, too many Meetings with only 3 speakers), are often pointed at by the Antis[3] as tell-tale indicators that The Truth is Dying. I wish they were right.
Wednesday night study weekly chapter list. “What's the Study this week? Did you read the Study? Cual es el Estudio?”
The Antis are an obscure but definite group. These bad people, beneath Outsiders and Those Who Lost Out, are possessed by an all-too-real devil and now spend their time and resources spreading misinformation online about His One True Way. Volatile, erratic, they are a macabre bunch. They come as close as any to blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, as if under some kind of Strong Delusion. “Who knows what they're writing about us on the internet,” a member might say, “you can post whatever you want online.”
The white-haired Older Brother Worker clenches you tight against the side of his chest, he's not wearing an undershirt underneath his oxford, he halitosisly half-whispers into your ear "Whatever you do, son, don't ever let yourself become an Anti..." A lot to mull on for a 12-year-old.
I'm avoiding talking about our “doctrine” since
we're deliberate about not codifying it and
what we have to say about it is of very little practical significance.
"What's your church called?" they always say we'll be asked. We take the name of Christ. (This line is drilled into every Professing kid). "What do you believe?" We follow scripture.
Most of our 20-thousand-something members[5] don't put much stock in biblical reading comprehension, the common sentiment being well if He Hath Revealed Unto Babes What Is Hidden From The Wise why do I have to have an academic understanding of some book to know what's right. We believe in the simple truth of the Gospel Story which we learn about through divinely inspired scripture. Don't intellectualize it.
A lot of our rules are really just reactions against Catholicism and reflections of the norms of 19th-century Irish protestants, our origin. We're especially Trinitarian, or Antitrinitarian, or uhh, whatever the opposite of the Catholics is. This was super important and central to our beliefs at one point. Maybe it still is, I don't know. Will this show up on the final exam? Where can I use this in real life?
Sum-total there's ~20,000 of us unevenly distributed around the world. By my estimation (Convention Group Pictures) the decline is slowing. No one is getting converted because our way of life is self-evidently depressing. A common Member response: “Sure interest is drying up in these entitled American left-wing-nut-job urban centers, but The Truth is growing like wildfire in nations like China where they don't have freedom of religion.”
This is observably a lie. Our best Brother Worker in China is an eccentric, charismatic-charlatan type and a couple years ago an outsider ratted him out to the government and the Chinese government kicked all our guys out of the country, so no more Meetings in China, at least as far as they care to tell low-prestige Friends such as me.
The Workers List[2] got into the Wrong Hands.
Jesus said unto Peter, Feed my sheep. A Healthy Flock desires to be found in Gospel Meeting to hear the Workers' Message every Sunday at 3:30 PM. The Workers are spreading the Gospel. Gospel Meeting is advertised in classifieds and bulletin boards. It’s supposed to be our funnel for new members. Maybe it used to be effective in the 19th century. These days Workers just preach that it’s the Flock’s responsibility to Till the Harvest Field.
In practice, Workers aren't observed leaving their room much beyond for Meetings. They sporadically leave the house for an enigmatic "walk" or "phone call." Must be important, all their work done in secret. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, I guess. "What time will breakfast be tomorrow?" a Worker will certainly ask.[7] There's no money involved. They go out two by two.
Workers won't do anything for you around the house during their visit. Two reasons:
Workers have higher responsibilities.
What with it being the position of the woman of the house to set it in order, to help would be an indictment of her capabilities.
“We know how women get with their systems in the kitchen, we wouldn't want to intrude.” a worker has said.
There are exceptions to this, of course. To our amazement, some of the younger, more liberal Workers have started the courtesy of taking their plates to the sink after they eat. Some Younger Sister Workers, the ‘fun ones’ are known to scrub the dishes and fold their own sheets, maybe even prepare a meal or two with the kids to engage with them. An Older Sister Worker might offer the woman of the house some words of correction if it doesn't meet her expectations. It is a Brother Worker's post to offer anyone correction.
There are approximately 1 million church functions that are not worth getting into, each ritual with its own dreary array of subtleties, meanings overt and hidden, social orders, etc. Attendance to everything is mandatory, of course. Always give more than you can tolerate. Gospel Meeting is of secondary importance to Sunday Morning Meeting which is held in an Elder's[10] living room at 10 AM every Sunday (or for some reason 10:30 AM in the western US). If Jesus returned to Earth today he would surely be found at his local Sunday Morning Meeting.
The act of Professing, the act of Offering for the Work, Testimonies, Emblems, Emblem Prayer, Emblem Hymn, Gospel Meeting, Special Meetings, Western US vs Eastern + Some of Texas Schism, Ireland vs. Everywhere-else Schism (USA was always just a a glorified crew), the “Nobody knows WTF anyone is doing in the deep south” Schism, The Canadian Excommunication Tapes, the secret chain of command among workers, Midwestern Cliques, California Cliques, Hymn Sings, Conventions, Preps/Work Day, Teardown, Wednesday Night, Sporadic Gospel Meetings, Get-Togethers, The Benches, Workers Meetings (secret, need-to-know!), Detasseling (exclusive!), Convention Baptism Pond, Convention Speaker Hierarchy, After-meeting Convention Talks, Convention Jobs, Night Watch, Funerals, Funerals, Funerals.
If a Worker ever did something WACKY like molesting a kid (that would never happen, though??), rest assured it would be dealt with in short order, discretely, and by the responsible parties. It's really indecent to dwell on that sort of thing. It reflects poorly on you that your mind wanders to such nasty places. I'd be asking God for help with that.
Elders are appointed by Workers according to their bespoke interpretation of criteria in 1 Timothy 3. Being an Elder means you get to run your own Sunday Morning Meeting which the Workers of your local Field will attend in cycles. It is a coveted position for young families that parents be granted the privilege of raising their kids with direct, regular exposure to our high standards of orthodoxy. We call them Elders and not Bishops because Bishop sounds kinda Catholic and we're not that. I know a lot of Elders that were up to some real rotten, disgusting stuff. Still have to show up at their place early enough before 10:30 so the Elders don't call up my parents to chew me out.
Guess.
One of our strongest control vectors is language. The Friends have adopted a kind of austere dialect where each word and cadence is laden with hidden meaning. In its highest form, all things are stated relatively, naming few if any concrete articles, producing words that are vacuous unless you come in with the full context. The medium is full of content and the words absolutely free of it. Few notions are communicated directly. Of course, the performance of Talking like this is obvious. It’s a show of status. I’ve tried to capitalize words to make it apparent where this language appears. It’s all very Hegelian.